The Mech Touch novel Chapter 675

The shuttle pilot faced an uphill struggle trying to get back to their mothership. Ves, Ketis, Soapstone and their escorts wanted nothing more than to return to the safety of their well-armored combat carrier.

A shuttle in the middle of a space battle might as well be flying naked, because a single hit from a mech-sized rifle could instantly blast it and its occupants into pieces!

Shuttles were meant to ferry passengers and small cargo between different ships and between planets and ships. Their designers built them small, light and energy efficient in order to fulfil a vital logistical role in any fleet or settled planet.

They were expressly ruled out as active combatants in a spaceborn mech battle. They were barely better armored than aircars in their standard configuration. Heavier variants such as combat shuttles may have been used to drop squads of infantry into hostile territory, but the purpose of their slightly less flimsier armor was to protect them against small arms and man-portable missile launchers.

Against the might of mechs, they might as well be naked, because literally any mech could tear them to pieces!

The shuttle jinked from port to starboard, up and down, and spun on its own axis for some reason. The pilot in the cockpit didn’t hold back anything in reserves and pushed her shuttle’s mobility past the threshold where the antigrav modules and inertial compensators prevented its passengers from feeling any g-forces.

They were basically riding a barely controlled shuttle that was one step away from spinning out of control in an inevitable crash!

"I really hope the pilot knows what he or she is doing!"

"Trust in our comrades, Ves." Soapstone spoke from the side. "This isn’t any different from entrusting our lives and our safety to the mech pilots who sortie out into the battlefield every time."

"Yeah, but at least in those cases, I’m safely tucked inside the protective embrace of a big fat combat carrier. Now, I’m riding a supercharged shuttle that is approaching the direction of the main battle in orbit!"

Hundreds of mechs slugged it out on each other, and Ves had no clue how the battle progressed. His limited feed to the Vandal internal network cut off as local jamming from both sides of the conflict threw the local information sphere into turbid noise. The shuttle’s sensors captured some of the battle, but it didn’t have the resolution or processing power behind it to fully resolve the details of the fight taking place many thousands of kilometers away. The pilot already drew out the full resources of the shuttle to help in navigating the chaotic battlefield!

"Soapstone."

"Yes?"

"Since this battle erupted so suddenly, did you manage to secure the final batch of fuel and supplies for the fleet?"

"Oh, the last batch already shipped out an hour ago. Back then, it wasn’t so clear if the Flagrant Vandals would be dragged into this fight. I’m sure the transports have dropped off their cargo at our logistics ships."

At least they didn’t have to worry about missing out on their final resupply.

"Did you manage to secure anything else?" He asked.

"A few knick knacks here and there. You’re not the only one who went on a detour for personal reasons. The only difference is that I was much closer to the pier when the fighting truly erupted! Wading through all of those malfunctioning cleaning bots was a slog!"

"That’s the weirdest thing about this entire incident. I can imagine why the pirates who lost all of their life savings stirred up trouble. I can even imagine why the Castle Breakers would be impulsive enough to attack the Omen of Misfortune out of the blue. What I can’t wrap my head around is why the bots were able to rebel in the first place."

He already formed his previous guess that whoever hacked the bots did so as a prank gone out of control or to destabilize the entire Mancroft Independent Harbor. He wanted to hear what Soapstone had to say and if she concurred with his theories.

"Hm.." She paused for a moment. "I don’t have a solid explanation about the bots. My experience suggests that it’s unlikely that a bug in the programming is to blame. Cleaning bots may look cheap to you, but they are sold and used in every single indoor location in human space. Do you know how many cleaning bots are used in the Bright Republic alone? Some estimates put their total number at five times the Republic’s total population, and that is just a conservative estimate!"

"So because a cleaning bot is so prevalent, a lot more care is put into their design than other products?"

"Exactly! They are some of the most bug-tested, optimized and abused bots the galaxy. They are frequently employed in sensitive rooms where matters of great import to a state, planet or company is discussed. Will their buyers allow these bots to clean these sensitive rooms if they are embedded with hidden sensors and recording devices? Absolutely not! Therefore, the integrity and soundness of the hardware and software of cleaning bots endures some of the most rigorous tests in the galaxy."

It made sense. Soapstone rambled a bit about all the certifications a cleaning bot had to go through before being pronounced ready for use. A silly bug like mistaking open wounds on living bodies as a stain to be wiped away really shouldn’t have occurred in even the worst cleaning bots on sale today.

Ves nodded in agreement. "So that directs us strongly to the possibility of deliberate sabotage. Still, if cleaning bots are so rigorously tested and developed, how come a hacker managed to penetrate through their ironclad programming?"

Now that he thought about it, it took more than a single whiz kid who knew his way around the virtual battlefield. Cleaning bots were everywhere, out in the open and vulnerable to all kinds of intrusions. Nolsen tried to engage his military-grade automatic hacking module on the stupid bots, but it plainly couldn’t find a way to drill through their firewall.

What the cleaning bots lack in hardware prowess, they more than made up for it with exquisite and virtually impenetrable software!

Soapstone announced her conclusion. "It’s a premeditated hack, and far too complex to be done by a single hacker with a vendetta against cleaning bots. This smells like the kind of stunt a state-backed intelligence agency would pull off. Only they are sophisticated enough to research and dig out an unpatched bug hidden deep within the programming of the bots."

That partially matched his own guesses. "I concur. Whoever is behind it has plenty of hacking muscle at their disposal."