The Mech Touch

The more data the human coalition gathered about the orven battlecruiser known as the V'gahnt-Zezne, the more horrified everyone became!

Even a person who did not understand anything about science and numbers could easily understand the prowess of a battlecruiser by looking at the sheer destruction wrought by just a single salvo of her 14 gigantic plasma cannons!

For a tiny instant, Ves began to feel immediate regret about pushing the Golden Skull Alliance into hopping onboard the Gemini Family's risky joint operation.

What was he thinking by putting himself along with everyone else in the Larkinson Clan at risk of getting blasted by this formidable pirate warship?

"The Gemini Family has instructed us to switch to Plan E!"

"Understood!"

Ves had already been briefed on all of the plans, so he knew exactly what the Geminis had in mind.

"Plan E is the right decision."

"Please explain it to me, Ves." Gloriana requested.

"Plan E involves a lot of stuff, but the key component is how we approach the orven battlecruiser. The firepower of the V'gahnt-Zezne is too oppressive. Even if it looks like it will take a while for her primary armaments to recharge, a single spread of gigantic plasma bolts can easily melt hundreds if not thousands of our mechs at once, and I haven't even talked about her secondary and tertiary gun batteries yet! We can't allow the V'gahnt-Zezne to fire a single salvo towards our fleet or main mech forces, so we need to take it out of the fight as soon as possible."

Gloriana agreed with that assessment. Even she became terrified beyond belief as she saw the power of a hostile alien battleship that was close enough to threaten her life!

"Does that mean all seven ace mechs will converge on the alien battlecruiser and take it down as soon as possible?"

Ves shook his head. "No. Look at all of the other alien warships that showed up. There are way too many of them. A handful are also pretty big and powerful as well. Our expert mechs and our regular mech forces aren't equipped to tackle so many warships, so most of our ace mechs will move to destroy the most threatening ones."

"What about the orven battlecruiser?"

"The Jedda Sandivar and the Royal Jeem will take care of her. Look. The two ace mechs have already accelerated forward while entering into warp travel. They're rapidly closing in on the V'gahnt-Zezne!"

The massive armed capital ship detected the approach of the two powerful mechs. It was hard to ignore the ace light skirmisher and the ace spearman mech seeing as they both dragged their ostentatious domain fields with them as they moved!

The V'gahnt-Zezne's plasma cannons were still in the process of recharging, and they couldn't turn fast enough to track the dizzying evasion patterns of the two offensive ace mechs.

However, the V'gahnt-Zezne still had plenty of other guns at her disposal!

Her formidable secondary kinetic cannon batteries began to fire in quick succession, causing the massive battlecruiser to launch a continuous string of heavy kinetic projectiles, each of which was capable of smashing over a dozen mechs in a row!

Yet whenever these powerful frigate-grade projectiles came close to their targets, they rapidly lost speed and power, allowing the respective ace mechs to dodge them with ease!

"Saint Kingdoms are too powerful!"

If Saint Jelmer Osenring was strong enough to mitigate the damage of numerous enormous plasma bolts, then Saint Marissa Lewandowski and Saint Kalasandra Boojay were more than capable enough of doing the same to a bunch of weaker kinetic rounds!

The problem was that the V'gahnt-Zezne had 132 secondary guns at her disposal, and their firing rate was much more impressive!

Not only that, they were also transphasic, so the ace pilots needed to exert a lot more effort into weakening the incoming shots!

The continuous streams of transphasic kinetic projectiles were exerting a lot of pressure onto the two approaching ace mechs, but they were so small that the ace pilots did not have to evade too many projectiles.

Though the V'gahnt-Zezne activated a spatial inhibitor device that attempted to throw the two ace mechs out of warp travel, Saint Lewandowski and Saint Boojay exerted their willpower to block the new effect, thereby allowing their ace mechs to keep traversing forward at many times their usual speeds!

Soon enough, the Jedda Sandivar and the Royal Jeem arrived right next to the V'gahnt-Zezne, which sparked a lot of alarm throughout the Unspokeen fleet!

The two ace mechs attempted to reach the hull of their target, but the V'gahnt-Zezne was covered by an array of rotating segmented energy shields!

Her secondary cannons were no longer able to track and fire at the ace mechs at such close range, but much of the 317 tertiary laser cannons did not have that problem! They flooded the two ace mechs with a continuous rain of accurate laser beams!

Not only that, the orven destroyers and starfighters that were tasked with protecting the Unspoken flagships also jumped into action!

A flood of firepower quickly assailed the two ace mechs, making it increasingly less tenable for them to expose themselves to so much withering fire!

That was until Saint Marissa Lewandowski unveiled her full domain field!

Soon enough, a dense and completely opaque ethereal smoke cloud surrounded the Jedda Sandivar.

The Royal Jeem also fell within its influence, but it deliberately preserved Saint Kasandra Boojay's ability to see through the smoke cloud.

Now that the two ace mechs became a lot more difficult to target and pin down, the ace light skirmisher and the ace spearman mech proceeded to circle around the large but lumbering V'gahnt-Zezne while constantly using their powerful melee strikes to weaken the orven battlecruiser's energy shield coverage!

None of the orven combat assets could get a grip on the two tyrannical ace melee mechs!

