The Mech Touch

　　Certainly, he was glad to be fighting alongside his men and women. Their Bright Warriors gleamed bright and gold as their surfaces had been polished up to an exquisite shine. The mech technicians responsible for caring for them had little else to spend their time on due to the lack of battles as of late.

　　The new model luminar crystal rifles silently barked laser beams into the distance. Since the pakklaton fleet was so distant, the attacks all seem to converge in a single point.

　　In truth, much of the extreme-ranged attacks missed their mark by hundreds of meters or numerous kilometers. It was just too difficult to land consistent hits when the margin of error was so miniscule.

　　The Avatar Commander wasn't bothered by that. The marksmanship of his ranged specialists were satisfactory and he could hardly ask more of them. They actually outperformed every other mech legion in the Larkinson Clan.

　　Not even the famed Transcendent Punishers of the Eye of Ylvaine fared any better in this regard. Their mechs were predominantly designed to output massed firepower at medium to long ranges and were not built with too many supporting systems that could help them achieve pin-point accuracy.

　　Sure, they had the help of their big guy Ylvaine, but from what he could see, the Ylvainans already fell back to relying on themselves after seeing that the extreme range effectively rendered the prophet's guidance useless.

　　What Melkor actually found disturbing was the nature of their target.

　　"Since when has the Larkinson Clan stooped so low that it considers a refugee fleet to be a legitimate target?"

　　There was no denying that the alien fleet not only carried a lot of civilians, but had also suffered from a lot of deprivations over the course of its flight from its original home in the region that humanity designated as the Torald Middle Zone.

　　While there were many alien races where the concept of a civilian population didn't exist, from what Melkor had researched on the galactic net, the pakklaton race had a lot in common with the human race.

　　Just like humans, the pakklatons cared for their young, expressed a lot of love towards each other, cared for their fellow avian beings, experienced sadness when their relatives died and possessed a strong sense of duty towards the defense of their weak and vulnerable.

　　The pakklaton refugee fleet exemplified that latter principle when the Larkinsons finally detected movement.

　　"Sir, the warships are moving! They have engaged whatever sub-light propulsion systems that are still operational!"

　　"What are their headings and what are they doing?"

　　"The warships… the warships are moving in front of their civilian ships. They are using their bulk to cut off our line of sight from their more vulnerable vessels."

　　Melkor would have admired this decision if the adversaries were humans. Since they were aliens, he felt a lot more mixed about this. It was weird to associate honor and duty to aliens.

　　Just like any human, Melkor had been inundated with lessons on how the aliens were evil and wished nothing more than to wipe out all of humanity.

　　That may be true in an abstract sense, but he could hardly imagine how this sad and ragged-looking alien fleet could pose a threat to anyone.

　　Even if the fleet successfully made it away, the surviving pakklatons could not possibly make a comeback. The Red Ocean would fall into the hands of humanity sooner or later.

　　Was it really vital for the new owners of the dwarf galaxy to wipe out the natives to the last alien?

　　Surely human civilization should be powerful enough to grant mercy to these helpless refugees.

　　The Red Ocean may be smaller than the Milky Way, but it was filled with star systems, many of them barren and not worth the effort to colonize.

　　It wouldn't take much effort to allow the alien remnants to settle on these worthless territories. As long as the Big Two maintained an outpost in these places, they could make sure that the colonies built by the pakklatons and other conquered aliens remained isolated.

　　So long as the aliens were not allowed to arm themselves again, their threat to human society would be nil.

　　Melkor, Jannzi and the other clansmen he had spoken with considered this the most realistic compromise they could make under the circumstances.

　　Humanity would grasp the Red Ocean with or without their support. This was an inevitable trend that no one could stop due to the huge level of commitment to the invasion and the enormous amount of interest groups that profited from the conquest.

　　No one could stop an avalanche once it started.

　　However, as the stronger party in this conflict, the human race could still hold true to its noble values and ideals even as it expanded its territory.

　　Yet instead of trying to coax the fleeing pakklatons into surrendering, the leaders of the Golden Skull Alliance only had destruction in mind.

　　Melkor had attended the top-level meetings and tried to steer the leadership in this direction.

　　His suggestions never found purchase. They might as well be rocks sinking into an ocean.

　　What disturbed him the most was that he heard no inkling of doubt or guilt from Ves.

　　Though Melkor always knew that the patriarch had always been more of a realist than other Larkinsons, Ves did not even pretend to pay lip service to honor this time.

　　Was Ves even a Larkinson?

　　"Maybe I am being foolish." He muttered.

　　Ves and many other clever-sounding leaders rationalized their actions as contributing to humanity.

　　The Avatar Commander recognized that wiping any stray alien survivors was in the best interests of humanity.

　　None of the fleeing aliens would forget about the race that had driven them from their homelands and slaughtered their fellow kin. If they ever regained their power, humanity would definitely bear their wrath!

