For some reason, mech pilots started to avoid Ves whenever he walked across the camp. Even mechs striding in his path started to turn back and take a detour rather than risk coming close to him. Not a single Vandal wanted to catch his attention!

As Ves ate a meal in one of the mess halls, he snorted contemptuously at the frightened mech pilots. Once he entered the prefab facility, all the mech pilots inside immediately made themselves scarce!

"What’s the big deal? I’m not even the person who decides the test pilots."

Chief Dakkon sat on the opposite side of the mess table. He partook one of the final pieces of wild god meat the Vandals still had in storage.

Every Vandal and Swordmaiden practically ate the meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner without end! Their reserves of wild god meat rapidly dwindled in a matter of weeks, until there was so little left that only the senior Vandals got to enjoy the final reserves.

"You have to admit that what you are doing is rather gruesome." The chief calmly replied. "From what I heard, there’s a one in thirty chance that something goes wrong in your experiments. If you were conducting this experiment in civilized space, the MTA would immediately shut it down and throw you into jail."

Ves smiled sardonically at the chief. "These mech pilots whine too much. Would they rather leave their mechs vulnerable to mental hijacking? It’s rather pathetic how the mechs don’t even dare to get close to one of the blessed people now. Besides, the only ones who are suffering are the bottom feeders among the mech pilots, and they’re not even seriously hurt."

He did not perform these experiments without taking a lot of precautions. He reduced the maximum throughput of data that the test pilot could exchange with the godling mech.

Therefore, even if a faulty neural interface bombarded the test pilot’s mind with junk data, the odds of suffering permanent brain damage was fairly low. Most test pilots that suffered a mishap managed to recover after a couple of days of rest.

Participating with his experiments practically gave them a chance to enjoy a couple of vacation days! Slackers loved that, right?

"Did you at least achieve a result or are you needlessly torturing the mech pilots for your own amusement?"

"Pff. Who do you think I am? A mad scientist?" Ves palmed his chest with mock-aggrieved expression. "I’m trying to come up with a solution to this problem in the fastest and most efficient method possible. I don’t have the time to undertake a year-long experiment where I have to crawl my way towards a solution. I’ve been sprinting right from the start."

"The faster you run, the more it hurts when you fall. I’m concerned about your lack of safety precautions. Your disregard of ethics alone is highly concerning. If I’m your supervisor, I would have shut down your experiment immediately. In fact, I would have fired you from your position immediately after."

Ves grinned at the chief engineer. The man was too old and set in his ways. "It’s a good thing you’re not in charge right now. This is a time of crisis. Everything about this planet reeks of danger. We can’t afford to leave any loopholes open. Although these natives are too stupid to realize that they can disable our mechs with their mind powers, who knows what will happen one day."

"Has it been confirmed, then? Are the other dwarves capable of interfering with the man-machine connection."

"Of the fifteen dwarves we’ve captured, twelve of them are capable of doing so when I finally prodded them into action. They only worked their magic on a simple test neutered mech that’s shaped like one of their godling mounts, but we’ve obtained the same results each time. Worse yet, we hadn’t even put any mech pilots inside, but they dwarves still managed to wrest control over the test mech regardless!"

As long as any mech was online, the dwarves and the city folk could potentially exert control over it! After he showed the results to Captain Byrd and Commander Lydia, his research became even more acute!

The commanding officers felt an unprecedented fear for the genetically-modified natives. Although they only kidnapped the chieftains and the strongest looking dwarves, who knew how many of their kind shared this ability? And if the wildlings could do so, the worshippers of the sacred gods could certainly do so as well!

This entire planet was a breeding ground for mech-hijacking freaks!

Chief Dakkon realized the seriousness of the situation. He understood now why Ves didn’t fear running afoul of the MTA. That was because the galaxy-spanning organization would probably be frightened out of their wits about these variation humans as well!

Right now, the natives were the common enemy of all mech pilots and mech designers!

"Have you at least progressed to a solution?

"It’s only been a week since I began my experiments and I’ve already produced some partial results. Certain modifications somehow hinder the ability of the dwarves to connect with the neural interface. The best iteration still isn’t able to block an outside influence, but it’s at least capable of reducing the intensity of the foreign data stream."

Ves did not fear any reproach because he produced results! As long as none of the test pilots dropped dead one day, he could do anything he wanted.

He needed more test pilots? After sending a quick message, they’d be delivered to his testing facility, kicking and screaming all the while.

He wanted more dwarves? After sending another message, the security officers went out and hunted down one of the nearby tribes and casually ripped their leaders and greatest warriors from their family and tribesmen.

The Vandals only denied his request to obtain one of the blessed people. That went a bridge too far, apparently.

"How are the negotiations with Samar proceeding?"

"Not very good." Chief Dakkon grimaced. "For a former industrial center, Samar is even worse than Mulak when it comes to technology. The moment the city saw our mechs, they sent out all of their sacred gods in an attempt to add them to their pile of treasures! These Samarrans worship technology!"

The abundant amount of technological wrecks somehow warped the blessed people of Samar into worshipping them. Even if it was a broken refrigerator, the citizens would prostate in front of them and ascribe inexplicable feats such as blessing their health or giving them extra strength.

They went completely mad with religious fervor!

