The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1763

Ves did not race down to the compartment in question without preparation.

Fearing a trap or a plot on his life, Ves resisted his immediate impulses to make some preparations.

He first put the Scarlet Rose on red alert and locked down all of the compartments and corridors. If some kind of infiltrator left the escape pod and skulked across his ship, then locking all of the spaces should pose a significant hindrance to the sneaky bastard!

Second, he withdrew all of the bots from the affected areas and ordered most of them to remain dormant and in place.

If any bots still moved during this time, then that was a very clear sign that someone managed to subvert a part of the Scarlet Rose!

Third, he withdrew to his quarters in order to don his second-hand combat armor. With a solid layer of armor protecting him from outside threats, Ves felt a lot more secure about confronting any potential intruders!

He armed himself with the triple-type heavy assault rifle while slotting the compact laser pistol in a dedicated holster.

Aside from that, he also checked his other gear, which encompassed various gadgets ranging from a jamming device to a multiscanner.

Only after he prepared his full loadout did Ves feel secure in investing the mysterious intrusion.

"Alright, let’s go, Lucky."

"Meow."

With Lucky in tow, they descended from the upper decks and approached the suspicious compartment.

Before Ves reached the entrance to the escape compartment, he halted a fair distance away.

Having learned his previous lesson, Ves no longer dared to act as a vanguard.

Who knew if the escape pod was a missile in disguise? Wouldn’t Ves be making the exact same mistake as last time if he entered a compartment which was filled with unknowns?

"Meow?"

"Stay on guard." Ves spoke and summoned up an interface from his combat armor’s wrist. "We should scout the situation first."

He summoned a random scanning bot used for routine inspections from a nearby maintenance compartment. After it arrived in front of the entrance, Ves ordered the hatch to open long enough to allow the bot to enter.

Once inside, Ves switched his view to the sensor bot’s optical vision.

After issuing an order, the bot did not immediately approach the strange escape pod. Instead, he instructed it to scan every corner of the compartment, from its escape pods to the sensors that made up the monitoring system.

He wanted to find out if the hardware had been tampered with. As long as Ves discovered anything suspicious, then he’d be able to confirm that someone hostile had been messing with his ship!

Surprisingly, Ves encountered nothing amiss.

It was as if the sensors and alert systems hadn’t been touched at all!

Nothing else had been touched as well. The bot found no holes cut into the bulkheads, no breaches in the other escape pods, no radioactive particles or other traces that signified that something in space had intruded in the compartment.

This was actually the weirdest observation of all. How could all of the customary traces of space exposure be absent, especially when a foreign escape pod somehow managed to sneak into this compartment?

"What is going on?" Ves asked in puzzlement.

Many of his paranoid suspicions turned out to be a bust if the scanning bot’s results could be trusted.

Had the scanning bot been fooled? Was his mystery opponent more formidable than anything he had imagined?

Whatever the case, Ves guessed that the answer lay in the peculiar escape pod.

When Ves directed the bot to approach the escape pod, the feed suddenly cut off.

"What..?"

?

He blinked at the interface as if he expected the feed to restore.

Yet as several seconds passed, the scanning bot didn’t resume its transmission!

Had it gone on a strike or something?

Ves furrowed his brows and switched the feed. When Ves watched what took place from the footage recorded by the monitoring system, he observed the scanning bot had shut off and crashed against the deck.

This inexplicable malfunction instantly doubled his apprehension!

If the earlier signs had succeeded in stoking his suspicions, then this latest occurrence definitely proved that something was wrong!

Ves knew that all kinds of strange and inexplicable technology existed. Ves had witnessed all manner of technological wonders that could result in such a strange escape pod appearing out of nowhere.

He even experienced many strange sights related to spirituality. From surviving an encounter with an assassin with spiritual potential to dealing with all of the strangeness of the Temple of Haaatumak, Ves did not rule out that some spiritual shenanigans might be at work.

Yet Ves did not take these possibilities too seriously. If he set aside all of these unrealistic and low-probability scenarios, then the simplest explanation was that the escape pod simply managed to infiltrate the Scarlet Rose by exploiting her backdoors.

Though Ves had made a lot of progress in closing all of these backdoors, he was under no illusion that he addressed all of them. Even if Calabast sent him a lot of supplementary data that pointed out these vulnerabilities, was it truly complete?

"Evidently not." Ves grimaced. "This is getting more and more precarious."

While he was tempted to dispatch another bot, he began to run out of patience. What if he tipped the escape pod off? What if he triggered some kind trap?

Ves decided to throw some of his caution to the wind. He turned his attention to Lucky.

"Go in and investigate the escape pod in the center."

"Meow?"

"Go do something useful for once and scout the escape pod!"

"Meow meow meow!"

"Don’t jerk me around! You’ve been eating so many exotics that your debt has only increased! The least you can do is to see what’s wrong!"

After a bit of arguing, Ves managed to browbeat his pet into entering the escape compartment.

"Meow.."

"Get going!"

Lucky reluctantly flew towards the compartment and phased through the hatch. After entering the area in question, he did not let go of his intangible state.

With utmost care, Lucky floated closer and closer while exhibiting a lot of vigilance.