The Mech Touch novel Chapter 758

The Flagrant Vandals already deduced that the Temple of Haatumak and her accompanying swarm of independent pirate vessels intended to arrive in this star system.

The invisible Acolytes stationed aboard almost every vessel of the Flagrant Swordmaidens hadn’t been placed there for sightseeing. The only conclusion the Vandals and the Swordmaidens could make was that they’d been placed as a fifth column placed ahead among their ranks.

As long as they utilized their strange form of stealth to remain completely unnoticed, they would be in a prime position to facilitate a two-pronged attack once the main force of the Church of Haatumak arrived and commenced their attack!

With the key to enter the Aeon Corona System in the hands of the Flagrant Swordmaidens, the cultists who plotted against them from the start needed to make their move very soon if they wanted to obtain the key.

Dealing with the Church of Haatumak already posed a significant challenge. Not only was their Temple almost as huge as a fleet carrier, they also enjoyed the devotion of many independent pirates who would gladly throw hundreds of mechs at the Flagrant Swordmaidens to please their god!

Fending off a swarm of low-quality mechs would take every bit of strength the Flagrant Swordmaidens could summon. If the invisible Acolytes suddenly assassinated the majority of their upper hierarchy, then the loss of command and coordination would certainly spell their end at the hands of cultists and fanatical pirates!

Even if the Vandals and the Swordmaidens confronted the Acolytes earlier than scheduled, they still had to deal with the other prong of attack. That was why Ves became confused why he only received a delayed notification of the threat.

Shouldn’t they be fighting for their lives since the first message arrived? Ves looked up its timestamp and noticed that it had been sent just after he activated his signal jammer!

"What?! An hostile force transitioned into the star system and nobody warned me?!"

Ves emerged out of his hut of crates and marched towards the exit. He unlocked the hatch and slipped out before confronting the nearest security officer. "What’s the state of the battle?!"

"Uhh.. battle, sir?"

"The Temple of Haatumak arrived in this system some time ago, isn’t that right?"

"That is correct."

Something strange was going on. "Did a battle erupt between cultists and our forces?"

"No, sir."

Ves blinked. "Then what did the forces aligned to the Church actually do?"

"They went on the attack, Mr. Larkinson. It’s just that they didn’t aim for us, but rather the Vesians!"

"What!?"

This sounded extremely preposterous at first. Ves raised his comm and read through the subsequent messages. He had a feeling he missed some details.

The messages indeed stated that the cultist fleet emerged close to the entry zone where the Vesian fleet had arrived. All of this had actually happened a few hours before, but the light of their emergence only just started arriving to the Vandals.

To sum up the observations made by the Vandal long-ranged sensors, they detected a significant amount of disarray among the Vesian fleet. Their countermeasures against long-ranged observation abruply ceased while several valuable combat carriers flew out of poisition or slowly began to blow up!

"The Vesians paid a visit to the Temple of Haatumak as well!"

Evidently, the Vesians sought out massive Temple in order to pay their respects and requested their ships to be blessed by their Priests so their powerful and energetic fleet wouldn’t have to skirmish against the sandmen every step of the way.

It made sense for the Vesians to do so, yet it allowed their ship to be infiltrated by the creepy invisible Acolytes who had a tendency of stalking important people at close proximity from behind.

The Acolytes must have initiated a decapitation attack as soon as the Temple of Haatumak and her sycophants jumped into the system and closed in on the disarrayed Vesian force!

Presumably, with many officers assassinated or taken out of action and with sabotage wracking several of their vessels, the Vesians shouldn’t have been in a good shape to repel the swarm of pirate mechs that deployed from the pirates.

The first minutes of the battle proceeded chaotically as the Vandal long-ranged sensors worked hard to figure out what was going on, something which the battle didn’t help with all of the lasers and explosions scattering light in every direction.

When the battle between the Vesians and the worshippers initially began, the Vandals expected to witness a difficult battle for both sides. Which side won depended whether the numerically-inferior Vesians regained enough wits to form a coordinated defense.

Something like this should be hard to achieve if the Acolytes had free reign aboard their combat carriers. Unlike the Vandals, the Vesians couldn’t rely on a tip-off from Ves to be prepared to root out an invisible intruder among their ranks.

The subsequent messages that arrived at his comm reflected this prediction as the Vandals expected the pirates to vanquish the Vesians, though at heavy cost as the Vesian mech pilots didn’t go down without a fight.

Yet the battle did not proceed along this fashion, because at some point the Vesians deployed an expert mech.

How did the Vandals know? Because of the mech’s subsequent performance and the resonance emanations their sensors picked up. The mech was like a beacon in the dark!

This expert mech first proceeded to crash in the middle of the pirate ranks. Having entered the chicken coop, the wolf proceeded to demolish them in rapid tempo!