The Mech Touch novel Chapter 677

In the end, the Castle Breakers started a fight they couldn’t win. It wasn’t their fault for overestimating the friends the Omen of Misfortune could call upon. Perhaps the Castle Breakers knew that the Swordmaidens were liable to back up their pals, but they definitely didn’t anticipate the Swordmaidens drag along the Flagrant Vandals in their rush to save their allies.

After being chased by a patient, Vandal fleet, suffering a torment of bombardment that riddled their sublight propulsion into wrecks, the elite pirates eventually saw reality and surrendered with what little grace they had left.

In the meantime, the lukewarm forces of the Red Tongs and the Caged had quietly let off the Omen of Misfortune. They returned their mechs to their carriers and slipped their fleet away to the nearest Lagrange point in rapid time, leaving no opportunity for the Vandals to catch up to them and teach them a lesson.

Every Vandal servicemen felt pissed at the Caged for not heeding their initial warning. The Vandals had already been merciful to them when they let off the Caged in favor of annihilating the Masters of Combat, but they learned nothing from their old mistakes.

Hopefully, the Vandals would have the opportunity to corner the Caged and give them their just desserts.

"The frontier may be big, but we’ll catch up to you Roppongans sooner or later."

Since the Vandals performed the greater share of the fighting, they left the duty of policing the prisoners and taking their ships into custody to the Swordmaidens. It was the least they could do after dragging the Vandals in a mess that wasn’t any of their business from the start.

"The biggest winner by here is the Omen of Misfortune."

Not only did their up-and-coming mech champion the Hellvoice triumphed over the Deathless in a duel, they also managed to annihilate the Castle Breakers and any chance of retaliation after borrowing the strength of their allies.

Ves had a really foul taste in his mouth at the realization that the Omen of Misfortune basically got away scott-free when they should have felt some pain for their shenanigans.

This warped custom from the frontier which obligated allies to come to the aid to their allies was incredibly prone to abuse. Perhaps the pirates developed their own solutions to this particular problem, but Ves couldn’t see any from his limited exposure to the frontier way.

When Ves met with Ketis hours later at his office, he recounted his feelings on the matter to see what she has to say.

"You’re blind, teacher." Came her verdict. "Don’t you see? You Vandals have proven yourself to be a trustworthy ally! Helping the Omen of Misfortune when you could have ignored our calls for help was an honorable act that will spread from Mancroft and reach the entire Faris Star Sector. Everyone will know that the Vandals and the Swordmaidens are one and the same as long as they travel together."

Ves grudgingly nodded. "That’s a benefit, aye, but hasn’t this always been the case? The fact is that while we’re willing to help the Swordmaidens resolve their own grudges if the battle is winnable, it’s another matter entirely when we have to help your other friends."

"Don’t underestimate the influence of the Omen of Misfortune. Like us, they have a lot of allies and acquaintances as well. Now that you’ve saved them from the Castle Breakers, they’re obliged to pay back the favor. I think you will find that our journey into the frontier will be slightly easier now that they are in our debt. They excel in intelligence gathering, you know."

"What about the spoils?" he asked. "A lot of mechs got wrecked, and we’ve managed to capture the Castle Breaker ships mostly intact. What will happen with those?"

She shrugged. "We won’t be parsimonious with the spoils. You Vandals contributed the most in the fighting, so your share of it will be the biggest. I think the Omen of Misfortune will surrender all of the claims to the salvage and the prizes, and so will Commander Lydia if you Vandals are pissed for getting caught up in our fight."

Talk of that had already spread throughout the ship. Every servicemen would gain a nice bonus in their bank accounts while the Vandal fleet gained a hefty pool of disposable funds.

After she finished answering his questions, they went to work. Their main duties entailed helping the Vandals processed the damaged and wrecked mechs. In the aftermath of every battle, Ves needed to plan for new repairs and new replacements, and schedule them in the shortest time possible. Right now, they couldn’t afford any weakening of their spaceborn mech force.

Much of the work consisted of routine decisions that Ves had already delegated to his deputies and subordinates. It took some extra time to guide Ketis through some of his duties. _{ƒrēewebnovel.com}

She found everything about it boring, of course. "A mech designer isn’t an administrator! Why aren’t you leaving this to a bureaucrat?"

"A bureaucrat may know numbers, but he doesn’t know mechs. As head designer, I not only need to tally the state of our mechs, I am also obliged to draft up a plan to solve our inadequacies. Commissioning new repairs or ordering our mech designers and mech technician to salvage a wreck in bad condition requires an expert’s touch."

While non-mech designers could perform the same job that he was doing right now, they would never be as good as Ves. That was because an intricate understanding of mechs was required to allocate mechs efficiently.

The complexity of his responsibilities only grew more burdensome with each mech model the mech regiment employed. For the Flagrant Vandals, that was quite a lot, so Ves actually needed to use his ingenuity and his in depth understanding of mechs to navigate the swamp that was the mech roster of the Flagrant Vandals.