Chapter 651: Come On, Let's Go!

There were operator suits readily prepared in the changing room. Ling Lan’s group of six quickly changed into the operator suit that fit their body sizes.

The operator suit had anti-pressure and anti-shock functions. This suit was required to be worn by all mecha operators who were about to board a mecha.

However, if the situation was dire, this step could be omitted. However the results of that would be that the mecha operators who survived the ensuing battle would be severely injured. Great harm would be brought to the mecha operators if they battled without the protection of the operator suit and just relied on their flesh and bones.

Ling Lan’s group of six ran back to the holding area and warmed up their bodies along the way. This way, their operating speed would not be affected by warming their bodies up first.

Every mecha had its own corresponding operator. Ling Lan and the others also had their own mechas. This was the arrangement from the very beginning.

Ling Lan took out the activation key that belonged to their mechas and scanned the key at the sensors in the holding area.

“Clink, clank, clunk…” Suddenly a flat metal wall in front of them suddenly rose up and showed a groove like area. Inside it, there was a well-made, epic-looking and massive mecha. Compared to the mechas outside, this mecha was more beautiful and detailed. One look would make anyone know that this mecha was on a completely different level compared to those outside.

Ling Lan knew that this mecha belonged to her. It was no wonder that after looking around, Ling Lan only saw mechas below special-class level. She was still thinking where Feiyang had hidden the mecha that belonged to her.

She didn’t hesitate and walked to the feet of the mecha. At the same time, she pressed activation button on the mecha’s key.

“Bam!”

The cockpit suddenly opened. Ling Lan put force into her feet and jumped into the air. After that, her foot stepped on the outer parts of the mecha. Using this force, she got into the cockpit in an instant. This was the result of Ling Lan showing restraint. Otherwise, Ling Lan didn’t even need the extra step and would instantly fly into the cockpit.

“Clank!” The cockpit closed once again. Ling Lan activated the mecha that currently belonged to her. After finishing the mission, this mecha would be her very own ace mecha.

Ling Lan’s ace mecha was a balanced mecha with standard equipments. At the start, Ling Lan did also consider whether or not she should choose a close combat mecha. However, when she saw that Qi Long and Zhao Jun not hesitating in choosing the close combat type mechas, and Li Yingjie also chose close combat, Ling Lan couldn’t help but painfully give up on the thought.

In order to make sure they could cover long range fights, Ling Lan could only choose a balanced mecha. Additionally, with Li Lanfeng’s balanced mecha and Lin Zhong-qing’s long range mecha, their battle team’s composition was balanced.

This outcome saddened Ling Lan a little bit. Why did her small team have this many violent individuals?!

At that moment, Ling Lan hadn’t realized that the reason why there were so many violent individuals in her team was because of how violent of a captain she was herself. Wasn’t there a saying of some sort where people would say ‘Soldiers are the spitting images of their generals’? The few chances that Ling Lan had shown her close range abilities, her performances were quite ruthless. These performances stimulated her team members to become more ruthless. This stimulation made them greatly admire the merciless, unreasonable and powerful pressure close combat brought upon an opponent.

The activity in the holding area instantly alerted a staff member who had just finished inspecting a mecha. He didn’t stop for a second and brought his optical supercomputer with him as he walked over to Ling Lan.

When he saw that the activated mecha was an ace mecha, he was about to shout in excitement. However, he realized that that would be a show of poor behavior, he quickly stopped his voice from coming out of his mouth. He looked around quickly and discovered that his comrades hadn’t discovered the ace mecha. He then excitedly walked to this ace mecha that was activated.

“Serial number: L6-W1.” Although the staff member tried his best to contain his excitement, but the first few words that he said showed a hint of excitement and nervousness. When he said the serial number of the mecha, his voice was trembling.

It couldn’t be helped. Feiyang was once a military starship, but it was only a standard warship. The mechas that were paired with the warship only had special-class mechas as their highest level mechas. As a maintenance personnel who worked only on one warship for his entire life, he never thought he would one day be able to service an ace mecha. If he returned to the Federation alive, he will definitely brag about this fact to other maintenance personnel from other warships.

The dream of a mecha maintenance personnel, and his goal in life was to become a maintenance personnel exclusively for a single ace mecha.

