The Mech Touch

　　If the expeditionary forces decided to wait three or so weeks before starting a battle, the Larkinson Clan's latest expert pilot would have been able to debut on the battlefield with a fantastic new expert mech!

　　Unfortunately, that wasn't the case and she was stuck piloting the Bright Warrior that had been temporarily assigned to her. Though there was nothing wrong with the mech, her newfound expert pilot capabilities were so constrained by it that she constantly had to hold herself back from pushing the machine past its limits!

　　If she issued a request to allow her to pilot the Quint for this battle, General Verle would probably approve of her request. The masterwork mech had undergone enough upgrades for her to exert a considerably greater influence on the battle.

　　She did not opt to do so, though. It would deprive Isobel Kotin a chance to accrue valuable battle experience for this battle.

　　If the third user of the Quint was able to break through in the near future, then the Larkinson Clan would gain another powerful expert pilot who happened to excel in ranged combat!

　　She directed the sensors of her Bright Warrior towards the masterwork mech that had facilitated her breakthrough.

　　The Quint was performing decently enough in its rifleman mech configuration. Its custom-built luminar rifle fired bright golden beams towards the distant opponent at a steady rate.

　　Using the command privileges that had been handed over to her mech, she traced the shots fired by Isobel and found that the women had already integrated so well with the Quint that her hit rate was close to 80 percent, which was pretty impressive at this stage of the battle as there were other mech pilots that could only deal damage 20 percent of the time!

　　As for herself, Casella wasn't able to contribute much in battle so far. This was far from the pitched battles that she had trained and studied for. The G-Aena League that she participated in back in Chance Bay was much more to her liking as there was an endless amount of decisions she could make that could affect the outcome of the battle.

　　Here, the Living Sentinels only needed to take cover behind one of the armored vessels of the Larkinson Clan and try their best to use their luminar crystal rifles to hit the designated priority targets.

　　There was hardly any other complexity that needed her personal attention. The mech captains and support staff took care of all of the less important issues.

　　The only way she could provide meaningful help to her men was to speak with them in order to keep up their morale and ensure they stayed focused.

　　"Increase your firing rate." She instructed as she did so herself. "Our fleets have drawn close enough that our hit rate has increased. Less of our shots are going wide now. We need to disable these warships faster. They are already dealing substantially more damage to us than we wish!"

　　The horror of the enemy warships became more apparent as they were moving closer to real engagement range.

　　The problems related to minor faults in alignment and divergence of energy propagation no longer skewed the attacks quite severely anymore.

　　The ships from both sides began to incur increasingly more serious damage!

　　The Graveyard, the Gorgoneion, the Hemmington Cross and the Indigo Tremor bore the brunt of the damage. Each of them were large and prominent fleet carriers so they shouldered the greatest burden in protecting the train of ships sheltering behind their wake.

　　Though the aliens had shown some cleverness by focusing their fire on the largest and lightest-armored among the aforementioned capital ships, namely the Hemmington Cross, the Golden Skull Alliance coordinated its fleet movements so that even the Cross Clan's flagship enjoyed a reprieve by moving behind another vessel.

　　Through these series of maneuvers, the expeditionary forces ensured that the damage would be spread out as much as possible, with the Graveyard actually bearing a greater share of the burden.

　　The Graveyard could take it, though!

　　All of the junk and battle debris that had been melted down and processed into improvised hull plating made the vessel particularly economical to use as a damage sponge. Even if lots of hull plating eventually got ruined beyond the point of recovery, the salvage vessel could easily use other materials to fill in the gap.

　　The pakklaton warships on the other hand did not enjoy this particular luxury. They were built for mobility rather than enduring bombardment, but because of the necessity to protect the evacuation ships from enemy attacks, the aliens were put in a difficult spot.

　　The infestation of the voribugs also didn't help. They chewed through so many systems that the mobility of several warships were severely compromised. They could only rely on weak positional thrusters to slightly change their orientations, and even those systems were under attack by the voracious bugs!

　　As a result, despite being built for combat against other powerful threats, the pakklaton warships were continually accumulating more damage.

　　Soon enough, the two vessels that had attracted the brunt of the firepower unleashed by the human mechs finally succumbed in quick succession!

　　"Warship Gamma has lost power throughout all of her hull! At least one of her power reactors is still online, but it cannot transfer energy to any other part of the vessel!"

　　"Warship Epsilon is breaking into half! She has incurred major structural damage and her keel has blown open after one of her internal fuel tanks exploded!"

　　"Warship Alpha has lost 40 percent of her power, though her exterior armor is mostly intact. We believe the voribugs have inflicted major damage to her energy transmission systems."

　　"Lower the priority on Warship Alpha." General Verle ordered. "Her relatively intact hull plating will take time to drill through, but with her loss of power, her laser cannons are not as threatening. We should direct our fire on the greatest offensive threats."

　　As the crippled and disabled pakklaton warships slowly drifted away, the mechs directed their firepower towards another pair of alien vessels.

