The Mech Touch

The duel between Patriarch Reginald Cross and the Tireless Engine shook the surrounding space and occasionally produced collateral damage that made everyone else avoid their clash as much as possible.

The duel had become separate from the larger battle taking place in and around Duqeste XI.

Venerable Rosa Orfan sighed as she restlessly sat inside her cockpit.

This operation was anything but ideal in her opinion. It was hastily planned and contained far too few redundancies. The safety margin was razor thin and had become stretched even further due to the early detection of the RA stealth vessel.

Venerable Orfan knew what General Ark Larkinson had in mind. Both of them were high-ranking expert pilots that had already reached their bottlenecks and could not make any further progress. Both of them experienced the same persistent desire to find a breakthrough opportunity and smash apart their stubborn bottlenecks.

Yet just because they were eager to advance to the rank of ace pilot did not mean they were willing to do everything and throw aside much of their caution.

General Ark obviously felt more comfortable with organizing a daring raid on Duqaste XI due to two separate factors.

FIrst, Patriarch Reginald Cross would be accompanying the expert pilots. The powerful Crosser ace pilot had already proven his chops as an excellent duelist and a veritable engine of destruction.

Reginald's presence not only ensured that the enemy phase lord would not be able to bully the expert mechs while they executed their missions, but could also serve as a potential failsafe for any teammate that was on the verge of getting killed.

Of course, the latter was not a solid guarantee. Anything could happen in a messy battle. If the Tireless Engine fought so well that Patriarch Reginald was unable to maintain situational awareness of what took place further away, then the expert pilots would all be forced to fend for themselves!

In other words, the safety blanket that General Ark was counting on to preserve the lives of himself and his fellow expert pilots was paper thin. It could easily be torn so long as the aliens were a little bit stronger or luckier.

This operation was by far her most dangerous action in years. The only battles that could rival the danger factor of this mission were the ones that took place before she transcended her mortality.

Combined with the fact that getting discovered early meant that the Lionheart, the Riot and all of the other expert mechs had to approach Duqaste XI in the open for all of the aliens to see, the native aliens had a much greater chance of taking down an expert mech and killing the pilot nestled in the cockpit!

All of these factors exerted a huge amount of pressure onto Venerable Orfan's shoulders. The lack of support from the rest of the 77th Warborn amplified her concerns and made her feel even more isolated and left to fend for herself.

This operation was by far her most dangerous action in years. The only battles that could rival the danger factor of this mission were the ones that took place before she transcended her mortality.

Those grueling battles against enemies that outnumbered her own forces had been difficult to survive, let alone win. A lot of fights only ended in the favor of the early Larkinson Clan due to a combination of luck and because the patriarch of the Larkinson Clan often managed to pull out a trump card.

This time, Ves Larkinson was nowhere to be found. Perhaps he might have a way of monitoring this battle from remote, but he had absolutely no way of intervening more directly.

That decreased Venerable Orfan's confidence and made her feel that she could not afford to make a single major error.

If she screwed up big time, no one would be able to bail her out! The other expert pilots would likely have their hands full in trying to fight while heavily outnumbered.

She could only rely on herself, her expert mech and perhaps a few design spirits to overcome a difficult situation.

"WE CAN DO IT, ROSA." The electronic voice of male sounded in the cockpit. "WE MAY NOT BE READY FOR THIS, BUT WE CAN STILL SURVIVE THIS BATTLE."

"Riot…" The slightly aging woman looked strained. "The timing is all wrong. If Ark waited for half a year before putting us all up for this risky operation, then I would have no objections at all. I still cannot stomach his callousness for deciding that now was the right time to commit to a life-threatening challenge. It is all well and good if he decides to throw himself right in the middle of an enemy staging point by himself, but no, he has to drag all of the other expert pilots of his Warborn as well."

"THAT IS HIS PREROGATIVE AS OUR COMMANDER. YOU ORIGINALLY AGREED TO TRANSFER TO HIS MECH DIVISION, REMEMBER? YOU SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT YOU MAY ACTUALLY BE SIGNING UP FOR MUCH SOONER."

"I didn't know that Ark was such a selfish bastard at the time! Okay, I admit it! I fell for all of the old propaganda published by the Bright Republic. I used to think he was a perfect hero and leader that would protect any soldier under his care. Perhaps he still has a few good intentions somewhere, but his desire to break through is overriding his good sense as a responsible leader."

"YOU ARE JUST MAKING EXCUSES FOR A LEADER THAT DOES NOT DESERVE ANY LENIENCY. I CAN GUARANTEE YOU THAT HE DID NOT SPARE ANY THOUGHT ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL SITUATION WHEN HE DEVISED THIS OPERATION. HE ONLY THOUGHT ABOUT HIS OWN CONDITIONS. LOOK AT HIS LIONHEART. WHAT DO YOU SENSE FROM HIS MACHINE?"

Venerable Orfan utilized the optical sensors of her expert mech to take a deep look at the Lionheart flying at the head of their loose formation.

