The Mech Touch

Today was a special day. As the expeditionary fleet moved deeper into the Magair Middle Zone, the Hex Federation and the Golden Skull Alliance collected and verified enough intelligence to flesh out Operation Saturday Market.

The complete and comprehensive attack plan was an extremely complex affair that could fill up an entire library.

The Larkinson Clan was simply unable to plan out so many details, movements and actions in advance.

Fortunately, the Hexers had evacuated plenty of veteran strategists and staff officers from the Hex Army to the Red Ocean. Many of them were involved in the planning and data analysis of multiple major military operations.

Each of them earnestly pooled their efforts to formulate a thorough and realistic attack plan in the shortest possible time.

Much of it fell out of the scope of the Larkinson Clan and the Golden Skull Alliance. They involved tedious and troublesome matters such as preparing the logistics for all of the mech units, deploying scouting ships at star systems that might hide secret reinforcements and charting numerous different escape routes to avoid interception from angry Fridaymen.

The plan also went into thorough detail on what the different fleet elements and mech units should do once they arrived in the Pima Prime Star System.

As a port system that served a similar purpose as Davute, the place contained more than just a single terraformed and colonized planet!

Even though all of the Larkinson mech pilots had familiarized themselves with the probable opposition that they might face once they ventured into Pime Prime, the latest update from the Hex Federation finally clarified the role that the Golden Skull Alliance would play in the upcoming operation.

It was not easy for mech pilots to keep their heads in a massive war theater. Pima Prime was almost as large and developed as Davute, so there were a lot of objectives and a lot of opposition that was spread out over many different areas.

In order to ensure that every Larkinson mech pilot remained on the same page, General Verle decided to hold a general briefing.

The briefing was a bit different from normal, however.

Instead of standing in front of a stage where General Verle held a lecture that would be broadcast in different assembly halls across many different carrier vessels, he decided to take advantage of the latest technology and hold a more immersive event.

"Can you do this, Ves?"

Ves frowned for a moment as he parsed the man's suggestion.

"I never really thought about it before, but theoretically it should be possible. You already maintain a connection with the Golden Cat, but the bandwidth isn't too big. However, I think that as long as you limit your actions to speaking and moving a few limbs, I don't think there is a problem with your question. You've actually given me a lot of food for thought. Let me see what I can do. This won't take too long."

After Ves made a few additional improvisations, the general briefing commenced.

Vulcan had to work overtime to simulate a large and complete spiritual simulation of the Pima Prime System.

The central star and all of the planets and significantly-sized moons were rendered in impressive detail.

The MSTS even portrayed the basic shapes of the asteroid belts and planetary rings, and displayed parts of it in much greater detail if there were areas of interest.

At the same time, over 10,000 mech pilots simultaneously entered the cockpits of their mechs and interfaced with their battle partners.

Together, both the mechs and mech pilots engaged the MSTS in unison. Vulcan accepted each of the incoming connections and caused the mech pilots to appear above the star system's plane, giving them an impressive view of Pima Prime.

The simulation did not just display the stars and planets with the naked eye. The MSTS also displayed numerous markings and annotations to show the orbits of the satellites and the estimation population of humans on every settled part of the star system.

After giving all of the mech pilots a bit of time to take in the new setting, the simulated form of General Verle appeared in front of the floating crowd.

The man felt as if he was a specter who was about to egg on an army of ghosts. He inwardly sighed at how amazing the MSTS was at making him feel as if he was really floating above the Pima Prime System. The sense of realism was far beyond any virtual simulation programs he had tried.

"My fellow soldiers. Welcome to Pima Prime. Each of you have conducted many simulated fights in this star system already, but now that the Hexers and us have tentatively finalized our plan, I can finally tell you what we will be doing once we commence the actual operation."

Every Larkinson mech pilot connected to the MSTS perked up. The expert pilots who floated at the front of the massive crowd were more attentive than most.

The general first swept his arm across the star system down below. "Let's get the basics out of the way. Pima Prime is of great significance to the Gauge Dynasty. It is one of the few port systems of the Friday Colonies, and it is relatively abundant in common resources. This makes it a great place to build up a colony quickly and steadily turn it into an economic and industrial hub of the surrounding region."

He waved his arm. The presentation changed as the simulation displayed the flow of traffic that passed through the star system in the last few years.

"As you can see, the port system is functioning exactly as intended. Many comparisons have been made between Pima Prime and Davute, but the biggest difference between the two is that the former is backed by a single state while the latter is founded by a conglomerate of different pioneers. What this means is that 80 to 90 percent of all of the people, traffic and most importantly mechs in Pima Prime hail from the Friday Coalition or more specifically the Gauge Dynasty."

The reason why Davute attracted so much traffic from people who originated from all over the old galaxy was that it did not overtly attach itself to any legacy powers.

The pioneers who packed up their bags and passed through the beyonder gate wanted to found their own sovereign states. Each of them dreamt of becoming the kings or at least the dukes of their own kingdoms!

