The Mech Touch

The first two expert mechs developed and employed by the Larkinson Clan were about to test their mettle against each other.

Every Larkinson who was able to watch the feed of the test session paid rapt attention to the coming confrontation. Even though both mechs were subject to numerous restrictions in order to prevent any accidents from occurring, this was still a tense moment as the winner of this scenario would definitely affect the ranking of expert pilots in the Larkinson Clan.

Joshua, Jannzi, Orfan and Dise had all gathered in a private observation room. They studied the expert mechs displayed on the large projections with a great amount of attention.

"Who do you think will come out on top?" Orfan grinned as she lazily placed her hand on Jannzi's shoulder and pulled her closer. "Do you think that flighty little Tusa will be able to remain untouched or do you think that big bad Stark will be able to nail him down?"

Venerable Jannzi emphatically shoved Venerable Orfan's arm away. "I can't tell for sure. On the one hand, Tusa already spent several months with his expert mech. He knows all of the Dark Zephyr's nuances and is able to push it exactly as far as he needs it to go. On the other hand, the Amaranto is a masterwork. That gives Venerable Stark an immediate advantage."

"I don't think the power of the two mechs have much to do with who will win." Venerable Joshua said. "Just look at the mech types. Masterwork or not, I doubt the Amaranto is equipped with sensors that are good enough to uncover the Dark Zephyr's true coordinates."

He was right. As much as the Design Department tried to equip the Amaranto with good sensor systems, sophisticated data processing systems and advanced target acquisition systems, the Dark Zephyr's resonance ability was not something that pure technology could easily solve.

Venerable Dise nodded. "The only way for Davia to win is if she can figure out the Dark Zephyr's coordinates without relying on what her mech is telling her. The ability to go beyond the limitations of a mech is what separates good pilots from the bad ones."

This was the principal reason why piloted mechs continued to remain popular even when there were pilotless alternatives out there. Humanity's technology had advanced far enough to make battle bots viable enough to deploy on the battlefield.

Yet aside from the fact that their programming was always vulnerable to subversion, the fact that battle bots were never able to exceed their technical parameters made them a lot less exciting.

Mechs piloted by real human beings possessed an undeniable allure that humanity simply couldn't resist!

The emergence of expert pilots, ace pilots and god pilots breathed a lot of life in this seemingly idiosyncratic concept. This was why Joshua and his fellow peers did not completely count Venerable Stark out despite all of the odds stacked against her. They knew most of all that expert pilots were quite proficient in breaking the rules.

That also made every confrontation between expert mechs such a pain to predict. Striker mechs might not necessarily be able to beat light skirmishers and there was always a chance that knight mechs could defeat lancer mechs.

"It's starting."

Back inside the interference zone, the Amaranto finally began to fire its gun. Venerable Stark had kept the weapon warm, so from the moment she received permission to begin, she immediately fired a couple of light ranging shots.

Just as predicted, the thin red lances hit nothing substantial. Even if a couple of beams struck the visual shape of the Dark Zephyr, it was nothing but a distorted image that was able to fool nearly every method used to ascertain the position of an expert mech!

Despite the clear and obvious misses, Venerable Tusa did not relax in the slightest. Venerable Stark surely knew what the Dark Zephyr was capable of. This was just the start.

After firing dozens of low-powered single beams without accomplishing anything, Venerable Stark started to split the beams up. This was a special feature that was standard in many advanced laser weapons.

By using extra components to split the beam up and minutely angle them away from each other, it was possible for a single weapon to fire multiple beams that were spread in an expanding cone.

This was quite a difficult weapon system to handle proficiently. It was extremely difficult for both a mech and a mech pilot to precisely angle the splitting laser beams in a way that allowed them to accurately intercept multiple targets or hit multiple weak points of a mech or starship at once.

"Heh, it's too bad you aren't an Ylvainan, Davia!" Tusa couldn't help but grow cocky as the actual Dark Zephyr always managed to stay far away from the split beams. "If this is all you've got, then you can forget about laying a hand on my mech."

Each time the Amaranto fired a split shot, the Dark Zephyr danced and dodged an instant before as if it was just about to get hit. Even if that wasn't the case, Tusa diligently kept up the charade in order to give away as little clues as possible.

Venerable Stark maintained an impassive expression as she continued to pepper the spaces in front of her with laser beams.

She paid careful attention to the sensor and targeting data that her new expert mech fed to her. As much as the Amaranto tried to nail down the Dark Zephyr's actual coordinates, the data it supplied to her continued to miss the mark by at least dozens of meters.

No matter whether her mech tried to judge the Dark Zephyr's position by analyzing visible light, heat trails, gravitic positioning or anything else, the results were fundamentally skewed in different directions and different magnitudes.

Venerable Stark had already attempted to decipher some sort of pattern in the Dark Zephyr's deviation from its perceived coordinates, but Venerable Tusa already had months to work out a sophisticated system in which he made his actual hidden position as dynamic as possible.

