The Mech Touch novel Chapter 692

As the Flagrant Swordmaidens neared Mortose I, their sensors managed to resolve the Temple of Haatumak in her full glory.

When Ves initially heard the secretive cult cobbled up the Temple of Haatumak in a massive starfaring ship and house of worship in one, he expected something like six massive cargo haulers welded into a single abomination.

A cargo hauler basically looked like a set of massive cargo holds thinly held together by the thin superstructure of a ship. To shipwrights, their design exemplified the pursuit of maximizing cargo space while incorporating the minimum amount of structure necessary to keep it all together.

The Temple.. resembled something greater than that. The outer hull must have been a Swordmaiden’s wet dream, because she consisted entirely of bones of a massive leviathan-like alien that spanned at least two kilometers if the sensors estimated her size correctly!

"She’s a near-capital floating temple chimera ship!" Someone uttered. Others would argue that length-wise she already qualified as a capital ship.

Though the word salad may not have done the savage and crudely fashioned temple ship justice, it certainly described her accurately enough at a single glance. She was a pure expression of the savagery and idolatry that the sons and daughters of the frontier so revered.

Lydia’s Swordmaidens could only be regarded as posers in front of the real thing!

"From which creature did those bones come from?"

"Maybe they came from an exobeast that evolved on a gas giant!"

The speculation briefly disrupted the tranquility of the command center. Everyone couldn’t help it. Though the Vandals witnessed larger ships before, many of them never saw a chimera ship before.

She was jaw-droppingly crude, but emanated a sense of majesty as well!

The vaguely whale-like set of bones with a lot of eerie limbs attached from the flanks encompassed a core of what used by be cargo haulers. Obviously, the worshippers of Haatumak had done their best to build out and expand, reinforce and even change the inner contours in order to hide their humble origins.

Ves wasn’t fooled. He could easily read the traces where the armor covered up the contours of what used to be humble ships that plied the stars while carrying countless tons of goods.

Still, no matter how she started out before, the constant transformations as well as the incorporation of those tough, powerful and intimidating set of bones had given the Temple of Haatumak a status that few vessels in the Komodo Star Sector could match!

The closer the Flagrant Swordmaidens approached, the more the details became clearer to see. The rugged, frontier flavor of the Temple of Haatumak only grew stronger as Ves was able to pick out remains from salvaged ship and mech parts jutting out of the metallic portion of the ship hull.

It was as if the worshippers of Haatumak simply threw a lot of junk at their ship and crudely welded them together!

Certainly, cladding a vessel at least two kilometers long with proper armor cost a huge fortune in K-slates. Even if the Temple of Haatumak raked in a lot of money through rendering their services to the independent pirates, the cost was too prohibitive!

The end result bemused Ves. He appreciated the ingenuity behind her construction. "It’s a cheap way to bulk up a ship."

It might be more appropriate for him to regard the Temple of Haatumak as a floating solidified junk yard in engineering terms. Her armor literally consisted of junk, and only acted as armor by dint of their sheer amount.

The immediate consequence of piling up all of that low-quality junk was that the Temple of Haatumak must be one of the most sluggish starships in the Faris Star Region!

While the ponderous bone-covered vessel already settled into a stable orbit around Mortose I, allowing it to swing around the naturally habitable planet with deft speed, everything would change once she started to move out. Those massive thrusters affixed to the stern of the Temple looked as effective as trying to move a mech by putting it on a cart with sturdy wheels and trying to pull it with a dozen men.

Slow.

So slow.

How could this Temple still survive the harsh frontier when she was so slow? Certainly, she’d be able to withstand a great deal of punishment, but if the sandmen dropped into the Mortose System with a significant sandmen fleet, then that moving junkyard of a ship would never be able to get away in time!

When Ves posed the question to Ketis, she returned a surprising response.

"As far as the Swordmaidens are aware of, the Temple of Haatumak has never been attacked by the sandmen."

"How is that possible?!" He whispered back. "The barely sentient sand-like aliens are indiscriminate when it comes to harvesting high-quality energy! A big vessel like the Temple might not contain as much energy as a proper fleet carrier, but she’s still enough to sate the sandmen for quite a while!"

Ketis had no answer to that. "Don’t ask me. Let alone Commander Lydia or Mayra, even I don’t know what’s going on with the fanatics. They’re really weird and creepy. Mayra told me they were exiled to the frontier several hundred years ago because civilized space didn’t want them and their weird beliefs. The Temple of Haatumak on the projector is actually the third temple they constructed!"

"What happened to the previous two Temples? Did they get destroyed?"

The independent pirate vessels that volunteered to escort the Temple of Haatumak formed an effective deterrent against anyone wishing to make trouble with the cultists.

Ves inputted some commands in his console which caused the main projector to display three different Haatumak mech models.

"The worshippers of Haatumak employ three distinct mech models, each shaped like bestial or aquatic mechs adapted to spaceborn combat. The first one is this whale or seal-shaped mech."

The biggest and fattest of the mech models grew larger, dominating the available projector space.

"While the mechs are broadcasting their identity and allegiances via transponders, the annoying thing is that they don’t mention the name of the mech model. I’ve never seen anything like their designs before, so it’s highly likely the worshippers have developed these mech models in-house."

Sections of the projection of the whale-like mech lit up in red.

"I’ve taken to calling the biggest and most heavily armed mech model the Gun Whale. It aptly describes their purpose, as the cultists have slapped six integrated limbs that transition into integrated weapon systems above the ’elbow’ portion of the limbs. Each limb can bend and rotate in every possible direction, so they’re a lot more complex than the run-of-the-mill spaceborn frontline mech."

"Are the weapons formidable?"

"They are, sir." Ves nodded without hesitation. "Don’t underestimate them because they aren’t as hefty and chunky as heavy mechs. Their firepower can surpass the output of several average rifleman mechs. "What’s worse, their aquatic bestial shapes allows the designer to stuff a lot of systems inside the mech, so you can expect the Gun Whale to hit hard and sustain their rate of fire without suffering too quickly from depletion or heat build-up."

"Counters?"

"They’re big and heavy. Just like the Temple of Haatumak, that inevitably makes them slow. I think the original designers didn’t care too much about that disadvantage because they envisioned them as the Temple of Haatumak’s most staunchest guards. Technically, if a melee mech can fly through the intense rain of firepower it can unleash, it can take complete advantage of the Gun Whale’s lack of melee armaments. Basically, even if the Gun Whale weighs as much as a medium space knight, its better to treat it as a heavy mech."

This was all he could figure out in a short amount of time. He had a feeling the unorthodox shape of the Gun Whale hid some other surprises, but the only way to find out was to employ powerful active scanners, which the Temple of Haatumak would certainly consider a hostile act.

"What about the second and third mech models?" Major Verle pressed.

"If the Gun Whale is their defensive fire support platform, the latter two act as the offensive arm of their church."