The warships were all firing blind into the rapidly moving smoke cloud. The hidden ace mechs also used the massive hull of the V'gahnt-Zezne as cover, preventing the orven destroyers from opening fire lest they hurt their own flagship!

Though the orvens attempted to send in hundreds of starfighters at once, the Jedda Sandivar and the Royal Jeem quickly cut and stabbed them all to pieces before they could do anything useful!

"Just two ace mechs have rendered the most powerful alien pirate fleet impotent!" Ves uttered with shock.

Though he knew that this was the aim of Plan E, he never imagined that the Jedda Sandivar and the Royal Jeem would be so effective!

"The orven battlecruiser can no longer afford to launch unscrupulous attacks at our other forces!"

Due to the division of pirate forces, the Unspoken did not receive any help. The orven pirates also weren't in a mood to assist their rivals.

The orven pirates only cared about their own people and fleet, so as long as their flagship remained under threat, they could do nothing else but fight in their own little corner!

"That is one battlecruiser taken care of." Ves smiled as he saw how poorly the Unspoken coped with a pair of ace mechs.

"Don't celebrate too soon, Ves." Gloriana woke him up. "There are many other warships that have already begun to open fire on our mechs."

The V'gahnt-Zezne was hardly the only powerful warship at the disposal of the alien pirates.

Though the battlecruiser towered above all of the other ships in terms of tonnage and high-end firepower, the immediate rivals of the Unspoken were not too far behind.

The other pirate groups had their own sources of dependence that allowed them to gain at least some right to speak within the Palace of Shame!

The information panels projected in front of his seat updated every other second as many different sources constantly plugged fresh information into the combined command net.

Though not every source of information was accurate or reliable, there were thousands of analysts and specialists on duty whose job was to verify and corroborate every data entry.

All of this work enabled Ves to trust the information supplied by the command net and assume it was all reliable.

The picture it painted was not great.

The 'Rattling Egg' pirate fleet had 2 heavy cruisers at their disposal.

Though there was an enormous difference in size and power between a battlecruiser and a heavy cruiser, the Rattling Eggs obtained a lot more tactical flexibility by being able to field two vessels at the same time!

The '1854210' pirate fleet had 7 light cruisers at its disposal.

The 1854210's or whatever they were called made the relatively frugal decision to forgo larger hulls so that they could concentrate on building up a larger collection of smaller ones.

While light cruisers were much less expensive than heavy cruisers, they were not that much smaller. The differences were not that great aside from a substantial reduction in mass and armor. The reduction in firepower was not that big of a deal and their mobility gained a substantial jump.

The 'Opalescent Star' pirate fleet was much worse off as it only had 4 light cruisers at their disposal. That did not mean the Opalescent Stars could be ignored. Each of their vessels contained better tech and parts, allowing them to outperform any of their counterparts over at the 1854210's!

Finally, the 'Four Fingers' pirate fleet deployed just 2 light cruisers.

The caveat was that the Four Fingers also deployed a ship class that was a lot more familiar to the humans.

"Is that… a fleet carrier among the so-called Four Fingers?" Ves asked for confirmation.

"That appears to be the case, sir. The 'First Finger' is the flagship of the Four Fingers pirate group, and is primarily armed with a large amount of light gun batteries. She lacks any greater armaments because most of her hull capacity is dedicated to fulfilling her purpose as a carrier for approximately 3000 starfighters."

"What?! 3000 starfighters?!"

"Yes, sir. The alien small craft are smaller and more compact than our mechs for the most part. According to a single source of intelligence, the different starfighters fielded by the Four Fingers can roughly be divided into three categories. The light interceptors are the smallest and most numerous models. They are primarily good at fighting other small craft. Next up are the medium gunships, which possess heavier firepower and are mainly used to provide support. The heavy bombers are packed with powerful ordnance and are solely employed to destroy large starships or fortifications."

"Are our mechs better than their starfighters?"

"We cannot make that determination as the indigenous aliens make use of an endless variety of starfighters. We can only make a rough estimate. Since the Four Fingers raided the alien space lanes of the Zelmar Upper Zones in the past, we believe that the starfighters should at least be on par with our own mechs."

Ves relaxed a bit. "That is more manageable. How many starfighters have the alien pirates deployed up to this point?"

"We have detected approximately 88,000 small craft so far! Many of them appear to be autonomous combat drones but a third of them are manned or semi-manned craft!"

Ves widened his eyes. "Those are way more small craft than what we were led to believe from the estimates!"

It took a moment for the tactical officer to supply an answer.

"We mainly based our estimates on the number of alien carrier vessels that we know of. We accounted for the possibility that the Palace of Shame would have hangar bays that also contain small craft, but we vastly underestimated how much the pirates have been willing to invest into defending their hidden base as opposed to their mobile fleet assets. The vast majority of craft that we did not expect to appear on the battlefield are largely unmanned or semi-manned."

"What the hell does semi-manned craft even mean!?"

"Those are small craft that are piloted by an organic consciousness but without all of the redundant parts." Gloriana explained to him. "Do you recall the plasma saber of the Neo Amadeus that we recently salvaged in Pima Prime and repurposed for our own use?"

"Yeah. We call it the Scarlet Ember now. The Everchanger holds it now as the new weapon substantially increases its offensive threat. Wait…"

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