The Mech Touch novel Chapter 2842

Chapter 2842 - Limited Strength

Every plan and course of action required a certain amount of strength to complete.

Ves wanted to accomplish a lot of goals. Currently, he wished to blast off straight into orbit and fly back all the way to the outer system where he could reunite with his expeditionary fleet.

Theoretically, some of the vehicles in the refugee train were able to accomplish this. Perhaps their range was limited since they were primarily designed for atmospheric travel.

Due to their organic nature, the small and medium-sized biotransports suffered from a lot of problems once they ventured into space. They suffered from oxygen deficiency if they spent a prolonged time in space. Extreme temperatures assaulted their exteriors. Stellar radiation damaged their cells. The list of issues went on and on. It was much harder to make a biovessel spaceworthy.

That said, as long as the journey didn’t take too long, Ves could easily cope with these issues. While he wasn’t able to modify a biovehicle directly, he could grab some spare materials and augment the vehicle with conventional parts.

He could armor up a biotransport so that it wore its own ’spacesuit’.

He could hollow out such a vehicle and install conventional parts in their place that did the same job but much better.

He could even fabricate his own shuttle as long as he had access to a decent workshop along with sufficient raw materials!

In fact, the most ideal solution would be to steal a vehicle that was spaceworthy from the start.

Sadly, pretty much every vessel that satisfied his conditions was in the hands of the Prosperous Hill Transportation Service. Due to their monopoly on interplanetary transportation and logistics, all of these excellent biovessels were either in the hands of powerful factions or locked inside highly-defended bases!

"It doesn’t even matter if we grab one of those vehicles." Venerable Tusa Billingsley-Larkinson snorted. "Anyone and their grandmother can shoot it down as long as they have a gun."

He was right. Right after the Supreme Revolution broke out, many citizens with means attempted to escape Prosperous Hill VI by launching into space!

Even though the fighting had also extended into orbit, as long as any vehicle managed to reach deep space, they would probably get shot down by one of the many thousands of ranged mechs in the surrounding area!

In fact, this had already happened plenty of times! Thousands of flaming wrecks rained down from the skies in the first hour alone. Not just shuttles, but also mechs attracted a lot of fire as long as they flew high enough to be noticeable!

This was why aerial mechs consistently lowered their altitude throughout their engagements. They didn’t want to get sniped by a ranged mech that was situated on the other side of a city!

The only way a vehicle would be able to survive the passage into deep space was if it was heavy-protected or capable of maintaining stealth.

The former was only reserved for bigger factions while the latter was very challenging from a technical aspect.

As a result, it was not feasible for the Larkinsons and their allies to just pack up their bags and leave the planet at the moment!

This realization weighed heavily on everyone. They each had the means to flee, but the environment was too dangerous to make the attempt!

"We indeed need more strength." Captain Ulmond Cross said. "No one on this planet is our friend. Aside from the people in our base, we can’t trust anyone, not even the refugees that are parked outside of our walls."

The refugees had already begun to settle down. Some of them even deployed temporary structures in order to offer some rest or create a workspace to fix their equipment.

Yet despite their docile demeanor, everyone in the conference room knew that the refugees could easily turn into enemies. The base occupants had to manage their relations with other people carefully.

This applied to every organization and faction on the planet. In a situation where they were cut off from reinforcements and expected to fend for themselves, Ves and his people could hardly afford to provoke too many enemies!

The more enemies he attracted, the greater the chance of getting defeated by an overwhelming attack of enemy mechs!

"We can’t make it on our own with our current level of manpower, supplies and assets. We are especially short on mechs. If we want to expand our strength, we need to go out to acquire what we need to increase our security and work towards a possible escape route from this planet."

Expanding their strength meant getting their hands on more mechs and everything related to them. Ves understood this very early, so he proactively made the first steps by trying to attract refugees.

Ves wasn’t interested in picking up ordinary strays. The stupid Lifers could kill themselves for all he cared.

What he truly wanted was to gain the allegiance of existing armed groups!

Any small and absorbable organization that possessed mechs like the Roving Hunters were prime targets in his eyes. As long as they weren’t too troublesome or aligned to any troublesome factions, then they were acceptable additions to the Larkinson Clan!

He highly preferred absorbing these strong but not too stubborn Lifers into his clan over merely forming a temporary pact with them. He had no faith in verbal agreements and he had gotten screwed by them plenty of times in the past.

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