The Mech Touch novel Chapter 638

Lydia’s Swordmaidens appeared horribly out of place with the elegant, wood-paneled dining room. The earthen, classy interior clashed violently against their colorful exobeast garments.

Nonetheless, the Swordmaidens remained relatively composed. They showed no signs of unfamiliarity with formal settings. Though the Flagrant Vandals wasn’t the strictest mech regiment of the Mech Corps, they could be very traditional when they were serious.

The dining room hosted several large square dining tables. For clarity, the Swordmaidens were invited to sit on one side of the table, while the Vandals claimed the other side.

When the Swordmaidens were about to take their seats, they first detached the scabbards from their backs. Each scabbard incorporated a small antigrav module that allowed them to float in the air. The Swordmaidens placed them behind the backrest of their chairs, keeping them in easy reach and allowing them to draw their blades in an instant if necessary.

Not a single Vandal had the guts to request them to leave behind their swords. Many servicemen regretted leaving their backup pistols in the armory.

Commander Lydia and Major Verle took their places at the head of the main table. As soon as everyone took their places, the major stood up.

"Ladies and gentlemen. Vandals and Swordmaidens. We appear very different at first glance. Ordinarily, we should be facing each other on the battlefield. Yet circumstances have made us strange bedfellows. While I am aware that many of you have doubts, answers will soon be forthcoming. Suffice to say, I can think of very few combinations that are both flexible and formidable in battle! Together, we have wiped out the Masters of Combat from history!"

That gave both of them a lot of pride. If there was anything that lifted up the Vandals, it was a clean victory against a formidable opponent. Even the Swordmaidens felt pleased at this achievement.

"Despite our successes, many of you harbor questions. Questions about our mission. Questions on why we are heading to the frontier. Questions why the Swordmaidens and the Vandals need to combine our strength in the first place. Answers to all of these questions will soon be forthcoming. Due to the extremely confidential nature of our mission, the briefing will have to wait until we cross into the frontier and disable all of our quantum entanglement nodes aboard our ships, with the exception of our flagships. These extreme measures should already underscore the importance of our mission."

A lot of Vandals looked mildly alarmed when their commanding officer informed them that they would disable most of their quantum entanglement nodes. This was because the process of shutting them off was irreversible! Pulling the plug on the hardware would turn the machinery into an extremely expensive piece of scrap! These nodes communicated instantly across countless light-years through the interaction of matched pairs of particles.

Creating these matches pairs could only be done in a lab or a specialized production facility. Not a single mech regiment possessed the capability of producing new pairs of entangled particles to replace the ones that fizzled out.

Basically, the Vandals and the Swordmaidens willingly cut themselves off from the galactic net. Though they left two lifelines intact, Ves imagined that the remaining nodes would be put under heavy guard, to the extent of denying routine use of the nodes.

The impact of this announcement to the Vandals was profound. The idea of heading into the frontier with only a tenuous connection to civilized space was as frightening as crossing a cable over an endless chasm on foot. Only a single misstep was required to throw them into a fall they might never recover from! What kind of mission required such an extreme level of discretion?

Verle did not let his subordinates stew over this declaration too much. He silently clapped, causing numerous bots to float into the dining room and drop off the dishes to the hungry Vandals and Swordmaidens.

"Hmm!" Ves sniffed with a smile. "Finally, some real food! I’m sick and tired of those meals synthesized from nutrient packs."

A small piece of lizard-like leg had been served in front of him. The meat was topped with grey sauce and was surrounding with purple garnish that smelled like fresh ocean. Ves didn’t recognize any of the ingredients, but it didn’t matter too much. Every exomeat and exoplant safe for human consumption tended to taste the same after sampling enough of them. Human taste buds could be surprisingly lazy in some ways.

"Tastes like chicken." Chief Avanaeon muttered as he chewed his lizard leg like a piece of gum. "Correction, it tastes like a chewy piece of chicken."

Everyone from the technical branch of the Vandals sat around their own table. Ves, Chief Avanaeon, Chief Haine and a couple of other familiar figures faced a smaller number of unknown women.

Disconcertingly, the Swordmaidens sitting across the table looked no different from the Swordmaiden mech officers. Even their support personnel possessed the ability to chop someone up with their swords.

As the most sociable among the Vandals, Chief Haine broke the ice. "How’s the food?"

"Adequate. Not as good as the meat we have harvested from our own kills."

Okay.

"So did all of you grow up in the frontier?"

The Swordmaidens nodded. The oldest woman among them who looked as if she came from the same generation as Lydia spoke up. "We know you civilized folk think the frontier is a wasteland of alien and environmental threats. You are right to think so. None of our planets have been subjected to the fancy terraforming you take for granted. The frontier isn’t referred to as the untamed stars for nothing."

"How do you manage to live on those planets in the first place?"

"By the thread, mostly. By relying on our filtration systems, our hydroponic farms and our oxygen recyclers. Nearly every settlement is based around a life support system. Breathing air and drinking water is thousands of times more valuable there. We have all grown up to respect and fear the planet we call home. To many of us, leaving them is a dream."

Her eyes grew fervent and she threw a glance at Commander Lydia in the distance. Obviously many of the Swordmaidens owed everything to the woman who founded her own pirate gang.

Ves looked interested upon learning she was a mech designer. He quickly introduced himself before asking something that burned in his mind. "Are you the designer of the Misty Slasher?" _{freeωebnovēl.c૦m}