The Mech Touch

The ultimate goal of this ambitious assault was to ruin the Gauge Dynasty's economic and industrial ambitions in the Red Ocean.

It was for this reason that the Hexers wanted to ruin all of the buildup on Pima Prime V. They would never feel they had succeeded in this attack unless they directly turned all of the factories and cities of the busy trading planet into smoking ruins!

The Gauge Dynasty wouldn't make it easy. The military planners and analysts all expected the Gaugers to make their stand just before the invading fleet reached the doorstep of Pima Prime V.

Making a stand on the surface of the planet was unacceptable because the collateral damage of hundreds of thousands of mechs exchanging fire or crashing into each other was too great!

It was in the best interest of the defenders to fight as far away from the planet as possible, but they could not go too far or else they would give the attackers too much room for maneuver.

General Verle transmitted a silent command that gave his audience a clearer view of the immediate orbital area around Pima Prime V!

A loose ring of artificial satellites spun around the planet. When the view zoomed in even further, it became abundantly clear that many of these metal constructions were military in nature.

An entire array of orbital space stations and defensive platforms had practically turned its near orbit into a space trench!

While it was still easy enough to bypass this defensive line and land troops onto the surface, any carrier vessel that attempted to do so would likely be pelted by a lot of attacks from different directions!

The only way to reasonably transport a massive amount of mechs to the surface was to smash this orbital defense network first!

As long as the string of fortified space stations and defensive platforms got cleaned up, it not only became easy to dispatch a lot of mechs to the ground, but also bombard a lot of cities and critical sites from orbit!

Even though the defenses on the ground were not light, it was a bit too much to expect these static defenses to repel an entire invasion force consisting of at least 100,000 mechs!

"The Kosic Ring itself will not be easy to dismantle. The strongest points are the military space stations. They not only host a lot of powerful turrets, but are also protected by medium titan shields. Each of them require massed firepower in order to breach their defenses and neutralize all of their threatening aspects. Again, we do not necessarily need to be concerned about this arduous task because the Hex Army will take the lead in this assault."

General Verle pointed out the defensive platforms that were much smaller and weaker but also a lot more numerous.

"The defensive platforms built by the Gauge Dynasty are not that special. They are cheap, mass-produced constructs that essentially amount to free-floating armored laser turrets. However, their quantity along with their dispersed deployment makes it quite difficult to clean them all up in a short amount of time. As long as these defensive platforms keep firing their long-ranged laser cannons at our ships and our mechs, they can deal a lot of damage over time."

Many Larkinson mech pilots frowned. The defensive platforms might be cheap and not that high-tech, but each of them were covered by thick layers of cheap metallic armor plating.

Since these platforms weren't mechs, there was no need for them to go on a diet!

No matter how much weight these bloated constructs put on, it was okay since their only job was to maintain a stationary orbit in space!

General Verle made the situation clear to everyone. "The fixed defenses of the Kosic Ring must be overcome, but the Sundered Phalanx will make this task as difficult as possible. Unlike Pima Prima V-A which will probably be utilized as a speed bump, the orbital defense network will serve as the bulwark in which the Gaugers will make their stand."

He waved his hand, causing well over 140,000 mechs to appear!

The scary part about all of these mechs was that none of them looked like random machines that were randomly thrown together.

Many of them exhibited shared designs, shared colors and shared battle tactics!

"We can expect the Sundered Phalanx to deploy at least 14 complete mech divisions at the Kosic Ring. Each of them consist of around 10,000 spaceborn or multi-environmental military-grade mechs. Many of them are veteran units from the Komodo War. The majority of Fridaymen mech pilots have fought and lived through years of massive battles and enormous campaigns. Their piloting skills are solid and their psychological values are even more impressive. Each of them has extensive experience with dealing against suppressive glows, so don't expect them to fold so easily when we confront them with living mechs."

Every decent Fridayman veteran from the Komodo War could no longer count the amount of times they fought against Valkyrie mechs.

Though the glow of the Valkyrie mech line had received a considerable boost in effectiveness when Helena took over from the Superior Mother as design spirit, the Fridaymen had done their best to train their minds to overcome their instinctual fears!

This especially applied to the troops of the Sundered Phalanx.

As the main military branch of the Gauge Dynasty, the Sundered Phalanx was the strongest and most well-funded military branch of the entire Friday Coalition!

General Verle did not look too worried, though.

"That said, while the mech divisions in Pima Prime have all been restored back to full strength, there are many rookies among them that have not gone through all of this fighting and tempering. I believe it will be fairly easy for you to distinguish them and pick them off with ease."

That still left a lot of mechs piloted by battle-hardened veterans, though!

Many of the opposing mech pilots fought in at least ten times as many battles as the Larkinsons!

The disparity shouldn't be too great, hopefully. The Hex Army had its own fair share of Komodo War veterans.

In addition, the Larkinson mech pilots spent thousands of hours inside the MSTS. They fought in all manner of highly realistic spiritual training scenarios that were not only hardly distinguishable from reality, but also stimulated them to a much greater degree than any virtual training programs!

