The Mech Touch

The main fight most definitely centered around defeating the large amounts of mechs and defensive installations within the Pima Prime System.

However, defeating the strongest mechs of the Sundered Phalanx also played a crucial role in Operation Saturday Market!

The Hex Federation would have never agreed to target a star system as valuable as Pima Prime if not for the fact that the Golden Skull Alliance was willing to lend its complete support.

To be more precise, the participation of Patriarch Reginald Cross and his powerful Mars was the greatest factor that made this offensive operation viable!

While the Cross Patriarch had already committed to defeating or at least stalling the Gauge Dynasty's ace mech, there were still a lot of enemy expert mechs that needed to be taken care of. Each of them were more powerful enough to fell over a thousand mechs during a single deployment if left unchecked!

"I have already given you the bad news." General Verle said. "The Sundered Phalanx will be able to field around 50 modern heartland-level expert mechs, and the most prominent among them are equipped with transphasic mech systems."

"What about the Hex Army, sir?" Venerable Joshua asked. "The Hexers surely have enough expert mechs as well, right?"

"That is not entirely true, Joshua. You must certainly be aware that the Hexers have lost a disproportionate amount of expert mechs and expert pilots during the Komodo War. While it is true that a lot of their mech pilots have broken through during the hard fighting, they are not adequate replacements for the older mid-tier and high-tier expert pilots. The result of all of this is that the Hex Federation is only able to commit up to 30 expert pilots to this operation, of which the majority are rather weak."

Venerable Joshua and the others grimaced. This meant that the Hexers were unable to fend off the enemy expert mechs by themselves.

"The Hex Federation should have more expert pilots than that, right?" Venerable Rosa Orfan asked. "Why don't those women send out more of their champions?"

"The reason why they can't send more is because the Hex Federation needs to maintain the defenses of its own colonies during this period of time." Commander Casella already guessed the reason."

"So?"

"Don't forget that the weaker coalition partners originally instigated us and the Hexers to launch this attack in the first place. Their ultimate goal is to increase their margin of safety and weaken their enemies. To them both the Gauge Dynasty and the Hex Federation need to be weakened. Ruining Pima Prime satisfies one of the conditions. Attacking a core colony of the Hexers while much of their available combat strength is occupied elsewhere is even better! In order to prevent this third party from taking advantage of the situation, the Hexers must make sure to maintain the strength of their own defensive garrisons."

Taking away too many expert mechs from their own colonies made it a lot easier to breach their defenses.

If it came down to it, the Hexers could still afford to lose the majority of their attack force, but they could absolutely not afford to lose any of their core colonies!

The allocation of forces showed that the Hexers still hated the Fridaymen enough to launch a daring assault on a strategically important port system, but also retained enough caution and hesitation to hold back.

In any case, the operation was still viable. The participation of the Golden Skull Alliance played a crucial role in making up for the shortfall of champions!

General Verle quickly summed up the numbers. "When it comes to expert mechs, our clan is able to field 10 of them. The Glory Seekers can bring 4 to the table while the Crossers will also bring 4. That technically means that we are only short of 2 expert mechs compared to our opponents, but we cannot assume that this will actually be the case. The intelligence we have on our opponents may not be entirely complete or accurate. It is much easier to hide five or so expert mechs than to hide an entire extra mech division." 

It could also be the case that there were less expert mechs in Pima Prime than normal, but the chances of that happening should be low, especially when they detected the Hexer movements.

In any case, the overall picture painted by General Verle was not optimistic. While the Hex Army was able to supply enough low-tier expert mechs to block the enemy low-tier expert mechs, the Hexers did not have enough solutions to handle the stronger and more troublesome Fridayman expert mechs!

"So it is up to us to beat up their biggest and baddest expert mechs, right?!" Venerable Vincent bombastically asked. "Then let's get it on! I'm more than ready to beat up their vaunted high-tier expert mechs with my C-Man! There's no way that the enemy can handle my transphasic stuff!"

General Verle shook his head. "You are forgetting the fact that the Fridaymen most certainly incorporated phasewater tech in their own expert mechs. Enough time has passed for them to harvest a decent quantity of phasewater and develop powerful new mech systems around this substance. I admit that your C-Man is strong, but it is still a stretch for you to compete against a high-tier expert pilot and expert mech. Your resonance strength is still too weak."

None of the Larkinson expert pilots had a good idea how they would fare against the more formidable Fridaymen expert mechs.

General Verle already thought of that and brought on a more qualified individual to discuss the particulars of the enemy expert mechs.

"When it comes to explaining the properties of the expert mechs that you will likely face in battle, I believe it is best to leave this job to a mech designer. Patriarch Ves, please share your thoughts on the machines our expert pilots will have to defeat."

General Verle flew to the side as Ves finally turned from observer into presenter.

When everyone turned their attention to Ves, he smiled and commanded the current simulation to display a depiction of each known expert mech behind his back.

