The Mech Touch novel Chapter 4522

The extensive looting process lasted for a week, and did not proceed without problems.

The temporary coalition grew less united by the day as the individual pioneering groups constantly argued against each other for the same pieces of loot.

So much alien salvage and treasure had become available that greed became ubiquitous. The compulsion to claim the shiniest loot and the most interesting toys frequently provoked quarrels that often left every side dissatisfied with the compromises they made at the end. _{freeweɓnøvel.com}

Negotiating teams from every pioneering group continually met with each other in order to make backroom deals and form temporary alliances in order to gain priority on certain types of loot.

Time was of the essence. Of the two stars of the Boryan System, one of them was a highly disruptive neutron star that continually bathed the entire star system with unstable magnetic fluctuations and other hazardous activity. Already the derelict alien warships were beginning to degrade at an accelerated rate.

Everyone sped up their salvaging efforts. They concentrated on looting priority goods such as starfighter energy shield generators, containers filled with valuable exotic materials, warp drives that needed a lot of overhauls in order to make them usable for human vessels, databanks and other electronic storage devices, distinctive alien artwork that appealed to collectors, live alien prisoners and most importantly phasewater.

Different groups had different priorities. For example, the Lehrer Foundation displayed an extremely high interest in obtaining samples of advanced alien technology, particularly the powerful transphasic weapon systems of different alien warships.

The Gemini Family wasn't particularly picky about the loot. It just wanted to obtain the goods that could yield the greatest amount of MTA credits and MTA merits.

The Golden Skull Alliance meanwhile grabbed a little bit of everything.

Master Benedict Cortez instructed the Cross Clan to snap up alien tech that could be relevant to mechs once he managed to study and reverse engineer their underlying principles.

The Glory Seekers selected items of particular interest to the Hex Federation, which most notably included relatively intact hulls of disabled alien warships.

The Larkinson Clan also claimed a modest amount of samples of exotic alien technology, but also put a greater priority on biological goods and phasewater.

The division of phasewater became one of the most contentious issues of the plundering operation. The amount of pure phasewater was considerably less than expected as many alien pirates had either used them up or purposely destroyed their stashes out of spite.

This caused most of the available phasewater on the battlefield to be locked inside existing products.

It was certainly possible to recycle warp drives, shield generators and other phasewater-infused products, but the yields were too low. Obtaining 50 percent of the phasewater integrated into a device was the best case scenario, but the prevailing yields were much lower.

All of this meant that the recycling value and the resale value of all of the alien tech were severely discounted.

The only way to gain maximum value out of them was to sell the working pieces of technology to alien buyers who were already familiar with the native products, but that was most definitely a treasonous act!

Every pioneer had to abide by a common set of rules before they obtained passage to the Red Ocean, and consorting with indigenous aliens was definitely an important taboo!

The Big Two had intensified their enforcement of this particular rule as of late. There had been too many incidents of greedy human pioneers trading away valuable human tech and knowledge to the native aliens that examples needed to be made!

As such, a lot of powerful alien technology could only be sold to human buyers at a fraction of their value.

"It's not so bad, Benny." Ves shrugged as he leaned back in his chair. "I didn't agree to take part in this battle in order to fill the coffers of the clan. The Living Mech Corporation is already doing a good job at that. What I am truly after is phasewater, rare and powerful pieces of tech and other goods that simply don't get sold in marketplaces like Davute. Our research and development divisions have obtained a lot of goods that will easily keep them occupied for several decades."

Ves learned that alien technology was one of the currencies of the new frontier. The overall tech level of the indigenous alien community might be inferior compared to the tech level of humanity as a whole, but the natives possessed an unquestionable advantage in their familiarity and ability to leverage phasewater.

Famed research and development institutions such as Morton Tech and Melmen Advanced Systems largely depended on reverse engineering salvaged alien devices to fuel their own advancements.

If Ves ever wanted to reduce his dependence on external development companies for high-tech mech parts, then he needed to give his clan enough materials to work with, which was exactly why the Larkinson Clan collected so many diverse pieces of alien tech.

"Did we manage to acquire a lot of alien biotech products during the salvaging operation?" Ves asked his personal assistant as he glanced around his office.

He needed to expand the display area for his battle trophies. He wanted to commemorate the defeat of the V'gahnt-Zezne and the unclean whale.

"I am afraid I have to disappoint you, boss. The Palace of Shame lacks a biotech infrastructure. The only major use of biotechnology employed by several pirate groups is related to food cultivation. They have these large flesh pillars that can absorb pretty much every form of organic materials as well as many kinds of inorganic materials and process them into pure nutrients tailored to satisfy the individual dietary needs of a specific alien race."

Ves grew interested. "Oh? Tell me more about these flesh pillars."

"According to numerous sources, these organic food producers are highly mature products that have long been in use by many different alien races. The tech has been around long enough for many alien races to develop their own racial variants that can efficiently keep them fed under circumstances where the supply of natural food products is unstable. They are particularly common in small outposts, isolated space stations and pirate vessels."

"So what you're saying is that they are basically organic nutrient pack production machines."

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