The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1354

Once Ves had his fill of the black market, he and his group left through the same method of shuttling between a number of blacked-out aircars.

Nothing amiss took place, though Ves half-expected something to happen. Nitaa and Lucky constantly remained on high alert in case the aircar brought them somewhere dangerous.

Ves especially trusted Lucky as the aircar’s attempt to blind its occupants failed to work on the cat. If his pet wanted to glimpse outside, he could simply phase through the structure of the vehicle.

Fortunately, Commander Meivin’s promises stayed true. Ves encountered no attempted robberies or extortion or anything like that. The black markets on Vindar VII couldn’t afford to scare away the few foreign buyers who were brave enough to frequent their sites and inject some extremely valuable hard currency in the local economy.

Ves had money. A lot of money. He also showed his willingness to spend his fortune. That made him a king among beggars in the Chuko Republic.

The way Commander Meivin regarded Ves had obviously increased by a few notches. Spending the equivalent of half a billion bright credits on a single transaction spoke volumes about his foreign employer’s financial strength!

The Vindar Dustravens snagged a loaded client!

From the way Commander Meivin looked so satisfied, Ves was sure that the Dustravens received a commission for the money he spent at the venues he was brought to. This was already to his expectations.

As long as everyone amply benefited from the current arrangements, they wouldn’t be tempted to resort to more unpleasant options to earn a big payday.

Ves knew that this was simply the price of getting in bed with a local snake.

Once everyone finally returned to the hotel, Ves went up to his room and called up Nitaa to study the DNA-strand figurine in greater detail.

Lucky sniffed the hand-sized ornament with a curious expression.

"Meow."

"It’s okay, Lucky. Your nose is just geared in a different way." Ves soothed his disappointed cat as he configured the settings of his Vulcaneye.

Right now, Lucky covered the entire hotel room in his ECM field. This posed a lot of hindrances to his multiscanner’s operation, but different from inferior devices, his Vulcaneye could pierce through the jamming as long as Ves held it very close and dialed up its power.

In the meantime, Nitaa kept turning the disguised receiver in her hands as she tried to decipher its secrets.

No luck.

"I really can’t tell anything about this statue aside from what I’ve already determined." She said with a downcast expression. "The only other guess I can make is that it may have been designed to be identifiable to people with empowered noses like mine."

Ves agreed with her assessment. "That is a very strong possibility. Even if the Compact has done its best to erase any records of their hidden moles, they still need some way of tracing them somehow. I think it’s quite ingenious since I doubt even the MTA or the CFA developed means of tracing these mysterious scents."

This also meant that they might be incurring some risks in carrying the ornament around. Who knew if they’d be approached by a Compact agent one day who held the mistaken belief that Ves and Nitaa were hidden assets of the cult!

Nonetheless, as long as carrying the one-time receiver did not lead to immediate hostilities, Ves found the risks acceptable.

The object represented his canary in the coalmine! As long as it started hooting, they would know that something drastic had changed.

Otherwise, by the time Ves realized that he should launch his grand expedition, the Compact bloodhounds might have already marked him as a person of interest!

That reminded him of another priority for this trip. He should really look into obtaining more geril spice. In fact, Ves wanted to do more than buying the finished product. He desired to obtain the unique plants the Nyxians processed into their trademark pungent spice!

"Will geril spice be able to obscure the smell of this trinket?" Ves curiously asked. "It might be prudent to hide it from your former compatriots. I only want it for its ability to receive a critical message."

"It’s worth a try."

Ves retrieved his packet of geril spice from his pocket and sprinkled it over the figurine. Though it looked rather silly of him to flavor an inedible object, Fe Nitaa looked optimistic.

"I think it worked. The spice won’t stay fresh when exposed to open air, but as long as it remains effective, I can’t distinguish the hidden receiver anymore."

This was a welcome development. With one less worry on their minds, they continued to study the ornament.

Sadly, they made no further gains. His System-bought Vulcaneye scanned the object at close range in multiple modes, but all of the data he received indicated that it was nothing but a piece of decoration made with slightly-valuable materials.

His multiscanner detected absolutely no circuitry, crystals or other weird objects that might be responsible for receiving a transmitted message. The object presented a very interesting puzzle to Ves. His knowledge on signals and communication was too shallow to even begin to fathom how the object functioned as a signal receiver.

After they stopped their investigation, he waved Nitaa to the side while calling Gavin to his room.

As Ves sat while idly playing with Lucky, Gavin took his seat at the couch opposite to his own.

"What’s up, boss?"

"With everything I’ve observed so far, I think it’s time to fill you in on the details of one of my more ambitious plans."

Ves began to enlighten his assistant of his grand expedition. Though Gavin might have picked up some clues just by interacting so much with his boss, this was the first time he heard of something so incredibly significant!

"This is.. this is crazy!"