　　The pakklatons weren't helpless, though. Even though less and less of their laser cannons were still operational, the damage they inflicted on the hulls of the human vessels had slowly built up to a point where even the Graveyard was beginning to feel distressed.

　　There was a limit to how much the human vessels could spread out the incoming damage across their hulls.

　　Compartments breached and numerous ship systems situated in the forward sections malfunctioned.

　　Even crew members began to die as those who couldn't afford to draw back from their vital functions became affected by the attacks.

　　The time, effort and resources needed to fix all of this damage became increasingly more costly.

　　"These pakklatons are too stubborn and tenacious." Ves deeply frowned.

　　The decision to make a last stand fell outside of his expectations. He and his fellow leaders had miscalculated. Rather than fleeing with most of their fleet, the aliens looked as if they insisted on fighting to the death!

　　However, even if the aliens put up a better fight than usual, the combat power of the pakklaton warships were still within a tolerable range.

　　"We're not pushovers either. Now that we have drawn a bit closer, our mechs are more effective as well!"

　　Not only were the alien ships being struck by an increasingly more ferocious rain of small laser beams, other mechs showed their capabilities as well!

　　The expeditionary fleet shifted its formation and put the Spirit of Bentheim in front!

　　The ship, though not the biggest and most resilient capital ship in the fleet, was particularly tough to take down from the front.

　　With the giant head of the Golden Cat adorning her entire bow, it took a lot of frontal attacks to melt through all of the Breyer alloy and other relatively strong materials!

　　Though previous attacks had caused the head of the Golden Cat to look scorched and disfigured, the factory ship could resist considerable damage as long as the attacks came from the front.

　　The point of putting the Spirit of Bentheim in such a prominent position wasn't to rely on her to soak all of the remaining damage, though. Resilient or not, the firepower of seven alien warships was no joke!

　　"It's Venerable Jannzi Larkinson!"

　　"The Shield of Samar is moving into action!"

　　After a long time of sitting on the side, the only true defensive expert mech of the Larkinson Clan finally received orders to exert its power!

　　Though the Shield of Samar in its current incarnation had already fought in prior battles, it had never found the opportunity to showcase its majestic capabilities in a true sense.

　　This time was different. After launching so many powerful laser beams, the pakklaton warships had worn down the defenses of the expeditionary fleet to the point where subsequent damage could inflict real losses.

　　This was intolerable to Venerable Jannzi!

　　"More lives being lost due to greed." She gritted her teeth.

　　She has strong opinions about the purpose and motivations of this aggressive action, but she knew that this was not the time to complain. Her main priority at this time was to limit the damage and save as many lives as possible!

　　It also did not escape her attention that this was a good time for her to showcase her capabilities.

　　As of late, her prestige as an expert pilot had dropped. Few clansmen had truly seen her contribute meaningfully to a battle and therefore had a mistaken impression that she wasn't as indispensable as the likes of Venerable Stark or Venerable Joshua.

　　"Samar!" She called to her mech! "Let these ignorant watchers see how strong our shield has become!"

　　GLADLY.

　　As she resonated with her expert mech, she also called out her other battle partner!

　　"Qilanxo, lend me a hand! Our shield needs to endure as long as possible!"

　　An inaudible roar rang in her ears, signaling to Jannzi that the big lizard agreed!

　　After accumulating her power, focus and will to her shield, Jannzi and the Shield of Samar exploded into action!

　　"PRIMAL AEGIS!"

　　The expert mech projected a massive resonance barrier that covered a radius of several hundred meters, thereby protecting much of the battered bow of the Spirit of Bentheim!

　　Not only that, but a vague energy manifestation of an enormous lizard appeared on top of the resonance barrier!

　　The illusionary lizard roared, causing the barrier to receive additional power from another source!

　　As numerous laser beams raked the resonance barrier, it managed to hold true!

　　Both the aliens and the humans themselves were astounded by how resilient this resonance barrier turned out to be. Not only did it cover a huge area, it also resisted a lot of energy attacks without showing any sign of reaching its limit for the moment!

　　This was the perverse nature of an expert pilot at work. Their willpower was literally capable of distorting reality. When it was amplified with the help of an expert mech, the effects could be applied on a grander scale!

　　Though Venerable Jannzi quickly suffered from additional strain with every heavy laser attack that had been stopped, she steeled her will and became determined to endure torture as much as possible!

　　"The longer I hold out, the more lives I can save!"

　　By temporarily blocking much of the alien attacks, the expeditionary forces gained a major advantage!

　　Two more alien warships were taken out of action!

　　This time, the Amaranto did not inflict the crucial blows alone.

　　Instead, the Star Dancer Mark II and the Everchanger both managed to acquit themselves well this time!

　　The two expert mechs might be proficient in ranged combat, but they never excelled that much in long-ranged precision.

　　It was only when the battle progressed up to this stage that they were truly able to demonstrate their respective strengths!