The mockups of a total of 50 expert mechs made a profound impression on the Larkinson expert pilots.

The quantity of enemy expert mechs was enough to intimidate almost anyone, even expert pilots!

"That's a lot of machines." Venerable Tusa said. "They come in all shapes and sizes as well. There are expert space knights, expert striker mechs, expert heavy artillery mechs, expert light skirmishers and even expert lancer mechs."

Ves nodded in agreement. "That is indeed the case. Let me state upfront that the intelligence we have on these Fridayman expert mechs is not that complete or reliable. The leaked intelligence did not mention too many details about them and our spies aren't able to dig out too much solid information about their performance parameters or their special features. We haven't even been able to gather any solid images of half of these expert mechs. They have rarely if ever shown up in public and they haven't participated in enough battles for footage of them in action to end up on the galactic net."

He waved his hand, causing the projections of numerous notable individuals to appear in front of the Larkinson expert pilots.

"Now, before I briefly go over what we know about each individual machine that you may very well bump into on the battlefield, I think it is useful for you to understand the design approach and direction of the Sundered Phalanx's cohort of expert mechs. The first lesson is that just like our own expert mechs, the ones designed for the Sundered Phalanx are strongly defined by the specialties of their lead designers."

Ves gestured at the simulated figures of the older ladies and gentlemen.

"Each of these esteemed and celebrated figures before you are some of the more prominent Master Mech Designers who come from the Gauge Dynasty. They have been involved in the development of the expert mechs in Pima Prime, at least that we know of. Many of them have actually worked on multiple expert mechs, which means it is essential for you to familiarize and learn how to deal with their powerful design philosophies and design applications."

He started off with the Master Mech Designer he was most familiar with among the Gaugers.

"This gentleman here is Master Toqueman Huron. You all owe a lot to him because he is the source of the inspiration that eventually led me to developing spiritual networks, battle formations and design networks. He also happens to possess 2 percent ownership of the LMC."

That was a considerable surprise to some of the expert pilots that never paid attention to this kind of news!

Venerable Imon Ingvar scratched his head. "He's a shareholder of our mech company? Doesn't that mean he's on our side? Is it okay for us to trash the expert mechs he designed?"

A few other expert pilots snorted and looked at him as if he was stupid.

"Don't pay attention to this stuff." Ves responded. "An enemy is an enemy. Don't show any mercy to the enemy expert mechs. Shareholder or not, Master Huron and his work are still obstacles to our clan. It will do us a lot of good to demolish the expert mechs he painstakingly designed and show that continuing to oppose us is a bad idea."

Since the patriarch said so, then the Larkinsons did not have to treat Toqueman's work any differently.

The majority of expert mechs behind Ves' back dimmed, leaving only a few ones untouched.

Ves highlighted two of them in particular and caused them to grow in size so that their distinctive design features became more evident.

Venerable Vincent looked confused. "Are these expert mechs twins? They look almost the same!"

"These are the Tensars. They are one of the latest representative works of Master Huron. Built upon his most recent advancements in neural networks, they are a matching pair of mid-tier expert rifleman mechs. While we are not certain whether they have incorporated any transphasic systems, even without them they are still formidable in battle."

"Why?"

"Well, the most important reason is that the Arma Tensar and the Fila Tensar are both closely connected. What I mean by that is that the expert mechs are capable of pulling their expert pilots into a deep and extensive neural network, essentially binding the minds of two different expert pilots together, allowing them to share their battle instincts, judgment and perhaps even their special traits with each other!"

Since the Larkinsons made good use of spiritual networks, the gathered expert pilots did not underestimate the power of Huron's neural networks!

Though Ves' description was lacking in details, the implications of his words were considerable!

"I am sure you can guess what that means." He continued. "Through a state that the Gaugers call Complete Coordination, Venerable Anastasia Choi and Venerable Geraldine Fameuse are able to synchronize and coordinate their individual battle actions to a near-perfect level. They can coordinate their attacks precisely. They can fend off the enemies that target each other's expert mechs. They can borrow each other's perception and judgment to improve their own individual reactions. We have also obtained hints that they can even share each other's domains and distinctive strengths!"

It was as if the Arma Tensar and the Fila Tensar were part of a single cohesive system!

Rather than treating them as two separate expert mechs, it was more accurate to think of them as a single package!

Ves gazed at the simulated versions of the Tensars with great respect. "Unlike Master Huron's rougher and more experimental design applications, the neural network that he has especially developed for these projects is both refined and reliable. The strength of the expert pilots and their close trust towards each other play a large role in this. By the accounts that we have received, the teamwork between the expert pilots assigned to the Tensars are so great that the two of them can even defeat their high-tier counterparts!"

This meant that the pair stood a good chance of defeating Patriarch Reginald Cross and the Bolvos Rage in the past!

Considering that the Larkison Clan lacked a high-tier expert pilot of its own, who could possibly contain the threat posed by the Tensars?