The Mech Touch novel Chapter 324

The pirates left behind in orbit of the Glowing Planet turned their attention to themselves and started to fight over the spoils left behind.

This truly showcased the lack of integrity among their ilk. The moment they lacked a common enemy, the gangs that made up their alliances broke apart like like a meteor falling through atmosphere.

The smarter pirate fleets had already pulled back from the Glowing Planet. Ves found to his regret that the Dragons of the Void had begun to pull back even before the Mech Corps and the Mech Legion linked up.

In any case, Ves enjoyed a rare moment of peace as the Happy Jelly made her way to the edge of the Glowing Zone.

Along the way, they stumbled along a couple of smaller pirate vessels that had sought to park themselves out of the way from the most contested regions. These outfits and lone wolves instantly moved out of the way of the allied fleets and never turned back.

If even the massive pirate alliances hadn’t managed to beat them above the Glowing Planet, then nothing else stood a chance.

"Looks like we can definitely rule out any more shenanigans from the pirates." Ves observed as he took a look at the plot. "It’s a shame they’re too scared to pressure us further. They’re the only reason the Mech Corps and the Mech Legion haven’t started shooting each other yet. I think it’s time we take some precautions."

"Precautions? What for?" A mech technician scratched his skinny head. "They’re maintaining a steady fifty kilometer distance from our fleet."

"Fifty kilometers is nothing in space. That’s enough distance to allow any laser to hit our ships with perfect accuracy. Even if the Happy Jelly is juking back and forth to hinder any predictions, it’s not going to help us a lot at this distance. We’re too close."

His pronouncement depressed the joy that ran throughout the Whalers for making it out of the Glowing Planet alive. A significant amount of mech pilots had met their end on that rock.

No one was in the mood to fight another battle. Ves noticed that everyone instinctively avoided thinking about the possibility of clashing with the Mech Legion, so he took it upon himself to kick the Whalers out of their potentially fatal complacence.

"Look, we plan for the worst and hope for the best. There’s a chance the Mech Legion is just as fed up with fighting as we are, but we can’t make that assumption. The Mech Legion hates our guts and wants nothing more than to destroy the Republic and take away our stars."

Ves eventually got through the mech technicians that they had plenty of work to do. He presented them with a projection of the Happy Jelly’s schematics.

"I’ve prepared some plans to repair and strengthen the Happy Jelly’s structure with the supplies and scrap we have on hand. We don’t have the time to apply all of these fixes, but every little bit helps us make it through the final fight."

An older female ship crew frowned as she studied the schematics. "Some of this looks really complicated. Did you come up with these plans yourself?"

"I’ve spent some time aboard large machines. While I don’t specialize in starships, there are plenty of things in common to all machines. I’m mainly focused on strengthening the Happy Jelly’s structural integrity, so there is little need to disrupt the delicate internal workings of the carrier."

To be honest, Ves did not have any confidence he could improve any of the Jelly’s badly maintained functions. The FTL drive especially looked iffy. He was afraid that if he bumped into it once, it would malfunction entire and leave them stranded in local space.

After some convincing, the mech technicians and ship technicians went to work. Ves did all he could now to prepare the Happy Jelly for the coming the fight. He had his own preparations to make.

He returned to his bunk and looked at the flashing orb placed on his bed. "I miss you, Lucky."

His cat finally couldn’t hold his evolution back. The moment it became clear that they made it off the Glowing Planet, Lucky curled in on himself and extruded an unknown white material around himself to begin his level up process.

Basically, he turned back into an egg.

Ves didn’t dare to stroke the egg with his bare hands. He first let his antigrav clothes cover his hand with a glove before he dared to caress its bone-like surface.

"This feels a lot like Rorach’s Bone."

The resemblance to bone made the egg feel truly real. Only the lines of glowing blue crisscrossing the surface of the egg made it clear that the egg possessed a mechanical aspect.

"I know you can’t help it, but I really wish you’d waited with this level up."

Once the Happy Jelly began to move away from the Glowing Planet, they traveled out of range of its insidious energy fields, including the one responsible for the Overcharge phenomenon. Every overcharged energy cell slowly lost their excess charge and turned back to normal, though in the perspective of the energy cells, nothing had changed at all.

Lucky must have noticed that he began to lose his temporary condition, so he immediately decided to evolve as soon as the immediate danger subsided.

Unfortunately, this left Ves without his closest companion and bodyguard. He had always relied on Lucky to keep him safe against any threats on foot.

"For now, I’ll only be able to rely on Melkor and my shiny new toy."

Ves activated his Privacy Shield and retrieved the Amastendira from his Inventory and put it in one of his pockets. He did not wish to reveal the System’s ability to materialize and dematerialize objects in a possible fight.

A couple of days went by as thousands of ships boosted their way out of the Glowing Zone. The further they traveled from the Glowing Planet, the weaker its influence on local space.

The amount of naturally occuring spacetime anomalies had decreased to such an extent that they ceased to be a threat.

This was not good news.

Previously, the Mech Legion might have scruples about launching an assault. If they sent out their mechs towards the Mech Corps, they’d have to cross a brief No Man’s Land where they wouldn’t be covered by the dimensional smoothers.