The Mech Touch novel Chapter 754

The only reason why Ves and the others remained calm was because the distance couldn’t be closed within a short amount of time. Still, due to the light that bounced off the Flagrant Swordmaiden fleet at an earlier time, the Vesians had already started accelerating towards their foes.

While the Flagrant Swordmaidens could have easily kited the Vesians around, right now their entire fleet suffered a substantial slowdown. Not only did they still haven’t taken complete control over their newly conquered light carriers, the Vandals also raced to repair the sublight propulsion and the FTL drives of the Finmoth Regal and the Linever Swan.

With the Flagrant Swordmaidens fleeing at half their maximum acceleration, the Vesian newcomers would eventually be able to catch up!

"When will the Vesians intercept our fleet?" He asked with an increasing amount of worry. "And have we identified their mech regiment?"

"Sixteen hours. And no, the sensor operators and analysts don’t have a clue yet. The Vesians who arrived apparently make use of standard Vesian combat carrier classes. At this distance, it’s too hard to make out any markings or variations."

If the Vandals brought a reconnaissance corvette or something like that, then they might have been able to resolve more detail. As of now, the ominous Vesian fleet’s origins remained a mystery to everyone. Did they hail from Imodris? Venidse? Hafner?

Their exact origins made all of the difference. So far, it didn’t seem likely they hailed from Venidse because their fleet moved significantly faster than the sluggish, heavily-armored combat vessels the Venidsans routinely preferred.

The Vesians knew they held an information advantage and actively worked to extend it. Almost immediately upon emergence, they activated a number of countermeasures.

"They’re employing a reflective dust field to obscure our long-ranged optical sensors. Their laser-armed mechs are also beaming their weapons in a dispersed angle in the direction fleet."

A cheap and convenient way to hinder optical sensors from resolving details in long range was to throw a lot of junk data at them. The reflective dust bounced light that passed through them back and forth, which caused the images the optical sensors resolved to come out dimmer and distorted.

The dispersed laser emissions only exacerbated the problem. At this distance, a laser beam dispersed most of its energy. However, trying to stare at the fleet while distant lasers shone into the optical sensors was like trying to resolve detail while staring directly into a bright sun!

"Ves? Why is it so important for you to know what unit you’re facing?"

Since Ketis hadn’t experienced their run throughout Vesian space, Ves briefly filled her in. "Of the three Vesian duchies the Vandals have pissed off in recent times, we’re practically reviled by the Imodris and Hafner. The former because we raided two of their planets, and the latter because we captured and ransomed one of their up-and-coming expert pilots."

"I heard some rumors about it, but to think you lived through that is impressive!" Ketis exclaimed. "It also sounds really humiliating for Imodris and Hafner. No wonder you Vandals are shaking in your boots right now. Do you think they’re here to hunt you Vandals down?"

Ves thought about it but shook his head. "They wouldn’t have entered the frontier or go all the way into the deep frontier just for us. I bet they’re likely after the same objective as us. It’s rather brave of them to travel all the way up here without allying themselves with a local pirate outfit."

How they managed to get here mattered little at the moment. The point was that the Vesian vessels started catching up to the half-crippled Flagrant Swordmaidens and would certainly be able to reach them before the engineers replaced the FTL drives!

According to the reports sent by the engineers in charge of the replacement process, the sabotage did not only disable the FTL drive, but also the network of corrections around it. Fixing all of it required an extensive teardown that consumed a lot of time.

Even if the engineers cut as many corners as possible to speed up the work, they still lacked too many chief engineers who knew how to work with the FTL drives! As the most sophisticated component of a ship, a bunch of junior engineers had no business messing with them! It took decades for the average engineer to pass all the certifications that allowed them to handle FTL drives responsibly.

"According to the latest update, the engineers estimate the Finmoth Regal’s FTL drive will take at least twenty hours to repair, while the drive for the Linever Swan will take at least thirty-six hours!"

Both repairs took far too long to fix! The Acolytes had really employed their explosive charges with a great degree of skill!

This left the Vandals specifically with an awful dilemma. Would they choose to abandon another combat carrier and a vital logistics ship and transition into FTL without them, or stick around and wait until they completed repairs?

The latter option sounded patently unviable. Although the Vesians hadn’t brought a full mech regiment, they brought at least half of its strength. If the Vesian fleet’s mech roster consisted of an even mix of spaceborn and landbound mechs, then that meant the Vandals would have to contend against at least five-hundred spaceborn mechs!

The Verle Task Force may have been able to match their strength in their prime, but after all of the battles and casualties the Vandals could only bring half of their strength to bear. Actually less so now that they lost a couple of mech captains.

"This is not good news at all. Death is creeping onto our backs but we can’t run away fast enough to escape its hungry grasp! Not if we cut off our wounded tail!"

Having already lost the Antecedent, it would hurt if they had to discard the Finmoth Regal and the Linever Swan as well. By now, the other independent pirate vessels had run away as far as they could from the Flagrant Swordmaidens, some even transitioning into FTL to depart the star system entirely!