There were still concerns that the gap between these MSTS-trained mech pilots and grizzled veterans in the service of the Sundered Phalanx was too great.

The only way to know for certain whether the Mental Simulation Training System could truly substitute actual battle was to test the Larkinson troops against their Fridayman counterparts!

General Verle grinned. "I happen to have another piece of good news to you. After thoroughly analyzing and confirming the intelligence on the different mech divisions, we can confirm that 8 of them still make use of outdated mechs while only 6 of them are modernized."

"What do you mean by that, sir?" Someone asked.

"Let me show you a comparison between two mech divisions."

The view changed to display two large collections of Fridayman mechs.

Each of them were formidable military mech models that were all designed by multiple Master Mech Designers!

However, the more discerning among the attending mech pilots soon noticed a few clear differences between the groups of mechs.

Verle pointed towards the collection of mech models on his left. "These are the mechs utilized by the 2003rd Medallion Guards. As you can see, most of them have a bit of heft to them. This is because the mech division is dedicated to spaceborn defensive battles, which is one of the reasons why the Gauge Dynasty has assigned them to this garrison. Now, do these mech models look new in your eyes?"

A lot of mech pilots shook their heads.

"That is because the Gauge Dynasty has transferred the entire mech division with all of their mechs to the Red Ocean. While the Sundered Phalanx has drafted a plan to replace them all with more modern and more formidable heartland-level mech models, the timeline stretches well into the next decade. There aren't enough high-quality resources available in the Friday Colonies to fabricate so many military-grade mechs. Rather than replacing their older military assets for newer ones, the Gaugers would much rather keep their old machines while steadily producing more new machines."

This was a clever scheme. The Sundered Phalanx just had to ship over a lot more mech pilots that generally took up a lot less space on a starship.

Once they arrived at the Friday Colonies, these mech pilots would remain in reserve until the Gauge Dynasty finally built enough mechs to raise a new mech division.

General Verle pointed to the collection of mechs to his right.

"The 6161th Nidin Vergers is an example of a new mech division. While their martial traditions and mech doctrines are still immature, their mechs are highly modern and considerably more formidable than the ones fielded by the Medallion Guards. Each of them are recently designed with local materials and local technological standards in mind. The Nidin Vergers is a mech division that is meant to put up a good fight against foreign military units that might originate from the galactic heartland."

The threat posed by the Nidin Vergers was almost certainly higher than the Medallion Guards!

The performance difference between the newer and older mechs could reach as much as 20 or 30 percent!

Of course, a lot of variables such as the cost to produce the mechs were different as well, so the comparisons weren't entirely fair.

Nonetheless, that did not change the fact that a considerable part of the defending troops were still stuck with using rim-level mechs that had only received minor modifications and upgrades as best!

This was good news to the Larkinson mech pilots as the clan had made sure to supply them all with new or upgraded heartland-level mechs without exception!

"What of the mechs of the Hex Army, general? Are all of them heartland-level machines as well?"

"Good question. The Hexers have tried their best to pool as many modern mechs in their attack force as they can, but don't expect any miracles. What I can tell you is that all of the living mechs designed for the Hex Army are updated to current standards. This is especially the case with the newest batch of Hexer mech models that our mech designers have recently supplied to the Hexers. You can expect each of them to be as strong as our own mechs."

This gave the Larkinsons a lot of reassurance. Any mech designed by their patriarch was undoubtedly powerful enough to earn a lot of respect on the battlefield.

Since the Hexers were such avid fans of the mechs designed by Ves and Gloriana, the Hex Army would undoubtedly deploy a huge amount of them for this massive operation!

"Which of the mech divisions will we fight against, sir? Will we be focusing our firepower on the outdated mech divisions in order to clean them up as quickly as possible?"

"No." General Verle immediately shook his head. "It's the exact opposite in fact. We will take up the fight against the strongest and most modern mech divisions fielded by the Sundered Phalanx!"

That caused a lot of mech pilots to react with surprise!

"Do you think we are here to freeload off the Hex Army? I can imagine that it might be tempting to push the greatest burdens onto the Hexers, but that would be a disservice to our honor, our efforts and our friendship with our allies."

General Verle waved away the depiction of the outdated mechs of the Medallion Guards, leaving behind the more modern and formidable ones fielded by the Nidin Vergers!

"We are elites! Our mech legions are equipped with mechs that are more expensive and powerful than the crack troops of the Sundered Phalanx. While our numbers are not even close to catching up to that of our enemy, we have always pursued the elite route to the maximum in order to make the most out of the limited mech capacity of our fleet. I believe in our superiority! I believe in it so much that I do not expect you to just hold back the strongest opposing mech divisions, but demand that you smash through their ranks with clear and overwhelming force!"

In other words, if the Larkinson Army was not up to expectation, then it would surely suffer a lot if it allowed the elite Sundered Phalanx mechs to run amuck!