The Mech Touch novel Chapter 2770

Chapter 2770 - Graveyard

"Meow~"

Lucky flew up to Vivian Tsai and offered up his back for petting and stroking.

The shipwright couldn’t resist the cuteness. She grinned and put down her data pad to play with the gem cat.

"You’re not as hard and cold as I thought. What is this unusual material? I’ve never encountered anything like it before. I would love to find out where to get some."

Ves ruefully smiled as he sat down on the chair opposite to Vivian’s desk. "You won’t be able to find it anywhere else. Lucky is quite a unique existence."

Though Ves hadn’t met with Vivian a lot, she already looked more comfortable in her own skin than before. Despite her relatively junior age and experience, she occupied a high position within the hierarchy of the clan.

Being thrust in a position of great responsibility always changed people. Fortunately, Vivian successfully stepped up and managed to organize an entirely new department within the Military Bureau.

With a small army of engineers, analysts, lesser shipwrights and other personnel answering to her, she had made a lot of progress in developing new capital sh.i.p.s while at the same time evaluating existing ones the Larkinson Clan might wish to acquire to gain an instant boost.

Right now, the meeting revolved around the latter.

After Vivian had her fill with the affectionate cat, she returned to business.

"Ahem, after several weeks of exploration, outreach, preliminary negotiations and investigations, we are ready to present you with a small list of choices that the Larkinson Clan might wish to acquire."

The decision to add another capital ship to the expeditionary fleet was not a trivial one. Making impulse purchases with sh.i.p.s worth more than a trillion hex credits was not done. Every buyer had to study every possible angle of a ship for an offer in order to make sure it fit their needs.

Starsh.i.p.s, especially larger ones such as capital sh.i.p.s, were often individualized. These were expensive assets that were usually put to use for fifty, a hundred or even two-hundred years!

With such a long service time, it was well worth it to invest money to modify them to better suit a specific purpose.

Over time, as new generations rolled in that introduced better technology and new innovations, owners might also choose to upgrade specific parts and systems to keep up with the times.

Starsh.i.p.s never remained static. A good crew and owner constantly invested in them and cared for them so that they delivered reliable performance.

However, the opposite also happened. Plenty of starsh.i.p.s suffered when dysfunctional crews and awful owners handled them improperly. These vessels exhibited greater problems that caused their total lifespan to shorten considerably.

The dossiers that Vivian prepared for Ves happen to fall under the latter category.

"The conditions you have set have made it rather difficult for us to attract good offers." Vivian patiently explained. "You chose to retain the two long-range FTL drives in order to upgrade the Spirit of Bentheim. While this is your prerogative, the value of the Auralis is severely diminished now that she has lost her greater advantage."

"She’s still a very good fleet carrier. It’s not as if she has become worthless after losing her long-range FTL travel capabilities. She possesses excellent armor coverage that is completely intact and there are a wealth of modern military-grade systems and components inside her hull. Her capacity is also good at 600 mechs."

"The supply of good, armored fleet carriers like these is considerably higher than the supply of deep strike fleet carriers, sir. We are working in a much less favorable market environment. This has caused us to receive a large number of sketchy offers."

Ves narrowed his eyes. "Sketchy in what way?"

"Whatever you can think of." Vivian shrugged. "The people and organizations that reached out to us were opportunities trying to see whether we were gullible enough to fall for their tricks. While the capital sh.i.p.s they showcased all seemed like good value at first glance, our inspections revealed many issues. Worn-out FTL drives, improperly-repaired hull structure, prem.a.t.u.r.e stress fractures in the keel, contorted software and most egregiously unannounced downgrades. My men and I have witnessed too many instances where quality parts and systems were replaced by cheaper variants without doc.u.menting the changes."

"And this actually works?"

She nodded. "I have grown up in the shipbuilding industry and I have listened to a lot of stories from my father and his colleagues. They have all encountered instances where the clients fail to do their due diligence. There are all kinds of reasons for that and there are also sellers out there who explicitly fish for these customers. What we needed to do was show that we aren’t gullible suckers. Once we rejected the outright scams, we were left with more decent offers that are actually made in good faith."

"I see. Tell me what you have encountered."

"Oh, there is quite a decent variety of second-hand sh.i.p.s on offer. Most of them are non-combat oriented though. Organizations tend to cling to their fleet carriers a lot tighter so there is less on them in the market. Another issue is that the capital sh.i.p.s on offer are usually several decades old. The worst are over a century old. While they are technically in working condition, the outdated tech, worn construction and other issues mean that they require lots of time and effort to keep them in good condition."

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