The Mech Touch

　　In order to prevent the incoming attacks from concentrating the damage on weak points, the vessels continually changed their orientation.

　　This made it considerably more difficult to launch successive attacks on vulnerable sections.

　　However, the pakklaton ships were less capable of employing this tactic due to the damage they had already sustained. The wounds sustained in previous battles along with the incredibly persistent infestation of voribugs severely affected their mobility.

　　The most immediate consequence of that was that they were considerably easier to damage!

　　After piling up damage on two of the nine alien warships, the alien fleet finally displayed true vulnerability.

　　"Warship Gamma's armor integrity has dropped across the board. The alien vessel's weak points have also expanded. If we can land one or more numerous powerful attacks on this section to the upper side of her hull, then there is a chance we can detonate the nearby electrical systems and weaken the structural supports over there, thereby inflicting major internal damage to the forward section of the warship."

　　"Venerable Stark, do your best to target this weak point."

　　"With pleasure." The expert pilot grinned.

　　Throughout this battle, Venerable Davia Stark had been holding back for a long time.

　　Unlike the soft-minded Larkinsons who were acting squeamish about targeting an alien refugee fleet that was on the ropes, Stark only saw an enemy that needed to be eliminated at all costs.

　　After witnessing her entire state and almost all of its population being scoured by the sandmen, she had developed a lifelong vendetta against aliens of all kinds.

　　Though the Big Two belatedly wiped out the sandman race from existence, it wasn't enough for Stark.

　　She realized that humanity would always be vulnerable against the predations of other jealous, cruel and callous species.

　　There was no justice in the galaxies.

　　Therefore, she had made it her mission to enact retribution to any race that could one day rob human children of their parents.

　　No one deserved to endure the unimaginable scale of loss that took place in the Sand War!

　　Even though the pakklatons were by all accounts weak and relatively unimportant by human standards, Venerable Stark did not look down on these supposedly weak aliens.

　　After all, wasn't that what people said about the sandmen as well?

　　While the Big Two could easily roll over the sandmen whenever they wished, they instead allowed the vermin to prosper and accumulate strength.

　　When the rats flooded out of their nests, their aggression quickly overwhelmed the third-rate states in their way.

　　Though Venerable Stark was a second-rater now, she could never forget her roots as a humble third-rater.

　　At that level, the enemies that the MTA and CFA considered to be too trivial to clean up had killed trillions of hapless human victims before they finally got the end they deserved!

　　Just thinking about those dark days that had almost broken her to pieces caused the dark flame of retribution in Venerable Stark's heart to burn hotter.

　　Her eyes sparked with the spark of vengeance as she condemned the remnants of the pakklaton race to death.

　　"The aliens must die so humanity can live in peace."

　　She did not concern herself with the fact that humanity invaded the Red Ocean first. She also did not care that this initiative was led by the Big Two to whom she harbored deep grudges.

　　In any situation where humans were under threat or potential threat by an alien race, her answer to the problem was simple.

　　"Death!"

　　As her powerful emotions surged, the Amaranto surged in turn.

　　The masterwork expert mech that she had partnered with for many months had not only fed off her strength, but also took in her hatred of the alien and developed the same drive to rid the cosmos of inhuman threats.

　　Mech and mech pilot fell in sync as their stimulating emotions brought their cooperation to a new level!

　　Stark's elevated force of will produced so much resonance with the Amaranto that the two actually broke a new record for themselves!

　　The expert pilot did not pay attention to that, though. Her entire mind and will was focused on her immediate task.

　　Thousands of energy beams lanced from the expeditionary fleet to the distant pakklaton refugee fleet.

　　Occasionally, the slower-firing laser cannons of the alien warships lanced back towards the expeditionary fleet.

　　With each devastating salvo, four to ten of the laser beams struck the vanguard of the human fleet, burning off more armor plating while dealing peripheral damage to their systems.

　　All of the energies being traded back and forth produced different levels of interference that made it a bit harder for the Amaranto to land a blow at the precise weak point designed by the Larkinson Army.

　　Venerable Stark had to fall back to her experience and intuition. She narrowed her eyes as she delved deeper into the man-machine connection.

　　At the same time, she resonated with the Amaranto's powerful luminar crystal rifle. Though she did not find it necessary to activate the Beam Bending resonance ability, she still resonated with it in a more general sense in order to empower its impending attack with a touch of her own will and hatred.

　　Infusing her luminar crystal rifle with the latter caused it to glow hotter and redder than before.

　　In fact, the entire Amaranto turned into an ominous specter that looked as if it had become the embodiment of hellfire!

　　As her hatred and animosity towards aliens reached a peak, Venerable Stark finally sensed that the right moment had come.

　　"TASTE MY RETRIBUTION!"

　　The Amaranto exploded in red as its rifle fired a powerful, high-powered resonance-enhanced laser beam that soared towards the pakklaton fleet at the speed of light!

　　Though the beam only flashed up the space it passed through for an instant, its effect was much greater than any other attack unleashed by the humans!

