The Mech Touch novel Chapter 772

After twenty minutes of exchanging half-baked theories, unsupported arguments and baseless speculation, they came no closer to explaining what went on with Venerable Xie and his cavalier behavior in the last battle.

"Enough!" Major Verle let out an outburst. "It is obvious that neither of us lack the expertise to judge the actual outcome of your work. I will have my men keep an eye on the subordinate and make an attempt to read his thoughts from his actions. For what is worth, I believe you when you state your changes has achieved at least something. Venerable Xie has not made a single attempt to contact the Fourth Prince, thereby continuing the ruse where he’s still alive."

The death of Prince Hixt-Klaaster was a very regrettable matter to them both. If that Acolyte in the service of the Church of Haatumak hadn’t been shrewd enough to target the prince, then Ves wouldn’t have been compelled to break a great taboo and tamper the neural interfaces of an expert pilot.

"There is a chance that Venerable Xie is merely pretending that he has lost interest in catching up to the Fourth Prince." Ves couldn’t help but add.

"There you go again." Major Verle shook his head in a tired manner. "You are full of guesses, but what is the point of answering so many questions? Without proof, none of your assertions can be taken as the truth. Still, I’ll assign more men as a precaution."

After discussing a few other matters, Ves left the stateroom and went to his office to take care of paperwork that piled up after every major battle. The fleet stood down from red alert but maintained yellow alert in case the sandmen fleet brought friends.

Sand and sand-like particles drifted into the astral winds as soon as the battle had ended. Nothing remained of their enemies and the handful of mechs they managed to engulfed. Any mech that ended in their clutches would have been broken down as the sand pressed down on their frames from all sides until they finally broke into fragments.

Unless a mech was rescued in the first couple of seconds, they never came back intact. Despite the somewhat primitive way the sandmen fought, they utilized their unique properties to great advantage.

Ves looked at the final tally and saw that the Flagrant Vandals lost another ten mechs due to the initial ambush and various mishaps during the spontaneous battle. Most of their mech pilots ejected in time and survived, fortunately, but the fleet didn’t carry enough spare mechs to put them to use.

For now, the mech pilots who lost their own mechs had to be benched and put on reserve.

He contemplated whether to request the logistics ships to fabricate a bunch of cheap mechs to put these pilots back into action, but he rejected this option in the end.

"It’s going to take way too many resources to fabricate completely new mechs. We need those resources for repairs and other purposes."

He processed other matters that came to his desk. Some of the combat carriers almost emptied out their ammunition reserves, prompting Ves to place an order to replenish them. The logistics ships already had their hands full for the next week as they accessed their store of bulk materials to fabricate cheap, low-quality rounds and shells to replenish their ammunition stockpile.

The low-quality rounds wouldn’t be as damaging or reliable than the commercially-manufactured ammunition, but Vse would rather have an abundance of low-quality rounds than a limited selection of higher-quality ammunition.

"At this rate, our stores of bulk materials will be consumed. We really have to seek out some asteroid or moons to mine or else our guns don’t have anything to fire anymore after winning a couple of skirmishes against the sandmen."

The presence of the sandmen hung over everyone’s head like the Sword of Damocles. No one knew another sword took the place of the old one and threatened to hack off their heads.

Such a nightmare scenario frightened Ves quite badly because he was more aware of the state of the fleet than the average Vandal.

Even though the Flagrant Vandals dragged a considerable supply train long, most of them consisted of transports and cargo haulers that carried a large but finite amount of resources. Once they tapped out their stockpile, their supply situation would really start to crater.

Naturally, this only applied to the Vandals. Lydia’s Swordmaidens may have brought their own supply train, but their depth and breath of resources couldn’t match the preparations of their allies.

While Ves did not have exact figures in possession, his casual interrogation of Ketis revealed that they would likely run out of bulk resources when the Vandals only expended a third of their own bulk stockpiles.

In short, if the Vandals really needed to find an asteroid field or a moon to stabilize their increasingly precarious supply situation.

"Fortunately, physical ammunition is only useful for our spaceborn situation."

The Vandals did not plan on deploying any mechs that relied solely on ballistic weapons on the ground. Even Venerable Xie’s Pale Dancer would have to exchange its trusty ballistic rifle with a customized laser rifle that Miss Lisbeth and Chief Keys originally fabricated for the Parallax Star. The weapon had collected dust for years, and would finally see some use after undergoing modifications to make it more compatible to the Pale Dancer.

A few hours went by as the Flagrant Swordmaidens finally recovered from their previous ordeal. After a brief round of servicing, the mechs assigned to patrol the fleet launched into space and began to form a single chain of mechs that extended outwards in each direction.

The detection envelope reached as much as eight-hundred kilometers from each direction! Such a distance granted the fleet a lot more minutes of vital preparation time.