The Mech Touch novel Chapter 929

The interior of the Starlight Megalodon became baptized in war and paralysis. Behind the scenes, the captain’s faction and the admiral’s faction waged a frigid war on the ship’s internal network and all of her automated systems.

Meanwhile, in realspace, Flagrant Swordmaidens and the Vesians fought over the vault which they believed stored a batch of high-grade life prolonging serum and other valuables. _{ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom}

These two interconnected battles threw the entire ship into disarray and prevented her from engaging her most potent defenses to annihilate the humans or the AIs that took up arms.

The chaos wracking the ship lessened almost every human and AI’s attention away from the neutral Research Department. The evenly-sided stalemate also ensured that the conflict wouldn’t be resolved within a short amount of time.

These serendipitous circumstances provided the perfect backdrop for Miss Calabast! So much so that Ves couldn’t help but eye with considerable suspicion. He strongly believed that she definitely had a hand in enabling this confrontation to occur. She might have pushed both sides towards a conflict just so she could manufacture an opportunity to break into Project Icarus!

"What are you looking at?" Miss Calabast noticed him staring daggers at her. "Do you have any complaints? You shouldn’t think that much. You just continue to do what you are good at while I do what I’m good at. Don’t forget that I have a stake in you as well now."

He sure knew it considering he worried about what she had over him every waking moment.

"Let’s just get this over with so I can either lend a hand to my comrades or make my way out." He grumbled. "Why do you need my assistance so much anyway? You can hack anything from what it looks like."

Calabast shook her head. "I only managed to pack up Virtual Commander Cosit because she’s not a research AI. You only saw me input some commands that wiped out her personality matrix, but I spent days to search for exploits and find a way to remove her from the picture. Her removal is necessary because it leaves you as the highest-ranking officer in the Research Department. Check your authorizations. While you haven’t inherited the position of department head, Cosit’s absence caused the ship to transfer many of her powers over to you. We’ll need that to unlock most of the restrictions barring our way."

They tested out her assumption very quickly.

Ves and Ketis accompanied Miss Calabast and her war party into Cosit’s office. It turned out the entrance to the Exotic Research Sub-Division lay right beneath Virtual Commander Cosit’s desk!

"Go work your magic, Ves."

Surprisingly enough, when Ves inputted a special opening command, the entrance responded.

They watched the desk hover into the air before a hidden mechanism disengaged the locks and slid back the deck plating. A hole extended right into the darkness underneath.

"Go and hover down. Be careful that you don’t fall!"

Miss Calabast, Ves, Ketis, the heavily armed exoskeleton soldiers and the security bots all activated their antigrav modules and floated down into the dark.

No lightning lit up the sheer tunnel leading downwards, so everyone activated their suit lighting and activated an augmented vision mode on their helmet visors.

A minute later, everyone carefully touched down on the deck underneath. They subsequently passed through a heavily guarded but ominously silent security checkpoint.

Ves understood that technically Ves shouldn’t have received so many authorizations after Cosit’s removal. Certainly, he shouldn’t have obtained the security clearances and permissions to enter the Exotic Research Sub-Department. Yet Calabast manipulated the automatic succession process in such a way that turned over the bulk of the virtual commander’s responsibilities on his lap.

Therefore, they didn’t encounter any hindrance at the first checkpoint. Yet there were seval more in their path before they could reach the inner core of this secretive section.

"Careful, you two." Calabast warned as the two had started to let down their guard in the dark environment. "We easily managed to bypass the first security checkpoint because it’s not as strict and stringent in preventing entry. The next checkpoints will be rather troublesome because while the gates and fixed defenses will recognize your authorization codes, the security bots and virtual officers residing inside are different."

"Different in what way?" Ketis asked.

"For security and redundancy reasons, the bots and virtual officers all operate on an entirely enclosed network within the Exotic Research Sub-Division. There is no way I can access the network from the outside, and let me inform you that I have tried many times."

"So what does that mean?"

"We’ll have to fight our way through the bots. These aren’t the standard bots like the ones that watch my back right now. The bots inside are of a completely different make and model. They’re extremely formidable and armed with extremely lethal weapons, though the good news is that there aren’t a lot of them. The Exotic Research Sub-Division mainly relied on elite human guards to guard their top secret projects."

Even if the CFA extended a lot of power to AIs and bots, they always relied on humans to take up primary responsibility. As they should.

When they walked across the eerily empty corridors, they finally encountered the next checkpoint.

As Ves transmitted the authorization codes to the checkpoint, most of the turrets and other defenses stood down.

However, the virtual guards and security bots immediately grew hostile.

[Wait a minute! You’re not Virtual Commander Cosit! You don’t belong here!]

Miss Calabast didn’t bother with any verbal sparring. She held out a plasma rifle and instantly pulled the trigger. "Open fire!"

The war party outnumbered the still-functional defenders of the security checkpoint. Yet their armament was extremely destructive!

One slicer bot teleported right in the middle of them and began to whirl around with their special blades. Within half a second, the bot managed to slice several unprepared exoskeleton soldiers into half despite their thick armor plating!

A handful of other bots fired out destructive rays that molecularly disintegrated the security bots that Calabast brought along. Everyone else including Ves and Ketis huddled behind their bulk as cover, but the bots dwindled by the second!