The Mech Touch novel Chapter 612

Ves reflected on the difficulties he faced in the past, and the most recurring threat always seemed to come from nowhere. Use of stealth technology appeared to be much more ubiquitous than he thought.

"I’ve been screwed way too many times by attackers hiding under stealth."

He knew how powerful stealth technology could be under the right circumstances. He himself made use of the Full Stealth Augment from the System in the past. Its uses had saved his life at several critical moments.

If Ves could make good use of stealth, so could his enemies.

Before, Ves had the misconception that stealth was a rare breed in the galactic rim. Now he knew better.

"It’s likely because the use of stealth technology isn’t publicised."

No one wanted to draw attention to their successes when it didn’t suit them. A stealth operation only succeeded when nobody knew what really happened.

When Ves thought about the applications of stealth technology, he realized that the benefits outweighed the costs. A stealthed commando shuttle at the right place at the right time could easily disable a large and expensive ship.

"The cost of research and development isn’t cheap, but it shouldn’t cost too much money to raise a spaceborn commando force or a squad of highly-trained infiltrators."

Training and equipping a squad of infiltrators probably cost around ten million bright credits under those conditions. As long as someone spend this much money, they obtained a versatile means of sabotaging a facility worth an entire fortune or kidnapping an important scientist who could earn back billions in credits.

Ves also didn’t forget about Venidse’s largely successful attempt at crippling the ships of the task force a few months earlier. Those stealthed commando shuttles only cost tens of millions of credits at most, and they had been capable of crippling large logistics ships worth several billion credits at the very least.

Plenty of methods existed to counteract stealth technology, but the problem was they came with greater costs. In the relatively poor and resource-barren places along the galactic rim, the standard of technology wasn’t very high. Good anti-stealth technology required a significant investment in research and funding.

Presumably, the only reason why stealth and anti-stealth technology hadn’t become more prevalent was because only the larger players had access to them. While some off-the-shelf stealth and anti-stealth technology could be procured from the open market, their specifications became somewhat of a known factor as a result.

When those products became popular enough to become widespread, developers could easily reverse engineer their inner workings and develop counters for their next product release.

"Perhaps only state-like entities are the only ones in the galaxy that can bear the cost of participating in this rat race."

The reality of the matter was that placing a large number of handheld scanners onto rods and pointed them in every direction likely didn’t help that much. The scanner devices could easily be fooled and lacked the power to brute-force their way through the more sophisticated applications of stealth technology.

Fortunately, the Vandals didn’t put all of their hopes on these scanners. Every Vandal on patrol carried around a sack or container of sand dug up from the nearby beach. Once in a while, they grabbed a handful of sand and threw it around.

Some of the hackers and mech technicians even reprogrammed some spare bots into doing the same.

Though these means didn’t seem foolproof, it massively increased the difficulty of attempting to infiltrate the shipyard. Their true worth lay in their deterrence value. The Vandals basically made it so that it wasn’t worth the trouble to intrude upon their domain.

Perhaps they had gotten their wish.

The night passed uneventfully. With the Reinaldan mechs on high alert, anyone who wanted to sow more death and destruction wouldn’t be able to catch them off guard anymore. The True Sons of Vesia evidently hadn’t showed up again.

Despite the lack of infiltrators showing up behind his back, Ves still didn’t relax his vigilance against stealthed opponents. He developed a thorough loathing for this mode of attack.

As long as threats came openly to him, Ves could always form an appropriate response. The trouble with stealth attacks was that they never left him with sufficient time to respond. As soon as he found out about anything amiss, the worst had already happened.

The more he became entangled with the conflicts taking place at the upper rungs of power, the higher the odds of encountering applications of stealth technology. Ves resolved to guard against its use and develop his own solutions that counteracted any threats hiding under stealth.

"Once I have some free time, it’s time to hit the books again."

In the meantime, Ves caught up on what had supposedly happened during the night. The stories circulating on the galactic net reported several suspected battles going on during the night. All of them occurred far away from any city limits and underwater, so most of the inhabitants hadn’t seen any signs at night.

When Ves browsed the news articles, he figured that at least seventy-five percent of the reports contained pure fantasy. The events only existed in the imagination of the news portals that wanted to draw more traffic to their premium services.

The only threats the night shift took care off amounted to fending off random groups of rioters and other troublemakers.

Nonetheless, a large portion of the Honored Ones stationed around the city departed to reinforce other positions. This indicated that the fighting hadn’t ended yet. For now, the unknown assailants still possessed the strength to contend against the Reinaldans stationed on this planet.

How long this could last, nobody knew.

"The Harkensen System is one of the Reinald Republic’s major star systems." A logistics officer explained to Ves the next morning. "They have many mech units in reserve. While they don’t dare to strip the defenses of Harkensen II and Harkensen III to reinforce Harkensen I, it’s only a matter of time before reinforcements arrive."

"How long do we have?" Ves asked.