[1-200] THE MECH TOUCH

Chapter 195: Control

"Is it ours?" Ves asked as he walked towards the inner base.

"It's doubtful." D'Amato replied as he tried to hurry up. His missing arm disrupted his coordination. "From what little sensors we still have in place that are transmitting back their readings, the fleet is several times larger than the expeditionary fleet at its height. None of the incoming ships are broadcasting any identifiers that we can recognize either."

Could there be a fourth party trying to ruin the third party's game? Or were the sandmen up to no good?

"It's not the sandmen, if that's what you're thinking. They're fairly distinctive even at a distance."

They entered a command center after the guards verified their identities. These days, his contributions extended Ves a lot of privileges including extended access of the base. He even got to meet Commander Tregis in person.

The man looked as if he'd aged a lot since the start of the expedition. Tregis wearily gestured Ves into his office. "Ah, I was just about to summon your presence. Please sit."

After Ves and D'Amato took a seat, he began to ask the first thing that came to his mind.. "What's the status of the pirates?"

Tregis gripped his fist. "They're getting close to finding out the entrance to the underground cavern. Even without a professional surveyor in their payroll, they're exploring and scanning the surface of Groening IV with numbers on their side. With the amount of processing power at their disposal, they'll discover the entrance at any moment now!"

The ground team faced a difficult situation then. If the recent arrivals turned out to be friendly, then the base camp merely had to wait out their arrival. If they proved hostile, then they had even less hope than before, because any friendly reinforcements would have to go through two enemy fleets.

Ves couldn't give up too soon. He held out hope that the incoming fleet would prove friendly. "How shall we fend off the pirates if they come? We don't have a lot of assets left. In addition, all of our mechs and mech pilots are worn out."

"According to the latest calculations, the unknown fleet is making good speed towards Groening IV. If the Dragons of the Void make a stand, then both fleets are projected to clash within twenty-two hours. A fleet engagement will drag on for several hours, though, so we'll have to hold out for around thirty hours."

Thirty hours sounded a lot. With the arrival of an unknown element, the pirates must be accelerating their efforts at finding the entrance to the lush metallic jungle underneath the surface of the planet.

"We'll have to do our best to fortify our position then."

Tregis nodded. "Our miners have already finished extracting the motherlode, so we can fully concentrate our defenses here. However, that still leaves us with an exhausted force. In truth, I've assigned some men to employ a radical solution to increase our defenses."

"What is it?"

"Bringing back to Kaius online."

What? Ves widened his eyes as he heard the preposterous words coming from his mouth. "That's impossible! That mech is a badly-damaged enigma and we don't even know how it works!"

Ves thought that Chief Ramirez and his men were in the process of dismantling the huge chimera mech in order to make it easier to move.

The base commander didn't deny his assertions. "It's a longshot, but we should be prepared to employ every resource we have on hand. Our exobiologists and mech technicians are already at work trying to get the biological machine to work. They're still encountering problems with the control method. Your should see if you can lend a hand."