"You Blind Men pretend that you can see further ahead than anyone else, but to me your names are right on the mark. As far as I’m concerned, all of you must be blind as a bat if you think the Blue Paradisios are any good!"


    The Blind Prophet’s projection shook and leaned back against Ves’ increasingly more vehement tirade. "Mr. Larkinson, whoever you are, your infantile iling amuses no one."


    "What did you say?! Infantile iling?! I’ll tell you what infantile iling means! Your Blue Paradisios are living proof of Ronnie st’s infantile iling! Your mechs areplete failures as an effective design! The only thing it has going for it is its mobility and uracy, but at what cost?!"


    "Ronnie’s mech model shares none of the excellent armor coverage of my original Crystal Lord design! Not a single hint ofpressed armor is retained in Ronnie’s bastardized design, but he has the gall to keep its armor ting as thin as the thickness a data pad! I bet your mechs can’t even cope with continuous micro-impacts from space dust! That’s how pathetic the Blue Paradisio is able to withstand damage!"


    "My authentic Crystal Lord design is a marvel of endurance! It is a sleek andpact design because lotion onnd doesn’t require too much energy. It’s apletely different matter when Ronnie mashes in a flight system all of a sudden without any regard of my design’s existing internal architecture! The abomination that he created with blending the Crystal Lord with a spaceborn mech design has turned your mechs into the worst of both worlds: low-performing with incredibly poor endurance!"


    "That sad excuse of aser rifle you’re wielding is a horribly overpriced piece of crap. You would have all been better off salvaging a half-wreckedser rifle off a debris field than buy this hamfisted imitation from Ronnie! It is capable of firing a powerfulser beam, I admit, but what’s the point when its firing rate is slower than the amount of meals I eat every day! Its knockoff crystal technology implementation is so crude and sloppy that it’s obvious that Ronnie has no idea what he was working with! I bet thoseser rifles are already giving you problems, right? That’s because those cheap imitation crystals are burning themselves out! They barelyst a couple of hundred shots before they give up the ghost!"


    Ves lost himself in his tirade. He truly wanted to make the Blind Men see what an awful mistake they made by buying so many copies of the Blue Paradisio!


    "Mr. Larkinson, I do not appreciate you finding fault of our mechs. A battle is fought and won by men, not mechs. We have already seen that your mechs are not in good shape. The condition of our machines will hardly be a detriment to our assured victory in theing battle."


    "Hehe." Ves nefariously chuckled. "Your victory is assured? You are truly blind to believe so! To me, your mechs are all one step away from falling apart! Let me see from what mech you are transmitting. Ah, that one in the middle and front, eh? I’ve studied this mech of yours. Is your flight system stuttering? That’s because it’s installed incorrectly during the assembly phase! Whoever fabricated this copy did such a poor job that it will only take a single strong impact from the sides to dislodge critical parts of your flight system! By then, your mech is a sitting duck, condemned to coast in space in a predictable path that makes it easy for us to shoot you down!"


    "And that mech to the right of you. That machine is a particrly poor effort on the part of the manufacturer. Did Ronnie outsource the fabrication to a bunch of monkeys or something?! I bet its legs hardly function at all. Not that it’s important in space battles, except I can tell you that if those legs are shot out from under it, the failure will cascade to the mech engine, causing it to shut down entirely and rendering the mech mechanically frozen! How would it be able to fight if it can’t move its limbs?!"


    "That mech at the rear has a severe sensor problem! Any half-decent ECM system can fool its sensors to such an extent that it will truly to turn blind! It’s liable to fire itsser rifle at your own mechs rather than the mechs of its opponents!"


    "The mech next to thest one takes the cake in terms of poor craftsmanship. Whoever fabricated this mech needs to be thrown out the airlock because its power reactor is no good! That mech already has jitter problems right? That’s because it’s constantly attempting to stall its inevitably reactor shutdown! One strong concussive shock will definitely force its power reactor to stall and undergo its emergency shutdown process! The mech pilot inside won’t even have any power left to call for help by the time it bes a floating statue!"


    By now, the spectators and anyone else who listened in turned numb. Themunications officer opened up an unencrypted channel to the Blind Prophet’s mech, so plenty of other people listened in as well.


    None of them expected to hear Ves turn into a maddened dog who couldn’t let go of the Blue Paradisio’s many faults!


    As the primary recipient of Ves’ angry ramblings, the Blind Prophet hardly got a word in response! It hardly even registered to the piratemander to press the button to shut down themunication channel.


    This was because the faults that Ves exposed so brutally about their mechs all described their current states to a disturbing degree of uracy! The Bind Prophet simply could tear his ears away from the unvarnished exposure of all of the ws of his outfit’s mechs no matter how much it hurt to listen to Ves!


    The pure emotion that Ves put behind his words practically drew the Blind Prophet into a forced introspection. Not a single fault exposed by Ves was inurate. This mech designer truly knew what he was talking about!


    "Hahahaha! Tell me, Blind Prophet, are you still pleased about your new mechs? Do you still think you got a good bargain by purchasing these flying wrecks? Open your eyes, old man! The truth is that Ronnie st bamboozled you with a mech model that’s horribly overpriced! How much did you pay for them all? I bet you paid at least thrice as much as they are actually worth! Hahahaha!"


