The Mech Touch

5665 A Mech That Sells Itself

Domineering.

The new heavy artillery mech made an absolutely domineering first impression.

Micky Tarukan had yet to mention the name of the new machine.

He did not mention any of its specs, nor its overall concept.

He just rambled on about the impact of the return of warships and warned that the mech industry risked losing its dominance if it did not deliver the solutions that people needed.

What the newly unveiled heavy artillery mech had just done was to prove its ability to serve as one of those solutions.

It did so in the most straightforward fashion possible.

No words.

No tricks.

Just a single attack was all it took to heavily damage and down a combat carrier with just a single shot.

A lot of mech commanders and other related people watched the broadcast. Many of them were currently stationed on a combat carrier that was not much different from the one that got downed.

When they thought about how their own vessels would fare in the same situation, their hearts immediately chilled.

Combat carriers were designed to confront enemy mech forces head-on and land on hostile planets. Their defenses had to be good enough to resist at least a decent amount of firepower.

It would do no good for them to get shot down before they could deploy all of their mechs!

The newer the starship, the stronger their defenses. Each time the firepower of mechs improved by another measure, the combat carriers released during that period made sure to boast enough defenses to maintain their usefulness.

What they witnessed just now was a huge shock.

While the ship class selected by Isthmus Manufacturing was just a surplus vessel that had been built before the onset of the Hyper Generation, she had still been decently maintained over the years.

A fine vessel like this could easily last for a century as long as her owners regularly invested in upgrades.

Even a budget approach should easily allow the combat carrier to remain serviceable for at least two more mech generations.

Yet a single hyper mech managed to strike such a strong blow that her defenses succumbed all at once!

Even if the newly introduced heavy artillery mech made use of an expensive transphasic kinetic weapon, it was still worthwhile to expend a few grams of phasewater to instantly down a fairly decent combat carrier!

Fortunately, it was unlikely for humans to get on the bad side of a battery of these new heavy artillery mechs.

In the backdrop of the Red War, this scarily powerful mech model would surely become one of the strongest weapons available to second-raters.

No matter whether the heavy artillery mech model attained its astounding result by relying on a transphasic weapon, the machine had already proven its chops as a genuine shipkiller as far as most people were concerned!

This was the power of a striking demonstration. Through a single brief demonstration, Isthmus Manufacturing had already sold the new product to a lot of forces.

The fear they held towards their starship getting demolished by a single strike from this monster of a mech drove them to attain this supreme firepower for themselves!

As the crew-less combat carrier finally struck the ground with such force that the crash generated a local earthquake, the final explosion produced by the failing power generators encapsulated the horrible consequences that the opponent of the heavy artillery mech might suffer!

Micky Tarukan smiled with genuine pride as he gazed up at the majestic cannon that had produced such an amazing result.

"Impressive, is it not? Not every mech can reproduce this result. In the interest of transparency, I must mention that the combat carrier is 20 years old and has only received light technical upgrades over the years. She is not equipped with transphasic shield generators that you can typically expect from alien warships. Much of the interior of her hull is relatively hollow, which is different from the denser and more structured hulls of dedicated warships. That aside, minor alien races typically do not invest too much phasewater in their sub-capital ships. Their hulls are also more fragile as the aliens typically rely less on material defenses."

Alien warships tended to vary dramatically in size, mass, design, features, performance and usage.

The existence of a multi-racial galactic community helped to standardize and homogenize a lot of common rules and customs, but it couldn't erase all of the unique quirks of every intelligent race.

The arche for example still utilized drastically different tech and warships than the rest of the Red Ocean!

Nonetheless, their ability to resist attacks generally tended to fall within the same range due to a common set of circumstances.

Each sub-capital ship class had to be cheap enough to make it viable for mass production.

They also had to be tough enough to resist a certain amount of fire from other warships.

As such, the defensive properties of a typical alien sub-capital ship should at least be as good as that of a human combat carrier, but often boasted even better defenses due to leveraging the advantages of their energy-based defenses.

"It is unlikely for a single hyper mech such as the one stationed behind my back to disable a better equipped alien warship with a single discharge of its main cannon." Micky Tarukan admitted. "Alien warships are always on the move on the battlefield. It is normal for shots to miss at further ranges. The defensive properties of alien transphasic shield generators fluctuate wildly, but even if a ship of this size is covered by the most advanced multi-layered transphasic segmented energy shields, it is rare for heavy artillery mechs to undertake their duties alone."

A lot of movement took place on the massive exhibition floor.

8 more black-coated hyper heavy artillery mechs emerged from below. The elevators that lifted up these hefty machines hardly strained as they were rated to support much larger machines if it was ever necessary!

The sight of 9 identical heavy artillery mechs with the same identical main cannons pointed in the exact same direction made for an even more striking impression!

One of these machines had already demonstrated the capacity to down a 20-year old combat carrier.

Would 9 of them be able to take down a fleet carrier with a single salvo of their main cannons?

