Ves blissfully woke up from his slumber.
Though he had already left Majestic Teal behind a long time ago, he still thanked his fortune that he managed to make it out of Prosperous Hill VI.
Every day he woke up without having the threat of getting attacked by a fringe group or the overpowering forces under the control of a political faction made him feel at ease.
Obviously, Ves still hadn’t fully processed the lingering trauma of his latest adventure. It was truly harrowing for him to go back to a circumstance where he lacked the protection of thousands of strong and loyal mech pilots. It was as if all of his hard work and effort into raising the military wing of the Larkinson Clan was for nothing!
“Well, I learned my lesson now.” He murmured.
He would pay extra attention to any planets that imposed strict restrictions on how many escorts an organization could send down.
The problem was that this custom was quite common. Prosperous Hill VI wasn’t even the worst of the bunch. As a port system, it had to accommodate a high amount of foreign traffic, and all of those businessmen, industrialists and entrepreneurs could never completely place their trust on the Planetary Guard or soldiers for hire to protect them against their rivals!
“The problem now is that my clan has grown too powerful.”
This was a rather strange problem to have, but it definitely gave him some new headaches. According to his assistant Gavin, the threat level of the Larkinson Clan had grown so much that even the strongest second-class states would be wary of the arrival of a massive fleet that possessed the equivalent battle power of a military mech division!
The expeditionary fleet could do a lot of damage if all of its mechs went on a rampage. Perhaps the Larkinson Clan’s ability to unleash total annihilation was not as exaggerated as that of Uranus, but the sheer amount of mechs meant that Ves could theoretically command all of his forces to spread out and wipe out many population centers at once!
Even if the bigger and more strategic cities were protected by military garrisons, not every city enjoyed as much protection! The Larkinsons could easily take advantage of the holes of any planet’s defensive strategy and wipe out millions of people while inflicting even greater material damage without getting wiped out in an instant!
The Larkinsons needed that power in order to protect themselves. Yet that also put them on the list of high risk visitors whenever they crossed over in any state.
The expeditionary fleet already detected signs that this was the case. There were monitoring devices pointed at all of their ships and maybe mechs if their resolving power was good enough.
Military patrols and other, less overt signs of monitoring persistently dogged the fleet. Some star systems became a lot more unfriendly towards their arrival than others.
While local authorities knew better than to provoke an independent fleet with thousands of battle-ready mechs at its disposal, there were several annoying ways to get their message across.
It didn’t matter to Ves. He had no intentions of making any extended stops in Winged Serenade or any other place for that matter. His fleet had already bought enough supplies to last a couple of months, and if the Spirit of Bentheim stopped her production activities, the clan could probably spend a year or two in space!
“This is the advantage of grasping power by myself.” He whispered.
He was not strictly beholden to any single state or organization. While the clan was still dependent on others to acquire valuable materials and strategic goods such as capital ships, the Larkinsons had already grown strong enough to trade with organizations that Ves could only look up to in the past!
Money could not solve every problem, but it had enough power to address the mundane issues plaguing the fleet.
As Ves thought about the plan to acquire the next batch of capital ships, he began to feel a bit of pain from the top of his head.
He activated a mirror projection that showed what was going on. Resting atop the pillow where his head rested, Lucky was gnawing on his hair for some reason. Teeth that were sharp enough to cut through extremely resilient exotics such as Unending alloy were merely bending his hair strands. Saliva that was corrosive enough to soften and melt Breyer alloy was merely causing his hair to become stained with cat saliva.
“What the hell…? Have you lost some circuits, Lucky?”
“Meow… meow…”
“You’re being too demanding. Aren’t you happy with your Breyer alloy meals? I’ve even supplemented your diet with some other exotics every day!”
“Meow!”
“You’re a cat! Other cats are perfectly fine with eating the same cat food every day. Besides, those exotics in our vault are too precious for you to eat. I need them all to fabricate our next expert mechs. You can forget about taking a bite out of them. The warning system that I have set up already told me you have been lurking close in the last week!”
Though Ves was not able to block Lucky from sneaking into his vault in order to gorge on his P-stones and other precious materials, he at least succeeded in setting up a rudimentary spiritual tracking system.
While he still wanted to refine his design of this system before he deployed it on a wide scale, so far its ability to detect Lucky was quite good. Ves was quite proud with how much his spiritual engineering had progressed. Hopefully he would be able to use his new invention to detect all manner of spiritual infiltrators. He still remembered how he never noticed those freaky Haatumak cultists standing in close proximity to him. The way they completely negated both visual and electronic detection was incredibly weird!
Gloriana had already woken up earlier so the other side of the bed was empty. She had been sleeping less as of late in order to devote more time in the design lab.
“Damn overworker. She’ll work more effectively if she takes adequate rest.”
Well, it wasn’t as if Ves was any different. Everytime he became passionate, he could never resist the urge to cut back on his sleep despite knowing the consequences.
