In the face of the debilitating conditions of the Hypeh-Tekas System, Ves felt gratified that his latest works could take care of themselves a lot better than other products.
While the power of death was prevalent throughout the local space, his Woodsap chs possessed enough vitality and other advantages to retain their combat effectiveness for a ti.
They were almost tailor-made to fight under these adverse circumstances. The greatest source of strength of a Woodsap ch was its ability to sustain itself.
Out of all of his planned elental Carmine chs, none of them could endure continuous setbacks as well as his Woodsap chs!
As long as they did not suffer a single overwhelming blow, they could always find ways to restore themselves again.
No matter whether the enemy inflicted lots of damage to their organic ch fras or forced them to drastically increase their energy expenditure, his proud biochs only needed to draw strength from each other or from any other organism to undo all of the consumption.
Of course, Ves did not blindly assu that his Woodsap chs would be able to operate perfectly under adverse circumstances.
In the hours that passed since the combined fleet entered the Hypeh-Tekas System and began to move towards the inner system, the concentration of dark miasma had grown.
The quantity of deathborn in the periphery also grew by a steady rate.
If both of these trends held, then that ant that once the combined fleet arrived at the first priority site, the human chs and warships would definitely face an unimaginable degree of external pressure!
Ves did not dare to assu that his Woodsap chs could endure such punishing conditions without the protection of Casella's Command Field.
The Second Elf did not want to give up so easily, though.
"The Saint Commander's willpower is precious. She should not squander her power to protect our Woodsap chs. We will manage sohow. If there are any missions that require her to split up her forces, then we will readily accept such an assignnt. What we have discovered in this star system may be the first, but most definitely not the last ti the Red Cabal has colluded with this new extragalactic nace. The Terran Alliance does not have the ace commanders to spare for every future encounter against these deathborn. We must rely on more accessible assets such as our Woodsap chs to hold the line against a threat that can directly phase through the defenses of our starships and devour the souls of our unprotected spacers."
The Terran scion-turned-elf possessed a much broader perspective of the bigger picture than most of his fellow Woodsap ch pilots. He had been appointed their leader for good reasons.
"While I am proud of my works, please do not overestimate them." Ves cautiously warned. "They can only function well so long as you can sustain their consumption. The First Law of Thermodynamics still applies. My Woodsap chs cannot magically create energy out of nothing. Any significant depletion of structural integrity of energy can only be made up for by draining another source of materials and vitality. I am afraid that the coming fight will be so draining that you will use up your Gaia Trees in no ti. After that, there will be very few sources that your Woodsap chs can draw upon."
The elven leader nodded with a serious expression. "We are already aware of these limitations. We are not resigned to this. Our staff and I are already working on finding alternate sources of life. We do not believe that there is no life at all in the heart of enemy territory. If there is truly nothing for us to find, then we still have a last resort. Many of my fellow Woodsap ch pilots have already agreed to let us cannibalize their bonded partners. They intend to go much further than stripping non-essential parts from their ch fras. Only by sacrificing their entire biomass and almost all of their energy reserves will we be able to reallocate resources in the most effective way possible."
"What?!"
That sounded outrageous to Ves! While he designed his Woodsap chs with the ability to donate their own TE Wood and wood energy to other friendly machines, it was only supposed to be an ergency asure.
To go as far as to sacrifice entire biochs just to bring other organic machines back to fighting conditions sounded a lot more extre!
Ves could not imagine that these living chs that had only co to life a month ago would willingly sacrifice themselves.
He found it even more perplexing that the carefully selected test pilots would also agree to end their careers prematurely.
How could they possibly be willing to cut short their dreams of becoming a genuine ch pilot?!
However, Ves soon realized that this may not be as painful of a sacrifice as he initially thought.
"Wait." Ves narrowed his eyes. "Are you counting on my recently developed hyper keystones to give those sacrificed Woodsap chs a chance to make a coback?"
The tall and slender elf smiled in response. "Yes. This auxiliary technology is the guarantee that we shall rely upon to give our noble brothers and sisters a chance to regain their power. As long as your hyper keystones work as advertised, the Woodsap chs that have selflessly sacrificed themselves shall return in full honor after the conclusion of this campaign."
Ves hadn't really paid too much attention to his hyper keystones after their inclusion in his 7th generation living chs.
That was mostly because the Premier Fleet and the Bluejay Fleet did not field any standard living chs at this point.
Many of his older second-class mainstays had yet to be upgraded to contemporary standards, so hyper keystones did not see much use over the old expeditionary fleet.
Ketis, who still presided over the latter, never shared any news about hyper keystones, mostly because the expeditionary fleet had beco so good that it never suffered massive losses.
Even after it had lost the protection of its ace chs, the remaining expert chs and other ch units had reached a very high level of veterancy.
Combined with good leadership, excellent logistics, superior intelligence gathering capabilities and other accumulated advantages, Ves had very little concern that the second-class Larkinsons would suffer a massive loss at the less intensive frontlines in the border regions.
This also deprived him of an opportunity to witness the effectiveness of his hyper keystones at a large scale.
He therefore harbored a considerable amount of doubt about the effectiveness of his hyper keystones under actual field conditions.
It was already bad enough to rely on them on a typical battlefield.
The current environnt was much worse than normal!
"If those Woodsap chs decide to sacrifice themselves to replenish the consumption of other biochs, then they should do so inside your combat carriers whenever possible." Ves reminded the Terran elf. "Doing this right at the enemy's doorstep will leave the cockpit extrely vulnerable. I am not sure whether it can survive the adverse environnt long enough to safely return."
"We know. We will try to avoid this scenario, but we can make no promises. If we are forced to resort to this option, then we will not do so in vain."
The conversation ended not too long after that. Ves found it very difficult to make any suggestions that the clever Terrans hadn't already considered.
When he continued his little tour, his mood remained somber.
The prospect of suffering serious losses among the Woodsap chs left a heavy shadow on his heart.
He did not want his latest and most promising line of living chs to suffer such a serious setback so soon.
Yet if the mission called for it, the Terran soldiers would not hesitate to sacrifice themselves for the good of the Terran Alliance.
As Ves continued to inspect the preparations made by the people in charge of the other chs in the combined fleet, he found himself a bit disappointed by their lack of effectiveness.
The eclectic group of qi cultivators from the Red Collective's Moloch Squadron dug deep into their archives and selected all sorts of esoteric thods to increase a ch's resistance against the darkness.
From carving runes whose anings were not entirely clear onto the armor plating to dousing the machines with processed 'holy water', many of the solutions did not inspire that much confidence.
Even if a handful of them did work out a lot better than expected, their scope and scale were far too limited to protect all of the chs and warships of the combined fleet.
They could only count on large-scale systematic solutions to provide strong and broad-enough protection.
Casella's Command Field and the defensive spell array that was currently under developnt both promised to provide relief, but with deep limitations.
Ves still did not feel comfortable with such a thin safety margin.
Was there nothing else that they could do?
He even approached Jovy Armalon to ask whether the Red Association would agree to install complete neural interfaces into the chs of the Bluejay Fleet.
Surely, it shouldn't be too troubleso to convert its existing stock of RA chs into true chs, right?
Unfortunately, Jovy shook his head.
"If it was that simple, we would have begun the conversion process already. We cannot deploy our true chs in this battle. It is not a matter of capability. We mastered the technology a long ti ago. What is truly holding us back is permission. Headquarters have denied our request. We are not allowed to employ this restricted tech."
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