The Mech Touch

The gathered mech commanders and staff officers tried to imagine what it would be like to fight alongside 80,000 starfighters.

The interceptor craft were remarkably light and fast. It would be easy to send them on a flanking or reinforcement mission. They could also circle around and attack an enemy unit concentration from the rear.

However, their lack of armor and transphasic energy shields seriously put their survivability into question!

Very few Larkinsons preferred to pilot these craft for this reason. The Seyditch interceptors looked so flimsy that it was as if they would already fall apart if someone sneezed in their direction!

Perhaps that was an exaggeration, but nobody would ever make the mistake of thinking that they could last in any hard confrontation where their mobility became constrained!

"How hard do these Seditch fighters hit?" Another Larkinson officer inquired. "Since they are designed to fight against alien phasefighters, they must have something to count on in order to deplete the transphasic energy shields of our enemies."

Commander Casella Ingvar smiled. "The fleeters explained that to us as well. The Seditch interceptors rely on two different means to inflict effect damage onto enemy phasefighters. First, just like our ranged mechs, their combat effectiveness is much higher if they can take advantage of the space suppression field generated by melee mechs near their targets. Most of the battle plans therefore advocate that every mech unit must be accompanied by a corresponding starfighter unit. The two of you will have to learn how to get along."

Audible groans sounded from the compartment. The mech pilots and mech commanders did not look forward to babysitting these inexperienced and unreliable starfighter pilots!

Though Casella understood where her fellow Larkinsons were coming from, she still placed her hands on her hips.

"Show some respect, please. These starfighter pilots are both brave and patriotic. They voluntarily signed up to pilot these fragile death traps in order to defend everyone's homes. Their machines are inferior, but that only makes them more worthy of respect in my opinion. The least you can do is to accommodate their presence and actively work out how to fight alongside each other. Your teamwork is not only crucial to increasing their chances of survival, but it may also end up saving our lives one day. In a time where the Red Tide Offensive have already battered down multiple defensive bands within a week, we really cannot let something as banal as interservice rivalry get in the way of our common goals."

That was enough to set the Larkinsons straight. They may have reservations towards starfighters, but they did not have any reasons to disrespect the brave volunteers who chose to pilot them in battle.

They were not actually fleeters, but merely second-raters who wanted to fight in a more direct capacity than crewing a warship or fulfilling a support function.

"I wanted to mention this later, but since the pilots have been brought up for discussion, I may as well make this announcement now. Headquarters have organized meet and greets between our mech pilots and the newly arrived starfighter pilots. They are all small in scale in order to foster greater intimacy and prevent any specific problems from arising. After this briefing is over, I expect you to go back to your units and instruct your subordinates on how to behave. Is that clear?"

Everyone nodded. Even if they held different thoughts about these meetings, they kept their opinions to themselves. They were no longer operating in peace time anymore. They could get into real trouble if they disobeyed orders!

Of course, they were all willing to follow any orders issued by Commander Casella. She had not only proven to be a capable administrator and leader over the years, but she was also a very powerful high-tier expert pilot.

She had filled the void left by General Quinlist Verle pretty well in the past few years. It was rather impressive how she was able to keep up with so many different developments while also keeping her skills and abilities sharp.

The only downside was that nobody, not even Casella herself, expected that she would break through anytime soon.

It was not because she was lacking any opportunities to prove herself. The Red Tide Offensive exerted so much pressure onto red humanity that a lot of mech pilots had broken through just in the first week alone!

The real issue was that her willpower and mentality had not yet taken a decisive step forward. She needed to figure out what she truly wanted and specify her goal with greater precision.

Only when she successfully improved her conviction would she be ready to take the next step!

The Sentinel Commander understood her own shortcomings, but did not have an easy way to address them yet. Her increase in resonance strength came too quickly.

One of the reasons why Tusa and Isobel managed to get ahead of the rest was because their goals, motivations and convictions were remarkably simple and direct. It was easy for them to refine their convictions and transform their willpower because they did not really have to put too much thought into their reasons to fight.

Commander Casella was in a different boat. Most mech commanders tended to advance slower and break through at lower rates due to all of the additional variables that came into play.

It was already quite remarkable that 1 of the 8 god pilots of humanity possessed a command specialization, but even that was questionable.

The Army of One did not exactly attract universal praise among other high-ranking mech commanders.

The god pilot completely gave up on commanding human mech pilots in battle in favor of controlling battle bots and other automated war machines instead.

Although the Army of One managed to make it work at an exceptionally high level, many critics took his decision to favor lifeless bots over flesh-and-blood mech pilots as a betrayal against the Mech Industry.

Of course, few people dared to utter this criticism in a public forum. Only his peers at the same level could command his attention, but it didn't seem that any god pilot or Star Designer managed to get him to reform.

Not that it could ever happen. God pilots were the most stubborn people imaginable!