“Yes!” Ling Lan’s calm and collected voice made the staff member tremble. His originally excited and jumpy mood suddenly calmed down. As expected of an ace operator, just the sound of his voice was enough to calm a person down. The staff member showed an expression of admiration. In the eyes of a maintenance personnel like himself, ace operators were legendary individuals they looked up to.

“I will now begin the inspection…” The staff member instantly got into his role. He began to carefully examine the data of the mecha. His eyes fixated on the images shown on the optical supercomputer. he was afraid that he would miss something. The work that made him felt numb originally, now gave him immense pressure. He was afraid that he would miss something and in the end cause a regrettable outcome.

Sweat began to drip from the staff member’s forehead. The inspection only lasted a short 10 seconds, but in these 10 seconds, he actually had sweat all over his body. His work clothes was also soaked in sweat.

“Serial number: L6-W1, check is complete! It is able to join the battle!” After examining that everything was fine, the staff member immediately pulled out the connecting wire, pulled down his microphone and shouted out that the inspection was complete.

At that moment, the staff member let out a sigh of relief. Also, he finally got to know what it felt like to be a maintenance personnel exclusively for one single ace mecha and the amount of pressure that he needed to endure. The staff member believed that if he continued doing this, he would definitely die young because of the immense pressure.

The mecha engineer made it seem as though his job was very simple as he only looked at some data details. However, his duties were not that easy. His job was the most important last line of defense in protecting mecha operators. Sometimes, when mechas were activated, the mecha wouldn’t be able to detect hidden malfunctions. The optical supercomputer connected from the outside was like a bystander who could clearly see all the problems.

History had taught everyone that malfunctions of a mecha was even more terrifying than an enemy. Back then when mecha engineers were not valued, there would only be a single mecha engineer for a large team of mechas. Those smaller mecha teams did not even have a single mecha engineer.

The price these mecha teams paid were painful after they overlooked the importance of mecha engineers. Once, a starship fleet encountered an enemy fleet. A large scale battle would take place. Without enough mecha engineers on board doing emergency inspections, one of the mecha teams didn’t have their mechas inspected and went into battle…

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In the end, these mecha operators didn’t die by the hands of their enemies, but rather by a virus that was hiding within the mecha’s operating system. At the end of the battle, the entire mecha clan consisted of 380 people only had less than 10 people survive. The only reason these people were able to survive was because their mechas had just gotten the virus in their system. The virus didn’t take effect yet. That was why these few mecha operators were able to survive the battle.

This painful truth made the Federation no longer be neglectful and looked down on the soldiers who were mecha engineers. Although the final investigation of the situation showed results that the mecha engineer on duty was partially responsible due to neglecting the odd behaviors of the mechas’ operating systems, a tragedy like this perhaps wouldn’t have happened if the mecha clan had more than just one mecha engineer.

The lesson learned from this bloodshed had made the Federation decisively increase the amount of mecha engineers. The Federation lowered the necessary requirements and also gave commoners chances to join the military.

Afterwards, there was one outstanding mecha engineer, who was following a certain general, had shown amazing skills in mecha repair during one of their missions. Before the reinforcements had arrived, the group had very little resources left and their mechas were also damaged beyond repair. This mecha engineer managed to extend the life of the mechas using the limited amount of resources they had. In the end, through this act, the group managed to hold out until reinforcements arrived.

After that general had climbed to the top of the military rankings, that mecha engineer became one of the higher-ups of the military as well and was given the rank of Major General. Just like that, a commoner, who did not have a strong physical constitution nor high intelligence, used his own skills in repair and observation to become a general that people admired. This was a real story about how a commoner became a part of history.

This individual made mecha engineer to instantly become a sought after job for commoners who were aiming to change their fate. Afterwards, becoming a mecha engineer became a popular choice in the military.

Even now with all the mecha engineers within the Federation, standard operators still couldn’t have the luxury of having one engineer for their mecha. However, the number of engineers was still enough for one engineer for one group, one engineer for two special-class mechas and one engineer for one ace mecha. Only ace operator had their own mecha engineers.

