The Mech Touch novel Chapter 550

Chapter 550

After his discovery, Ves acted out a play . He pretended as if he was as frustrated as the other Vandals, not even hesitating to demand a meeting with Major Verle to obtain some answers .

The rigid mech officer refused to spill the beans, just as Ves expected . The man had a point that a secret as momentous as this should only be known by those who needed to know . Ves did not actually require an answer to perform his duties, so he was firmly on the very large list that definitely didn't need to learn the truth .

Ves couldn't blame them from withholding the fact that they imprisoned Lord Javier and was attempting to bring him out of the Kingdom . Though their greater motivations escaped him, the Vandals would surely be doing it for a reason .

That reason may be a great cause, or a selfish cause . Whatever the case, Ves had no further leads to pursue . Walking close to the hidden compartments already raised some flags, so Ves planned to keep his head down for the time being and pretend that he knew nothing more than the rest .

After the conference call, the mech designers all tackled their work with urgent effort . Ves was glad to see that nobody slacked off time, and many had in fact exceeded their former standards .

"When other people's lives are on the line, there's no sense of urgency . Now that there's a substantial chance that we might all go down, it's no wonder that they are working so hard . "

With a deficit of more than two-hundred mechs, the Flagrant Vandals would be hard-pressed to regain their former strength . Ves deliberately set their goal post to restoring a hundred mechs within a month as an aspiration . He didn't expect the mech technicians and mech designers to reach this target, but getting close enough already helped out a lot .

As the task force finally left the accursed territory of Venidse, the Vandals kept themselves while they crossed through the space claimed by the Klein Duchy .

During this time, they managed to drop their work to hold another solemn space burial .

Over a hundred coffins had been laid out in the hangar bay of the Shield of Hispania . The sheer amount of coffins weighed down upon the survivors like a boulder . Pretty much every Vandal knew someone who rested in those coffins .

Seeing the coffins placed on the decks with the banners of the Vandals draped on top of them emphasized the peril they still hadn't gotten away from yet . How many more Vandals would lose their lives in the coming days and weeks? A hundred? Two-hundred? Maybe all of them? Nobody knew, but all of them feared the answer .

The Vandals plainly weren't in a fighting condition at that time .

Fortunately, Klein appeared to be as equally fearful of the Vandals as the Vandals feared getting entangled with their mech legions . From the intelligence the local rebels passed on to the Vandals, Klein wanted nothing to do with the scrappy enemy force that thrashed the Frosty Meteors .

Pyrrhic it may be, word of the victory had already spread throughout the Kingdom and the Republic . The victory cemented the reputation of the Flagrant Vandals as devious but capable warriors .

While Venidse had a lot more mechs to spare, Klein faced the opposite situation . As a peripheral territory in the Kingdom, they could afford to be lavish with their mech legions . They hoarded their mechs as if they were their own children, and rarely deployed them against formidable enemies .

Though the Vandals had lost over half of their spaceborn combat capability, Klein didn't know that . As long as the Vandals kept their true condition silent, the Vesians wouldn't have any reason to hunt them down .

This was why the Vandals acted very circumspect around the VRF and the local rebels . Ves even received orders directly from Major Verle to limit the amount of information Iris could access .

Telling their guest designer to fob off was not a pleasant conversation for Ves .

"Our mechs are in a bad shape, Iris . I think it's best if you lend your skills to the mech technicians . They're awfully short-handed . "

Iris glowered at him . "Don't you need me anymore, boss?"

"Ah, eh, you're not the only one who needs to get their hands dirty . Some of the most complex repairs can't be performed by anyone in the fleet except me . That should give you an idea how urgently we require more technical expertise . "

With that quick excuse, Ves packed Iris off . Naturally, he wasn't wrong either . He did plan to allocate some of his time to restore the more difficult cases . He even took the time to select some promising wrecks and requested the Vandals to transfer them to the Shield of Hispania .

Thus far, the Vandals managed to keep Klein guessing and their rebel partners mostly in the dark . The only time where Ves thought the gig may have been up was when they converged in a desolate star system to trade away a substantial amount of loot and salvaged mechs for much-needed resources . If the rebels had someone smart on their payroll, then they would have recognized the significance of the materials that the Vandals had requested .

They couldn't do anything about it . During staff meetings and private talks with Lieutenant Commander Soapstone, Ves reiterated the importance of replenishing their stockpiles .

"You either get me the supplies on this list, or you'll have to accept the fact that we're going to be short of at least fifty mechs . "

Presented with that argument, Verle and Soapstone couldn't resume their penny-pinching ways and continue to hoard their useless riches . What they needed the most right now was to supplement their battle strength . The odds of making it out of the Hafner Duchy at their current strength was small .

It would already be hopefully optimistic that the Vandals would be able to field around three-hundred mechs . That was the number of spaceborn mech pilots the task force had left that could still go into battle . The rest had died or suffered grievous injuries that their onboard medical bays couldn't treat .

A small number of mech pilots even suffered neural damage that permanently disabled their ability to interface with a mech .

Ves knew there was no going back from such an injury . Even his grandfather suffered from the same affliction, and despite his prestige as a former expert pilot, he had no choice but to resign his commision .

All the suffering throughout the entire fleet affected Ves on a spiritual level . His heightened spiritual sense picked up the waves of grief, apathy, and other unpleasant emotions . The mech pilots in particular acted as beacons of despair, whose negative emotions propagated stronger and further than any other human .

Ves even suspected that they were responsible for exacerbating the negative mood that descended upon the task force .