　　Though the fiery red laser beam was not as exaggeratingly wide and filled with energy as the attacks unleashed by the alien warship-grade weapons, the beam unleashed by the Amaranto was much more concentrated.

　　In order to exploit a weak point, applying brute force power was not necessary.

　　Stabbing it with a single scalpel was enough to achieve the desired effect, and the Amaranto's vengeance-fueled laser beam happened to play this role to near-perfection!

　　Though the beam deviated from its intended target by dozens of meters, the hot and destructive energies released upon impact completely blasted the affected compartments to pieces!

　　The overflow of destruction from the resonance-enhanced laser beam dealt far more localized damage than any other weapon employed in this fight!

　　Due to the structural damage this high-powered shot inflicted, the pakklaton's warship was unable to supply power to three of her powerful primary laser cannons.

　　Not only that, but the alien crew members and the various ship parts located in the bow section all became impaired in different ways, thereby lowering the combat effectiveness of the ship in question!

　　Nonetheless, a warship was not a pushover. The pakklatons did not excel at building warships but the ones the Golden Skull Alliance confronted today displayed a remarkable degree of resilience despite all of the hardships they endured since the start of their long flight!

　　Venerable Stark cared nothing for that. She instead grew irked because the attack she invested much of her power in failed to cripple the enemy warship to the degree she hoped.

　　It would have been great if targeting the weak point resulted in the ship blowing herself apart or knocking out all of the primary laser cannons instead of a couple of them. There were still eight more warships that also needed to be subdued, and she didn't have the reserves to knock them all out in this fashion.

　　She contemplated whether she should fire a subsequent high-powered attack but figured that the hole she had blown open with her earlier attack would suffice. Other mechs could easily take advantage of the opening to deal even further internal damage.

　　"I'll leave the rest to you!" She told the Larkinson Army before she set her sights on another warship.

　　At this time, the pakklaton fleet finally exhibited a substantial change.

　　On the bridge of the Spirit of Bentheim, someone dutifully reported the latest changes.

　　"Sir, we are detecting a high number of shuttle transfers between the pakklaton starships!"

　　Ves quickly swept his gaze to the projections that displayed an increasingly more detailed image of the distant alien fleet.

　　"What are the pakklatons doing?"

　　"We believe they are preparing to evacuate a part of their fleet, sir. The shuttle traffic from all of their vessels are mostly converging onto five of the civilian ships that are in the best shape at the moment. The remaining enemy ships are also moving to prevent our firing lines from attacking the vessels that are likely being prepared for evacuation."

　　"I see." Ves said.

　　He and the strategists had been waiting for this to happen. Though the pakklaton fleet still possessed a high degree of threat, Ves judged that the aliens were not that enthused about fighting a battle where they could only attain a pyrrhic victory at best.

　　"Wait a minute." His train of thought suddenly froze as he looked closer at the activity taking place in the distant fleet. "There are way more transfers than we expected. They're not evacuating their weakest vessels. They're also pulling out their people from their more intact vessels, including their warships!"

　　Many others had noticed this taking place as well. It became increasingly clear that the aliens did not intend to evacuate most of their fleet this time.

　　This was quite a reckless move!

　　If none of their warships joined the evacuation attempt, then how would the pakklatons possibly be able to defend their surviving civilian vessels?

　　"What the hell are these aliens thinking? There's no way their paltry number of civilian vessels can make it further across the Krakatoa Middle Zone on their own!"

　　It was too bad that none of the Larkinsons had access to the alien fleet's internal deliberations. They could only guess at the motives of the alien leaders.

　　Ves grew ugly. He wanted to drive away the majority of enemy warships in order to spare his own forces a hard fight.

　　Had the Golden Skull Alliance pressed the aliens too hard? Should he have ordered his troops to take it easy?

　　"Are there any warships showing signs of being readied for evacuation?"

　　"No, sir. Our long-ranged scanners have even detected the transfer of significant quantities of phasewater out of the warships. If our comprehension of their situation is right, then we believe the pakklatons are completely giving up on evacuating the majority of their fleet in order to maximize the chances of success of their remaining 5 civilian ships. If their warp drives are injected with additional phasewater, then that will directly improve their ability to traverse greater distances!"

　　"Damnit!"

　　He wanted that phasewater! He could not stand the thought of all of those valuables slipping away from him due to the actions of the aliens.

　　For a moment, he was tempted to order his fleet to focus on targeting these evacuation ships, but that would probably inflame the aliens even further.

　　Besides, the alien fleet was putting a lot of hulls in the way, so attacking the key vessels was far from simple.

　　"Keep focusing on the warships." He eventually instructed. "Quelling their ability to resist is our highest priority. "Once we have neutralized their ability to threaten our forces, we can do whatever we want."

　　The fight continued as the exchange of weapons fire continued to heat up. As the mechs and warships began to see further improvements in their hit rates, the casualty figures continued to grow higher!