The Mech Touch

As Ves continued to observe the unfolding battle from many different perspectives at once, he noted that Lanie was doing pretty well for herself.

The only problem he had with her decision making so far was that she attracted way too much attention with her actions.

Out of all of the Lucid Rages that the Avatars deployed into battle, hers was the only one that had been able to disarm the heavy mechs of the Pima Defenders left and right!

By stripping over two-dozen powerful mech weapons from the hands of the enemy machines, the Pima Defenders most certainly took note of Lanie's abnormally high skill.

Even if she wasn't an expert candidate herself, it was absolutely worth it for the Fridaymen to dispatch an expert candidate of their own to stop Lanie from stealing more weapons.

Ves only glanced at her Lucid Rage briefly before setting aside his concerns.

As a mech champion, Lanie did not pilot an average mech. Her Lucid Rage received multiple upgrades and modifications such as a strengthened cockpit, reinforced tonfas and other minor improvements.

He had already told Commander Melkor to pay a bit of extra attention to Lanie during her debut battle. If she ever got into trouble, the nearby Avatar mechs would not idly stand by and allow the enemy to threaten her life!

Seeing that the duel between the Lucid Rage piloted by Lanie and the Favored Son piloted by an enemy expert candidate turned into a stalemate, Ves no longer paid any attention to Lanie's performance.

As much as he cared about her, there were many other clansmen that also deserved his notice.

Besides, the other fights were much more exciting!

For example, the Penitent Sisters and the Swordmaidens had teamed up to pressure a different section of the enemy battle line.

What was curious about the Sundered Phalanx units was that they clearly developed a healthy respect towards all of the mechs that were known to be able to launch a powerful battle formation attack.

Every time a large enough formation of Penitent Sister, Swordmaiden or Glory Seeker mech approached the enemy battle line, the Fridaymen set a predetermined plan in motion.

First, the melee mechs that were most at risk of getting caught up by a massive area attack dispersed as much as possible without compromising too much of their own lines.

The spread out in such a way that the mechs in the front remained stuck while the ones at the rear had distanced themselves from each other as much as possible!

Ves found it kind of funny how scared the enemy reacted to just the hint of getting targeted by a battle formation.

Obviously, the Sundered Phalanx still suffered from the trauma of losing lots of mech pilots as well as the entire crew of one of their deep strike fleet carriers in a single extraordinary attack wave!

Acting spooked was not the only response that the Fridaymen had formed against the possibility of getting swept by a giant wave of death energy.

Ranged mechs mostly hailing from the Blackened Reapers directed drastically more firepower towards the Swordmaidens and Penitent Sisters!

This made it a lot more difficult for mechs such as the Second Swords and the Valkyrie Redeemers to do their jobs!

The only consolation was that the Blackened Reapers had to give up attacking other targets, thereby giving the Hex Army more room to press their own attacks.

"This is too annoying!"

"What are our ranged mechs doing? Those Blackened Reapers need to be shot down."

"It's as if the Fridaymen have nothing else on their mind but preventing us from grouping."

The only way the Swordmaiden and Penitent Sister mech units could escape widespread suppression was if they dispersed their formations and spread themselves out across the battle lines.

Surprisingly enough, not a single enemy ranged mech bothered to shoot at the mechs hailing from the two infamous mech legions when the option of launching a battle formation attack was taking off the board.

"It's as if the Fridaymen are training us not to employ this trump card." Ves concluded with a perplexed expression.

In fact, neither Legion Commander Sendra of the Swordmaidens or Legion Commander Valerie Chancy of the Penitent Sisters wanted to resort to their strongest measures so quickly.

Though the Sundered Phalanx presented plenty of target-rich environments to the Larkinson Clan, the effect of killing a lot of mech pilots and disrupting an entire chunk of the enemy front was not as great as it sounded.

"It's like a nuclear option to put it in simple terms." General Verle explained to Ves when the latter requested clarification. "The threat of employing a weapon of mass destruction is generally more useful than activating it. Just look at how much the movements of the Swordmaidens, Penitent Sisters and Glory Seekers disrupt the arrangements of the Sundered Phalanx. Our enemies have to implement far more changes than us in an attempt to mitigate the damage if we ever decide to resort to this measure. If we want to make the most out of our battle formations, then we should save it for a later time."

"How much later should we wait?"

"It depends, sir. You should already be aware that the mech pilots participating in such a massive movement will become too tired to retain their battle effectiveness. While they can still fly back to their motherships and hand over their machines to our reserve mech pilots, all of this takes valuable time that we cannot afford at this time. Besides, it is impossible for the enemy leaders to be so complacent towards the threat posed by our battle formations. My gut feeling says the Gaugers are more prepared than we think. The Black Cats are currently working hard to find out the enemy's measures in advance, but we will eventually launch our strongest attacks even if we haven't obtained any further information."

