The Mech Touch novel Chapter 5144

As much as he did not like it, Ves understood that Vivian Tsai was correct.

Neither the Larkinson Clan nor the other partners of the Golden Skull Alliance possessed the research capabilities to adequately figure out the archeship.

Perhaps Ves might be able to make good progress if he studied the captured alien stealth vessel in person, but the opportunity costs of doing so were too great.

He was a mech designer! If he wanted to advance to Master anytime soon, he could not afford to squander his time on rummaging through a complex alien ship.

This was why it made sense to outsource this job to a more competent partner.

The problem was that reasonably intact archeships were both rare and highly valuable. They were so elusive that only the Red Two and perhaps a couple of first-class powers managed to get their hands on similar alien vessels.

Just as Ves intended to teach in his Frontier Wisdom course, trust was always in short supply.

If he handed the captured archeship over to a bigger player, would Ves and his clan actually be able to receive the research results and materials that they were due?

"We can't turn the archeship over to the Red Two." Ves immediately decided. "The fleeters are the most qualified people to research the archeship, and the mechers are not too far behind. However, they probably already have a bunch of these ships in their possession, so they won't particularly value our contribution. I also don't trust these guys to share all of their findings with us. There is nothing we can do if they embezzle our stuff."

Vivian could not say anything about that, so she offered a few alternatives. "Both the Hex Federation and the Colonial Federation of Davute possess the adequate research infrastructure required to study the archeship. However, I don't expect these second-rate colonial states to attain quick results due to their inherent limitations. It may take five to twenty years for their best researchers to decipher the working principles of archemetal and electronic resonance."

This was just an estimate on her part. It might take a shorter or longer amount of time to attain these crucial results.

"What if we leave the archeship in the care of a first-class power?" Ves threw out. "I'm not talking about an entire state, but merely a large enough organization."

"A proper first-class research group will be able to produce meaningful results faster. This is especially the case if it is allowed to reach out to other research institutions to tap into the expertise of more qualified researchers."

This was how the bigger players usually handled situations like this. Ves favored this solution a lot more than the other alternatives, but the problem was that he needed to find a trustworthy first-class partner to hand over this important responsibility.

He briefly thought about the Eden Institute of Business & Technology. After he had completed his high-profile inaugural lecture, he had managed to deepen his integration into its academic community.

While he developed a lot of respect towards Master Laila Devos, he was not certain whether he could trust the Devos Ancient Clan that she ultimately answered to. What if the snobby Terrans chose to renege on the agreement anyway?

This matter demanded a lot more careful consideration. Ves needed to explore these options at a later date. For now, he was eager to step foot inside the archeship.

"Lead me to our prize."

Ves and Vivian strode towards the Small Oven. They made sure they had fully enclosed their protective suits before they strode into an artificial vacuum-filled space.

It was far too troublesome to pump in air every time the Small Oven took in a new starship or sent one out again. This was why the entire space remained in vacuum.

Engineers and shipbuilding crews already started to crawl across the complex exterior of the archeship. They apparently figured out how to deactivate the alien vessel's stealth vessel, because her multi-colored hull was plainly visible to the naked eye.

"She's beautiful." Vivian spoke over the communication channel with a tone of pure admiration. "There is little that we know about the arche, but their shipbuilding tradition is completely different from anything else we have encountered. Not even the aliens of the Milky Way have developed anything comparable in their tech base."

A lot of basic technologies were rather common and universal. Pretty much every technology-oriented race inevitably started to discover and make use of electricity, alloys and warships in similar ways.

It was quite rare for alien races to step outside of established technology and come up with truly new and unique inventions.

Luminar crystal technology was one such example. Archetech was another case of signature alien tech.

As Ves and Vivian moved closer to the alien hull, they were able to gain a much better view of the alien ship.

The archeship looked like an elongated oval egg that was surrounded by patterned alien metals

The coloration of the hull plating ranged from dark bronze to rusty green copper. The primary reason why the surface of the alien ship was so inconsistent was because the arche dynamically produced it by combining a lot of random exotics together.

One of the more confounding traits of archetech was that it did not impose too high demands on consistency. As long as the arche threw in enough valuable materials with the right properties, the aliens didn't care whether a block of archemetal was a little too heavy or lacked a bit of power.

Archeships were essentially machines that were made out of a large collection of semi-ad-hoc archemetal parts.

Just like how no two puelmer homeships were the same, archeships also exhibited large individual differences in material composition and performance because their makers did not value consistency.

"Every archeship is a unique work of art." Vivian aptly described. "They are products made with a collection of individual alien shipbuilders who all developed their own style of constructing starships."

The archeship was not only colorful, but also covered with lots of patterns. Ves knew that this was key to the principles behind archemetal. Without all of the internal patterns that functioned like circuitry, it was impossible for them to evoke and respond to electronic resonance.

He could see the clear parallels between luminar crystal technology and archetech. Both alien tech bases preferred to construct large, solid objects of matter and carve out internal patterns that functioned like circuitry.

This contrasted sharply with conventional technology that essentially consisted of a lot of tiny components that were never meant to function by themselves.

The latter was a lot easier to work with. It took a lot less effort to repair a broken product, and it was also easy to modify or upgrade it by swapping a few components.

"I understand." _{ƒreewebηoveℓ.com}

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