The Mech Touch novel Chapter 113

The salvage operation proceeded on schedule. Ves downloaded a popular scavenger’s app and loaded in the blueprint and the scans of the Dortmunds. Every time the observation bots scanned a section of the Dortmund, a section of the blueprint turned from red to green. A brighter color meant that there were more of those parts available.

In this way, Ves slowly found out whether his reconstruction effort was feasible.

At the end of the day, the entire blueprint turned green.

"There’s enough working parts available!"

Whoever sabotaged the Dortmunds did a sloppy job. The mech was evidently in a hurry as each machine only endured a couple of sword attacks. The observation bots already marked out all of the green parts. With some careful disassembly Ves could retrieve them intact.

The only problem was that the blueprint radiated a couple of glaring red spots. Some consisted of inconsequential parts like the exterior casing or some unimportant cables. Others presented a bigger problem.

"I’ll have to scavenge all of the broken parts and figure something out."

Having marked the additional parts, Ves began his disassembly. Despite his lack of experience, he made up for it with patience and focus. His recent augmentation left him with a steadier grip, which aided him in utilizing his tools with precision.

A Dortmund was a beast of a printer. If Ves did lacked both a blueprint and a repair manual, he was liable to break something. The valuable information procured from the Society allowed him to avoid many pitfalls and handle the most important components with care.

The work proceeded slowly as Ves took care of the entire disassembly himself. None of the Barracuda’s plentiful bots could help with this delicate operation. The best they could do was to bring them back to the ship and store them in secure containers freshly fabricated for this very purpose.

The entire operation lasted almost an entire week. Ves worked with excessive care, and this led to quite a few delays. His partner might have grumbled a couple of times, but he dutifully patrolled the area with hardly any pause. Both of their nerves were fraught with tension.

When Ves sent off the last shipment of parts, he finally relaxed a little. "The most crucial part of this salvage operation is done."

The Barracuda already swelled with printer parts. While her cargo bay possessed enough space to accommodate them all, in order to leave enough room for the Harrier, Ves was forced to store them elsewhere. He repurposed the dormant compartments in the middle and upper decks as emergency storage rooms.

It made his ship a bit less safe, but Ves could deal with it. The Barracuda could not fit much more without throwing away some supplies.

"Let’s go back to the bottom floor of this base and open up the final stashes."

Dietrich, Lucky and Ves all floated down the elevator shaft and reached the fourth underground floor. While Dietrich kept watch from the corridor inside his mech, Ves entered the marked out maintenance closet and prepared to crack open a suspected safe.

First, he removed the armored wall panels. Then, he cut through the structural composites that make up most of the walls. In order to avoid any disruptions, he used a more sophisticated plasma cutter from the Barracuda’s inventory. After reaching close to the safe, he turned it off and chiseled off the rest of the wall with a specialized tool that kept vibrations to a minimum.

He eventually hollowed out a corridor to the front of the hidden object. It turned out to be a simple armored box rather than a fully featured safe.

"This must be a later addition. Whoever installed the box likely fabricated it with the materials on hand."

"That’s a good thing, right?" Dietrich asked.

"The safe is made by an amateur, but it’s still generating heat. I can’t be too sure about what’s inside. Let me take some scans."

While the sensor-blocking exterior hindered most of his efforts, the proximity made it easier for the multiscanner to return some readings.

"There’s a trigger attached to the hinges. Any use of force will trigger some sort of mechanism that will ignite a block of flammable high-density fuel."

"Is there any way you can stop that from happening?"

"Not yet, but I’m working on it." Ves replied as he churned his brain for solutions.

His Jury Rigging skill applied primarily to mechs, but it also came in handy in situations like this. He knew what type of fuel was inside. If he froze the section close to the fuel block, he could prevent its ignition even if he trigger went off. It might not be able to prevent anything else, but Ves was hopeful he could retrieve the contents.

He picked up a specialized freezing tool from the floor of the mech stables and got ready to freeze the flammable fuel block. He first dug out a wider channel to the top of the armored box. He pressed the semiflexible nozzle against the top and started the freezing process.

The box frosted over rapidly as the cold spread out quickly. After estimating that he’d done enough, he turned off the freezing tool and threw it aside. He quickly picked up a miniature plasma cutter and started cutting through the front of the safe.

He was racing against time. He had to finish cutting and retrieve the contents of the safe before the fuel block unfroze. Ves carefully operated the cutter in order to prevent its localized heat from spilling too far outward.

The box clanked as Ves successfully cut a hole in the front. He turned off the cutter and pulled away the circular piece. This time he covered his hands with a thick pair of gloves which he also borrowed from the deceased techs. With remarkable speed, he dug out a handful of objects that turned out to be a pile of data chips.

He finished the job by throwing in a prepared explosive before running outside. The blast ripped apart the entire wall setting. Ves deliberately strengthened the explosion in order to interrupt any other surprises. The scanners he placed around the closet failed to register any follow-ups. He was fairly certain it did not trigger any alarms. _{fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm}

"Are you certain no one has a clue we’re here?" Dietrich asked again.

"The sensors and scanners that I have at my disposal are state-of-the-art. I haven’t detected any outbound signals. I also haven’t found any signs of an active quantum entanglement node."

The latter was difficult to stop, but those things were large, expensive and power hungry. They had to be in order to establish instant communication with the rest of the galaxy at a decent bandwidth. Ves suspected that the raiding force prioritized their destruction.

Before Ves tackled the larger stash, he wanted to take a look at the contents of the data chips he painstakingly retrieved. He grabbed a secure data pad and inserted one of the chips.

No viruses or hacks popped up when the data pad accessed the chip. To no one’s surprise, he encountered nothing but encrypted files.

He had an answer for that. "Barracuda, please connect to this data pad and decrypt these files. Disable any precautions in the chip while you’re at it."

His ship featured basic electronic warfare capabilities. By basic, it meant the systems paled in comparison to those installed by warships. Compared to the dismal technological standard of a third-rate state, the Barracuda only took 4.7 seconds to decrypt all of the files. That was considered to be fairly slow for a modern corvette.

The data pad revealed reams of unlocked files. Ves opened up a document and briefly tried to make sense of it. He nodded and switched to another file, only to encounter something similar. When he removed the data chip and put in another one, he encountered the same sort of data.

"So what did you get? Top secret research? Some juicy intel?"

"Nope. Looks like we’ve stumbled upon a financial ledger. It logs all external transactions, from import to export. The amount of revenue this base has earned is astounding."

"So are our suspicions correct?"

"I can think of no other reason why this base is so circumspect. The massive profits from these sales is enough to make any medium-sized corporation lose their morals."

From the clues they gathered beforehand, they concluded that this facility was an illegal operation. Ves had also recovered some of the logs from the Dortmunds to support this verdict.

Ves gathered up the data chips and put them into a secure container. "This facility was setup to mass-produce unlicensed mechs. It’s not difficult to get a hold of a couple of excellent designs without paying for the license. The real challenge consists of producing mechs from these pirated designs without getting caught by the MTA."

As the self-proclaimed regulators of the mech industry, the Mech Trade Association took a dim view on anyone who broke the rules. The MTA’s dreaded Enforcement Division came down hard on anyone who violated the rights of intellectual property holders. Forget about getting sued and sent to jail. The Division always went in guns blazing.