　　"It makes sense to eliminate the hidden threats."

　　If Melkor was a bot, he could easily accept this argument without hesitation.

　　He was not, though. He was a human. He possessed emotions and had been raised as a soldier by the older generation of Larkinsons.

　　Times were simpler back then, but Melkor still cherished them all the same. Aliens, warships, the Red Ocean and all of the other headaches he contended with these days were of no one's concern in the past.

　　He did not yearn to go back to those days, though. The Larkinson Clan had stepped up and became exposed to the wider reality and all of the messiness associated with it. He would rather be a part of this initiative than force others to bear this burden.

　　"It's hard, though. There is no satisfaction in victory this time."

　　The dying pakklatons wouldn't be the only ones to mourn this course of events. A lot of Larkinsons would need to reconcile their ideals with whatever might ensue over the course of this battle.

　　"Are we truly doing the right thing?" He asked for the umpteenth time.

　　His new mech wasn't able to provide him with an answer.

　　That was another issue that made him feel more lost than usual. It had only been a short time since he received his long-awaited custom command mech from Gloriana.

　　The Gold Beacon certainly diverged from the Bright Warriors he had previously piloted. Though its capabilities, features and overall feel fit him a lot closer, the mech was not as alive as other living mechs.

　　Having piloted Ves' work for years, Melkor had developed a certain amount of understanding and expectations for them. They were like children that started off weak and innocent but slowly developed stronger personalities as their mech pilots educated them with each piloting session.

　　Melkor had to start all over with the Gold Beacon, which meant this battle came at an awkward timing. He still needed to 'wear in' his resplendent command mech in order to truly be able to pilot it like it was his second skin.

　　"That's also something that is different."

　　Now that he was able to make comparisons, Melkor was able to distinguish the works of Ves and Gloriana more clearly.

　　Gloriana's vision of mechs was a lot less chaotic and more neat. She designed the Gold Beacon more as an extension of Melkor rather than a more independent partner.

　　The Gold Beacon's sense of personality and self was much weaker, which meant that he could not interact with it the way he did with his previous mech.

　　Although it was not a necessity for mech pilots to have access to back-talking mechs, Melkor only began to miss what he once had access to now that he had transitioned to a different mech.

　　"Well, I shouldn't complain. My new Gold Beacon is much more powerful in its own right."

　　He loved its new rifle which Ves had custom-designed for his mech. It was more powerful and tailored to his preferred marksmanship style.

　　As he kept firing shots at the distant alien warships, his hit rate was noticeably higher than average. His shots also dealt a bit more damage, though that wasn't always noticeable considering that the enemy warships were so large and covered with thick hull plating.

　　"Control your firing rate!" He reminded his troops as he noticed that they became increasingly more obsessed with raising their precision. "This battle can take hours. Don't wear out your systems and build up your heat levels so quickly. We need to wait until we get closer before we go hard. Until then, show restraint!"

　　This pattern dragged on for many minutes. After the initial excitement had died down, the battle turned into a routine where every mech pilot numbly pulled the trigger after minutely adjusting their aim.

　　Even the contests that the mech pilots held to attain the highest hit rate was no longer enough to make them more enthusiastic about this engagement.

　　The only variable that could truly cause a ripple in their numbers was whenever the enemy warships managed to inflict real damage with their powerful but inaccurate primary laser cannons.

　　Dozens of heavy laser beams lanced in the direction of the expeditionary fleet. Many of them went so wide that no one even paid attention to them, but four of the violet beams managed to strike different targets.

　　Two of them happened to burn through the bow of the Gorgoneion. After suffering repeated hits, the fleet carrier's forward shield generators had reached their limits and needed to cool down and receive emergency repairs before they could be put to use again.

　　Fortunately, the Gorgoneion was designed to absorb a lot of blows with her impressive hull armor. Her bow was like a solid nose of metal that could endure sustained bombardment without damaging anything of importance.

　　Another beam glanced the side of the Spirit of Bentheim, which wasn't a big deal either due to the factory ship's adequate protection.

　　What truly triggered a reaction out of Melkor was that an Avatar mech happened to stand in the way of a large laser beam that missed its intended target.

　　Instead of damaging a ship, the powerful warship-grade attack engulfed an entire Bright Warrior mech!

　　By the time the beam faded away, only charred and half-vaporized remnants of the machine remained. The cockpit hadn't been able to endure this immense energy onslaught and turned into a molten mess.

　　Melkor didn't even want to imagine what the mech pilot went through during this brief interval of time.

　　"These cannons are only going to get deadlier."

　　The pakklatons had nine warships. While they weren't as tough as the ships of other races, they were still able to withstand a lot of damage before succumbing.

　　How many Larkinsons must die before they neutralized the main threat? Melkor feared that the aliens would show much more tenacity than before.

　　If the pakklatons intended to fight to the death, Melkor was sure his clan would pay dearly!