The Mech Touch

Ves thought that was the end of it. Something flung from a ship while traveling in FTL space rarely if ever made it back to reality.

The higher dimensions bore only a loose connection to the material realm. Time, distance direction, mass and energy behaved very differently in these dimensions!

Many races including humanity took advantage of the properties of the higher dimensions to travel faster than light.

Technically, the ships werenʼt traveling faster than light in the higher dimensions. It was just that distance was getting more compressed the higher the dimensions went, which allowed for a slow-moving ship to reach an incredibly distant destination in a reasonable amount of time.

The key was the FTL drive. As long as this complex ship component worked as advertised, the vessel was able to enter and exit the higher dimensions without becoming affected by all of the reality-bending transformations that could turn entire bodies into a string of spaghetti spread across numerous dimensions!

As soon as the Scarlet Rose ejected an escape pod while traveling in FTL, the object should have disappeared.

Whether it drifted aimlessly in the confusing higher dimensions for eternity or got torn apart because one end stretched too far from the other end of the object, something ejected into the higher dimensions without protection almost never made it back!

Of the countless times this occurred, only a rare couple scraps ever made it back to the material dimensions, let alone bump into another ship traveling through FTL.

Ves was almost sure he got rid of the mystery escape pod. To see it return into the same space as before spooked him to no end!

”This is impossible! This canʼt be done!”

Barring perhaps the Big Two and the first-rate states, no one should ever be able to retrieve something lost in the higher dimensions!

Even if it was possible, then at the very least the object in question should have its own FTL drive!

Yet the escape pod contained nothing that suggested that it incorporated a means to travel through FTL! It was too small to carry a full-sized FTL drive, and even a minidrive that had recently been announced by the MTA was a little too big to fit the interior of a typical escape pod!

Ves suspected that he wasnʼt dealing with anything technological at all! Instead, he encountered an anomaly that was likely related to the spiraling spiritual energy empowering the escape pod in some unknown fashion!

Whatever the sleeping woman was doing, she had accomplished something that only high technology should be able to do! For her and her escape pod to literally cross through space and maybe time and emerge onto his ship again without passing through any barriers was incredibly freaky!

”What is going on!? Am I stuck in some kind of ghost incident?!”

The spacer community circulated a lot of ghost stories. Many people who traveled in space sometimes encountered some strange anomalies and other unexplainable phenomena.

Whether they were true or merely the figments of a drunk spacerʼs imagination, plenty of stories got passed around.

Some people treated them as entertainment. Others considered these tales to be superstition.

Only some spacers truly bought into the tales no matter how outlandish they sounded!

Ves refused to believe that he was caught up in a so-called ghost incident. He was merely the victim of some kind of spiritual stalker who chose to snuck aboard his ship for some reason! There shouldnʼt be any ghosts involved!

”Get out! I donʼt want you here! Go find some other to haunt!”

Ves activated the same commands as before and flushed the escape pod into the ravages of the higher dimensions without any hesitation!

An escape pod shouldnʼt be able to surface exposure to the higher dimensions without the support of an FTL drive!

He didnʼt leave the bridge during this time. He forgot about every other task on his agenda for the day and carefully observed the feed of the escape compartment like a hawk.

Nothing appeared out of the blue. The space which formerly held the escape pod remained completely empty as if nothing was about to sneak into it. Several hours passed by until hunger eventually affected his stomach.

”I should grab a bite.”

Though he wasnʼt sure whether he and his ship was in the clear, he still had to take care of his needs.

He left the bridge and entered the mess hall where he cracked open a nutrient pack and dumped its contents in his mouth as quickly as possible.

With everything that happened, Ves wasnʼt in the mood to savor the unique tastes of Coalition-standard nutrient packs.

The moment he finished his meal, he reflexively activated an interface on his combat armor and called up the feed to the escape compartment again.

What he saw almost caused him to spit out a mouthful of nutrient mush!

”Why are you back?!”

The familiar old escape pod was alive and well! Even after ejecting it into the higher dimensions multiple times, this clingy space derelict kept returning to the Scarlet Rose over and over again!

Ves became incredibly angry. Who asked to be haunted by a ghost?!

”If I canʼt get rid of you, Iʼll just kill you first before I throw you out!”

Ves raced down the compartment in question in his full battle loadout. Once he entered the chamber, he approached the escape pod, ripped off the cover, pulled the lever and aimed his rifle at the sleeping beauty resting peacefully inside the pod.

Ordinary people couldnʼt bear to ruin such a pretty image. The hibernating woman possessed a charm that reminded him of some of his mechs. He knew that this was one of the side effects of strong spirituality.

Yet even without this indescribably quality, the woman was still beautiful enough to attract a lot of appreciation. Ves wasnʼt sure whether the woman was wearing makeup or not, but she hardly looked like she needed the help!

