The Mech Touch

Before the Larkinson Battalion fought this match, the clan sought to find a solution for the infamous stealth tactics of the Quizlam Battalion.

"You all know what we are up against." Commander Casella told the Larkinsons in the meeting room. "The Quizlams excel at hiding their mechs. That not only prevents us from destroying them, but also allows them to approach us with near impunity. Yet their emphasis on electronic warfare also means that their mechs are not that good in frontal combat. As long as we can find them, we can confront them directly with our mechs. That will be the key to victory."

"How can we expose them, though? The Quizlam Battalion's stealth and ECM technologies are too good! None of the other two battalions managed to crack their advanced technologies. How can we do any better?"

"What about the Eye of Ylvaine? They should be good at detecting all kinds of sneaky bastards!"

Everyone directed their attention to the Ylvainan captain in the room.

"Ylvaine is not some sort of oracle you can dial on command." The mech officer grimaced. "The Great Prophet is still in recovery after the Ylvaine Protectorate has gone astray. He is all-knowing, but we must not burden him with too many demands."

"Surely Mr. Ylvaine can lend us a hand?"

"I'm sorry, but in non-critical situations like these, it is best to be frugal. The more we make demands of the Great Prophet, the less he can provide for us in the battles that truly matter."

The Sentinel Commander was one of the highest leaders of the Larkinson Clan. She was well aware of the dangers of the Red Ocean and could not afford to squander limited resources too soon.

From what Commander Casella understood of Ylvaine's situation, the so-called prophet was too short of worshippers to provide much support. What little he had left in the tank should be saved up for the kind of life-and-death battles that the Larkinsons would get embroiled in sooner or later.

As much as she wanted to borrow Ylvaine's full might to expose all of the hidden Quizlam stealth mechs, she could not justify the expenditure this time.

The stakes of the upcoming match were not as great as their previous battles. Sure, losing the match against the Quizlams might put the Larkinsons out of contention in the G-Aena League, but the loss was not that great.

Every mech pilot would still be alive. Many destroyed mechs could still be restored or recycled. The only really painful consequence of ending their tournament run was to forgo the chance to win a lot of combat carriers.

Commander Casella fell into thought for a time.

"We cannot rely too much on the powers of the Ylvainans." She eventually decided. "Our clan consists of far more than Transcendent Punishers. Our other mech legions must carry their weight as well."

"Still, the Avatars, Vandals and so on cannot properly deal with the Quizlam Battalion's mechs and battle strategies. If we throw them in with little support from the Eye of Ylvaine, they will all end up getting harassed to death by invisible and untouchable enemies like the Heartfallers."

The Larkinsons discussed a number of alternate solutions before someone came up with a bright idea.

"Wait! Why can't we triangulate the enemy positions?"

"Explain."

"The Transcendent Punishers work by nudging the aim of the mech pilot in a certain direction, right?"

"Correct."

"Then if at least two Transcendent Punishers are able to find the direction of a hidden mech, we can infer coordinates of the enemy mech through simple math!"

A few of the Larkinsons already became enlightened by what the analyst meant, but the others still needed a bit more clarity.

The man who proposed the idea formed his palms into knives and pressed them flat on the table.

"Pretend my palms are Transcendent Punishers. Let's say that there is an enemy stealth mech hiding somewhere in front of us. Right now, we don't know where it is located, but the great Ylvaine has a clue."

The two palms changed their orientation angles until they formed a vague pyramid.

"If Ylvaine does his usual stuff and clues in two Transcendent Punishers located in different locations, they only have to point the barrels of their cannons in the right directions. Once we register this direction, we can use the data we've collected to triangulate the position of the enemy mech!"

The analyst illustrated this example by pushing his two palms forward along their current orientations until they bumped into each other!

This time, everyone understood the method!

Although this tracking method required the cooperation of at least two Transcendent Punishers that were located away from each other, it was an incredibly simple and low tech solution to one of their biggest problems for the upcoming match!

"I see." Commander Casella's eyes lit up. "The Transcendent Punishers do not even need to fire their weapons. In fact, it might be best not to frighten the hidden Quizlam mechs in advance. As long as their coordinates are exposed, we can deal with them in many different ways!"

"We should give away as little clues as possible. If any of the Ylvainan mech pilots know the direction of a hidden enemy mech, then they shouldn't point all of their guns at it. That will just give away the fact that we know."

The Larkinsons began to discuss how to best leverage and optimize their ability to triangulate hidden opponents.

When the match against the Quizlam Battalion finally commenced, the Larkinson Battalion employed all of these newly-developed methods for the first time.

While it was true that the Larkinsons spread out their mech units because a single street wasn't big enough to accommodate them all, there was a second reason why they needed to distance themselves from each other.

The Transcendent Punishers that were located in the center of each Larkinson mech formation had to go their separate ways in order to make triangulation work as effectively as possible!

Right now, the Transcendent Punishers mostly pretended to be on standby, but in truth their mech pilots were shouldering the most important responsibility of the Larkinson Battalion at the moment.

They prayed to the Great Prophet and opened themselves up for divine guidance.

As Ylvaine responded to their pleas by nudging their aim through the Transcendent Punisher mechs, the mech pilots resisted the urge to change the orientation of the guns under their command.

Instead, they utilized the neural interface to digitize and transmit the vector data of the suspected enemy location to the rest of the Larkinson Battalion.

Every mech was capable of calculating the exact enemy coordinates after they collected the vector data from different Transcendent Punishers.

