The Mech Touch novel Chapter 732

On their emergence into a nameless binary brown dwarf system, the long-ranged sensors of the fleet lit up!

"Sir, our sensors have detected artificial mass signatures half an AU from our position!"

"Identify the signatures!"

It took some time for the sensors to resolve what they picked up. The longer it took, the more the Vandals relaxed a bit, because active threats usually radiated more heat and signals and therefore showed up clearer on the sensors than dead objects.

"It’s a debris field, sir! Around eight shipwrecks have been identified, of which at least half are light carriers or equivalent. An unknown number of mech wrecks surround the foundered ships."

While the Vandals and the Swordmaidens remained vigilant, they largely failed to pick up any active ships or mechs. Whoever left these wrecks might have already departed the binary star system.

More details poured in as the Flagrant Swordmaidens cautiously approached the debris field in order to investigate its circumstances.

The sensor officer passed on more and more pertinent information. "The residual heat and energy radiating from the shipwrecks indicate that they were set upon less than a week ago, no more than three days from our arrival!"

That was close!

Everyone thought the same thing. Nobody really had a reason to dive into the deep frontier. Those who dared to trespass sandmen space were either extremely daring treasure hunters or sought another goal entirely.

Even then, space was big, so big that treasure hunters could be anywhere. To coincidentally stumble upon a recently created debris field with signs that the victors made it out a couple of days earlier suggested that the Flagrant Swordmaidens stumbled upon their rivals!

"It’s not a coincidence." Ketis quietly whispered to Ves through her open helmet. "Only a small number of crazy treasure hunters ever have a reason to explore the deep frontier. Even then, they always go by lone ships instead of a fleet with a train of cargo haulers or transports."

In other words, the true daredevils tried to keep their ventures into the deep frontier as swift as possible and avoided burdens whenever they could.

Bringing along a couple of slow, fat and happy cargo haulers did not make for a sneaky fleet composition that could escape at the drop of a hat. The cheap, inferior FTL drives typically built into the engineering bays of cargo haulers generally took an extremely long time to cycle.

While a combat carrier could finish cycling their FTL drives in four hours or so if their engineers were good, a cargo hauler mostly took at least two hours more. The older and more aged the vessel, the more worn out its FTL drive became and the longer it took to finish a cycling process after transitioning back to realspace.

Even corvettes, generally regarded as the fastest proper starship class available on the market, brushed up against a hard limit of around three hours to complete its cycling process.

Therefore, bringing along a supply train of logistics and cargo ships was like shackling a fleet with a ball and chain. It slowed their entire progress down to a ponderous walk forward.

Nonetheless, larger fleets couldn’t do without a supply train. Combat-oriented vessels such as combat carriers, light carriers and converted carriers devoted most of their internal volume to stashing mechs. On top of that, they needed to devote more space to essentials such as workshops, tools, spare parts and spare materials. Even then, the carriers couldn’t carry a sufficient amount of supplies to keep the mechs in good condition for more than a month or two under normal use.

Therefore, a big force almost always carried along a necessary train of ships dedicated to resource processing, fabrication and storage.

In the worst case scenario, a combat fleet could always cut off their tail and run away by abandoning the slow and useless logistics ships.

However, the peculiar part about the debris field they detected was that it consisted of an even mix of combat and non-combat vessels. If all of the wrecked ships belong to the losing side, this meant that they never had the opportunity to flee.

The attackers ambushed the losing side when they least expected it! The battle occurred far too suddenly for the weaker side to split up!

Eventually, the fleet came close enough to pick up weak signals.

"We’re detecting hundreds of faint signals, sir." The sensor officer said. "They are all spread out over the debris field. Many of them have drifted further and further from the center of the field."

"Have you identified the nature of the signals?" Major Verle asked, though from his tone he already suspected what they might be.

"The stronger signals predominately come from escape pods or ejected cockpits, while the weaker ones are likely broadcasted from vacuum-sealed hazard suits, vacsuits or suits of combat armor."

"The emergency broadcast signals always include whether the occupant of their vehicle or suit is dead or alive." Major Verle noted. "How many of those signals still claim that their occupants are alive?"

"No more than a dozen, sir."

"That’s not a lot."

"Sir, I cannot explain why that is so. We need to employ our near-range sensors to obtain the necessary amount of resolution to resolve what has happened to the suits and escape pods. Right now, our primary optical sensors are being massively hindered by the fact the binary dwarf stars in this star system are some of the faintest we’ve ever encountered."

Optical sensors worked best at resolving detail at great distances, but they depended heavily on the amount of light being shone on the objects they observed. In weaker star systems, the effectiveness of their optical sensors degraded to the extent that they were pretty much flying blind in space!

"Have we received any transponder signals? Have we already deduced the identity of this fallen fleet?"

"According to the signals transmitted by the transceivers or transponders from the surviving craft or suits... they claim to be part of Chopra Interstellar Security, a large mercenary corps based out of Bentheim!"