The staff member who checked Ling Lan’s L6-W1 reported to the holding area’s JMC. In the next second, the JMC in the holding area connected with Ling Lan’s communicator: “Attention L6-W1. Attention L6-W1. You have been arranged to be ejected out of port number three. Please prepare to join the battle.”

After the JMC finished, Ling Lan’s mecha was moved to port number three.

The JMC who was responsible for port number three saw that her work area had a new mecha that had arrived. So she immediately raised her head, then shouted with surprise, “Ah!”

Her voice startled the other JMCs beside her, “Little Qing, what’s wrong?”

“Ace mecha. It’s an ace mecha.” The JMC called Little Qing pointed at the screen in front of her as she shouted.

Her words instantly excited the other JMCs. They all looked towards her direction. After seeing that it was indeed a Federation standard-issue balanced ace mecha, the other JMCs all joined in and screamed in excitement.

Their team leader saw them and immediately had a serious expression on her face, “This a war zone, why aren’t you people at your posts?”

The JMCs knew they did something wrong. They didn’t dare to make a sound and all went back to their posts.

“L6-W1 ready! Requesting to join the battle!” Ling Lan quickly examined the mecha and found that everything was ready. She then pushed down on the communication button to port number three’s JMC.

“Yes, please wait for a moment!” This JMC’s voice was trembling a bit, but it was still clear.

“Performing final checks. B17 movement normal. Oxygen system functioning normally. Weapons standard type. Checks completed, ejection permitted!”

“And I’m rooting for you!” The JMC from port number three suddenly added these few words. Although she couldn’t see the appearance of the mecha operator who wore the helmet in her video feed, her heart still skipped a beat from the calm and collected gaze of the operator. She impulsively shouted out those words.

After saying those words, Little Qing woke up from her trance and her face became pale. She actually went against the rules regarding actions of the JMC. If this ace operator was to formally complain about her, she would definitely be expelled from the military. Little Qing seemed to have already begun to feel the mockery and disdain from those around her. Her eyes began to water, but she could only hold it in. Since she had done something wrong, then she must accept the result. Why should she be crying at this time?

Hearing the JMC’s words, Ling Lan was stunned for a second. This was against the rules… Ling Lan raised her head and looked at the JMC’s image on her mecha’s screen. She saw that this JMC had an expression of terror along with the tears that were about to fall from her eyes. It seemed that she understood that she had made a mistake. Those words seemed to be said accidentally, not purposefully…

However, it didn’t matter. This was the JMC’s encouragement to Ling Lan. Ling Lan closed her eyes and politely replied, “Thank you!”

The cold and calm voice shot the word of thanks straight into Little Qing’s ear. It was like the sound from heaven and almost made her faint. Ah ah ah, that operator didn’t blame her and even thanked her. Little Qing felt she was very lucky. Her first time servicing an ace operator actually had her met such a reasonable person who didn’t complain about her breaking the rules.

Since the operator was already so busy, she couldn’t continue taking his time. Little Qing took a deep breath and sucked in her tears back into her eyes. Then she pushed down on the countdown button.

The port along with the mecha’s screen began the countdown at the same time.

“5, 4, 3, 2, 1… Take off!”

“Whoosh!” The mecha shot out through the tunnel. Simultaneously, the mecha’s engine roared as the mecha moved through space like lightning.

Right as Little Qing had sent off the ace operator from her side, her comrades, the other JMCs, all screamed in excitement. It turns out that they had also received the individual they were going to service and they were all ace mechas. Ports one to four all had one ace operator appear and Little Qing received yet another ace operator. That meant that there were a total of five ace operators. This surprised all of the JMCs. Why would such a simple transport mission have five ace operators appear during the mission? What important mission did they accept? Since it was that important, why would the mission be given to a standard warship such as theirs?

The excitement of the girls from the appearance of five ace operators was all seen by the team leader. Her mature face showed a hint of concern. Only she knew that another group of JMCs at ports five to eight had serviced six ace operators long before this current group of JMCs.

Since there were 11 ace operators appearing at the same time, along with how their warship was modified in secret for an entire year, the team leader knew that the mission they had taken up was not any average mission. She only hoped that with the protection of these 11 ace operators, they would be able to complete the transport mission.