The Mech Touch

Every Larkinson became stunned as Venerable Ghanso Larkinson did the unthinkable.

His mech attacked a mech piloted by another Larkinson!

Not only that, he attacked an honored veteran who served in the Mech Corps for many years, no less!

Though Ghanso employed great skill and careful aim to disable the Dawnbreaker without imperilling the life of its mech pilot, that did not change the fact that he violated one of the family's most fundamental rules!

By shooting another Larkinson, he implicitly conveyed that the laws of the Bright Republic trumped the rules of his own family!

While it sounded ridiculous, no Larkinson ever thought those two would ever come into conflict.

The Larkinsons were an upright, military family who served the Bright Republic with honor and distinction.

They possessed a lot of faith in the justness and properness of the state. The Larkinsons wouldn't have dedicated their lives so wholeheartedly if the Republic they served was corrupt!

Of course, to Ves, the Larkinsons were mostly treated as unwitting grunts by the true powers of the Bright Republic. The level his family operated never ascended to a height where they became exposed to the dirty dealings that took place at the top!

Perhaps Ghanso's mission was the first time the Larkinsons became exposed to the true face of the Bright Republic!

Ves held some blame for dragging the Larkinsons into the pit. If he hadn't become such a successful mech designer, the Larkinson Family wouldn't have been exposed to the sharks that operated at this greater stage!

Naturally, Ves did not feel guilty at all. In his perspective, he was doing his family a favor. The Larkinsons possessed so much power, but rarely used it to better themselves! They should thank him for opening their eyes!

"Ghanso!" An old female veteran shouted. "You have taken up arms against your own blood! Do you have no shame!? Even if you are on a mission, there are some lines that you should never cross!"

The Glittering Comet did not seem deterred at all! It pointed its rifle straight at the mech piloted by the woman in question.

"I admire you, Eisbeth Larkinson. I listened to your stories when I was young. Yet that does not mean that you are right! Don't blow this situation out of proportion! I just shot apart the leg of a mech that is in the way, nothing more! I have never threatened the life of any Larkinsons!"

"You fool!" Ves couldn't help but shout. "Even if you are an expert pilot, damaging mechs is an inherently dangerous action! What seems like minor damage can easily cascade into major damage elsewhere! With the firepower of your expert mech's rifle, you only have to make one misjudgement to damage the cockpit!"

In truth, as long as Ghanso was careful enough, he could probably avoid damaging the cockpit. Mechs these days were quite compartmentalized, and no part was more shielded and separated from the rest of the mech than the cockpit!

The degree of compartmentalization depended heavily on the mech type, design style and budget of the mech design. The Dawnbreaker, which had been explicitly designed to preserve the life of the mech pilot, was a lot safer to pilot than a Desolate Soldier!

This meant that out of all of the mechs that made up the wall of mechs, it was the cheaper and poorly-armored Desolate Soldiers that posed the most risk to their mech pilots!

Ves knew his own mech designs the best. When he estimated the immense firepower of the Glittering Comet, he knew that his Desolate Soldiers were as fragile as leaves!

Ghanso's expert mech already crippled a Dawnbreaker with a single shot! Even though its armor coverage mainly converged around its torso and its formula was mainly configured to resist energy damage, it was still an astounding sight!

The Glittering Comet began to fly forward again.

"Since you've explained the risks of standing in my way, please tell the rest to stand aside. Don't force me to fire again!"

Instead of quaking in front of the Glittering Comet, the mechs instead remained rooted in place!

They would not allow Ghanso to proceed further!

"Ghanso!" Clinton Larkinson shouted. "I originally sympathized with your views! Now that you have fired your weapon at one of our own, I've realized how far you have gone! Duty does not equal serfdom! The degree in which you dedicate yourself to the state has gone too far! When the Republic wants brothers to fight against brothers, perhaps it is time to question whether it is still worthy of our loyalty!"

Though Clinton's words weren't specifically meant to support Ves, he nonetheless encapsulated every Larkinson's grievance against Ghanso's stance!

"Go back, Ghanso! Don't turn yourself into a kinslayer!"

"You are no brother of mine, anymore!"

"I looked up to you! How could you have tarnished our Larkinson name today? Get lost!"

The Glittering Comet's shiny exterior shook as Ghanso momentarily lost control. The scolding by his fellow family members started to affect his mentality!

This was normally impossible! Expert pilots possessed a near-unshakable will! They never faltered against even the most awful odds! They would rather die than betray their principles!

However, the root of their strength was also their vulnerability.

From his understanding of expert pilots, so long as they began to doubt their principles, their will would probably exhibit flaws!

Though Ves wasn't sure what Ghanso's principles actually were, following the rules and valuing his family probably ranked very highly in his mentality!

Ves began to look up to the Glittering Comet. Would they be able to defeat Ghanso in this fashion? Was attacking other Larkinsons a step too far to someone who always admired his own family's heritage?

"I.." Ghanso spoke. "I am not at fault. If not me, then the hundred other mechs of the Mech Corps would have shot at you. They don't have the control that I have. The reason why I asked to confront you alone is because I am the only one capable and willing enough to exercise restraint!"

