The Mech Touch novel Chapter 948

Even though the stealth shuttle never managed to place all of the shaped charges it carried, over eighty percent had already been placed before the sudden accident.

Even as the Six-Sided Dice rolled away in space in an uncontrollable spin, Ves imagined a giant dice thrown across the galaxy in the largest casino game in the history of reality.

He quickly shook his head to rid himself of that inappropriate image. This wasn’t the time to indulge in his fantasies!

"Mr. Larkinson, Chief Avanaeon, is there anything you can do to help the Six-Sided Dice to resume its stealth mode?!" The Vandal officer asked.

Both of them shook their heads. "No, sir. There is simply no way. The Six-Sided Dice needs days of repair work before it has any hope of recovering her ability to enter stealth!"

Let alone days, the stealth shuttle didn’t even have seconds as a handful of deserter mechs immediately arrived next to the spinning stealth shuttle.

A Hellcat hybrid knight mech piloted by Mech Captain Bonnet herself came closer in order to make sense of the strange metal cube. Seconds later, realization came through as she connected the cube’s appearance to the damage the Finmoth Regal suffered.

She opened up a channel to the shuttle. The CFA shuttle following in the distance listened in as well.

"Vandals." Bonnet spat acidly. "No one else wants to take us down as much as my old pals. I know it’s you!"

"Heh." The stealth shuttle’s pilot chuckled. "Friggin’ traitors. What now, traitor? Your ship is dead in the water! You’re going to have to be towed to get anywhere! Good luck asking the pirates for a tow when sandmen ships are continuing to scour this system of human ships!"

"Oh yeah? Too bad you won’t live to see it, Vandal!"

Captain Bonnet’s Hellcat lifted up its wrist and fired the nail driver mounted to it. A large, thick and sharpened alloy rod immediately launched from the wrist and punched a hole straight through the Six-Sided Dice!

The stealth shuttle immediately shattered afterwards, destroying it utterly without giving its occupants any way to survive!

"The Six-Sided Dice is destroyed at the hands of Mech Captain Bonnet." The Vandal officer noted with regret. "No life signals detected from the wreckage of the stealth shuttle."

Every other Vandals closed their eyes at the loss of two loyal Vandals.

As for Ves and Avanaeon, as the creators of the Six-Sided Dice they regretted its loss over the loss of the two Vandals. That was their escape vehicle!

While Ves didn’t know how much Avanaeon cared about the shuttle, personally he deeply felt pained by its loss. He lost a valuable escape method!

While his recent stint as a Senior Mech Designer aboard the Starlight Megalodon allowed him to supplement his understanding of stealth systems by a little bit, he lacked the resources and industrial capacity to fabricate a second Six-Sided Dice.

He only managed to construct the one that just got driven a nail through by repurposing the salvaged remains of Venidsan stealth shuttles.

Perhaps if the Vandals still retained their logistics systems, he would still be able to cobble up an inferior copy, but for the moment the only shuttle that Ves could rely on was his CFA shuttle.

Thinking about the many capabilities of his CFA shuttle calmed him down a bit. Almost all of its parameters vastly exceeded the parameters of that sad excuse of a stealth shuttle. The CFA’s standard ECM systems already approximated the functionality of an active stealth system. If not for its inability to hide itself from plain view, the CFA shuttle was already a nearly undetectable vessel in space!

Ves sighed and refocused himself before he decided to move away from the loss of the Six-Sided Dice.

Although the loss of the stealth shuttle pained the Vandals, they quickly whooped in joy as they saw the Finmoth Regal being wracked by various explosions!

Her recently-active propulsion systems suffered modest but incredibly focused and deliberately-aimed damage. The shapes charges damaged critical sections that not only disabled their functionality, but also caused certain active and volatile elements to explode as well!

This meant that immediately after the short and underwhelming series of detonations, more than a dozen more significant and more destructive secondary explosions wracked the stern of the Finmoth Regal!

"Half of her main thrusters are inoperable!"

"She is leaking fuel and propellant!"

"The Regal’s engineering bay has been breached! Secondary explosions have inflicted moderate damage to the core engineering compartments before emergency seals have set in! One of her power reactors has been affected and is currently undergoing emergency shutdown!"

A raft of damage reports streamed in as the CFA shuttle easily peered through the mess of signals and mapped out the effects of their sabotage. After the secondary and tertiary explosions subsided, it became clear to everyone that they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Even if the Vandals suffered painful accident, this same coincidence also magnified the damage suffered by the combat carrier!

"Chief Avanaeon, what’s your verdict? Can she move or resume operation within a short period of time?"

"She’s dead in the water." Avanaeon declared with confidence. "No matter how good their engineers and repair crews are, the Finmoth Regal needs a drydock or the assistance of a well-equipped logistics ship if she wants any hope of regaining her mobility. All the secondary explosions have not only damaged the sublight propulsion systems directly, they also affected the structural integrity of the hull sections around them. Her entire rear is shredded!"

This was all they needed to hear, because the Vandal officer quickly ordered the CFA shuttle to retrieve its comm buoys and discreetly slink back to the Shield of Hispania.