The Mech Touch

Ves finally waved his arm and switched off the live feeds that showed the aftermath of the battle.

There was no point in observing what was taking place in the Ramage Repulsor System any further. Neither side was willing to launch any further attacks and Ves had other people in his employ that could analyze the current condition of the damaged alien battleship.

He needed to get ready to hold a number of emergency meetings to get ready for an upcoming warship assault.

Before that happened, he wanted to make sure to hammer home a point in his daughter's mind.

"Aurelia?"

"Yes, papa?"

"What is your take on this battle?" Ves asked. "What stands out to you? You will earn bonus points if you voice opinions that I have yet to address."

His little girl frowned in thought. She was so cute when she was doing her best to impress her parents.

Aurelia became so eager to meet her father's expectations that even Mana halted her current studies!

The companion spirit's semi-independent personality not only provided Aurelia with another thinking track, but also allowed her to view a situation from a slightly different perspective compared to herself.

Even if Mana wasn't a real cat, she still resembled one close enough.

As Aurelia and Mana both spent a minute in thought, they finally came up with a few notable observations.

"What happened today is really sad for both sides." His older daughter mentioned. "Many of their people have died and they also lost a lot of assets. The people of Cenatus Prospecting should be the saddest of the two since they have lost their flagship and leader."

Ves slightly shook his head. "You are mentioning obvious facts. You might as well say that stars are hot."

Aurelia smirked. "I'm not finished yet, papa. What I am actually trying to say is that our fleet hasn't suffered any losses throughout this battle. Cenatus Prospecting and the Tower of Babel did exactly what we wanted them to do. They fought against each other and forgot about our involvement."

He became a bit more satisfied when she mentioned this angle.

"That's correct. We took advantage of a fundamental condition to force our two enemies to turn their weapons against each other. Are you smart enough to figure it out, sweetie?"

Her daughter scrunched her face. She looked troubled as she couldn't figure out how she could please her father.

She eventually gave up and stared at Ves with her adorable eyes. "Please tell me the answer."

Ves chuckled. "Very well. This is a rather advanced concept that you will only be able to understand when you grow older. The key words are information asymmetry. Do you know what that means? You should already know the meaning of information, but what does asymmetry mean?"

"I learned in my math classes that asymmetry is the opposite of symmetry. Two sides aren't equal. It is as if one of my ears is larger than the other."

"Yup. Now how does that tie into information?"

"I think… it means that one side has more information than the other." Aurelia concluded. "In our situation, our side knows the most. We knew about the existence and location of the Tower of Babel whereas Cenatus Prospecting remained clueless. Neither of our adversaries figured out that they were being baited by us until it was too late."

"Hehehe." Ves amusingly grinned. "The asymmetry still exists. If I am correct, the aliens haven't even figured out that they were fooled. I just lured the Tower of Babel out of the brown dwarf star. After that, I made it seem as if the Cenatus Prospecting fleet destroyed a connection to a powerful phase whale by blowing up the bait. The aliens predictably went mad and laid all of the blame at the feet of the humans directly in front of them. They might not even know about the existence and the proximity of our own fleet."

"That will help if you want to attack them." The little girl cleverly remarked.

Ves nodded. "Ah, I see you've caught that important detail. You are correct. Our goal is to rescue a human prisoner that is trapped on the damaged alien vessel. The battle that just concluded a moment ago hasn't changed that. This means that it is still important to maintain a significant information advantage over the other party. We don't want the surviving aliens to know we are coming and prepare for our upcoming attack in advance."

"Won't the survivors of Cenatus Prospecting tell the aliens what truly happened? Our other enemies know about us and must have figured out that we are responsible. It will be much harder for us to attack the Tower of Babel if the alien soldiers learn about us in advance."

Ves nodded. "You are technically correct, but… the aliens may not be receptive to a message from an enemy that managed to cripple the front half of their proud battleship. Besides, it might not even matter anymore if we cannot exploit the information asymmetry between us and the aliens. Do you know why?"

"Because… the aliens have lost too much."

"Correct, but what I really wanted to hear is that we have an overwhelming strength advantage over our opponent." He told her. "Strength makes everything easier. An unbeatable opponent suddenly becomes vulnerable if you have the strength to overpower your adversary. You don't have to resort to risky, convoluted schemes like the one we just pulled off. We can just knock on the doors of the aliens and smash them apart."

His daughter made another remark. "This is what you wanted from the start. You wanted to attack the Tower of Babel, but you did not have the required strength. You had to rely on another attack method to soften up the enemy."

Ves smirked again. "That is correct. That ties in to another trick that I am fond of using. You see, we managed to advance our interests without paying any real price. Instead, one of our enemies had inadvertently taken the initiative to pay the price in our stead. That is the delicate art of making others pay for your benefits. Many of the most powerful and successful organizations have excelled in this art. If our clan wants to join their ranks one day, it is essential for us to master the associated methods."

"Oohhh…"

"Remember, Aurelia. It is not really impressive to use our own army to defeat an enemy army. This is because we will always incur serious damage in battle. If this happens often enough, our forces will become so damaged that we cannot protect ourselves anymore. A true victory should look like this. Instead of dispatching mechs and mech pilots, we instead made clever use of trickery and our unique advantages to win a battle. This is the most ideal way to solve our problems. We should only contemplate a frontal battle when we have exhausted all other alternatives."

