The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1774

It took some time for the small Hexer fleet to reach the Scarlet Rose. Ves took advantage of the delay to deal with the aftermath of the battle.

He first retrieved the wrecks floating in the vicinity of his ship. Before the Hexers arrived to the rescue, Ves lost two of his four battle bots.

The Paravin and the Selzer still remained functional, but the enemy light skirmishers made short work of the Kravon and the Fliskin.

Ves bled his heart out at the sight of the two broken machines. Fortunately, the light skirmishers disabled them by relying on finesse rather than overwhelming force.

The Kravon’s frame was still in one piece. The enemy light skirmisher that attacked the artillery mech merely managed to cut all of its essential power lines with high precision.

Since Lady Curver designed the Kravon, she probably taught the CRC how to disable the mech as efficiently as possible.

The Fliskin was in worse shape. As a former light mech, its armor coverage was really too thin, and its limbs could easily be separated by an opposing mech!

Just as Ves predicted, a pilot-less light skirmisher stood no chance against an identical machine piloted by a skilled mech pilot!

"Battle bots are really too ineffective against piloted mechs." Ves helplessly observed.

Fortunately, Ves could still restore the Kravon and the Fliskin as long as he retrieved them. He could also convert the battle bots back into proper mechs, thereby adding four valuable second-class mechs to his arsenal.

Second-class mechs are very hard to come by to Ves. He especially valued the quality and comprehensive documentation on the four bodyguard mechs.

As long as he could retain possession of the machines, he could derive all sorts of benefits from tinkering with them! Due to the urgency of his flight, he hadn’t studied them as much as he wanted. As long as he could examine their construction at his leisure, he would probably comprehend the essence of second-class mech design in a couple of months!

That wasn’t all. Once Ves was done with them, he planned to pass on the four restored mechs to the Avatars of Myth so that they could gain some valuable experience in piloting second-class mechs!

"Simulation training is all well and good, but all of my Avatars should have the opportunity to train with the real deal!"

It was incredibly hard for third-class mech pilots to learn how to pilot second-class mechs. Without any practical experience in piloting the mechs, the Avatars wouldn’t be able to tell whether they were truly qualified to pilot these powerful machines!

The four second-class mechs neatly solved this problem for his Avatars of Myth. Though Ves did not intend to rely on Lady Curver’s products to outfit his Avatars of Myth for battle, they still served as excellent training mechs!

"I have to make sure I get everything I can salvage off this battlefield!"

He passed on instructions for the Paravin and the Selzer to salvage remains of the Kravon and the Fliskin. He also ordered them to salvage any pieces of the Fridaymen light skirmishers while they were at it. The mech hangar and the cargo bay still offered enough room for some extra spoils.

Once he did so, Ves turned away from the control panel and threw a glance as the stacks of Breyer alloy a short distance away.

Knowing that a prize crew would come and take command of the Scarlet Rose, Ves needed to clean up some of the traces.

There was no way Ves wanted to give up this endless source of Breyer alloy!

"Let’s get to work."

He began a very hasty cleanup. First, he halted the loop and let the mysterious rest in the tube. To avoid attracting any attention, Ves ordered all of the tubes to seal themselves, thereby blocking access to the escape pods.

While this wasn’t exactly standard, Ves hoped that the prize crew would pay attention to other aspects of the Scarlet Rose. There shouldn’t be much of a reason for them to inspect the escape pods!

Afterwards, Ves accessed every bot and system in the vicinity and wiped out the logs and archival data related to the loop he formed.

To be absolutely safe, he even opened up the forging machine in order to pull out the data chips containing the logs and destroyed it entirely!

No hard proof should be left that this machine managed to process a large amount of identical escape pods in the last week!

Ves wasn’t entirely satisfied, though. While he managed to clean up all of his traces, he wasn’t sure what Cassandra Breyer would do if she was by herself for an extended amount of time.

Would her mummified body eventually resuscitate after being left alone for a few days?

Would her escape pod disappear from the Scarlet Rose and instead begin to the Stellar Chaser?

Would she somehow manage to find out what he had been doing towards her and take revenge?

He had no idea what would happen! He really didn’t want to leave his ship for this reason!

If Ves had his way, he wanted to stay aboard the Scarlet Rose and keep the Glory Battalion away!

Yet that would not make any sense at this time. Ves may have taken over the Scarlet Rose, but he hadn’t subverted all of her systems. Much of her running still depended on Fridayman programming.

Not only that, but the ship had been operating without a crew for almost a month. This inevitably caused some of the components of the mobile supply frigate to degrade.

The increased time required to cycle her FTL drive was just one of many indicators that the ship was deteriorating due to lack of maintenance!

The chance of malfunctions would drastically increase if Ves insisted on running the Scarlet Rose without a crew!

Since Gloriana was a mech designer, she should know the risks. She would never allow Ves to have his way!

While he didn’t mind telling her about Cassandra Breyer if he had to, Ves did not trust the other Hexers. The chance of leaks was too great.

"I’ll just have to keep my mouth shut and hope for the best!"

Perhaps the Hexers would find out about his secret anyway. Ves still wanted to do his best to secure his spoils!