The Mech Touch

The doom that hung over his head never went away.

Ves just forgot about it when he became obsessed with exploiting the production loop. He came up with a lot of ideas on how to make use of this seemingly-endless source of Breyer alloy.

After several weeks had passed, the loop showed no signs of stopping! Whatever technique Cassandra Breyer performed, its programming obviously did not account for the absurdity that Ves subjected her to! If she was conscious, there was no way she would approve of his exploitation!

Fortunately, she never showed any signs of waking up after the forging machine burned her body up over a thousand times!

Just like a cleaning bot that kept bumping into a wall after its programming glitched, Cassandra Breyer seemed incapable of changing her current fate! Perhaps she wasnʼt even aware of her current circumstances!

Ves was especially surprised when her spiritual energy levels remained constant despite the constant creation of Breyer alloy.

Matter didnʼt come out of nowhere. Ves believed that not even gods were capable of circumventing this fundamental truth!

Matter was energy and energy was matter.

The human race had long invented ways to convert energy into matter and vica versa. It was just that this process was extremely inefficient. A humongous amount of energy was needed to generate a modest amount of matter. Tech constraints also made it impossible or impractical to create valuable exotics.

Otherwise, the Big Two wouldnʼt have needed to launch an invasion of the Red Ocean Dwarf Galaxy! It could simply sit on its Dyson spheres and transform an endless amount of solar radiation into phasewater!

This was why Ves continued to find the current situation absurd. What Cassandra Breyer casually managed to do in her strange undeath state ought to be impractical at best and impossible at worst!

Ves had the sense that he had inadvertently come in touch with a facet of human civilization which was very dangerous!

Could Cassandra Breyer be an associate of his mother? Was she an agent of the Five Scrolls Compact?

Whatever the case, if some random mummified corpse casually performed a feat that could only be replicated with extremely advanced technology, then there must doubtlessly be other people out there who wielded greater powers!

Ves had a feeling that he would definitely be able to bump into these spiritual adepts if he traveled to the galactic center. The chances of bumping into someone as powerful as Cassandra Breyer shouldnʼt be too large in the expansive galactic rim.

This was also why he suspected that the woman must be targeting him specifically rather than the Scarlet Rose.

”How troublesome.” He muttered.

He couldnʼt wait to return and find out whether he could sustain the loop while stepping out of the ship. If it turned out that he could only keep up production while he was physically present on the Scarlet Rose, then he wouldnʼt be able to profit as much from this process!

Yet before he could return to safety, the Friday Coalition finally managed to catch up to his flight.

The Coalition Reserve Corps hadnʼt been sitting on its thumbs all this time. Aside from putting a bounty on his ship and encouraging masses of mercenaries to do its dirty work, the people in charge also redirected their own assets!

The hunter frigate that showed up just happened to be in a prime position to intercept the Scarlet Rose. Not only did she emerge a stoneʼs throw away from his ship, but her relative motion to his ship even provided her with a head-start!

The Scarlet Roseʼs navigation systems went to work. By measuring the relative position, speed and acceleration of the new arrival, Ves quickly found out that he had only 66 minutes left until the hostile ship came close enough to start a battle!

”What awful timing!”

According to the transponders, the frigate bore the name of Terrinac. Ves tried to search up her name and ship class in the internal database of the Scarlet Rose as well as Aislingʼs personal terminal.

No match. The Terrinac was probably one of the CRCʼs more clandestine vessels. Her amazing acceleration made it clear that she probably excelled in pursuits!

This signified that the Terrinac would definitely catch up even if Ves managed to escape this star system!

If she was fully crewed, the Terrinacʼs comprehensive performance was leagues better than the Scarlet Rose.

Ves had to shake the Terrinac off right away if he wanted to complete the final leg of his journey!

Out of curiosity, Ves attempted to hail the Terrinac.

The other side did not accept his transmission request. It appeared that his hunters were very professional. There was no need to talk between each other.

As far as the crew of the Terrinac was concerned, the capture of the Scarlet Rose was inevitable!

Both sides knew the score. The CRC had slowly dug out many of the cards that Ves depended upon to escape from its clutches.

All of the earlier battles against the mercenaries gave the CRC plenty of footage to study his battle bots in-depth!

With Aisling Curver, their original designer, in their employ, the CRC probably figured out all of the weak points of her former mechs!

Ves briefly grinned. ”Many of those weak points arenʼt as vulnerable as before.”

With a steady supply of Breyer alloy, Ves did not hold back in strengthening the overall structure of the battle bots.

He not only supplied the Paravin with a brand-new tower shield that consisted entirely of Breyer alloy, but also modified the structure of all four battle bots to vary their existing structure!

By and large, Ves substantially added a lot of armor plating to strengthen their resilience. While their mobility dropped, the boost in defense was more than worth the tradeoff in his eyes!

Yet will this unexpected change be enough to hinder the Terrinac?

”Probably not.” He sighed.

The Friday Coalition came prepared! As the Terrinac slowly closed the distance, Ves tried to figure out every possible way he could avoid a confrontation.

