The Mech Touch

The Ghirard Fleet was a lot better equipped than other assault fleets.

The Tireless Engine took the humans a lot more seriously than many of his peers. He had used the months preceding the start of the Red Tide Offensive to make use of his considerable wealth and connections to increase the preparedness of his fleet.

Whether his efforts paid off or not, the exotic phasefighters added to his small craft lineup generated considerable difficulties for the expert mechs!

It became abundantly clear that the nunser assault fleet had arrived in the Duqaste System with the distinct expectation of fighting against human expert mechs!

General Ark and the other expert pilots taking part in the operation even felt especially targeted by the measures employed by the opposing aliens.

They possessed the distinct expression that the native aliens had been scrambling to develop effective anti-expert mech countermeasures that did not require the intervention of a phase lord.

The aliens made a wise decision to do so. Expert mechs possessed a lot more agency than other machines and had a disproportionate effect on the battlefield. Even if they weren't as outrageous as ace mechs, they could still ruin a lot of plans by exercising their strength at the right time and place.

Since the native aliens had only recently gotten serious about developing real technological counters against expert mechs, their solutions appeared to be crude and haphazard.

There was no obvious cohesion or coordination between the different experimental models. The designs of the special phasefighters diverged a lot, showing that they were all designed by completely different companies or research institutions.

Their quality also left a lot to be desired. The native aliens had only recently started to utilize phasefighters in order to counter mechs, but there was still a distinct difference in refinement between ordinary phasefighters and these more specialized craft. The experimental designs clearly looked as if the aliens had taken a standard phasefighter design and hastily grafted additional modules on them in order to make them more suitable to hinder expert mechs.

The green starfighters with their strange nets was an expensive if somewhat effective solution to contain an expert mech, if only for a short duration. Even if the C-Man did not possess the ability to morph its exterior into ripping chainsaw teeth, Venerable Vincent could have utilized his willpower to break out of the trap if he was willing to expend more willpower.

The yellow phasefighters were a bit more confounding. Instead of trying to keep their distance, they utilized large and thick plates mounted to their front as walls to push expert mechs around. Although there weren't as many of them, it only required four or five of these expensive craft to pin an expert mech in place!

Regardless of whether the yellow phasefighters managed to entrap their targets or not, the purple phasefighters that appeared from the midst of the enemy swarm gained enough opportunities to lock on to their targets and launch their powerful transphasic missiles!

The threat posed by these missiles were much greater than usual. The sensors of the expert mechs detected that the warheads were not only filled with much more powerful explosive materials than usual, but also contained a higher phasewater content!

"The aliens are really willing to spend a lot of money and phasewater to take us down!"

"It's worth it so long as the missiles manage to do their jobs."

"Evade the missiles and shoot them down as quickly as possible!" General Ark roared.

He began to get more serious. Three more integrated luminar crystal cannons opened up on his Lionheart. They already began to glow white before unleashing a rapid barrage of resonance-empowered light beams that accurately struck a missile each.

The firing rate of the luminar crystal cannons was impressive, though it clearly exerted a lot of strain on the crystals. It was only due to the true resonance acting on the crystalline components that they were able to perform way above their safe margins without bursting into shards.

The effects were impressive. Dozens of transphasic hyper missiles fell in a matter of seconds, causing them to fall apart, explode prematurely or go way off-course.

The other expert mechs did not sit around either. Even if they were much more inclined towards melee combat, none of their pilots dared to be pedantic at this time and utilized their backup pistols to intercept one missile after another with extraordinary skill.

As high-tier expert pilots, their marksmanship had already reached an impressive height even if they did not specifically invest a lot of time in this skillset.

Most of the transphasic missiles eventually got wasted mid-flight, but a couple of them ultimately managed to get through the relentless barrage and were on the verge of striking the C-Man!

Venerable Vincent Ricklin, whose expert mech had been especially targeted by the enemy special phasefighters from the start, had grown increasingly more furious at being singled out all of the time.

He poured his anger into his C-Man, causing it to resonate even stronger with his willpower.

Just before the transphasic missiles were about to strike the expert brawler mech, the C-Man suddenly released several resonance-empowered spikes of smart metal and accurately caused them to pierce the cones of every incoming warhead!

Numerous powerful explosions set off in front of the C-Man, forcing the machine to jerk away.

"Are you okay, Vincent?"

"My mech is fine, but I am pissed. I had to sacrifice a small amount of smart metal to block those powerful missiles."

"You made the right decision. The purple phasefighters have already launched most if not all of their payloads. They shouldn't be able to launch a second salvo anytime soon unless they return to their motherships to rearm themselves. We need to get past this blockade and execute our mission. Do not let our efforts be in vain."

"Fine, but I am not going to let these special phasefighters gang up on me for free!"

