The Mech Touch

Though the daring raid only caused the Ghirard Fleet to lose roughly 30 percent of the supplies and other war material stashed on Duqaste XI, much of the destroyed hardware consisted of expensive explosive munitions or high-value hardware that couldn't be resupplied as easily.

The operation was already a success in this regard. The damage should be able to postpone the alien assault on Duqeste VII by at least two weeks if not longer if the aliens suffered greater logistical problems.

General Ark was tempted to let this go further. The original plan demanded that the raid destroy at least 45 percent of all of the supplies stashed on the surface. This should produce enough of a delay to deter the Ghirard Fleet from launching an all-out attack by 3 to 4 weeks.

In the current context of the Red Tide Offensive, a delay of at least 21 days was an eternity!

That was enough time to reinforce the Duqeste System with a handful of mech divisions and an even greater quantity of human starfighters.

The additional delays would also give the mechers and the fleeters more time to fortify the planetary and orbital defenses further and force the aliens to spend more effort to take control of the entire place.

The ripple effects of these delays were fairly small, but still significant enough to represent a major contribution to the war effort. The fate of the Torald Middle Zone may eventually be decided by this action.

In short, the more the Warborn were able to delay the Ghirard Fleet, the greater the chance that the 3rd defensive band in the Torald Middle Zone would eventually be able to hold on. That was enough to give General Ark and other participating expert pilots a huge sense of fulfillment.

However, the reason why General Ark decided to err on the side of caution was because he was feeling more and more uncomfortable as the operation continued.

The more time passed by, the more Ark felt uneasy about the relative lack of resistance from the native aliens.

Sure, the defenders of Duqaste XI were still doing what they could to repel the expert mechs.

However, their warships, most of their phasefighters and their static defenses were ultimately not equipped to counter powerful and highly maneuverable expert mechs.

The most the defending nunsers could do was to take lots of shots at the rapidly-moving expert mechs and hope that one of their attacks occasionally struck the resonance shields of the expert mechs, thereby causing their defensive buffers to thin a little further.

General Ark quickly inspected the state of the resonance shields of the Lionheart and the expert mechs that were transmitting their basic telemetry to the expert command mech.

The Lionheart's resonance shield was in the best state. It had only lost 40 percent of its integrity.

The other expert mechs were a little worse off. The Riot and C-Man had lost over 50 percent of their resonance shield integrity while the Blade Chaser was a little better off due to its better evasion and relatively unremarkable appearance.

Much of the reason why the expert mechs sustained so much damage so far was because they momentarily got delayed by the special phasefighters.

The Lionheart and the other expert mechs had already eliminated enough of these experimental craft that the remainder shouldn't pose much of a problem anymore. That should make the return trip a lot less time-consuming and dangerous.

Then why did General Ark feel as if he was about to get in a lot of trouble?

It was as if a giant set of jaws was slowly emerging from the shadows and about to engulf the Lionheart and all of the other expert mechs!

The only obvious threat that could make Ark feel so threatened was the Tireless Engine. He had made sure to pay attention to the duel unfolding further away from the planet in case the nunser phase lord decided to disengage from the Mars and attempt to bully the weaker expert mechs.

No such thing had happened, though. Although the battle between the two powerful transcendent beings occasionally swing in the favor of one side to another, the Tireless Engine did not have the luxury to divert his attention elsewhere.

Then what else could make him feel so apprehensive? Was it the presence of hidden archeships? Was it the arrival of incoming reinforcements? Was it because the Ghirard Fleet was secretly preparing to deploy an unknown superweapon that could make his life miserable?

Any of these possibilities could be true. General Ark did not have enough information for his intuition to form a more solid guess, but the mere hint of a danger on the horizon was already enough for him to decide his team had done enough.

Even though a part of him still felt a bit of regret that he had yet to encounter a challenge dire enough to draw out his hidden potential, he was not about to gamble so recklessly his life and the lives of his subordinates.

"We're pulling out." He repeated his instruction. "This fight has been too easy and not too unpredictable so far. Rather than assuming that the Ghirard Fleet doesn't have the means to defeat us, it is better to act as if they are ready to spring a trap on us all. Have you already seen that the native aliens have been moving to encircle us and block our escape routes as much as possible?"

"I am glad that I am not the only one who feel this way." Venerable Orfan said. "I think I have a slightly better idea why it is better that we leave sooner rather than later. According Qilanxo, a powerful being is on the way. It is approaching Duqaste XI from the edge of the star system in warp travel. It's either a really powerful alien warship, or another phase lord."

"Another phase lord?!" Venerable Imon Ingvar sounded alarmed. "We can't handle another big guy like the Tireless Engine. Even if the new phase lord is weaker, none of us can resist the attacks of such a powerful being for long."