No matter whether it was a Bright Warrior, a Ferocious Piranha, a Valkyrie Redeemer or a Devious mech, each of them instantly knew where to unleash their aggression once they received the right data transmissions!

The enemy was taken off-guard. Even if the Larkinsons showed that they could overcome the effect of powerful interference and sensor-blocking particles, the Quizlams never expected that their much-vaunted stealth technology was rendered completely ineffective!

The combination of both stealth technology and other detection countermeasures should have made it impossible for the Larkinsons to sniff out the Quizlam stealth mechs!

What was especially insulting to them was that the Larkinsons assassinated the Quizlam machines with their own stealth mechs!

[What an unexpected surprise! The Quizlams thought they could play their usual game and rely on their advanced stealth and interference technology to conduct guerilla warfare, but the Larkinsons have become their second nemesis after the Ginetzys!]

[How can the Larkinson mechs possibly identify the positions of the enemy mechs?]

[I cannot say, but I suspect their odd and strange heavy artillery mechs may be responsible for this. According to public sources, certain religious-themed mechs designed by the patriarch of the Larkinson Clan possess strange detection powers. There is a lot of history behind these 'Ylvainan' mechs, but if they can truly detect the coordinates of every enemy no matter their means of hiding, then the Quizlams have definitely encountered an unbeatable opponent!]

The Quizlam Battalion originated from a virtual security company called Quizlam Systems. This company's main line of business centered around offering products and services related to electronic warfare, stealth warfare and information warfare.

One of the reasons why the Quizlams participated in the G-Aena League was to showcase the effectiveness of their products to a massive audience!

Though the Quizlams indeed attracted a lot of new customers after they dismantled the Heartfall Battalion, right now their impressive tech appeared to be completely useless against their current opponent!

After losing over 150 mechs in rapid succession, the Quizlams had desperately pulled back their remaining units, but that did little to solve their current problem.

The battlefield was still largely obscured in sensor-blocking smoke, so the Larkinson Battalion could not recklessly split up and hunt down all of the enemy units.

It was no problem for them to maintain their current formation and advance towards one group of Quizlam units.

Once it became clear that the Larkinsons could not only pin down the locations of their opponents at greater distances, but also showed enough patience by staying together, the surviving Quizlams had to do something to reverse the current trend!

"Evasion will only delay our defeat. We must go on the attack and assassinate those damned heavy artillery mechs! As long as these confounding machines are taken out, the chance is high that they won't be able to detect our mechs anymore. Get into position!"

Though the Quizlam mech pilots were incredibly distressed that their opponents negated their biggest advantage, they quickly rallied once they realized they still had hope.

It didn't matter if the enemy outnumbered them by two-to-one or even four-to-one. As long as the Quizlams were able to restore their original advantages, they could easily stem the losses and inflict disproportionate damage to the Larkinsons!

All they needed to do was to assassinate all of the Transcendent Punishers of the Larkinson Battalion.

The Larkinsons were quite aware of their great reliance on the Eye of Ylvaine, so all of their mech formations were geared towards protecting them. The Avatar knight mechs surrounding the heavy mechs practically made it impossible to snipe them from afar!

The only other choice the Quizlams had left was to commit all of their remaining melee mechs. Even if these mechs quickly got taken down, the sacrifices were worth it as long as the Transcendent Punishers went down!

Soon enough, all of the Ylvainan mech pilots began to receive a frantic amount of nudges from the Great Prophet.

"A large number of Quizlam mechs are storming our positions! They're going after our Transcendent Punishers!"

Before the Quizlam melee mechs swept down from the air, a large amount of kinetic rounds slammed into the mech formations.

The ranged attacks successfully diverted some of the attention of the Larkinson mech pilots, thereby giving the Quizlam light skirmishers and other melee mechs better chances to complete their missions!

"Shoot them down!"

The Larkinson ranged mechs all opened fire at the Quizlam light mechs that appeared from above and behind the cover of the tall structures.

Due to the dense urban environment, the enemy light mechs succeeded in getting fairly close without opening themselves up to enemy fire.

It was only at the end that they were forced to expose themselves!

"They're too fast!"

"Just hit them once! Their armor is as good as paper in front of our guns."

The Quizlams committed all of their melee mechs in order to take out the Transcendent Punishers! Even if the Larkinsons managed to shoot down dozens of them in quick succession, there were still enough enemies remaining that the Ylvainan mechs came under serious threat!

Soon enough, a lot of daggers plunged into the weak points of the Larkinson heavy artillery mechs!

Even though the nearby knight mechs moved to crush the Quizlam assassins into pieces, they were a bit too slow and clumsy at their jobs.

The ultra-mobile Quizlam light mechs rapidly circled around as they unleashed repeated attacks. Even if their dagger strikes were weak and unable to penetrate through armor, they still damaged plenty of vulnerable systems such as the weapon mounts and exposed sensor systems!

Sadly, the heavy artillery mechs were designed to take a lot of punishment. Many of their crucial parts and systems were buried deep within their frames and it was not possible to damage them with lots of weak and unfocused attacks!

The light mechs had no choice but to employ their other measures.

Mounted on each Quizlam light mech was a bandolier of potent grenades. Normally, they would throw or launch the grenades from a safer distance, but the chance of destroying the Transcendent Punishers was too low if they played it safe.

Instead, the Quizlams sought to press as close to the rear side of the Transcendent Punishers as possible before activating a command that not detonated all of the grenades, but also self-destructed their own machines!

Over a dozen explosions erupted throughout the Larkinson Battalion! The knight mechs that attempted to protect the stricken artillery mechs were forced to use their shields to withstand the violent forces!