The Mech Touch

Commander Casella Ingvar never felt so driven as today.

Though she did not consider herself to be muddle-headed in the past, she admitted that she hadn't exactly set a solid enough goal or ambition for herself.

Merely wishing to become more powerful or to become a better protector and supporter of her brother was far from enough.

That may have been enough for her to advance to the rank of expert pilot, but ace pilots had to reach a higher standard.

Casella actually found it to be ironic that the primary driver of her breakthrough had been her inability to save her brother and her nearly impossible goal of bringing him back to life.

Previously, she often accused her brother for possessing a strong and frankly unhealthy fixation towards her. As much as she loved Imon, she did not think it was appropriate for him to dedicate his entire life towards her own sister.

Casella was not as unaware of the rumors that others shared behind her back as they assumed. They admired Imon's strength, but also considered him mad. They accused him of having a sister complex and that he probably would have married her if the practice was acceptable.

The worst part about these idle rumors was that Casella honestly couldn't say they were wrong.

In the end, Casella finally understood where Imon was coming from. Her breakthrough to ace pilot had caused her to develop her own brother complex of sorts.

There were many different goals to fight for. Casella wanted to fight for her brother. This goal had become so central to her psyche and willpower that its importance exceeded her loyalty to the Larkinson Clan!

That was not to say she was ready to defect from the clan on the spot, but if there was ever a conflict between her goal and her duty, she would not feel guilty in the slightest if she chose the former over the latter!

Casella did not think that she would be forced to do so anytime soon. The Larkinson Clan remained aligned to her own goals, and Ves was still the best mech designer to upgrade and improve the Minerva.

"LET US ANNOUNCE YOUR SAINTHOOD TO THE HUMANS AND ALIENS IN THE ARVEST LIMA SYSTEM." Her battle partner spoke. "IT IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE FOR US TO MAINTAIN A LOW PROFILE ANYMORE. SINCE THAT IS THE CASE, SHOW EVERYONE YOUR NEWFOUND STRENGTH AND COMMAND THEIR RESPECT."

Casella knew that her battle partner was right. It was impossible for her to travel to Messier 87 even if she advanced to the rank of god pilot one day. She still needed to rely on the best of red humanity to develop the necessary tech and supply the resources needed to build the device that could make the crossing.

She needed to expand her influence beyond the Larkinson Clan and build up a reputation among the elites of human civilization. Only by consistently proving her strength, her abilities and her value would she be able to forge fruitful relationships with the god pilots and Star Designers who could deliver her to Messier 87 one day!

Time was precious. Her breakthrough to ace pilot had caused the Minerva to become affected by forced resonance, which temporarily elevated its performance to that of an ace mech!

Her eyes glowed brighter as she actively stretched her Command Field, the zone in which she was able to reach out and empower any friendly mech within her range.

Just as she suspected, her Saint Kingdom was much different from that of any other ace pilot.

The best way to describe it was that it was an evolution of her old Command Field instead of her resonance shield.

This was probably the defining property that set a command-oriented ace pilot apart from more conventional ace pilots.

Casella knew that she had a choice to evolve her powers to specialize in strengthening her personal combat capabilities and empowering others during her breakthrough.

She decisively committed to the latter without needing to make a conscious decision. She had chosen to become a commander, and she fully intended to see it through.

What was important was that now that she had reached this level of strength, she had gained an unparalleled ability to command her troops, but sacrificed an opportunity to turn herself into a much more powerful combatant in the process.

Any ace pilot could defeat her and the Minerva if they were caught by themselves. Casella knew without a doubt that she could never fight at her full power ever again unless she had an army of friendly mechs at her disposal. Becoming a commander had become a permanent part of her identity.

One of the indicators of this profound change was the retention of her resonance shield. She still kept it, though it had become a lot more capable of blocking incoming damage.

It simply wasn't the same as a traditional Saint Kingdom, though.

Conventional ace pilots could exert their willpower onto anything that entered their domain, including enemies. They could sap the power from projectiles, slow down enemy phasefighters and induce fear in the minds of vulnerable soldiers.

Casella's resonance shield only offered the more basic protective properties that she was accustomed to as an expert pilot.

Yet what she gained in exchange was magnificent. Her Command Field had become so much stronger.

She was able to track everything that took place in a much wider range than before.

She was able Commandeer friendly mechs at much further distances if she chose.

She was also able to analyze and predict the actions of most enemies that entered her massive domain field!

The Sentinel Commander began to take advantage of all of these expanded capabilities.

First, she began to Commandeer almost all of the Larkinson mechs serving in the expedition fleet.

This not included the predominantly ranged mech units that were located in the rear, but also the melee mech units that were deployed closer to the front!

Many Avatars, Swordmaidens, Penitent Sisters and so on became surprised when they felt the powerful influence of Commander Casella.

The distances between the newly ascended ace pilot and the melee mechs easily surpassed a hundred kilometers!

While that was not particularly huge in a large space battle like the one taking place right now, it was still a lot further than the dozen or so kilometers that previously characterized the radius of her Command Field.