He didn't think this way at first, but after he continued to learn from the likes of General Verle, Minister Shederin and Director Calabast, he had wisened up. The stakes had become too high for him to be as gung-ho about resorting to violence as before.

The idea that he wanted to impress in his daughter's mind was that the Larkinson Clan had already lost if it needed to resort to a fight to fulfill its goals.

He left his oldest daughter with those thoughts. She needed to internalize these lessons before he was ready to teach her more.

A few hours later, Ves received an action plan that the leaders of the Golden Skull Alliance had formulated in the past few hours.

In truth, their staff already prepared the basic frameworks of several different plans. Once the damaged state of the Tower of Babel became clear, the planners were able to take the most appropriate plan and adjust its parameters to the current situation.

Ves expected that General Verle and the others would decide on two different courses of actions.

The Golden Skull Alliance could either launch a general assault on the Tower of Babel, or send in an infiltration team that could rescue Lord Pearian Yorul-Tavik as quietly as possible while the aliens were distracted with repairing their vessel.

He became surprised when General Verle presented a different plan that combined the steps of several other plans.

"This…" Ves hesitated.

"We need to strike while the iron is hot." General Verle's projection responded. The man looked as if he was in a hurry. "It is safest for us to wait until we wait for all of our starships to cycle their FTL drives, but there is no need for us to wait so many hours. Even if we bring all of our mechs back to the Ramage Repulsor System, they won't be able to play a meaningful role. All we will do is to expose them to the terrifying guns of a battleship that has retained at least half of her combat power."

This had become abundantly clear in the previous battle. The ranged mechs of the Cenatus Prospecting fleet constantly fired their weapons against the Tower of Babel, only for the formidable alien battleship to shrug off the damage.

The transphasic energy shields were simply too powerful. Even when the Unrelenting managed to break open the front half of the Tower of Babel, the combined firepower of thousands of distant mechs failed to inflict significantly more structural damage.

This was because the exposed hull of the hybrid alien battleship was simply too tough and massive! She was as durable as a space fortress and could absorb a lot of damage before she lost all of her functionality.

When Ves considered how many mechs would get shredded by the unreasonable firepower of the damaged battleship, he reluctantly agreed with the general.

"Okay. Say you're correct about this. Is the alternative necessarily better, though? The decision to transfer a single ace mech, our expert mechs, our Valkyrie mechs and our DIVA contingent on starships with redundant FTL drives is just as risky if not more. I can understand the need to rush them back to the Ramage Repulsor System without any delay, but they will be on their own once they have arrived."

"Speed is crucial for this operation." General Verle emphasized. "Numerous experts such as Chief Shipwright Vivian Tsai have warned us that the alien crews are performing emergency repairs at an alarming pace. They have access to advanced tech that is massively speeding up the pace in which they are able to restore many ship systems that can still be saved. The sooner we strike, the less guns and energy shields we have to face. We can also prevent the Tower of Babel from restoring enough mobility to avoid a confrontation."

The man made a few good points. Ves found it difficult to refute the need for haste.

He still felt incredibly worried about the fate of the troops assigned to this blitz attack.

"Are you sure that this is enough?"

"Numbers are meaningless when challenging an opponent of this scale." Verle stated. "We need quality, not quantity. To be more precise, we only need the Mars, the Amaranto and the Promethea to neutralize the enemy battleship. The other expert mechs can draw away more fire and provide us with a greater buffer in case an accident takes place."

"Why bring along the mechs of the Penitent Sisters and the Glory Seekers if that is the case?" Ves critically asked. "They will suffer enormous casualties before they can get close enough to launch their battle formation attacks."

Distance never really mattered that much in the mech battles of the past. Most enemy mech forces weren't able to inflict effective damage onto the Valkyrie mechs at extreme ranges.

Warships were different! They possessed an unparalleled ability to shred large quantities of small craft at range!

There weren't any convenient asteroid belts or planets in the vicinity of the Tower of Babel's current location that could cover the approach of the Valkyrie mechs.

"We do not intend to rely on the Valkyrie mechs to finish off the alien battleship, sir. As I have mentioned before, the Mars and our expert mechs should be able to contain and degrade the Tower of Babel's offensive systems and propulsion systems by themselves. The reason why we want to have the option to launch a death battle formation attack is to prevent the desperate aliens from killing Lord Pearian Yorul-Tavik. By wiping out most of the surviving alien crew ahead of time, the chances are great that any survivors will be concerned with more acute problems. None of them should have any ideas about executing their only human prisoner."

That made a lot of sense. Ves did not want to go through all of this effort, only to return empty-handed.

Sure, it was already a massive accomplishment if the Golden Skull Alliance was able to capture a unique alien warship that incorporated a blend of advanced technologies from different races.

He had no doubt that the MTA was willing to award a handsome sum of MTA merits to gain possession of the Tower of Babel!

However, Ves was not short on MTA merits these days. What he truly needed at this stage was friends in high places.

Lord Pearian Yorul-Tavik was his best ticket to forge a solid friendship with an influential first-class clan!

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