"You.. you still haven't given up?" Melkor asked in astonishment. "Isn't it enough that you shot at a Larkinson once?!"

"Shut up, Melkor! You are not qualified to look down on me, you dropout! Family or not, we are citizens of the Bright Republic! What you are doing is already intolerable to the Mech Corps! If I refuse to execute my orders, I will be condemned as well! This is why I have to fulfill my orders faithfully! As long as I am "

A wave of conviction emanated from the Glittering Comet, causing every Larkinson to feel a chill.

Even Ves became affected by the outpouring of will from the mech! His eyes widened as he recognized that Ghanso's managed to solidify his wavering will!

All of his hesitation was gone! Only his mission mattered!

Before the Larkinsons could scold Ghanso further, the Glittering Comet fired yet again!

A loud boom erupted from its rifle! The Desolate Soldier that Ghanso targeted practically tore in half as its lower half separated from its upper half!

The damage was so catastrophic that the cockpit automatically detected that the situation was untenable and ejected away!

Two huge crashes thundered the ground as both halves of the mechs crashed on the ground! Fires began to erupt from the wreckage, releasing toxic fumes in the air!

Just like before, Ghanso carefully aimed his shot downwards so that the round impacted the ground a few kilometers away, thereby harming no one else!

Even so, the debris flying away from the shattering was enough to kill a crowd of humans!

Ves, who almost lost his footing yet again due to the thundering shocks, couldn't help but grasp Lucky tighter and run backwards!

The power of a single human was incomparable to the power of mechs!

Even with his abundant protection, he had no confidence in protecting himself against the power of mechs! Merely the aftershocks was enough to overload his shield generators and turn him into mincemeat!

As Ves hurried away, the Glittering Comet no longer held back.

Venerable Ghanso methodically fired his rifle after taking only a second or so to aim! This was enough time for an expert pilot specializing in marksmanship to control his damage output to a very precise degree!

While he wasn't too proficient in figuring out the extent of his damage against different mech models, his intuitive understanding was very high!

His rifle continued release round after round! Ghanso had configured his rifle to the lightest setting, yet it was still enough to crush any mech opposing him with plenty of damage to spare!

A battle between an expert mech and more than a hundred regular mechs shouldn't have been so one-sided.

At the very least, if the Larkinsons and Avatars did anything else stand in place, then they might be able to overwhelm the Glittering Comet through sheer weight of numbers!

Unlike the Belisarius, the Glittering Comet was still a pure ranged mech! Its defensive prowess was fairly limited compared to other melee mechs, so its defense shouldn't be as perverse!

As the mechs piloted by the Larkinsons and Avatars continued to break apart and collapse on the debris-strewn ground, the Mech Nursery began to resemble a graveyard of mechs!

Ves inwardly bleeded at the sight of mechs getting downed! Most of them belonged to his Avatars and Sentinels! In the current stage of the Sand War, it was incredibly difficult to procure more mechs or the materials required to build them! Each Desolate Soldier and Dawnbreaker was precious to him and the LMC!

A part of him wanted to give up and tell his fellow Larkinsons to stop their futile actions.

He recognized that his plan to stall Ghanso had failed. Outside of his expectations, his stubborn cousin decisely attacked the mechs piloted by family in order to complete his mission!

"Well, at least I have made a point." He muttered. "Support for Ghanso's faction within the family will probably drop to rock bottom after today!"

Those who were neutral would probably be repelled by the depths that Ghanso was willing to go in the name of duty. Ghanso unwittingly validated every accusation that Ves had made!

Of course, the more savvier Larkinsons would probably recognize that Ves played Ghanso like a fiddle. If he hadn't provoked the irascible expert pilot so much, the situation wouldn't have deteriorated to this extent!

Therefore, Ves was sure that the hardliners in his family would not easily give up on tradition.

That was fine. As long as Ves won over the majority of the Larkinson Family, he would definitely be able to grasp it completely!

This was an extremely important goal for him due to one important reason: the family's 25 percent ownership of the LMC!

As long as Ves took over the family, he could essentially control the family's stake in the company, thereby regaining absolute control of his company!

If not for these shares, Ves wouldn't have bothered so much with the Larkinsons! As it was, he could never allow the conservative and traditional faction led by Ghanso to control a portion of his company!

He shook his head. All of this was up for the future. For now, he still had to make it through the current crisis!

An expert mech confronting numerous standard mechs almost always led to the same outcome. The latter had no chance.

Dozens of mechs crashed or collapsed to the ground as cockpits continued to eject into the air!

With the help of his supreme marksmanship, Ghanso precisely controlled his aim to the point that not a single mech pilot came close to losing their life!

As Ghanso continued to disable mech after mech, his understanding of their properties deepened. Less and less explosions and fires erupted and the amount of debris being flung had lessened as well!

Soon enough, not a single mech opposing Ghanso was left! All of them lay shattered and broken beneath its feet!

The hearts of every Larkinson who witnessed this sight or survived Ghanso's attacks had frozen!

Even the spectators tuning in on the broadcasts of the journalists in the field were shocked!