[401-600] THE MECH'S TOUCH

Chapter 441: Death Trap

The 6th Flagrant Vandals only appreciated the Hellcat design due to its iconic status within the mech regiment. Even then, the Vandals hadn't actually invested a lot of resources into improving the design.

Even if the Mech Corps hardly sent any mech designers to the Vandals, couldn't they have supplemented their design teams by hiring them on their own?

Ves didn't understand why they placed so little importance to the design department. Professor Velten was supposed to be chummy with Colonel Lowenfield. Couldn't the Senior Mech Designer make a better case for her department and stop its gradual deterioration?

"Well, I'll be taking a look at another piece of the puzzle soon."

Once Ves finished his talks with the other two mech designer, he proceeded to take up his first task. This time, Professor Velten wanted him to focus his efforts towards the Inheritor design first.

"It's the most prevalent model of the Vandals." The professor told him. "Therefore, I'd like to see if there is any way you can make a contribution to its design. Even a minor improvement can save dozens of lives due to how much the Vandals depends on this design."

Therefore, his first task was to listen to the people who worked with the Inheritor mechs on a day-to-day basis.

Ves looked down at his comm and set his destination. The device flickered to life and projected a small line that led him through the confusing maze of corridors of the massive factory ship.

"I'm finally stepping out of this cage."

As he went through the corridors and took a few lifts downwards, Ves saw lots of new things. He passed by several important compartments, such as a workshop that repaired broken mech components to a mineral processing area that turned raw asteroids into usable resources.

Each of these sights opened his eyes to what the Wolf Mother hosted. At the size of a capital ship, she could truly be called a mobile factory in space.

"There's so much industry going on inside this ship."

He already knew in an abstract way that the Flagrant Vandals depended on the Wolf Mother along with a couple of smaller logistics ships to keep the entire mech regiment afloat. Yet he never got exposed to the extent to which the Vandals worked to make it possible.

Besides being struck by the scale of these operations was the fact that everyone who worked in these compartments wore the uniform of a Vandal. That basically meant that they were proper servicemen and not some kind of civilian help they picked off the streets.

It made sense for the Wolf Mother to be staffed by so many support personnel, but his estimate on how many people worked aboard the ship had to be adjusted upwards by several thousand people.

"Repairing broken mechs and fabricating new ones is a massive industry in itself."

Ves genuinely admired the entrepreneurial spirit of the Vandals. Without access to external sources of funding, the Vandals managed to scrape by on their own with the help of their factory ship. And besides the whacky FTL engine, the Wolf Mother was very well put together for a vessel that the Vandals constantly worked upon. Ves hardly noticed any flaws in the structural integrity of the areas he walked by.

After a long walk, he finally reached one of the hangars where the Vandals assigned a squad of spaceborn mechs. Though the Wolf Mother always tried to stay out of fights, sometimes the fight came to her. It was imperative for the factory ship to possess some means of defending herself.

As Ves came up to the nearest hangar, he went through a security check before being allowed inside.

"Wow."