"Well, whatever is on the way, we need to get out before it is too late. We still have a chance to avoid confrontation."

Though Venerable Vincent Ricklin personally wanted to stick around and have a shot at the newcomer, he was sober enough to understand it was not wise to fight this bout so deep in enemy-occupied territory.

His C-Man and Tiny C both pulled out from the half-destroyed warehouse that they had been rampaging in and flew straight into the air.

The other expert mechs followed suit as well.

Expert pilots possessed keen intuitions and were often able to sense serious threats to their lives by observing the tiniest of clues.

These clues could consist of anything, such as the nervous movement patterns of enemy phasefighters or the lack of strong resistance from the native aliens during this phase.

The more General Ark thought about it, the more this situation started to feel like a vague trap.

"Be on the lookout for any surprises." He said. "If my hunch is correct, the native aliens will soon do everything in their power to delay our departure in the hopes of bringing in the powerful threat that is coming from afar."

The only consolation was that the distant threat still needed a bit of time to arrive in orbit of Duqaste XI. A delay of a few minutes wouldn't change the situation all that much, but if they ended up getting stuck for fifteen minutes or more, there was much greater chance that they might never be able to leave!

As the expert mechs ascended from the surface, the native aliens finally began to employ their first means to hinder the human raiders from making a getaway.

A combination of nunser sub-capital warships and particularly large nunser phasefighters began to form a loose net in higher orbit before they began to deploy a powerful energy field that altered the properties of a wide swathe of space!

"What are they doing?!"

"Unknown! My mech is taking measurements and analyzing the data as quickly as possible, but the energy field generated by the Ghirard Fleet is unlike anything humans have encountered before!"

The Larkinson expert pilots already started to make a lot of wild guesses, from deploying an immensely large energy shield to trying to distort the fabric of space to slow down the escaping expert mechs.

Whatever the case, the native aliens were keen on protecting the warships and phasefighters that were generating this unknown energy field, because the remaining enemy assets began to open fire at the expert mechs with much less restraint than before!

Although the alien warships and phasefighters refrained from firing any kinetic projectiles, they did not hesitate to fire energy beams so long as the firing angles did not cause the attacks to strike the surface of the planet.

The warships were especially difficult to deal with as many of them mounted missile launcher arrays that were able to launch sizable salvos of transphasic missiles at the expert mechs!

The Lionheart had to work harder to shoot down the missiles before they could reach their targets, and the other expert mechs sometimes had no choice to resist the attacks with their resonance shields due to their poor missile interception capabilities.

The expert pilots all understood a little better why first-raters liked their multipurpose mechs so much. The versatility of such machines allowed them to handle this kind of situation a lot easier than specialized mechs!

As the expert mechs struggled to weather the storm and get past all of the alien assets, the energy field continued to grow stronger, yet still failed to produce any noticeable results.

General Ark only grew more and more apprehensive as this strange phenomenon continued. All his sensors could determine for certain was that the enemy warships and phasefighters were expending a lot of power to maintain this collective effect!

"What are they doing?!"

"I… do not feel directly threatened by their strange actions. I don't think the nunsers are targeting us directly!"

"Then what are they trying to accomplish?! Have they formed a giant spatial barrier that will block our attempts to leave the battlefield?!"

"That is not it." General Ark frowned. "There is no barrier of any kind in our way. Matter can still pass through the energy field without a problem."

The more the expert mechs struggled through all of the attacks, the closer they came to the collective energy field.

The expert mechs still did not feel anything threatening about the unknown energy waves saturating the surrounding space. The expert pilots made sure to use what remained of their resonance shields to block these exotic energy waves for fear they might have an adverse effect.

It was not until the expert mechs were halfway out that the purpose of the giant energy field finally became clear.

"DANGER! MOVE AWAY!"

The expert pilots all sensed an acute threat and frantically moved their expert mechs away just as a huge surprise dropped on site all of a sudden!

"Is that the Tireless Engine?!"

"No! Ghirard is still fighting against the Mars over there! This… this is a different nunser phase lord!"

The expert pilots all grew shocked at what occurred. They never imagined that the Ghirard Fleet had a way of speeding up the arrival of an incoming phase lord by generating a strange energy field that essentially allowed the newcomer to take a spatial shortcut!

The warships and phasefighters responsible for making this happen visibly looked drained. This effort had taken a lot out of their systems, but the results more than justified the damage they incurred!

The new phase lord needed a little time to regain his bearings, but once he managed to stabilize himself, he openly announced himself to both friend and foe!

"I HAVE ANSWERED YOUR SUMMONS, FATHER. FEAR ME, DESPOILERS OF THE RED OCEAN, FOR L'KOI, THE FACELESS WARRIOR, SHALL END YOUR TYRANNY UPON THE STARS!"

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