Perhaps in one second his actual expert mech was a little bit to the right, while in the next second it had pivoted as far to the left as it could go. Tusa had also become quite good at reading the firing patterns of enemy ranged mechs after challenging himself in so many practice sessions. An average approach would never work against his expert mech!

The Amaranto was beginning to run low on energy. Though the mech came with additional energy cells, it had already fired its weapon plenty of times during this entire session.

While the luminar crystal rifle was currently firing its beams at the lowest power setting, the sheer number of times that Venerable Stark pulled the trigger was taking a toll on the energy her expert mech had left. Not even a masterwork was able to generate an infinite amount of energy!

"Hmm, it's a pity. My intuition and judgement hasn't improved to the point where I can pin this fast mech down." Venerable Stark frowned.

She was hoping that piloting an expert mech would improve her battle sense and make her more sensitive towards the Dark Zephyr's actual coordinates.

While she did experience a lot of improvements, she never excelled in this skillset. She was still dependent on the data that her mech provided to her. If the Amaranto made a misjudgement, then Venerable Stark wasn't easily able to correct for such a mistake.

Still, if Venerable Tusa thought that she was unable to strike his mech without converting to the Ylvainan Faith, then he was sorely wrong!

"Amaranto! Let our light dispel the darkness that clouds our eyes! ILLUMINATE!"

This was not a resonance ability that the mech designers had incorporated into the expert mech design. Instead, Venerable Stark leveraged the prime mech aspect of her machine, something which she had always been able to explore back when she piloted the Bright Beam Prime.

Different from her former prime mech, the Amaranto was much more intricately tied to the Illustrious One, which had been designed to accommodate the design spirit from the ground up. She was able to make a much more substantive connection to the alien entity.

The Amaranto's red glow began to grow brighter. At the same time, it began to light up in different shades.

Back on the Spirit of Bentheim, Ves was perhaps the only other person who knew what was taking place.

"Prime resonance! She's calling upon the Illustrious One!"

Through Venerable Stark's unceasing efforts, the design spirit was able to descend a lot closer to the Amaranto than what should ordinarily be the case. Even though the strain was taking a greater toll on her already weary mind, her will did not allow her to return in failure!

"We'll be facing far more difficult opponents in the future, so we cannot accept weakness! Dispel the darkness and light our way forward!"

After the Amaranto glowed so bright that it had turned into a rainbow, its third eye projected a broad and expanding field of subtle white light that instantly illuminated an entire section of space!

The false Dark Zephyr's black-coated surface grew a little brighter when shone with this constant flood of light, but that did not necessarily mean anything.

A few seconds passed before the Amaranto shifted the aim of its rifle and snapped a single, straight beam that unerringly hit a seemingly empty patch of space!

Unlike the previous times, the beam did not continue to course into space. Instead, it halted abruptly and seemingly disappeared. At the same time, the false image suddenly showed that it had been struck by an invisible attack!

Though the effect sounded complicated, the simple fact was that Venerable Stark successfully managed to identify and strike at the true coordinates of the Dark Zephyr!

Even when the light skirmisher activated its boosters in order to jerk aside, Venerable Stark was still able to read Tusa's actions ahead of time!

"That's cheating!" Tusa shouted over the communication channel! "You cheated! It's gotta be Ylvainans, right? Did you ask them for tips or something?!"

Venerable Stark shook her head as her expert mech slowly grew dimmer. As far as she was concerned, she had passed the challenge. Now that she came up with this trick, she could rely on it to identify the Dark Zephyr's actual coordinates at any time.

"You just don't use your expert mech well enough, Tusa." She calmly replied, though she wasn't able to hold back her sense of superiority. "There is more to your expert mech than meets the eye. What I just did was activating some of the hidden potential of my machine. I suggest you explore your own a little more thoroughly instead of sticking to your usual routine. Who knows, maybe you'll be able to block me next time."

In truth, the trick she employed was not flawless. One of the factors that allowed her to find the real Dark Zephyr so easily was the limited range between the two mechs. Due to the inverse-square law, at greater distances the illuminating light became more and more feeble. At longer ranges, it was unlikely for it to detect anything hidden.

Still, Venerable Stark was already satisfied with what she got. She judged that she could cooperate with the Illustrious One in more ways than just this improvised ability.

The session had finally ended. The two expert mechs flew side by side and returned to the Spirit of Bentheim without any incident.

The bots deployed by the Larkinson Clan all returned to their respective berths as well. However, in order to prevent any third parties from figuring out any sensitive clues about the Amaranto's performance, the Larkinsons dispatched a large salvaging party to scoop up all of the loose debris that could give away certain clues.

Once everything was cleaned up, the fleet transitioned back into FTL and resumed its journey across the Bardo Star Cluster.