Nobody thought that the answer would be yes, but at the very least it was plausible for their combined firepower to breach the energy shields of a typical fleet carrier and inflict substantial material damage to the hull plating and surface compartments!

If such a result could truly be achieved, then this fantastic new product would definitely be a gamechanger in second-class combat!

It turned out that Isthmus Manufacturing did not just unveil them for show.

The newly arrived heavy artillery mechs had already been activated. They simultaneously charged their main cannon alongside the one that had appeared first.

The impression generated by the simultaneous charging of nine shipkiller truly scared the hell out of many people!

How much firepower did all of these machines possess? Even if a ship was strong enough to resist the simultaneous attacks of 9 of these black metal beasts, the vessel would definitely not remain in good condition!

As if to put this assumption to the test, Isthmus Manufacturing brought in an entirely new vessel to serve as the target for this demonstration.

The difference this time was that the vessel was positioned so far up in the skies that a large projection was needed to show her current condition.

"Is that an alien battleship?!"

"It has to be! I don't recognize the species that has built this triangular-shaped battleship, but she appears to be in remarkably good condition. Whoever managed to capture her definitely paid a lot to preserve her hull as much as possible."

"Wait, an alien battleship is too heavy to fly under atmospheric conditions. Are the heavy artillery mechs actually about to strike the ship from the surface of this planet?!"

It would be amazing if a mech could pose a legitimate threat against a battleship in orbit!

The definition of battleship differed between humans and aliens.

To humans, battleships were hulking beasts that were entirely covered with high-grade exotics from top to bottom. Their resilience was legendary, and so were their price tags.

Alien battleships tended to be more mixed in this regard. They benefited from the protection of much more powerful and numerous transphasic shield generators, but their hull construction tended to be much more inferior than that of genuine human battleships.

They resembled human battlecruisers a lot more as they tended to be relatively faster as well.

Regardless, most human forces still had to struggle a lot to overcome the defenses of a typical alien battleship.

It was not uncommon to see hundreds of rifleman mechs firing at a single alien battleship, only for the latter to act like it was singing in the rain.

People had a feeling that this might be different. As the captured alien battleship activated her full transphasic multi-layered energy shields, the heavy artillery mechs adjusted their aim and opened fire when their main cannons had fully charged!

BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM!

Nine powerful weapon discharges blended together in a cacophony of noise!

It took time for the gauss projectiles to cross hundreds of kilometers and escape the atmosphere, but no one minded the delay.

Suddenly, the much more substantial transphasic energy shields of the enemy warship endured a huge amount of strain!

One of the three layers suffered so much strain from trying to resist the simultaneous impacts of 9 transphasic hyper super-heavy gauss rounds that it showed visible signs of destabilization!

Though the much larger alien vessel managed to remain intact, the fact that her defenses endured so much strain from just nine second-class heavy mechs was already astounding in itself!

The heavy mechs charged their main cannons yet again.

One of the clear and obvious downsides of this mech model immediately became evident.

The firing rate of its main cannon was too slow!

BOOOOOM! BOOOOOM! BOOOOOM!

However, the wait was worth it. Once the awfully slow cannons got ready to fire again, the resulting full-powered attack thudded against the outer-most defensive layer and strained it yet again!

BOOOOOM! BOOOOOM! BOOOOOM!

BOOOOOM! BOOOOOM! BOOOOOM!

The heavy artillery mech had to fire several more times before the first layer of defense finally shattered entirely!

This was amazing as the heavy artillery mechs not only displayed perfect accuracy at much longer ranges, but the projectiles also managed to retain much of their power as they overcame the effects of both air resistance and gravity.

"One down, two more to go!" A member of the audience excitedly commented.

Aside from these outbursts, most people remained silent as they waited for the 9 heavy artillery mechs to recharge their formidable main cannons once again.

Despite boasting four more cannons on their backs, the newly built machines showed no sign of resorting to them at all. It was as if these heavy machines solely existed due to their main guns alone!

No one complained about the wait. The longer it took, the more powerful the attack. That was a universal rule that everyone was familiar with regardless of their technical proficiency.

Micky Tarukan did not even feel the need to resume his speech during this interval. The heavy artillery mech model that he intended to introduce to his audience was already doing a good job of selling itself!

BOOOOOM! BOOOOOM! BOOOOOM!

The third salvo put such a dent in the second layer of energy shields that the captured alien battleship seemed to groan from the strain of resisting the simultaneous attacks.

The effect of perfectly synchronizing 9 attacks was definitely greater than letting them attack in sequence!

The combined spike in force was so violent that it was as if the effective firepower of 9 heavy artillery mechs rivaled that of the ship's very own primary armaments!

Even if this exaggerated result could only be accomplished by literally throwing phasewater away, lots of ambitious leaders were more than willing to waste entire liters of this rare substance in order to secure the title of warlord for themselves!

"How long will it take for the alien battleship to lose her transphasic energy shields?"

"Shorter than the native aliens desire, that is for certain."

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