    "You blind idiots. If you’re blind enough to fall for Ronnie’s scam, how are you even confident of winning against us?! Your judgement ispletely wrong! Let me tell you something. Fielding the Blue Paradisio against the sole mech designer of the Crystal Lord is thest mistake you will ever make in your lives. That’s because I’ve already picked out all of the faults I mentioned and more and sent them all to our own mech pilots. It only takes a few well-ced prods to copse all of your shoddy mechs! There is nothing about your Blue Paradisios that can confound my judgement! To you, they might have seemed like decent marksman mechs, but what I see is nothing but a collection of holes!"


    The Blind Prophet shook. His expression had be grave at the start, before growing more resigned, until finally settling on fear.


    Yes. Fear! The Blind Prophet didn’t do anything to hide his obvious, naked fear towards Ves!


    As Ves wound up for another angry speech despite both forces about toe into fighting range, the Blind Prophet finally shook up and pressed a button to close the channel. The piratemander’s projection winked out just as Ves wanted to berate the man some more.


    "What?! How can you shut off the channel!?"


    Without asking for permission, Ves connected his CFAm to the CFA shuttle in the Shield of Hispania’s shuttle bay. Using its advanced CFAmunications technology that Ves had inadvertently updated previously with his connection to the gctic, it forcefully intruded upon themunication system of the Blue Paradisio and reopened them connection by force!


    "You again!" The Blind Prophet despaired as he kept pressing the button and activating the mentalmand to shut down the channel. His own mech refused to obey hismands! "Why won’t you go away?!"


    "WHERE ARE YOU RUNNING, OLD MAN?! I have much more to say! Just look at you iling around trying to deactivate this channel! Hah! Tough luck! The security suites of your mechs are so poor and outdated that any three-year old child with a hackingm can take over your mech! Just look at how easily I managed to forcibly reopen this channel!"


    "Go away!" The Blind Prophet screeched. "Your poisonous words will not have sway on us!"


    Ves cruelly grinned. "No chance of that, you blind old man! I admit that you’re blind, but your ears seem to be working just fine! Let me tell you about your good buddy Ronnie. You see, Ronnie is a bad boy. Instead of licensing some proper software for his mech, he probably probably pirated some random mech operation system for his Blue Paradisio design. WHAT AN IDIOT! No mech designer should pirate a random software package off the gctic! Your mechs are all riddled with backdoors and holes that it would probably take our hackers a couple of minutes to sabotage!"


    "That’s not possible! Mechs aren’t supposed to be susceptible to hacking!"


    "Oh, deny all you want, but how can you exin how easily mym hacked into your mech’smunication system? Face it, you old man. You not only got scammed by Ronnie, but you are piloting mechs that anyone with decent hackers can take control of! Your Blue Paradisio’s software is so decrepit that even two-hundred year old mechs are harder to hack than yours!"


    "No more! Please, no more, Mr. Larkinson!" The spooked piratemander pleaded. "We’ll go! We’ll go! We won’t disturb you any longer!"


    After that, the Blind Prophet issued a quick series ofmands that immediately saw the battle line of the Blind Mech turn around and flee back to their carriers!


    Even their carriers started to turn around as if they couldn’t wait to get away from Ves’ acid tongue!


    Ves grew even angrier as he saw all of the mechs of the Blind Men turn around in an attempt to flee his destructive rants. He stood up from his observation chair!


    "WHERE ARE YOU GOING! GET BACK HERE! RUNNING WON’T SAVE YOU FROM THE REALIZATION THAT YOU BOUGHT THE WORST MECHS IN THE FRONTIER!"


    Even though the Blind Prophet couldn’t cut off the forcedmunication channel, the piratemander did his best to ignore the voice of Ves.


    "Lll! I am not hearing anything! I am not hearing anything! As soon as I get out of here, I’ll make myself turn deaf!"


    "Why are you running! Come back here pirate! I can talk all day about your faulty mechs!"


    Even as Ves continued to yell at the fleeing Blind Men, Major Verle regained his senses first. He looked back at the local plot and saw that the sudden exit of around sixty rifleman mechs turned the Remediers and the Slick Hairs intoplete disorder.


    The two pirate outfits couldn’t believe what was happening! One of their fellow gangs was actually running away before they even fired a single shot!


    "Attack!" Major Verle forcefullymanded. "Send in our assault force! Crash into the Remediers! They’re vulnerable as long as they remain in disarray! Break them apart before the Blind Men regain their senses and turn around!"


    It took some time, but the prepared mechs of the Vandals and Swordmaidens began to move in against their unsettled and distracted opponents. The pirates had left themselvespletely open by listening in on Ves’ public tirade!


    "Why are you running! I’m not finished yet! Not by a long shot!" Ves kept hounding the Blind Men even as they crashed into the hangar bays of their carriers in an attempt to get out as fast as they could! "No matter how many light-years you run, the truth will catch up to you! Just face it! You all bought crap mechs that are worth less than how much you can earn back if you scrap them all! Buying Ronnie’s products is the biggest mistake in your blind, foolish lives! Next time, buy legitimate mechs instead of cheap knockoffs!"