William Carter pointed to the wrecked and abandoned mechs from both sides on the battlefield not far away and said, “With the parts from these guys, I think I can piece together a vehicle. Now that this place has become the enemy’s forward base, the base where the giant transport ship landed up north should gradually be abandoned, and both supplies and troops will be transferred to forward bases like this one.” He then pointed to several faintly visible mountain ranges to the north and said, “The further north you go, the weaker their defenses become. As long as we get a chance to cross the plain north of the jungle and slip into the forest at the foot of those mountains, we’ll be out of the Empire’s control.”

“What should we do now?” the innocent-looking female medic asked softly.

“Let’s wait until it gets dark. Once we’re rested, we’ll dig together tonight. Heh, I can’t do this alone.” After saying that, the scoundrel asked with a lecherous grin, “Who wants to sleep with me? It’s really warm, you know.”

The two female soldiers automatically ignored the fat man’s teasing. The three of them dug a hole to rest in a bush on the other side of the jungle, far from the Empire’s forward base, waiting for nightfall. Outside the hole, William Carter put a lot of thought into making several traps and camouflaged them perfectly with branches.

The three huddled together waiting for nightfall. Although the fat man had a foul mouth, this was his first time being so close to women, and his psychological barrier made him less brazen than usual. Instead, he tried to press himself against the wall of the hole, closed his eyes, and pretended to be asleep.

The two female soldiers actually had little concern. Before being rescued by the fat man, they had almost stopped daring to imagine what would happen to them after being escorted to the base. They knew exactly how they would be treated—gang-raped and then executed. They might not even live to see the execution. That kind of fear was suffocating.

They didn’t know if they had the courage to commit suicide. At least before being rescued by the fat man, they hadn’t even had the chance to try.

The moment William Carter jumped out of the grass, in their hearts, this somewhat silly, somewhat ruthless, and somewhat shameless fat man had already become their pillar of support.

The disappearance of the escorting soldier triggered a large-scale search at the Empire’s base as night approached. However, the search ended quickly. Under what circumstances would a male soldier escorting two completely defenseless female soldiers go missing? The Empire’s soldiers exchanged knowing glances about the disappearance. Those two women had nothing to do with them—they were the officers’ prey. Some soldiers even felt a bit of schadenfreude.

Even such a cursory search made the fat man tremble with fear. He lay pressed against the wall of the hole, focusing all his attention on catching the slightest sound around him. An Empire soldier approached the bush, but the tangled branches and thick thorns quickly made him give up on entering. He carefully inspected the outside of the bush, found no traces of anyone passing by, and turned to leave.

The fat man let out a sigh of relief. As his tense body relaxed, he suddenly realized that two soft bodies were snuggled tightly against him, their bare forearms brushing lightly against his skin. The indescribable, intoxicating sensation made the virgin fat man feel as if he were floating in a dream.

“Hey, we still don’t know your name,” the female medic said softly, almost in a whisper.

“Well… my name is William Carter, Corporal, First Squad, Logistics Company, Third Armored Battalion, Fifth Division.” The fat man’s voice was awkward and a little shaky, a result of the tingling sensation on his arm.

“My name is Olivia Bennett.” The female medic’s voice was still gentle. “She’s Emily Carter.”

The female pilot Emily Carter seemed to be almost asleep. Hearing her name, she murmured a response in a half-dream.

……

At night, darkness had completely fallen. The only star in the Newton system, also called the sun, had disappeared below the horizon. On this planet with no moon, everything was pitch black. The fat man felt his way to the edge of a mech wreck and quickly dismantled the parts he needed with the mechanical arm. The grueling training at the mechanical repair camp had made him intimately familiar with the structure of all kinds of mechs, so the disassembly was as swift and precise as a master butcher at work.

The two female soldiers were assigned by the fat man to dig a hole. They had to dig a chamber three meters deep, five meters long, and five meters wide beneath their hiding place. This would become the underground workshop where the fat man would assemble and hide the vehicle.

Over the next two days, William Carter scurried back and forth like a nocturnal rat, dragging the dismantled mech parts into the hole bit by bit. He even found some rations, temporarily solving the problem of the two women refusing to eat unknown animals or insects.

The two “mother rats” also did an excellent job. The underground chamber they dug was beautiful, and they carefully disposed of the excavated soil. Even the fat man thought they had a real talent for digging.

Using soundproofing tiles stripped from the armor, the fat man made a soundproofing system for the chamber and began to focus on building his vehicle. He first used an emptied Empire single-soldier mech pod to assemble a cockpit that could hold three people, removed the Empire’s small energy engine, and installed three powerful Federation [Honor 15] energy engines. One of them would provide the energy needed for the defensive shield.