The Mech Touch novel Chapter 326

When Melkor and Ves barged into engineering, they turned slightly and approached a ramp which gave a commanding view of the entire compartment. While Melkor took up a prime position to shoot down all of the huddled exoskeleton-suited intruders, Ves looked around the chamber for any signs of sabotage.

He spotted two alarming observations.

First, they placed something that looked a lot like explosives on the FTL drive. Ves found it funny that the boarding party went through the trouble of affixing its exterior with explosives when they could easily wreck it with a hefty kick from their exoskeletons.

Second, a Vesian tech specialist seemed to be digging deep into the central control console. The corpse of the previous head engineer bleeding out next to the console must have granted them access to the controls. Or, they might have hacked its outdated security settings.

Whatever the case, Ves had to deal with both these dangers quickly. The reason why he accompanied Melkor into engineering was because he was deeply afraid of just these kinds of tricks.

The moment the hostiles realized they couldn’t hold their position, they wouldn’t hesitate to destroy the power reactor or the FTL drive, or induce them in a manner that would blow up the entire Happy Jelly.

Ves bumped Melkor’s combat suit and gestured towards the FTL drive. He held up his old laser pistol to show his cousin that he could handle himself. Even if Melkor held some misgivings about his presence here, the stealth augment had almost run its course.

No time for second guesses.

"Go!"

Once the stealth augment ran out of power, Ves sprinted for the FTL drive while Melkor pulled the trigger of the Amastendira.

Another massive, long-duration laser beam extended out of the barrel of the mastercrafted weapon. Melkor ran the entire beam along the engineering bay like a scythe cutting through wheat. More than half-dozen armored boarders lost their lives when the super-powered laser beam cut right through their military grade exoskeleton armor.

Entire bodies split in half along with their armor and any gear they carried. Instantly, Melkor neutralized over two-thirds of the threat in the compartment!

To their credit, the survivors responded swiftly to Melkor’s sudden appearance. They snapped their rifles and wrist-mounted lasers at his position and barraged his position until the ramp became filled with holes.

"Agh!"

While Melkor had already begun to run, he still got hit by their uncannily accurate return fire. His light combat suit suffered a nasty series of burns and crater marks, wearing away the thin layers of armor until he dove into cover behind a thick enclosure.

One of the Vesians lifted up a launcher and fired a series of grenades at Melkor’s position, causing him to jump away in haste. All the while, he fired shorter bursts of high-powered beams straight through the cover of his opponents.

At this power setting, nothing could stand in the way of the Amastendira. Though its power reserves rapidly drained and its heat capacity started to get overwhelmed, Melkor icily took out one exoskeleton soldier after another.

If he had to resort to his standard laser rifle, he might have needed to strike the same location five times in a row to get through the thick infantry-scaled armor.

Though the Vesians put up a good fight, their numbers rapidly dwindled to the extent where they sought to activate their failsafes. The commanding officer of the boarding party sent out a signal and expected and explosion, only to be met with nothing of the sorts.

"I disarmed the explosives!" Ves yelled to Melkor as he detached the last explosive charge from the exterior of the FTL drive and threw it in a random corner.

Though the charges still posed a threat, he successfully disabled their receivers. Right now he ran towards the console and shot at the tech specialist who had been forced to disengage from the controls.

"Damnit, this gun is really no comparison to the Amastendira." Ves cursed as he engaged in a stale and anemic standoff against the specialist.

The Vesian tech specialist obviously received more training than Ves, and he slowly got the upper hand. He already struck Ves’ hazard suit a number of times, which melted away a significant slice of civilian-grade armor.

Compared to how Melkor systematically dismantled the Vesian soldiers, the fight between Ves and the tech specialist resembled a kiddie fight.

Ves became increasingly suppressed to the point where he didn’t dare to emerge from cover. "Melkor! Help me out here!"

Seconds later, a bright beam of gold punched through the tech specialist’s cover and vaporized his entire torso. His combat suit posed no impediment at all against the fury of a mastercrafted weapon.

The casual shot had taken almost no effort at all, though Melkor got into a sticky situation when the survivors tried to retreat from the engineering bay. As he chased after the stragglers, Ves approached the command console and tried to restore power to the Happy Jelly.

"Come on, don’t tell me you’ve given up the ghost!"

Though Ves only understood half of what the command console spat out, he still figured out that engineering had become a mess. The tech specialist had been rooting through the core settings doing who knew what.

In addition, the earlier battle also ruined many secondary systems in the engineering bay. It was a miracle that Melkor’s liberal use of the Amastendira hadn’t struck anything vital like the engine, fuel supply or FTL drive.

Still, his work aboard large vessels like the Happy Jelly and the Gregarious Wrath had given him plenty of pointers on how these vehicles worked. After a couple of minutes of kludging, he managed to spool up the power reactors and reconnect them to the rest of the carrier.

As Ves worked the controls, the motley crew led by Fadah finally showed up. The Whalers stopped in their track as soon as they saw the carnage. Wide stretches of scorch marks and molten alloys crisscrossed the entire chamber.

What upset them the most was spotting the fallen corpses of the intimidating exoskeleton soldiers. Ordinarily, an entire squad of heavily armed Vesians would have chewed up the Whalers pretty good.

The fact that Ves and Melkor took them out alone while getting only scratches in return spoke wonders.

"Fadah, stay here and reinforce the engineering bay. I don’t know if this is the only batch of Vesians aboard the Jelly. Remain alert."