The Lionheart continued to utilize its powerful integrated armaments to take down one special phasefighter after another. The expert command mech paid special attention to the yellow phasefighters that still tried to ram and cage the expert mechs with their ridiculously large front sides.

The other expert mechs also tried to whittle them down by shooting them with their backup pistols. Their secondary ranged armaments may be weak, but their shots still packed quite a punch by augmenting their power with true resonance.

Even so, the elite pilots of the yellow phasefighters tried their best to avoid letting their craft get hit from the sides or rear if they depleted their azure energy shields.

Their frontal sides behaved similar to the physical shields of knight mechs. While it was possible to break them, it took a disproportionate amount of effort to do so. The expert mechs wasted far too much time on trying to fell these hardy craft to the point that it was delaying their advance towards Duqeste XI.

The C-Man spent more time on trying to outflank and crush the yellow phasefighters than actually trying to fly past the annoying craft.

Venerable Vincent even decided to get more serious by employing another trick!

A moderate quantity of smart metal and other small compoonents split off from the C-Man, causing the expert mech to look a little thinner and less armored at some of its exterior sections.

As the glob of TESMAS wobbled in the vicinity of the expert mech it came from, a companion spirit emerged from the cockpit of the C-Man and entered the mass of smart metal!

"Vinny, let's beat these aliens up!" Venerable Vincent called.

"Huah!"

Unlike the companion spirits of many of his fellow Larkinsons, Vincent's own spirit actually resembled a miniaturized muscular version of himself.

When Vinny began to take possession of the glob of smart metal, he channeled his principal's willpower and quickly reshaped his new home into a miniature version of the C-Man!

Although the miniature version of the C-Man lacked a lot of components that made the expert brawler mech so strong, it was still powerful enough in its own right due to the strong true resonance holding it all together!

The mini-C-Man theatrically slammed its fists together before launching away at the nearest squadron of yellow phasefighters.

The small smart machine did not possess any powerful propulsion systems, but its vastly reduced size and mass allowed it to move swiftly through space, especially with Vinny actively working to resonate with the nanomachines that made up its small form.

The nunser phasefighters quickly registered the new threat and tried to shoot it down, but their miss rates were much higher due to the small size and impressive maneuverability demonstrated by the miniature C-Man.

As soon as the small machine managed to get close to an enemy phasefighter, it repeatedly punched the craft's azure energy shield with its tiny fists.

Despite the ridiculous size of this humanoid mass of smart metal, the tiny machine actually inflicted serious damage on the phasefighter's energy defenses!

This was not just due to its resonance empowerment, but also because it had actually been mounted with a miniature space suppressor!

The space suppressor's effect was very weak, but as long as Vinny amplified its effects with true resonance, it was able to weaken the transphasic effect of the opposing energy shield quite well!

The nunser pilot of the yellow phasefighter grew astonished when he finally realized the threat posed by the tiny version of the C-Man.

Size apparently didn't matter as the small smart machine eventually managed to tear through the azure energy shield before slamming its fists straight into the cockpit!

Despite all of the armoring and reinforcement, it did not take too much effort for the construct controlled by Vinny to punch through the layers and pulverize the body of the hapless nunser fighter pilot!

"Huah!"

Vinny let loose a victorious roar before he abandoned the disabled craft and hunted down another yellow phasefighter!

The other Larkinson expert pilots had never seen this before. While they had developed their own synergies between their expert mechs and their companion spirits, they never went as far as to create a miniature copy of their own machines that could apparently fight on an independent basis!

"What is that, Vincent?!" Imon Ingvar asked.

"That's my new mini-mech." The pilot of C-Man boasted. "I call it my Tiny C. Just look at it. Doesn't it look manly? Don't underestimate its size. I can't do everything with it, but it has potential. Once Vinny grows stronger, it can pilot a larger smart metal frame. I can't wait until it is able to reach the size of a phase lord like the Tireless Engine one day!"

Venerable Vincent certainly had big dreams.

For now, the 'Tiny C' was only a nuisance compared to its progenitor, but its current capabilities already presented a lot of potential uses.

General Ark was already able to think of an especially helpful application to the Larkinson!

If the Tiny C grew a bit smaller, it could become compact enough to squeeze into indoor areas that were normally only accessible to infantry. This would allow the smart metal construct controlled by a companion spirit to easily board enemy starships or hostile installations and disable them from within!

Even if the Tiny C was not able to match the power of the full-sized C-Man in this diminished form, it was still far stronger than any infantry soldier of the same size!

If Venerable Vincent was able to advance to the rank of ace pilot, then the power of his Tiny C would drastically rise.

This was especially the case if the Design Department upgraded the C-Man and replaced its old TESMAS with a much more powerful and technologically advanced smart metal armor system!

All of these improvements would make it a lot more difficult if not impossible for any internal defenses to stop the smart metal machine if it decided to go on a rampage!

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