To his distress, Ves failed to come up with a way to forestall the inevitable.

He entertained options he already ruled out such as overloading the propulsion system.

He also considered some unconventional plans such as throwing the mysterious escape pod in the flight path of the Terrinac.

A part of him hoped that Cassandra Breyer, or at least a duplicate of her, would wake up when the Terrinac picked her up and wreak havoc inside the ship!

However, Ves quickly discarded this unrealistic option.

If Cassandra woke up, she was liable to turn her ire towards him rather than the Terrinac!

To pin his hopes on her was pure folly!

”I donʼt really have that many options.” He helplessly observed.

His options hadnʼt changed since he first contemplated them. In fact, they probably diminished a bit as Ves did not believe he could abandon ship and sneak away unnoticed with the help of Aislingʼs special escape pod.

The CRC must surely be aware of the existence of this escape pod! The Terrinac could easily configure her sensors to detect the minute emissions the special escape pod couldnʼt cover up while in stealth!

Where could he go, anyway? This star system was just as barren and lifeless as his other stops.

The only possible ship that Ves could board in order to escape the star system was the Terrinac!

There was no way the CRC would make the same mistake twice! Ves bet that the internal security complement of the Terrinac had gone into high alert the moment the ship confirmed the presence of the Scarlet Rose!

Ves did not have weeks to tamper with the Terrinacʼs internal security systems. The entire frigate would definitely fight him every step of the way if he happened to board the ship!

It didnʼt matter if Ves obtained better gear. He salvaged much of his combat gear from the former crew of the Scarlet Rose.

It didnʼt matter if he extended the runtime of his Full Stealth augment. He exchanged 1 million DP for this gain, but the crew of the Terrinac wouldnʼt be stupid to allow an invisible infiltrator to kill them off one by one!

Perhaps Lucky stood a greater chance at wiping out the Terrinacʼs crew. His capabilities recently improved a lot by consuming so many expensive exotics.

With his intangibility and invisibility powers, it should be impossible for the crew to pin Lucky down!

Yet even if his cat somehow managed to succeed, where would that get him? Taking over the Terrinac was of no benefit at all as long as her mechs kept the ship at gunpoint!

Ves suspected that the enemy commander wouldnʼt be so stupid to keep all of his mechs close enough to be within reach of any nearby threats.

While Lucky was capable of flying in space, he merely moved and accelerated as a bird!

It was too impractical for him to cross the vast distances in space and attack all of the mechs!

As Ves ruled out option after option, he finally couldnʼt escape the unfortunate fact that only a frontal battle between his battle bots and the Terrinacʼs mechs would allow him to overcome this crisis!

”Looks like weʼre at the end of our rope, Lucky.”

”Meow.”

”Yeah. We might as well try.”

Seeing that he could do nothing else, Ves left the bridge and entered the mech workshop. He methodically activated his battle bots and put them on standby while he inspected the machines.

All four machines exhibited a bit more armor plating. The Breyer alloy added to their frames ruined their aesthetic contours, turning them into machines that significantly diverged from Aislingʼs original vision for her bodyguard mechs.

Ves had no choice but to place his faith on these tainted machines.

Compared to facing hundreds of third-rate mercenary mechs, he held little confidence that his battle bots would succeed this time.

Yet, he did not give up. He had come too far to stop at this point!

”Even if Iʼm defeated, itʼs not the end.”

As long as the Terrinac was out to capture him, Ves would still be able to bide his time and attempt another escape, especially if Lucky stayed hidden.

Of course, the Friday Coalition wouldnʼt be as complacent as last time. Now that he became known as an escape artist, theyʼll probably keep him confined until the Terrinac brought him all the way back to the Warsaw Giant System!

”Does Aisling even want me still?” He frowned.

If not, then Ves was in big trouble!

As time continued to pass, the time to deploy his battle bots had come.

He stepped behind a familiar control panel. Four separate projected interfaces came online as the battle bots launched into space one by one. Each of the machines lined up next to the Scarlet Rose in order to greet the appearance of the enemy mechs.

Soon enough, the Terrinac showed some activity. Ves directed the Scarlet Roseʼs optical sensors to observe the opposite ship carefully.

A second-class mech appeared into space. Ves instantly studied its visual design and figured its basic properties.

”One offensive space knight. Armed with a lance as well as a sword. Excels in charges. Secondary systems unknown as of now.”

”Two light skirmishers. Their models are identical, with only small divergences to account for the preferences of their mech pilots. Armament unknown, but likely consists of daggers.”

”Two rifleman mechs. Both armed with powerful gauss rifles. Good choice. Energy weapons take too much time to penetrate the armor of my battle bots. Too bad they didnʼt account for my Breyer alloy.”

”One striker mech. Armed with some sort of energy projector rather than a shotgun. Extremely deadly in close range. Forms an extreme deterrent against my melee battle bots.”

Six second-class mechs. Each of them also looked formidable. At the very least, their quality did not lose out from Aislingʼs bodyguard mechs too much!