[401-600] THE MECH'S TOUCH

Chapter 464: Enemy of the Entire Planet

The mech workshop district sat in the furthest reaches from the center of the city. It held a very poor location, being far away from the spaceport and the well-developed infrastructure that supported the manufacturing complexes on the other side of Neron City.

The only thing the district had going for was that beginning mech designers could easily rent a workshop for a pittance. They could also hire cheap manpower from the slums in the neighboring cities, though that also caused this part of town to be ridden with petty gangs and crime.

A gang member happened to spot a crash ball landing in the abandoned park. He didn't recognize the object and only thought it might be some space debris separated from a ship.

"Ol' lucky me! Anything that can survive entry is bound to fetch a few hundred sovvies."

The Vesia Kingdom utilized the nova sovereigns as their state-wide currency. Almost everyone referred to them as sovvies, and they held a value roughly twenty-five percent weaker than a bright credit.

To an average bottom feeder, a few hundred sovvies was more than enough to live on for a month or two. The gang member eagerly climbed over the rusted fence and entered the overgrown park. He pushed his way past the wild bushes and long grasses until he finally reached a small clearing with a lot of cooling debris.

"Treasure!" The man's eyes lit up and he practically threw himself on his knees to touch a piece, only to scald his hand from the residual heat of the exterior part. "Hot hot hot!"

After blowing his fingers, the man turned his attention back to the pieces and smiled. "So much stuff! Maybe it'll be enough to get a thousand sovvies!"

He had never owned so much money in a single instant. Everything went to pay for food, shelter and the occasional stimulants. Anytime he held more than a hundred sovvies, the money just seemed to slip through his fingers the next day.

As the man dreamt of what he would do with all of that wealth, his thoughts flew away when a thin, surgical laser beam pierced his head.

For a second, the dead gang member appeared to struggle with what had happened to him. The next, his body fell flat to the debris-strewn soil as his brain had completely given up the ghost.

Ves in his hazard suit emerged from behind a tree trunk with his Amastendira extended cautiously towards the corpse. The gang member looked dead, but was that truly so? He slowly inched forward until he was able to stretch out his armored foot and bump the motionless corpse.

After making sure the fellow was dead, Ves sighed in relief and held the man by his neck and quickly dragged him away. The landing site of his crash ball was a conspicuous spot and his landing here might have attracted someone else's attention.

After reaching a thickly-grow portion of the park, Ves let down his guard and studied the corpse. Despite the awful damage done to the head, the poor chap's remains hadn't spilled onto the rest of his body, which was exactly what Ves intended.

He stared at the man's cheap mass-produced clothes and compared them to his nearly spotless green mech designer uniform underneath his hazard suit.

The problem with his outfit was that it carried a couple of emblems and other trappings that marked him out as a mech designer in service to the Mech Corps. If Ves dared to stroll through Neron City's anarchy-infested streets with these clothes, he'd be liable to get mobbed by hateful citizens who decried the disastrous invasion of the Flagrant Vandals.

"Sorry buddy. I need your clothes."

Ves disengaged from his bulky hazard suit and shed his mech designer uniform. Then, he proceeded to strip the corpse and draped them to his own bare body. Their stature fortunately matched somewhat, so Ves didn't feel uncomfortable by their fit.