[401-600] THE MECH'S TOUCH

Chapter 429: Small Steps

Life aboard the Wolf Mother did not seem so hectic to Ves. He spent most of his time in the compartment assigned to the design department. This only took up a fraction of the space aboard the massive factory ship.

The factory ship was like a city compressed into a capital ship. It housed thousands of servicemen and devoted caverns of space to the industry of keeping the Vandals afloat.

A lot of responsibility rested on the shoulders of the Wolf Mother. While it wasn't unheard of for vagabond outfits to pursue a nomadic lifestyle aboard their ships, in the Komodo Star Sector, it was rarely seen on this scale.

From the basic information that Ves received on the factory ship, she used to start off as a smaller logistics ship. After some time, the voracious demands of the Flagrant Vandals necessitated further expansion.

Modules kept being added along her hull. The rising demand for services caused the Vandals to expand the capabilities of the logistics ship to a reckless extent. More asteroid breakers, more refineries, more alloy forge, more repair bays.

The expansion never ended, though it slowed down at this point due to physical constraints. The shipwrights among the Vandals did their best to accommodate the expansions. They strengthened the hull, overhauled the internal structure and sized up the essential components such as the power reactor, the thrusters and the FTL drive.

Ships of the Wolf Mother's current size were hardly seen in the Komodo Star Sector. Further expansion necessitated an essential upsizing to her FTL engine, something which could not be done by in a third-rate state like the Bright Republic. Only the Hexadric Hegemony and the Friday Coalition could afford to field capital ships of that scale.

In truth, it was cheaper to maintain a single base on an asteroid or an abandoned moon. Running a ship came with its own costs, and a vessel that ballooned to such a size must be using up an enormous amount of power and fuel each day.

Yet that was also the genius of it. The capability to move their main logistical base around gave the Vandals unparalleled flexibility in their deployments. From the stories he heard, the Vandals became famous even before the outbreak of the current war for their deep raids. They struck Vesian star systems situated well within the Kingdom's interior are fleeced their complacent industries to the bone.

While this sounded impressive and commendable, not everyone in the Mech Corps thought so. People would hardly be able to distinguish them from pirates, and their conduct of sneaking around to attack the weakest parts of the Vesians was seen as dishonorable.

While the warrior culture of the Mech Corps allowed for clever tricks and strategies to defeat an enemy force with ease, the Flagrant Vandals took it too far. The shamelessness in which the Vandals avoided standing battles against the Mech Legion led to their estrangement from the conventional military order of the Republic.

A mech pilot of the Vandals regarded themselves as Vandals and not as a serviceman of the Mech Corps. This was a problem, because the mech pilots who served in any other regiment held loyalty to both without any conflict.

Occasionally, Ves heard some talk of that nature whenever he ate in the canteen. Mech designers only made up part of its clientele. A lot of crewmen working in the nearby compartments ate their meals in this canteen.

"We're Vandals, not soldiers."

"Leave the heavy fighting for the big boys."

"I heard they're downgrading our paychecks again. As if they couldn't get any lower!"

"Damn, what are the field marshals up to? They're letting the Vesians intrude upon our territory for the umpteenth time. When will they ever have the guts to hit them back?!"