The bright white and resplendent expert mech looked extremely majestic even if it was glowing a lot less brighter than usual. The quasi-first-class expert mech still managed to look majestic due to its amazingly sculpted white lion head and projected blue cape that flapped as if there was wind in space.

The Lionheart easily stood out from the other expert mechs in their team, which also included the two Crosser mechs that took part in this operation as well.

The Lionheart was so much newer and better. It was a sixth generation living mech, while the Riot was still stuck as an ancient third generation living mech.

The design budget of the Lionheart was at least hundreds times greater than the current iteration of the Riot.

The former had been designed and built when the Larkinson Clan was already starting to enter into first-class society.

The Riot on the other hand was designed and built back when the Larkinson Clan had entered into second-class society not too long ago!

Though the Riot's much-appreciated Mark II upgrade may have granted him transphasic weapons and armaments, there were still many internal components that remained virtually unchanged since the day he had been built and brought to life!

All of this meant that even if both expert mechs were both transphasic, the Lionheart was able to withstand a lot more damage to its armor and internal structure than the outdated Riot Mark II!

It was difficult for Venerable Orfan to admit that her expert mech was no longer able to keep up with the current state of warfare. The enemies of the Larkinson Clan had shifted to a much stronger and formidable set of opponents.

As the team of expert mechs began to get closer to the lifeless rock that was devoid of any atmosphere, the many alien warships and tens of thousands of phasefighters had already formed up to meet the incoming human intruders!

Although all of these ships and small craft were crewed by mortal nunsers, Venerable Orfan still couldn't help but feel intimidated by the prospect of trying to bypass all of their destructive hardware.

"Be careful, but do not overestimate our foes." General Ark spoke over the communication channel. "We can get through this. Our mechs are all fast and agile enough to evade most attacks. Spread out further and give each of us enough room to maneuver. Make sure to cover for each other if one of our expert mechs suffers a mishap. Once we pass by their orbital assets, we have a clear shot at their supply and munition stockpiles."

Ark made it sound so simple. While it was true that the enemy phasefighters and warships had a low chance of actually hitting any expert mechs at these distances, the problem was that the opposing nunsers had a huge amount of guns at their disposal!

If a single cannon only had a 0.001 percent chance of hitting the Riot with a single shot, then there was a large chance that Orfan would have nothing to worry about.

If the aliens brought at least 100,000 guns to bear on her expert mech, then that was a completely different story!

Although the chance of getting hit by a single massive salvo was not 100 percent, the probability that her expert mech's defenses would get tested was still a lot higher than before!

Much of the outcome of this grueling approach would be decided by the strategic decisions of the nunser commanders.

Would they opt to focus their fire on just one or two expert mechs, or would they spread their firepower around in order to test all of the machines or hope they would get lucky?

If the former was the case, then Venerable Orfan quickly realized that her Riot would likely get into a lot of trouble!

The Riot was hardly the most mobile mech out of the team, and most of her tech was a lot older as well.

As the distant enemy warships began to open fire with their primary and secondary armament, Venerable Orfan no longer focused so much on her concerns and shifted into a more combat-oriented state of mind.

The initial salvo of warship-grade energy beams tried to strike all 6 expert mechs equally.

The nunsers had clearly coordinated their fire as they not only spread their firepower in equally sized portions, but also tried their best to fire their weapons in grid patterns, making it a lot trickier to evade the devastating attacks!

Nonetheless, the range was so great and the warship armaments were so clunky that it did not take too much effort for the expert pilots to deftly maneuver their machines out of the danger zones in time.

The intuition of almost every pilot participating in this operation was top-notch!

Every participating Larkinson expert pilot was a seasoned veteran who had thrown themselves into the jaws of enemy warships many times in the past.

The only exception was Venerable Lothario Cross. The Crosser had broken through later than everyone else, so he was still a low-tier expert pilot.

More importantly, he did not have the luxury of accelerating the growth of his resonance strength by gaining access to general purpose cultivation elixirs.

His attempts to evade all of the powerful warship attacks was remarkably worse than that of the other expert mechs!

The nunsers apparently made the same observations, because Venerable Orfan could already feel that many enemies had shifted their attention away from her Riot.

While she privately felt relieved about it, she understood that her reprieve came at the expense of another comrade.

"Lothario!" General Ark barked over the communication channel. "Your expert mech is about to get focused upon by the main elements of the Ghirard Fleet. Don't think about anything except survival! Do not hesitate to divert your course and back off from Duqaste XI if you think you cannot keep your machine safe at closer distances. You can still support us from a distance."

"Roger that." Lothario responded. "I can still proceed forward. My 80th Element is fast enough. However, the smart metal that makes up my expert mech is not able to resist warship-grade attacks as easily as more solid expert mechs. I will try to prioritize my machine's survival as best possible."

Just before the warships unleashed their second salvo at the only expert mech made out of nanomachines, the 80th Element already veered off and even began to deploy a few decoys made of very thin layers of smart metal in order to confound the alien gunners and targeting systems!

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