So when a handful of large and functional mechs came into view, pretty much the entire city went into an ecstatic fervor. Worst of all, the beast riders and the sacred gods that ruled the city were actually the most fanatic members of this cult!

The Vandal analysts even believe the worship of technology originated from the ignorant sacred gods who admired them for their shininess! From what they could gather, each of the sacred gods of Samar hoarded technological remnants like how dragons hoarded treasures in the stories.

The only way the unprepared first contact delegation managed to avoid a titanic clash was because they quickly ran away.

The sacred gods may be powerful, but they were never fast!

"So what now?" Ves asked.

"We’ve been trying to communicate with the Samarrans by throwing written messages towards their cities. Sadly, we don’t even know if they can still read!"

The Samarrans treated every piece of technology as a treasure, so when the Vandals attempted to send out a bot, the sacred god that went out to receive it directly gulped it down!

Just as Ves was about to respond, a tremor ran through the entire camp. All of the tables, chairs and their plates began to vibrate! The tremor only lasted for a few seconds before trailing off.

"What’s going on?"

Suddenly, a stronger tremor shook the ground. This time, the Vandals definitely detected something wrong. An alarm quickly ran throughout the entire camp.

"ALERT! ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT IS UNDERWAY IN THIS REGION!"

"Damn!" Ves cursed. He sent a serious glance towards Chief Dakkon before they abandoned their meals and joined the panicking Vandals out the mess hall.

Once outside, Ves took a look in the skies. Besides the flood of yellow-golden astral winds high up in the sky, Ves made out faint trails of objects plunging through the atmosphere. The friction of the air around the artificial meteorites caused them to stand out in the air.

"There’s twelve of them!"

"Thirteen!"

"They’re continuing to pour in! Who the hell is bombarding us?! How many artificial meteorites have they prepared?!"

"GET TO YOUR STATIONS! FOLLOW THE ANTI-BOMBARDMENT PLAN!"

Every Vandal already became familiar with many different contingency plans.

They actually predicted the possibility of becoming the target of orbital bombardment. Even though the chaotic spacetime distortion made it impossible to aim an artificial meteorite at a specific coordinate, as long as you threw enough meteorites in the same direction, then one of them would probably land on target eventually!

The sheer amount of artificial meteorites plunging from the atmosphere continued to land in a very wide region that encompassed both their camp and the city of Samar.

One meteorite actually plunged with incredible force just twenty kilometers away from the city walls! The sheer kinetic energy released by the impact caused a humongous crater to form and damaged the nearest side of the city through the subsequent shockwave.

This indiscriminate bombardment threatened to become the city’s holocaust!

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Ves didn’t run towards the workshops. Instead, he ran towards the headquarters bunker. As an underground structure, it possessed a bit more resilience towards orbital bombardment.

However, it was wholly insufficient should an artificial meteorite land directly on top of the camp! None of them could help it, because the planet’s extremely strong gravity amplified the damage these meteorites inflicted to its surroundings upon impact.

As Ves entered the headquarters, he walked past the panicking operators working frantically behind their consoles.

"The fleet just sent a messenger from orbit! They’re informing us that the pirate fleet consisting of the Caged and the Red Tongs are bombarding us right now! They’ve prepared an estimated two-hundred artificial meteorites!"

"Two-hundred meteorites!? That’s enough to devastate this entire region!"

Every Vandal within earshot scowled or grimaced. They defeated the Caged before, and actually spared them in favor of crushing the Masters of Combat. Instead of feeling grateful for the Vandals for sparing them, the Caged instead traded their old partner for a new one and paid back the Vandals by throwing giant metallic rocks at them! And not just a couple, but two-hundred at once!

Due to the fickle astral winds, the meteorites all flew off-course as they plunged down from the skies. Some zigged, others zagged, but the most dangerous ones were those who zigged off-course but then zagged back on-course!

Neither the Vandals or the Swordmaidens attempted to shoot at the artificial meteorites. There was no point! Neither of them brought any ballistic or kinetic weapons because the planet’s gravity would simply pull them down to the ground too soon. As for their considerable amount of laser armament, while they could deal a considerable amount of damage, they possessed one fatal flaw.

Laser weapons couldn’t knock an artificial meteorite off-course! In fact, all the laser cannons of their Akkara mechs didn’t even possess enough kinetic energy to open a door! While they inflicted more than enough heat damage to melt or vaporize any door straight away, but when it came to pushing solid objects, even a three-year old toddler hit harder!

This was simple physics, and only more advanced or exotic energy weapons generated enough kinetic energy to knock a solid object off-course.

Therefore, the contingency plan basically consisted of a simple principle.

"Spread out and hunker down!"

Perhaps in civilized space, a force would show some scruples about bombarding a planet with artificial meteorites. It happened every now and then, but only enough to take out a particularly hardened target.

Anyone who unscrupulously flung artificial meteorites towards a population planet quickly earned the ire of the MTA!

Unfortunately, the Aeon Corona System was as far away from civilized space as ever. With neither of the Big Two able to extend their influence in this closed star system, anyone could bomb the hell out of the surface of the planet and receive no repercussions!

The only hope the Flagrant Swordmaidens had against this disaster from the skies was to pray that their spaceborn forces would be able to catch up to the pirate fleet and halt their bombardment!