In any case, Commander Casella would try her best to find her breakthrough opportunity in the coming rounds of fighting, but she did not expect to make any gains in the short term. The odds were too low and she personally felt she hadn't earned it for the time being.

One thing was for sure, though. Once she finally managed to become a Saint, she would be able to make an enormous difference in combat, easily surpassing the impact of Saint Tusa!

While Tusa was a high-level asset that excelled in targeted, long-distance strikes, Casella was capable of empowering a huge amount of standard mechs and mech pilots at once.

At her current level, she was already able to elevate thousands if not tens of thousands of mechs to the point where they fought like quasi-expert mechs!

Once she became a Saint, she theorized that she may actually be able to amplify the combat power of the same amount of mechs to the level of a full low-tier expert mech!

Even though it did not sound that impressive, low-tier expert mechs had already surpassed the threshold of mundanity and gained the power of a god, if only on a really small scale.

The emergency of one low-tier expert mech in a large-scale battle probably wasn't that big of a deal, but what about ten? A hundred? A thousand?

Even though ace mechs were so superior to expert mechs that the former should easily be able to crush a hundred of the latter, but when Commander Casella Ingvar was able to mobilize the equivalent of a full mech division's worth of low-tier expert mechs, all of that quantity had a way of producing qualitatively terrifying results!

Casella reined in her thoughts. This was not the time to think about her potential advancement direction. She had a briefing to finish.

"Let's get back to the starfighters. Most of you will be fighting alongside the Seditch interceptors in the coming defensive actions. The interceptors are exclusively designed to fight against alien phasefighters. They are absolutely not suited to go anywhere close to alien warships. The fleeters have designed a different sort of starfighter for this purpose. The ones that are stationed in the orbital space fortresses and fighter bases within the defensive ring all consist of the Armadillo model of bomber craft."

The contrast between the two small craft were clear and obvious. The Armadillo was several times larger and much heavier armored compared to their fighter counterparts. Although their budgets were not that high, the fleeters had made a good effort to strengthen their defenses and allow them to withstand more attacks.

Subsequently, their mobility was not that great, and their ability to dogfight was frankly terrible. They were completely unsuited to fight against other small craft.

"Just like the bomber craft of previous ages, the Armadillos are expressly designed to withstand a certain degree of anti-fighter attacks and get close enough to release short-range but extremely powerful explosive munitions."

A mech officer raised an arm. "Ma'am, pardon the interruption, but why employ bomber craft when we can just launch missiles from anything else?"

"That is a good question. Let me explain what makes this ordnance special. First, they have short ranges. Most missiles are actually filled with propellants, which can add extra power to explosions, but are not as effective as purpose-built warheads. By devoting the majority of their space to stuff that explodes, they can be much more effective than other missiles despite sharing the same dimensions. The bomber munitions are also laced with phasewater. The Red Fleet deems it worthwhile to add small amounts of phasewater to these special bombs in order to amplify their penetration and effective damage potential by several times. The third and most important reason is that the bombs include the latest advancements that the fleeters have made to space suppression technology."

That caused a lot of people to look puzzled. Space suppressors had become familiar tools to them, but that did not change the fact that they were newly introduced. Had the fleeters truly improved them to the point where they made bombs a lot more effective?

Commander Casella zoomed in the projection so that it displayed a detailed image of one of the bombs mounted on the underside of the Armadillo.

"This section here holds a new gadget that the fleeters call the pulse space suppressor. Just as its name suggests, the device can produce the same effect as a conventional space suppressor, but instead of producing a continuous field where spatial activity becomes suppressed, it tries to produce the strongest possible field in a short interval of time. This interval can be as short as half a second. During that time, the device will dump all of its energy into weakening spatial activity generated by phasewater technology as much as possible, thereby allowing the bomb to either destroy the transphasic energy shield with devastating effectiveness, or pass through it entirely!"

"What?!"

"Why don't our mechs have these weapons?! We can make much better use of them than these clumsy mechs!"

"The fleeters invested a huge amount of R&D resources into enhancing the power of their guided munitions. They have the most say in how they are being used." Commander Casella said. "Besides, these bombs and the craft that carries them are anything but cheap. The bomber pilots are also specially chosen elites that have demonstrated good aptitude in piloting small craft and bombers in particular. Do not mistake the Armadillos for being as disposable as the Seditches. Once they are thrown into battle, you have standing orders to escort them and clear the way ahead for them. From the perspective of the fleeters, the fall of every bomber is as painful as losing one of our quasi-first-class mechs."

The Red Fleet was still trying to experiment what sort of small craft worked best in the Red War.

Their fighter designs, technological development, pilot training, combat doctrines and martial traditions were still being worked on. The fleeters chose Arvest Lima System as one of the proving grounds of the new Starfighter Corps!

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