The Mech Touch novel Chapter 630

The Flagrant Vandals had multiple reasons to force a battle at this time. However, the rank-and-file had no clue. If anything, they would rather let the Masters of Combat go now that the mechs of he Caged backed them up.

Yet turning back now meant that the Vandals might be facing the full might of their formidable landbound forces in the future. To prevent such an awful outcome, the Vandals truly had no choice but to go through with their aggressive intentions.

Ves reflected on the conversation he just witnessed. Major Verle appeared to have failed in his attempt to intimidate the Caged. Yet Verle’s reminder informed them that there was more to the conversation than what appeared on the surface.

First, Sub-boss Scornburned indirectly informed them of a couple of crucial points. They were under orders to cooperate, and couldn’t simply place them aside in order to ensure their survival. Second, they were under the obligation to put up a fight. Running without unleashing a single shot would certainly lead to backlash. Scornburned couldn’t afford to burn his bridges with his organization.

"Had the two made some sort of implicit agreement?"

Ves got the sense that the two came to a compromise. Would the Caged stab the Masters of Combat in the back? Would they simply exchange a couple of shots and split from their ally? Or did Ves just imagined something that wasn’t there?

He found it difficult to make a confident prediction of what was about to ensue. If there was anything he had learned from watching the Vandals to go war, it was that something went wrong in every battle.

"The Masters of Combat aren’t pushovers. They can do a lot of damage before they go down."

The Frosty Meteors traumatized the Flagrant Vandals a few months ago. The scars from that battle had never faded. Facing a mercenary corps from the same duchy and the same mech doctrine opened up all of those scars.

Ves realized that the Vandals needed to overcome this challenge. Their rest and recuperation in Harkensen had been interrupted. Many Vandals that had been stuck on Harkensen I were unenthusiastic about fighting another battle.

They lacked confidence in themselves.

Therefore, one of the reasons Verle prioritized this battle was because he saw it as a way to heal everyone’s scars and restore their confident demeanor.

Over the next hour, Ves and the higher ups planned out their strategies and tactics according to the information they had on hand. Commander Lydia of the Swordmaidens brought in her own cadre to help with the planning.

Right now, they had plenty of time before the fleets came into battle range. The ships of the Masters of Combat and the Caged had engaged their sub-light propulsion and attempted to accelerate away from the Vandals and the Swordmaidens.

Of course, they were only delaying the inevitable. The best the lumbering Vesian ships could do was to buy more time for them to prepare their own plans.

The Swordmaiden officers all possessed a wild quality that couldn’t be hidden through the projectors. While the Vandal officers reeked of professionalism, the strong and unsophisticated Swordmaiden officers didn’t look out of place in the frontier.

"Lydia recruits most of her Swordmaidens from the frontier." A Vandal officer quietly informed his fellow Vandals. "She routinely visits the small and isolated settlements among the untamed stars and picks up stray young girls who aren’t resigned to becoming breeding objects."

In civilized space, gender inequality was a thing of the past. The differences that separated men and women had been solved by technology. A female footsoldier was just as deadly in battle as a male footsoldier. When it came to mech pilots, their mental and physiological differences had a minimal effect on their combat effectiveness.

These rules didn’t necessarily apply in the frontier. The primitive settlements were deficient in development. Setting up a facility that hosted artificial wombs was beyond their means, so women had to stay home and insure the continuation of the next generation, sometimes under duress.

"The frontier isn’t a pleasant place to live, especially to women."

According to the intelligence Ves had accessed, Lydia’s Swordmaidens offered a way out to the more rebellious and adventurous young girls. While Commander Lydia didn’t have the means to force the settlements to halt their uncivilized practices, she could at least take advantage of the situation.

Every frontier girl that Lydia inducted into her gang became fanatically loyal to her. Ves recognized the similarities between Lydia’s recruitment practices and Chief Haine’s favorite strategy in Pirate Empires.

"They both build their organization around themselves. They demand absolute loyalty from their subordinates."

One of the most precious resources in the galaxy was loyalty. All the money in the world couldn’t necessarily buy the dedication of another person. Humans were emotional and irrational, and did not necessarily behave as predicted.

Grooming those that sought salvation from young was one of the best ways to raise a completely loyal force. Though it took a lot of time, Ves had to hand it to Lydia. Her investment had definitely paid off, seeing that she grew her Swordmaidens into a formidable force in the frontier.

"All of these analyses are well and good, but at the end of the day we need to smash them into pieces!" The middle-aged woman spoke. Lydia may have aged past her prime, but her athletic body and striped grey-and-black hair conveyed a ferocious image. Her Amazon-like appearance alone deterred most people in the frontier from starting any trouble. "Since you Vandals are shaking in your boots whenever you think about the Masters of Combat, leave their thick mechs to us. My Swordmaidens will carve out their mech pilots from their protective shells."

"Commander Lydia, we don’t wish to doubt your capabilities, but the Masters of Combat can inflict a ruinous amount of damage to us." Major Verle replied. "Their mechs are tough to fell without committing our mechs, but if we do so the ranged mechs of the Caged will box us in from the flanks."

"What’re you suggesting, then?"

"Ignore the Masters of Combat for now and chase down the mechs of the Caged."