The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1078

Ves stared at the crates of nutrient packs in dismay. Aside from them, he retained nothing else from the Aeon Corona Mission!

He lost his CFA shuttle with its amazing ECM systems. He lost his XV-99 Squalon field engineer armor with integrated minifab system. He also lost his CFA officer-grade comm!

His heart ached with the losses. Even though Lieutenant Stimmons would have likely taken them away anyway, he still felt awful that Lucky got to be the final benificiary.

"Tell me, Calsie, how can you let Lucky get away with eating my stuff?"

"We didn’t know. I think Lucky was too hungry for valuable exotics." Calsie looked apologetic. "Back when times were good, we followed your instructions and fed him a steady diet of ores. However, when we needed to cut back on expenses, every million credits counted, so we reduced the value of ores we supplied to Lucky. He must have been frustrated at the years of deprivation, so he sought alternatives."

"So he went straight to the vault?"

"You know as well as I do that no barrier can stop him. This vault is surrounding by meters armor plating! Nothing ought to be able to burrow inside! I transferred your CFA equipment in the vault with the reassurance that no one would be able to breach it without setting off an alarm. Somehow, Lucky avoided getting detected while he snuck inside. At that point, he held free reign to do whatever he wanted! It wasn’t until months later when I needed to retrieve something else from the vault that I came upon the remnants of the shuttle. The bite marks instantly made it obvious who was responsible."

"Lucky.." Ves grumbled resentfully.

His willful cat became more and more unbridled. His ability to turn intangible not only made every physical barrier a joke in his eyes, but now his ability to sneak became much stronger due to the ECM abilities he somehow assimilated from his meals!

Lucky’s Communications, ECM, Gravity Manipulation and Sharp Senses all seemed to stem from the shuttle, armor and his comm. Even his Gem Excretion had been upgraded to the fifth tier, perhaps by incorporating aspects of the minifab system.

And while the System sight did not list out how much more resilient Lucky’s exterior shell became, it must have received a substantial boost as well.

"This was supposed to be my gear when I chose to go on an excursion in the frontier." He lamented. "I would have been assured of my safety if I could make use of them. Now, I no longer have the confidence to enter the frontier anytime soon."

As much as he pined over his losses, Ves slowly recovered. That Lucky ultimately benefited at the CFA’s expense was not a major misdeed. A more capable Lucky would be able to substitute for the role his CFA gear played in a much more inconspicuous package.

For example, he wouldn’t be able to bring his CFA shuttle with all of its features everywhere, particularly indoors. However, he could bring along Lucky wherever he went. He could even develop a purposeful habit of doing so whenever he visited somewhere. Once people got used to seeing him with his cat, they would just mentally shrug it off as a quirk.

Plenty of mech designers possessed unusual habits, so Ves wouldn’t be any different for bringing his mechanical cat along. _{freeweɓnovel.cѳm}

"Please leave." Ves stated to Calsie after a short moment of contemplation. "Just leave me with my nutrient packs."

"Okay, sir... if that’s what you want."

He didn’t blame Calsie for her oversight in this matter. Who knew that Lucky would pull off something like this? The gluttonous cat ate almost everything made of metal and composite materials, leaving only the nutrient packs alone due to their organic content.

Ves walked up to the strewn crate that had spilled a bunch of nutrient packs on the floor. He bent down, picked up the crate, and carefully stuffed the spilled nutrient packs back into the crate.

"Worthless, huh?" Ves smiled sardonically. "To me, they’re treasures."

After stuffing all of the packs back into the crate, he put it down and moved towards the other crates. He lifted the top crates and put it aside. He repeated the process until he came to the bottom-most crate.

After opening it, he reached down his arm through the pile of nutrient packs and searched for something buried in the middle. After his fingers touched upon a small box, he grasped it and took it out.

"Hahaha. At least I still have this!" He laughed as he opened the small box, revealing the Archimedes Rubal organic brain implant held in perpetual stasis. "It’s surprising how many people look right past a bunch of nutrient packs."

When Ves witnessed Lieutenant Stimmons calling down some penetrating, wide-area scans from the corvette up in orbit, he made a prediction.

He guessed that as powerful as the wide-area scans appeared, they didn’t offer much detail! It would be too exaggerated if a small corvette, even of CFA make, could scan an entire terrestrial planet and expose every dirty little secret down to the nanometer!

A modern CFA battleship might possess the capacity to do so, but Ves refused to believe that the CFA would invest so much resources in outfitting a mere corvette with such a powerful scanning system!

While the Archimedes Rubal was of indeterminate value right now, Ves held high hopes for it once he found a means to double-check its biological programming.

"It’s always better to improve my own core capabilities than to outfit myself with gear."

Ves was a mech designer, so anything that directly improved his ability to design mechs took precedence over anything else.

After he became reassured that he still retained the Archimedes Rubal, he returned it to the crate and put everything back in order. Right now wasn’t the time to make use of what remained in the vault.

A couple of days went by as Ves tried to get over his losses. He supervised the planning around the upcoming transformation of the LMC.

In order to make it clear to the workforce that the company would be undergoing a major transition, the planners came up with a name for it: Phase 2.