The Mech Touch novel Chapter 306

The Gregarious Wrath primarily functioned as a tunneler, but that did not describe the extent of her purpose.

Many battles that took place on planets actually took place underground. While controlling the surface was important to control the local population and much of the smaller industries, the real jewels could be found at least a couple of kilometers underground.

While this brought a lot of inconveniences, the huge barrier of soil formed the most formidable fortification against bombardment, raids, infiltration and a host of other nasty consequences.

The main reason why the LMC spent half a billion credits on their production complex was because Ves wanted to create a giant underground fort. Considering the onset of war, such an extravagant precaution might definitely pay off.

In any case, with the proliferation of underground bases, a means had to be developed to strike them. After all, even pirates used underground fortifications to hide or withstand against the wrath of the lawful authorities of the galaxy.

Thus, Ves learned why the Gregarious Wrath adopted such a strange and aggressive name, and why the Mech Corps maintained such a large and expensive machine.

The Wrath performed the role of siege breaker.

As the anomalies neared the immobile tunneler, hatches opened up, allowing aerial mechs to emerge. Most of these mechs had their energy cells replaced by the undercharged variants that Ves had developed, so none of the pilots showed any hesitancy in sortieing out.

Meanwhile, everybody inside the Wrath went to their action stations. Ves had to leave the labs as well. As a guest, he should be returning to his bunk and hole up while the Mech Corps took care of the threat, but Ves wasn’t in a mood to hide.

"I still have those permissions given by Chief Petrisc. I’ll probably be able to enter the engineering bay."

Ves resolutely found the nearest fast platform and stepped onto its surface. The platform instantly zipped away along a special track in the corridors. Many other crewmen had boarded the same kind of platforms in order to quickly traverse the entire length of the Wrath.

His platform deposited him a couple of compartments away from the rear engineering bay. After going through another security checks, he finally entered it and found Chief Petrisc. The man occasionally issued orders while he kept his eye on a projected multi-pane interface that showed almost everything that happened inside and outside the Wrath.

"Ves, I figured you’d be here. A Larkinson never shies away from a fight! Come here and help me make sense of the readings."

Glad that he hadn’t been chased out, Ves approach the command console and turned his attention to the proximity map. Twenty-five mechs made up of the first wave. Without a better understanding of the incoming threats, the captain held back the other mechs.

Also, the expanded tunnel around the Wrath didn’t offer a lot of space anyway.

The deck beneath Ves rumbled a bit, and the reactors stationed at the center of the bay powered up.

The Wrath slowly powered up her systems and started digging again.

"Why are we tunneling again?!"

"We need to make more room for our mechs to fight!" Petrisc replied as he swiped his fingers across the projection, making adjustments on the fly. "The tunnel we’ve made doesn’t give our mechs a lot of room to maneuver, and the Wrath is vulnerable as well if she remains stuck like this."

The Wrath slowly started to curve upwards. The recently deployed mechs followed in her wake. After making a deliberate course change, the Wrath now pointed upwards, leaving plenty of room for the mechs to meet the approaching signals coming from the core of the Glowing Planet.

"The signals are moving right through solid matter." Ves noted quickly as he studied the plot. "They’re moving through both mundane and exotic materials like they don’t exist! I don’t think any machine made by man can do such a thing!"

Both of them came to the only conclusion possible. "They’re indigenous life forms!"

Three strong signals burrowed through the core like it was made out of vacuum. Ves tried to guess at their properties and wondered if they descended from the native wildlife that had once roamed the Glowing Planet when it still orbited around a star.

As the three signals came closer, the Wrath’s sensors resolved more data. Ves found them to be difficult to parse. The sensors failed to detect any mass readings or pick up any vibrations that indicated the signals burrowed through the terrain. Yet the amount of energy they held should be enough to power ten elite mechs.

"What kind of life forms are these?!"

"Whatever they are, they’re heading straight for the Gregarious Wrath! I think that says enough about their stance towards us!"

The galaxy spawned countless wonders throughout its ten billion year history. Many strange and unusual life forms emerged from these unique conditions, and humanity had encountered billions of them during the Age of Conquest.

Many times, these indigenous life forms seemed omnipotent, but they all fell in the end against the might of humanity’s inexorable rise. No one on the Wrath feared the approaching indigenous aliens, even though they possessed enough energy to riddle the Wrath from inside-out.

As Ves quietly tried to make sense of the increasingly detailed but incomprehensible readings, his mind inadvertently drifted back to the moments he met the ghost that wore his mother’s face.

"They’re energy life forms! They don’t possess a material form!" _{freёweɓnovel.com}

Chief Petrisc’s face turned grim. He instantly sent off a message to the captain before he even tried to confirm the wild guess. "If those are energy beings, then we’re in a lot of trouble."

Humanity encountered a handful of energy beings, whose existence in the material dimensions could only be sensed indirectly. It wasn’t accurate to call them ghosts, but most laymen treated these intangible energy beings this way.

That was because they couldn’t be hurt by a laser or projectile. Swords and shields flew straight through their transparent forms, though sometimes they didn’t even show any hint of their existence. These near or fully invisible creatures harvested countless of lives, mechs and ships before humanity finally found the key to repel their cheat-like existences.

"Do we have an expert pilot on board?" Ves asked with sharp eyes.

"We do. Venerable Stanton Drake is standing by to deploy. The only problem is that the mech technicians recently overhauled his Fire Worm. It’s a highly complex aerial striker mech that uses up a lot of power. Standard energy cells won’t meet its energy consumption so the scientists have been trying to adapt your energy cells for expert mech designs. They only managed to do so a day ago."