The Mech Touch

s by their immediate superiors who were currently present in this room.

An unprecedented air of serious fell among Major Verle and the Vandal cadre.

The import of the situation dawned upon each of them.
None of the Vandals present were stupid.
They saw the hints of what was coming, and might have extrapolated what might be in store for them.
There couldn ’t be that many reasons why the battered and diminished Verle task force needed to be sent to the frontier instead of the frontlines of the latest Bright-Vesia War.Find authorized novels in Webnovel，faster updates, better experience，Please click for visiting.

”Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Vandals, ” Major Verle began.
”The time has come for you to learn the nature of our clandestine operation.
I have carefully held this secret close to my chest along with a small number of officers because of the sensitive and outlandish nature of the mission.
Even now, I am only allowed to illuminate a small part of what we are after and why we must enter the frontier. ”

The conference room dimmed, and a projection came to life.

Ves knew this image.
He knew it well.

”T-That ’s a CFA battleship! ”

”She ’s an old one. ” A ship officer said.
”I recognize this style.
She ’s several hundred years old.
They don ’t make battleships like they used to these days. ”

The bold lettering on her sides revealed the august name of this venerable creation.

”The Starlight Megalodon. ” Someone whispered.
”Isn ’t that an old wife ’s tale? The missing battleship? She ’s gone off the deep end two or three hundred years ago. ”

The Starlight Megalodon.
A fully-fledging capital ship whose main guns could crack a moon and whose superweapons possessed enough might to fracture a terrestrial planet.
This was not just a weapon of the stars.
It was a weapon capable of bringing enough firepower to match the flare of a star down on a single target.

She was a hammer in the hands of the Common Fleet Alliance, meant to hammer down the nails that represented the stubborn alien races that lived in the periphery just outside human-occupied space.

Just like other human ships, her hull was shaped like a fish or a reptile without limbs or fins.
Long, perhaps a little fat, but not wide enough to present a huge profile when facing the front, the battleship ranged at least eleven kilometers long.

Her main cannon emplacements jutted out from almost every direction.
No matter what direction she faced, she could at least bring a single main cannon to bear upon her opponent.

Her armament layout might not have been the most efficient in terms of offensive power, but she was built like a cosmic brick.
The most amazing feat was that her entire eleven-kilometer exterior was clad in the highest-quality compressed armor plating!

The sheer amount of medium and high-grade exotics used in the mass-fabrication of the armor plates would have been enough to upgrade every mech in the Bright Republic with high-quality compressed armor!

And that was just one estimate.
A more ridiculous estimate stated that the Starlight Megalodon carried enough compressed armor to clad the Friday Coalition ’s entire mech roster with the substance!

These unfounded estimates illustrated the sheer extravagance put into their construction.
With a strong emphasis on defence, the Starlight Megalodon served as a defensive bulwark as well as a battering ram to any fleet centered around her presence.

Major Verle smoothly picked up after the alarm died down.
”This is the CFA ’s Starlight Megalodon.
Let me tell you why this missing battleship is relevant to our operation. ”

Their commanding officer briefly described what Ves already heard or derived from Calabast ’s spiel.
Nothing in their explanation diverged very much.
They both stated that the Starlight Megaladon had long been presumed missing, but that descendants in FTL-capable shuttles randomly popped up in the frontier for some reason.

The major skipped the part about the encrypted data chips and their necessity in tracking down the current location of the derelict battleship.
He simply stated that the Vandals and the Swordmaidens combined possessed the means of navigating towards that hidden treasure.

Everyone still sat stunned in their seats as the revelations surpassed every rumor that had been bandied about by bored spacers with an overactive imagination.

The major finally came to the part where he declared their actual objective.
”Make no mistake.
The Starlight Megalodon is a vault of technology that the Bright Republic still hasn ’t mastered despite several hundred years of progress.
If we can obtain a smidgeon of their tech library, we can advance the Mech Corps by leaps and bounds! Our primary objective for this excursion is the Starlight Megalodon ’s primary data banks! ”

Pretty much everyone bought it hook, line and sinker.
If Ves hadn ’t heard the cynical truth from Calabast, maybe he would have fallen for it as well.
Right now, Ves faked an expression of shock and puzzlement on his face.
It wouldn ’t do for the Vandals to find out he already knew the dirty details well before the rest of the crew got to learn the truth!

”The foundation of human civilization is the technology that we master.
Yet is it fair for the CFA, MTA and the first-rate superstates to hoard their technological superiority from us?! Just because we are situation near the edge of the galaxy doesn ’t make us the refuse pit of the human race! We deserve a fair share of the technological spoils, and if the galactic center is too conceited to give us a leg up, then we will take it from their forgotten ship! Do you know why? Because we are the Flagrant Vandals, and we take what is ours! ”

”We take what is ours! ” The rest of the crowd echoed the motto.

Ves refrained from joining in.
He wasn ’t a genuine Vandal, after all.
The rest would excuse him for holding back while the rest were swept up in the fervor of robbing a derelict battleship from the CFA.

He keenly noted that Major Verle never mentioned anything about the life-prolonging serums and medicines even once.
The topic of side objectives that boarding parties would grab as ’targets of opportunity ’ was the most he had to say about that.

The mech officer couldn ’t let the rank and file know they were about to risk their lives so that some old geezer back in the Republic wanted to life a few hundred years longer.