The expert mech design projects were her passion, so even if she had to cut short her sleeping cycle for several months, she would gladly sacrifice her beauty sleep in order to dedicate more hours of her time on refining her designs!
Ves calmly walked into the bathroom and took a quick shower. Naturally, the shower of his grand stateroom was extremely luxurious and efficient by second-class standards.
Before water poured down from the ceiling, a strong gust of wind removed most if not all of the dust and dirt particles from his body.
“Meow!”
Lucky, who had followed him inside for whatever reason, got shocked as well, causing him to jump towards the ceiling of the large shower cabin!
Seconds later, a shower of cleansing water poured down his body. Soap and other cleaning and perfuming substances had already been infused in the drops, so Ves did not need to grab any soap.
Gravitic modules built underneath the shower cabin gently caressed his entire body at once. It was as if a hundred invisible hands scrubbed his entire body at once. Even his hair was being massaged by fine threads of force.
The shower only lasted thirty seconds at most. Any longer was completely unnecessary as the algorithms running the shower cabin already determined that he had been cleaned to the most optimal state. Any further scrubbing was counterproductive and would lead to health problems down the line.
As a quick blast of air and force blew away all of the moisture clinging onto his body, Ves exited the shower cabin and dressed himself in his dignified-looking patriarch uniform.
It was not an especially extravagant piece of clothing. Aside from the extra golden filigree and other minor flourishes, it bore a high resemblance to the typical standard service uniform of the Larkinson Clan.
This was a deliberate design choice. He had no reason to dress himself up too much in front of his clansmen. Doing so would just increase the power distance between himself and his subordinates and make it seem as if he was not truly one of their own.
Ves was still accustomed to the somewhat casual and close way the old Larkinson Family exercised leadership. There was no need to be overly pretentious in front of the people that had become his new family.
Besides, after witnessing many examples of good and bad leadership, he felt that all of the artificial trappings of power were merely icing on top of a cake.
If the cake itself was rotten, then it didn’t matter how much sugar he poured on top of it. At best, the sweetener would just mask the foul taste. At worst, it would make him misjudge his own situation and believe he was infallible when he had already stumbled.
“Meow.”
His indignant cat landed on top of his head again, messing up the neatly-combed hairstyle that his grooming bot had just prepared.
“I told you already, I’m not feeding you with the good stuff! At least wait until our situation has stabilized. It’s rather difficult for us to obtain quality exotics when we are constantly on the move.”
“Meow meow!”
His cat settled on his head as if it was his cushion. Though Ves could easily bear the weight of his metallic pet, it was still an annoyance to go about his day while wearing an irritable cat as his hat.
“Blinky, do something about it. Get rid of this squatter.”
A purple blinking cat emerged from his mind. The Star Cat materialized next to Lucky and attempted to dislodge the protesting gem cat. His black-tipped tail already started to swish in anticipation of another fight!
Mrow.
“Meow!”
The two cats wrestled against each other while playing king of the hill. Lucky tried his best to stay on his chosen perch, but Blinky made it very difficult for the gem cat to have his way!
Suffice to say, Ves did not enjoy a quiet breakfast.
It took half an hour later before a bruised and battered companion spirit returned to his mind in order to recuperate. It seemed that this time Lucky had gained the upper hand.
“Meow!” Lucky arrogantly flipped his tail as he settled back on top of Ves’ hair, making it even messier than before.
If Lucky was an organic cat, then Ves might have felt a bit worried if his pet would use his head as a litter box.
Fortunately, Lucky was a different sort of critter. Ves would gladly present his black, messy hair as Lucky’s personal toilet as long as the pet produced as much ‘waste product’ as possible!
“Are you at least in the process of forming a new gem in your stomach?”
“Meow!”
“I hope you don’t produce another nonsense gem like the Supreme Comprehension one. Although it ultimately helped me out, it also got me in a lot of trouble. I have had enough excitement for a time, so please focus on producing normal gems.”
“Meow.” Lucky tapped his paws against Ves’ forehead.
Ves merely shrugged and went about his day. Just as he started to receive his daily briefing from Gavin, an alarm rang throughout his private office.
“That’s a ship-wide alert!” Ves widened his eyes.
He didn’t have to wait long before someone informed him of the emergency.
“What is it, General Verle?!”
“Someone struck our expeditionary fleet, sir! Five support ships and one combat carrier have blown up! Wait, I’m getting new information. As far as we could tell, our forces are not under attack by any other nearby forces. The space around our current location is largely devoid of other fleets. The most likely explanation is sabotage. The explosions that tore apart the ships have likely been generated by high-yield bombs planted in strategic locations within their hulls!”
Ves felt his chest grip tight. “Who do the vessels belong to? Is it the new Heavensworder vessels that have recently entered our fleet?”
“No, sir. None of the affected vessels are ours.” Verle quickly reassured. “Four of the destroyed ships belong to the Cross Clan while two hail from the Glory Seekers. All six vessels had joined the expeditionary fleet a long time ago. They are not recent additions.”
“Huh?” Ves frowned in puzzlement.
