The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1324

Once Ves obtained all the relevant information Nitaa possessed about the Compact, he lost interest in inquiring any further about her situation.

The few crucial pieces of information he obtained already loomed heavily on his mind. He cared little about the plots of the Order of Fl’xix or what the rejected trainees of the order were doing when they sold themselves to foreigners.

He turned his eyes back to Nitaa. Though he still held some reservations about trusting her, he was okay with bringing her onboard as a bodyguard. _{ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm}

"Alright, Nitaa. That’s enough for one day. Please bring Mr. Crindon to me. I need to have a talk with him as well."

While she exited the room to carry out her errand, Ves deactivated his Privacy Shield and returned his System comm back into his Inventory. Compared to his sensitive talk with Nitaa, he did not plan on raising any sensitive topics with his new virtual security specialist.

"Meow."

"Yeah, Nitaa is a lot more willing to work for me than Crindon. I have the feeling that he would have been fine with working for any other wealthy patron."

Once the skinny man entered the room and closed the door, he directed an interesting stare towards Lucky.

The cat was still radiating its ECM field.

"That is a very interesting functionality, sir." He said with mild awe. "I have never seen a mechanical cat employ an interference field of this caliber. Even my new comm is rendered impotent in this field!"

Ves smirked. "It’s CFA tech."

"Impressive! With such a function at your disposal, I have a lot more confidence in fulfilling my responsibilities! Can I ask whether your cat contains other CFA functions? An ECM field rarely comes by itself."

"I think Lucky has access to a lot of useful software and hardware. I’ll tell him to cooperate with you so that you can take advantage of what he has to offer."

"Meow!"

Lucky objected to that? What was he, a cat-shaped comm? He was more than just a tool!

Of course, Ves would have none of it. "Just do it. This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t assimilated my CFA equipment. It’s your own fault we have to make use of you to access those functions!"

"Meow meow!"

"Would you rather let us be hunted down by our enemies?"

"Meow.."

"Thought so."

Ves turned back to his new permanent employee. "So, Mr. Crindon. What do you think about my security arrangements?"

"I am still trying to get up to speed with all of your security arrangements. After communicating with the crew of your starship, I can already tell you though that she is reasonably secure against hacking. There’s only one issue, though."

"The Leemar Institute of Technology probably built a backdoor into her systems, right?"

Crindon nodded. "They would be crazy to let this opportunity go by. From what I heard, you received her as a prize for winning a contest. It makes sense if this institute would want to keep an eye on you. While your ship’s security suite has always been kept up to date, it will never pose a hindrance to its own developers."

His words rang true. Even without proof, Ves could very well believe the Barracuda was riddled with bugs that relayed everything they observed back to the Friday Coalition.

He never cared too much about it until recently. Before he made his last and final visit to Leemar, he always considered himself to be in the Friday Coalition’s camp. His distant but very real connection to Master Olson deterred the Coalition from making any overt moves against him while he was her apprentice.

Yet Ves no longer enjoyed the protection of the umbrella of this status! He’d been kicked out of Master Olson’s sphere of influence, thereby depriving him of a shield to fend off Coalition probes!

Now that it appeared that he was beginning to side with the Hexers, the Coalition would definitely monitor his starship carefully. Who knew what they would do with all of the data they gathered!

"Is there a way to stop the Coalition from snooping in our ship?"

"I advise replacing your ship with another. The most secure ones tend to be ships imported from other star sectors or ships that are made and sold in Centerpoint. The latter are extremely expensive, though."

None of those options appealed to Ves.

He estimated that buying an imported ship would definitely entail a downgrade in most parameters. The money earned from selling the Barracuda wouldn’t be enough to buy a ship with the same level of performance.

Buying a ship constructed by one of the ship-building enterprises related to the MTA would be even more expensive. Because they weren’t built by a state, they only possessed one backdoor for the MTA instead of backdoors for both the MTA and the state in question.

This was extremely valuable, as the MTA were mostly hands-off and rarely meddled in the affairs of the local states it supervised!

Perhaps the only way for Ves to get completely rid of every possible backdoor was if he built a starship by himself from the ground up. That was way too far-fetched to him as designing and constructing a fully-functional starship from the ground up was a huge endeavor! Their sheer size and functions meant they were incomparably more complex to build!