”Who cares if youʼre pretty or not! Iʼm telling you once! Leave my ship and never go back!”

The woman did not wake up. The flows of spirituality spiralling out of her body did not exhibit any changes either.

It was as if the woman was truly unconscious!

Yet from everything that happened, Ves seriously suspected whether the sleeping beauty was truly slumbering.

How could her escape pod return to his ship again and again despite throwing her out for three times straight?

Enough was enough! Ves was still determined to avoid the problems surrounding the escape pod as decisively as possible!

Seeing that Ves elicited no reaction at all, he steeled himself while Lucky carefully peeked from behind the shoulder of his combat armor.

His heavy assault rifle released a whine as Ves modulated the power and the frequency of its particle beam module.

In order to avoid damaging the rest of the compartment, he tuned down its power. Even when set at a lower setting, the power of the weapon was more than enough to kill an unprotected human body!

The moment he fired his rifle at the body, a bright glare flooded the optical sensors of his helmet.

The moment his vision returned, what Ves saw was different from his expectations.

He expected to see a bunch of broken, burned, scorched and vaporized remains. The sheer amount of power released by his rifle ought to be enough to shatter the sleeping womanʼs body while damaging the interior of the escape pod!

Though the latter did indeed took place, the body parts separated from the main body looked anything but fresh!

A dried, blackened head with an expression locked into a scream stared dully at Ves!

The rest of the remains that survived the brief weapon discharge all consisted of black, mummified body parts! Due to their lack of hydration, whatever heat and energy affected them quickly started to burn up, causing the remains to turn into ashes at a very rapid rate!

The moment the fire engulfed the upper torso, neck and head, the spirituality released from the body parts still circulated as usual!

It was as if Ves had never broken the mummufied body at all by firing a deathly weapon at it! He began to become more and more frightened as his intuition sensed something very huge was about to take inside the escape pod!

Before he became engulfed by panic, Ves quickly snapped himself out of his paralyzed state.

”Begone!”

He employed the same solution as last time. His armored palm slammed against an emergency button that caused the escape pod to forcibly shunt through a tube and launch from the ship!

This time, Ves did not bother to close the escape pod. He just wanted to get rid of everything in the tube without concern for exposing the interior to the lethal conditions of the higher dimensions!

Ves remained fully alert even after he ejected the escape pod. He lingered at the compartment for a couple of hours.

He had Lucky to keep him company during this time, but unfortunately his cat quickly lost interest and phased out of the compartment.

”Will this pod truly return?” He frowned.

It took several hours for it to come back. This was a very long interval, and Ves couldnʼt afford to remain on guard and neglect his other tasks for so long.

The Scarlet Rose still required his attention! Without a crew, many of the routine but very necessary maintenance tasks had languished. If Ves didnʼt address these minor issues, they would eventually grow up into major problems!

Rather than allow such misfortune to happen at the worst possible moments, Ves would rather perform some like maintenance and repairs to prevent the problems from snowballing.

Just as Ves let down his guard and turned towards the exit, his intuition briefly compelled him to turn around.

He did so.

”AAAHH!”

The escape pod not only reappeared, but returned in a pristine state!

The escape podʼs front had already slid open, revealing the same mummified female body as before!

Though dead and dried, the body was completely intact, as if Ves had never fired at it with his rifle at all!

”THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE!”

His mental gymnastics was unable to keep up with the strange phenomena he witnessed from this darned escape pod!

”I donʼt believe you can keep this up forever, you witch!”

Ves mercilessly changed the firing mode of the heavy assault rifle and unleashed a steady laser beam that quickly burned the dried skin and flesh from the mummified body!

The womanʼs hair went up in smoke in an instant while the rest of the dried tissue followed suit in a matter of seconds!

Only blackened bones were left, but under the incredible heat of a sustained laser beam, even they broke down!

Yet as Ves carefully observed with his spiritual vision, an invisible human body shape continued to release spiritual energy as if the body was still intact!

Evidently, Ve s failed to kill the mysterious woman completely! Her flesh and bones may have been gone, but her spiritual presence still remained!

Out of an irrational burst of fury, Ves continued to fire his laser at the interior of the escape pod.

However, the power of his heavy assault rifle failed to inflict material damage to the escape pod!

After penetrating the softer surface layers, the laser beam bumped into an extremely hard layer that completely withstood the heat and energy!

This escape pod was anything but simple!

It was more resilient than he expected!

”No wonder it survived so long in space!”

Regardless, Ves still decided to dump it into higher-dimensional space.

After annihilating the physical body of the unknown woman, it should take a lot of effort to reconstruct it again!

Yet a very ominous hunch prevented him from lowering his guard. Having figured out some rules, Ves forcibly shifted his thoughts and looked away.

He only turned around for a second before instantly turning back.

”DAMNIT!”

The escape pod was back, this time exposing a pretty, sleeping woman with brown curly hair!