The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3121

Chapter 3121: Fast Delivery

"You actually got the ships?" Ves asked in astonishment.

"Well, they're here right now. Can't you see?" Calabast grinned as she stood before him while holding Lucky in her arms. "To be honest, I can't claim full credit. A lot of barriers are no longer so insurmountable as long as I have Lucky at my disposal. Having an agent who can turn invisible and phase through every solid barrier as if it was a projection is practically cheating!"

The cat in question wasn't in a hurry to return to Ves. He instead settled into Calabast's embrace as if she was his mother. He even arched his back while letting out a lazy yawn!

"Meow~"

Ves furrowed his brows a bit. While he was happy that Lucky was able to make himself useful, he didn't want that to come at the expense of his pet's original purpose.

A gem cat's primary purpose was to produce gems!

The more Lucky grew, the less gems he produced on a yearly basis. Even though the quality and potency of the gems had gone up, Ves felt quite annoyed that Lucky spent most of his time napping, stealing food, fighting against Blinky, asking for petting and many other activities.

While Ves understood that there was probably little that the gem cat could do to control or hasten the production of his gems, he couldn't get rid of the suspicion that Lucky's other activities delayed the release of his next batch of gems.

The Larkinson Clan still needed the capital ships though. To see four of them being delivered to the Larkinson Clan at once was an amazing sight! As he looked at the projected view of what was happening just outside the Larkinson fleet, he could clearly see a small swarm of tugs dragging over four massive ships of varying shapes and sizes.

The Vivacious Wal, the Andrenidae, the Discentibus and the Blinding Banshee all appeared to be in decent shape, but their external condition was not indicative of whether all of their systems were sound.

"They're not moving under their own power." Ves stated the obvious.

"Yes. Well, given the nature of the hasty agreement I have forged with Mr. Gillian Semdam, I thought it was prudent to encourage him to send over the vessels as soon as possible. The longer the ships stay in the hands of S&S, the greater the chance that the company might tamper with their systems. Rushing the handover will severely curtail the risks. In fact, with Lucky's help, I have already set up an extensive monitoring network around S&S. I have been able to track exactly what each executive, shipwright and engineer has been doing in the past few days."

Ves looked quite impressed. "You don't do anything by half-measures. What are the chances that the Semdams has done something improper with the ships anyway?"

She smiled. "Well, I have extensive access to their internal databases and body of correspondence, so I am somewhat aware of the routine tampering they do to every starship that passes through their hands. That said, I cannot account for any methods that the engineers and other specialists haven't documented or submitted to the databases, so the ships likely aren't completely clean."

"Will our forceful negotiating methods come to bite us back?"

"According to my read on Mr. Semdam, the chances of that happening is minimal." Calabast confidently stated. "He is a man that rarely lets his spite overtake his reason. We are still in the possession of incriminating material and we can release it to the right people at any point. Given these circumstances, it is in the best interests of both him and us to honestly abide by the terms that we have set. Any impropriety that takes place will inflict losses on us both, and no one rational will choose to go down this self-destructive path. This is why I have deliberately tried to keep the terms reasonable. The more we push S&S, the greater the chance of lashing out. We do not need anything else from the company, so I have refrained from issuing any further demands."

That sounded nice, but Ves bet that Mr. Semdam still felt pissed.

What if the man's emotions overtook his reasoning? What if he wanted to take revenge regardless of the consequences?

That was what the extra monitoring is for, Ves supposed. If Mr. Semdam ever made a dangerous decision, Calabast would probably know straight away. Ves just decided to trust her to deal with the aftermath.

"So how spaceworthy are the ships that we have just received?"

Calabast shrugged. "I am not entirely certain about that. You will have to ask Vivian Tsai once she has finished inspecting each of the four vessels. From what I have gathered, the ship parts are all there and they should all be in working condition. That doesn't mean that it is safe to put them into operation straight away. The necessary checks still have to be performed and the ship also needs to be loaded with an enormous amount of supplies and configured for our use. It will take a lot of time to prepare skeleton crews and rush them through the familiarization process of their new vessels. At minimum, this will take a couple of weeks, and that is on the extreme end."

This was one of the downsides to rushing the handover process. If Semdam & Sons was allowed to ready the capital ships through their own means, then they could have probably done a much more efficient job. Just because the capital ships had been in their possession for a while didn't necessarily mean the ships were immediately good to go once they received their crews.

The capital ships had been languishing in orbit of Talulah Silver for numerous months or years. As odd as it sounded, a lot of powerful and complicated ship systems were designed to be in constant use. Letting them fall silent for long periods of time caused them to deteriorate faster than if they were being used normally.

In order to prevent its complicated systems from breaking down while the ship in question went on ice, they had to be locked down and configured in ways that slowed down the deterioration process.

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