Chapter 692. Temple of Haatumak (1/2)

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?”

”No. They just.. rusted away and degraded over time. They became too outdated even for the frontier.”