The Mech Touch novel Chapter 192

Just as Jutland indulged in his triumph, the Cathrec suddenly beeped in alarm. Its limbs moved stiffly as its pilot failed to response. "Detecting incapacitated pilot. Initiating contingency Gamma-One-Six. Autonomous control mode activated."

Some of the other mechs of the hunting platoon also started to move without any prompting from their pilots. From their awkward movements, Ves figured out that artificial intelligences had taken over their controls.

It was a brilliant countermeasure against Jutland’s psychic attack. Ves remembered that no such backups existed in the designs of the Olympian. Chief Ramirez must have taken his warnings seriously!

"These primitive bots won’t stop me." Jutland hissed and commanded the Kaius forward.

The smart intelligences that appropriated the mechs finished off the hexapods first. Jutland’s indiscriminate mental command affected not only humans but also the native wildlife. The AI’s conveniently cleaned them up before the Kaius lumbered over. Its extensive internal damage due to the corrosive chemicals Ves slipped inside the pool slowed down its gait, giving its opponents plenty of time.

The massacre didn’t even affect the raging madman. He continued to push the Kaius onwards as if he helmed a spaceship about to crash into a moon. He disregarded every possible consequence as the AIs mastered the controls and formed to receive the charge.

The Kaius stopped in its tracks as its anemic charge failed to phase the prepared Olympian. The Volmars along with the Cathrec had long positioned themselves at the flanks. As medium mechs, they pounced on the briefly immobilized Kaius like a pack of raptors.

All of the AIs aimed at the weak points, as if they’d already been programmed with the relevant data. The Kaius truly buckled this time as some of its weakened metal parts buckled under the force.

However, a starved camel was still bigger than a horse. Even with all of its ailments, the Kaius continued to hit back with slow but powerful attacks. It even managed to pull off a difficult feint and struck a Volmar square in the chest.

This highlighted the faults of using AIs. They had obviously been implemented with haste, giving them very little time to master their respective mechs, let alone develop a smooth routine that took full advantage of the strengths of their machines.

Still, as bad as they currently performed, they rapidly learned their lessons. Their movements grew smoother over time, and they made less mistakes than in the first minute. The Kaius became increasingly hard-pressed to fend off their coordinated attacks.

If the hunting platoon fought against any other opponent, House Kaine would hesitate giving up control of the mechs to AIs.

Yet they lucked out this time because as much as Jutland excelled in exobiology, he lacked the expertise to counter the use of AIs. Any competent force employed hackers and cybersecurity specialists that punished any widespread use of bots and AIs.

Despite falling leeward, the doctor still urged his Kaius to fight on. Neither side yielded.

Now that the Kaius became preoccupied in its battle against the AI-controlled mechs, Ves gained a much-needed reprieve. Ever since his body became immobilized by the psychic attack, he started fighting back against the restriction keeping his mind and body imprisoned.

It helped that while the restriction covered much of his mind, it focused predominantly on his subconscious. Somehow, it hadn’t managed to get a good grip of his conscious mind, allowing him to nibble at the edges of the restriction.

The more he freed up his conscious mind, the faster he got rid of his entanglement. He employed his newly freed up brain capacity to assisting his efforts to free his mind. Once Ves reached a tipping point, he outright broke his shackles, freeing his entire mind as well as his body in rapid succession.

He gulped in some air as he breathed in and out. His heart pumped with fury and his Jutland organ roiled as if it hated being stopped. Ves quickly devoted his full concentration on suppressing the rebellious organ. He didn’t wish to lay down on the ground any moment longer.

A welcome arrival padded over to him then. Lucky greeted his owner with a relieved meow. As a purely mechanical creature, the psychic attack hadn’t affected the gem cat at all.

"Lucky! It’s good to see you again." Ves picked up the cat and affectionately hugged the pet. "I’m going to need your claws for something important. Let’s go!"

He turned around and instead of running for the exit, he rushed towards the biolabs. While Ves cherished his life quite a lot, he also possessed a burning curiosity of what Jutland had been cooking in his labs. What if the doctor prepared something even worse than the psychic attack?

So with Lucky in tow, Ves reached the highly guarded lab area. Ves ignored frozen hexapods standing guard in front of the sturdy structures. He looked at the three structures and chose to begin with the smallest lab. With the help of Lucky’s energy claws, they easily bypassed the lock.

"Damn, this is a dud."

The smallest lab primarily consisted of scavenged computing terminals and the like. Jutland must have performed most of his data analysis and number crunching in this room. The lab also contained a few rudimentary microscopes and the like. After a round of searching, Ves finally found a cooler stashed underneath a desk. When Ves opened it up, an entire rack of vials greeted his eyes.

Most of them carried coded labels that Ves had no way of figuring out. Without a guide, he couldn’t figure out which ones were poisons or medicines. Whatever the case, Ves grabbed a nearby pole and resolutely smashed all of the vials.

A dangerous stink emerged from the cooler, so Ves only made sure he broke most of the vials before he quickly left the lab and shut the door.

"Let’s go to the next one, Lucky."

After another swipe broke the lock to the lab next door, Ves entered it with trepidation.

"What the?!"

Unlike the first lab, this one contained actual specimens. Ves expected to encounter a genetically engineered monstrosity like the hexaworms. Instead, he came face to face with half-a-dozen incubated human bodies. They floated silently in their own transparent vats with many tubes and cables connected to their bodies.

The most frightening aspect about the bodies was that they looked identical to Doctor Jutland.

"That madman cloned himself!"

Worse, the clones consisted of human-hexapod hybrids. While the original Jutland still retained a semblance of human appearance, he hadn’t constrained himself when he developed his clones. All of them featured a different mix of typical hexapod traits such as claws or scales. One Jutland hybrid even adopted a complete reptilian head!

While the clones appeared dormant, given the amount of time Jutland had spent on their development, Ves took no chances. First, he turned off the power to the various machines that connected to the bodies. Then he requested Lucky to claw through the vats and destroy the brains of the monstrous clones.

It took a tense minute for Lucky to complete his task. While the human-like clones perished quickly enough, the ones with scales fended off his energy claws with alarming ease. Lucky had to sneak his claws through their mouths and penetrate their brains from the inside in order to finish the job.