While it was a lot easier for the pioneers to accomplish their goals with state backing, the problem was that ultimate control would always rest with the officials and financiers from the Milky Way!

This was not what the ambitious founders of Davute wanted to happen, so they all agreed to invest and develop their port system using their funding and resources.

Their risky gamble succeeded and they managed to present enough of an open atmosphere that Davute became known as one of the friendliest places to conduct trade and commerce in the Krakatoa Middle Zone.

The situation was different at Pima Prime, and the mech pilots needed to know that in order to avoid making any false assumptions.

"When the pioneers hailing from the Friday Coalition entered the Red Ocean, they adopted a united strategy that called for colonizing lots of star systems in the same space region. The result is a sizable concentration of settlements that are all close enough to conduct mutual trade. Pima Prime already serves as the lynchpin of this trade. The Friday Colonies is already large and extensive enough that it does not need to import a significant amount of raw resources or finished goods from external sources. This makes Pima Prime much more cohesive and less chaotic than Davute."

The latter acted as more of a freeport where anyone from any place could come and conduct trades. As long as the traders and visitors did not bring any outrageous contraband or possessed a history or breaking the rules, they were all welcome in Davute!

Pima Prime on the other hand primarily existed to further the development of the Gauge Dynasty's colonies and lay the groundwork for its future dominance in the Friday Colonies.

External trade was not as necessary at the current stage and scale of colonial development in the Magair Middle Zone.

The frequent raids conducted by the Hexers made it a lot more dangerous to welcome foreigners in the Friday Colonies.

As such, the Fridaymen maintained a lot more vigilance towards foreign traffic. It was no surprise that a lot of trading fleets preferred to try their luck elsewhere.

The relative dearth of foreign traffic made it a lot harder for spies and malcontents to slip inside Pima Prime.

Fortunately, the Black Cats and the Hexer spy agencies knew the Fridaymen well enough to circumvent the strict security precautions.

"While Pima Prime is overly geared to servicing the domestic needs of the Friday Colonies, there are just enough foreigners passing through the port system for us and the Hexers to insert at least a respectable amount of infiltration and saboteur teams." General Verle spoke. "With the help of the intelligence leaks that we have obtained, these teams will play an important role in softening up the defenses and causing disarray among the opposition. I will explain the most relevant operations to us later. Just know that if everything goes right, the Gaugers will have to fend off attacks from within and without. This will make it much more difficult for them to maintain their composure!"

This was one of the ways the attackers intended to maximize their advantages. How could the Hexers not take advantage of all of the weaknesses exposed by the information package passed on by Tristan?

In truth, the assassins and saboteurs did not even need to succeed in their efforts. As long as they diverted vital manpower and resources away from the main fight and as long as they spread a lot of fear and confusion among the defending troops, they already contributed a lot to the operation!

General Verle pointed at the different planets orbiting the star.

"As a sizable star system, Pima Prime boasts 8 terrestrial planets, 4 gas giants and hundreds of moons. The Gaugers have only terraformed two terrestrial planets and one of the moons orbiting a gas giant thus far. Not only that, they also built dozens of space stations that orbit both settled and unsettled star systems."

The military leader grinned. "By the time our forces depart from this port system, I expect we will have trashed all these costly colonies and space stations."

The economic damage from doing all of this was incalculable!

It was already extremely costly for the Gauge Dynasty to send entire fleets filled with valuable resources and industrial machinery through the beyonder gate.

It cost even more time, money and effort to build up all of the mines, factories and infrastructure needed to quickly ramp up local industries.

While all of this would be worth it in the end, the premise was that the Gauge Dynasty was able to protect all of its infrastructure during this time!

If a group of angry Hexers barged into Pima Prime and happened to break all of this expensive stuff, then the Gauge Dynasty's colonial ambitions would be set back by several years!

While the Gaugers had the money and the resources to make up for their material losses, it was a lot more difficult to regain all of the time they lost if their most important colony in the Magair Middle Zone was razed to the ground.

Plenty of competitors who owned and developed their port systems would quickly take off and create a permanent disparity that meant that Pima Prime would always trail behind!

This was practically a death sentence to the Gauge Dynasty's desire to dominate the colonial state and become the undisputed hegemon of the Friday Coalition!

General Verle emphasized this priority in no uncertain terms. "This is our primary objective. Above all else, we must inflict as much material damage to Pima Prime's infrastructure. We don't necessarily need to defeat every defensive troop. If the enemy mechs have lost their courage and wish to distance themselves from our forces, then they are free to do so. We will just go on and bombard all of their precious factories and other valuable structures into scrap. Mechs can easily be replaced, but the manufacturing complexes that pump them all out are much more difficult to rebuild!"

In other words, in order to set back a colonial state, it was better to wreck all of the boring infrastructure than to defeat entire mech armies upfront!

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