The melee mech pilots of the Larkinson Clan did not look a gift horse in the mouth. Even if they harbored ambitions to break through by relying on their own efforts, they were still very curious to experience what it was like to wield the power of a demigod.

Perhaps they might even learn a few lessons that would help them gain a clearer understanding on what they needed to do master the same level of strength one day!

Many Larkinson mechs at the front began to light up just like all of the ranged mechs in the rear.

The latter had already been overperforming on the battlefield for a while now. The Commandeered Larkinson mechs not only attained much higher hit rates, but also coordinated their fire a lot more effectively, allowing them to take down targets much faster but without wasting any unnecessary energy and ammunition.

Once Casella began to Commandeer thousands of additional melee mechs in the more forward positions, their strength and fighting approach completely changed!

Each machine easily wielded the power of a quasi-expert mech. More importantly, Casella seemed to control them more directly, thereby causing them to fight as if the pilot possessed a large measure of her transcended skills and battlefield awareness!

The mech pilots in the cockpits of the Commandeered mechs voluntarily surrendered control to the ace pilot so that their mechs practically fought like perfect clockwork machines.

It was beautiful. Their coordination was already pretty good, but once Casella took control of the mechs, they moved in grand patterns that looked incredibly elegant and smooth from afar.

That was not all. All of the machines that glowed in dark gold resisted a lot more hits and inflicted greater damage when attacking. They even weakened transphasic energy shields to a much stronger degree due to the empowerment of their space suppressors!

All of these changes proved to be far too much to the elite orven phasefighters that had been grappling against the Larkinsons for a while.

Since the Larkinson Army was among the strongest second-class mech forces defending the Arvest Lima System, the predominantly orven invasion force had deployed much of their more elite phasefighters to entangle the Larkinson mechs.

It was a sound strategy as the Larkinson mechs and mech pilots had already proven their ability to trounce regular phasefighter units!

Though the orven phasefighter pilots weren't necessarily skilled enough to match the Larkinson mech pilots in skills, their more powerful interceptors were a lot more troublesome to fight against!

Their mobility, their hitting power, their transphasic missiles and their strengthened azure energy shields caused them to inflict greater losses onto the Larkinsons while not necessarily suffering too many casualties in return.

This was especially when the elite phasefighters always backed off and retreated when their azure energy shields had dropped to 20 percent integrity or less!

In many cases, the Larkinson mechs were unable to finish off these cowardly phasefighters, thereby causing their old enemies to return later with fully recharged azure energy shields!

The clever orven commander in charge of the elite phasefighters relied on this tactic to force the Larkinsons into a grueling, drawn-out contest of attrition, which was their least favorite approach towards combat!

As soon as Casella extended her power, the tables had turned.

The elite phasefighters no longer possessed a mobility advantage as the Larkinson mechs were able to catch up to them. Not just the light mechs, but the medium mechs were able to intercept their interceptors on a wide scale!

Once the mechs got close, their space suppressors sapped the strength of their azure energy shields, causing them to collapse after taking just a couple of blows from resonance-empowered swords and other melee weapons!

After that, it was game over for the elite phasefighters, as they had no ability to defend themselves once they lost their powerful azure energy shields!

The orven phasefighter pilots tried to adjust to the much higher tempo enforced by their opponents. They began to fight more aggressively themselves, hoping that their counterattacks would successfully force the Larkinson mechs to back off and abort their attack runs.

It didn't work. The dark gold coronas that surrounded all of the Larkinson mechs significantly amplified the defense of the machines!

The Larkinson mechs not only resisted a lot more attacks than before, but only backed off and fell back to the rear once they were on the verge of suffering serious damage.

With a commander as excellent as Casella in charge, her timing was always perfect.

Barring a few accidents such as mechs getting hit by an errant shot from the primary gun battery of an alien warship, Commander Casella personally ensured that no more casualties fell among the melee mechs!

The stupendous performance of the Commandeered melee mechs practically caused the orven phasefighter pilots to despair and lose all of their confidence in the battle.

"They're breaking!"

"I'm not surprised, haha! They lost over half of their number in just a couple of minutes!"

This was a small but important victory on the greater battlefield. A hole in the enemy lines had suddenly emerged. The orven assault fleets hastily had to divert their reserves to fill up the gap and prevent the humans from exploiting this flaw!

Though the quick response prevented any cascading failures, the orvens felt anything but good about it, because the reinforcements were getting trounced even faster than the previous elite phasefighter units!

Surprisingly enough, that was not even the worst that the newly ascended ace pilot had inflicted upon the alien attackers.

While Casella invested a lot of attention to micromanaging all of those Larkinson melee mechs at the front, she had diverted even more of her power to the 35 super-empowered mechs in the rear!

She could only elevate so many machines to a power level that was equivalent to that of a low-tier expert mech, so she had to choose wisely.

This was why she decisively chose to bestow this awesome privilege to 35 Transcendent Punishers Mark III!

What was the meaning of introducing 35 quasi-first-class pseudo-expert heavy artillery mechs onto the battlefield?

The impact they produced easily exceeded that of all of those Commandeered Larkinson melee mechs!

That was because the extraordinarily strengthened Transcendent Punisher Mark III's were beginning to lay siege on distant enemy warships!

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