Now that General Verle mentioned it, Ves also found it odd that the Sundered Phalanx wasn't working harder to negate the threat of his iconic battle formations.

Compared to the past, the Larkinson Army fielded a lot more mechs these days, and that meant that the spread and damage potential of its battle formations had grown as well!

One of the problems that the Larkinsons had discovered as of late was that the difficulty of aligning the mentalities of over a thousand mech pilots at once became a lot harder.

The power of the battle network they formed with each other and a design spirit became stronger, but that also amplified the mental burden of keeping it active!

Ves found this to be an unpleasant surprise when he initially learned about it during an experimental attempt to combine the efforts of the Penitent Sisters and the Glory Seekers.

His dreams of binding the minds of a million mech pilots together in order to unleash a cataclysmic attack that could sunder an entire planet or strip an entire CFA warfleet of all life were dashed!

That did not diminish the usefulness of battle formations, though. Their current effect on the battlefield was already fantastic and they granted the Larkinson Clan the ability to defend against powerful warships.

"Right now, most of the Sundered Phalanx mech pilots are still in high spirits." General Verle explained his own considerations. "Our Avatars of Myth and our Flagrant Vandals have achieved good results so far, but their efforts only affect a small part of the massive battlefield. With hundreds of thousands of mechs fighting against each other, it is still the Hex Army that is responsible for most of the fighting. Their performance is good for the most part, but the Sundered Phalanx are highly experienced in fighting the Hexers. The Gaugers have even gained the upper hand at certain sections of the battlefield."

The general was right. The performance of the Golden Skull Alliance was much better than that of the Hex Army.

Everyone involved in the planning of Operation Saturday Market already accounted for this, but the overall performance of the Sundered Phalanx was a little better than expected.

There were multiple reasons why this was the case.

For example, the Gauge Dynasty had been a bit more generous with equipping its colonial mech units with transphasic equipment.

Perhaps mechs such as the Space Piercer did not achieve stellar results against the Avatars of Myth, but they turned out to be significantly more effective when fighting against the mechs fielded by the Hex Army!

Another reason why the Sundered Phalanx gained the upper hand was that the intelligence disparity did not convey the attackers as much of an advantage as they wished.

So what if the Hexers and the Golden Skullers understood their opponents in advance?

The Gauge Dynasty was not wrong to place a high amount of confidence in its security arrangements for the Pima Prime System.

The local garrison employed a lot of highly trained veterans. Not only that, the Sundered Phalanx fielded plenty of powerful mechs by virtue of the Gauge Dynasty's powerful economic strength.

Even if most of the mech divisions on the battlefield were still working with outdated rim-level mech models, the strength gap was not big enough to give the Hexer mechs a crushing advantage.

"It seems it is still up to us to tip the battle in our favor." Ves determined.

The Golden Skull Alliance was certainly doing its part, mostly due to the quality of its mechs.

No matter the difference in quality of mech pilots, as long as mechs on one side were substantially more powerful, it was hard not to drop the ball!

Ves particularly admired the steady and reliable performance of the Cross Clan in this battle.

Though their mechs weren't as exciting and exotic as that of the Larkinson Clan, their machines were designed for war and could always be counted upon to gain advantages on the battlefield.

Most notably, their ranged mechs did not fall too far behind compared to their counterparts in the Larkinson Clan.

This was notable because the inherent tech and sophistication of the Crosser energy weapons fell significantly further behind compared to the latest generation of luminar crystal weapons.

Even though Ves was only a part-time energy weapon developer, the considerable advantages granted by luminar crystals gave his ranged mechs a powerful advantage on the battlefield.

Ves previously thought that Master Benedict might have made a mistake by rejecting the generous offer to adopt luminar crystal weapons.

"There is no need for us to make use of alien technology." Benedict told him at the time. "I do not deny that your guns are powerful, but there are more ways to achieve the same outcome. Perhaps it is my ego talking at the moment, but I do not think my work is any worse than yours. It would be a travesty if a mech designer of my level cannot even keep up with your mech designs."

Today, Master Benedict definitely proved that the ranged mechs of his design were able to carry their own weight!

They were not noticeably tougher than normal. They did not move any faster than normal.

What they did excel at was firing considerably powerful energy beams at a persistent rate!

In order to catch up to the firepower of the Rifle Warriors and other Larkinson ranged mechs, Master Benedict simply scaled up the weapons of his own ranged mech designs!

Scaling up the weapon was the simplest and easiest way to increase its power, but doing so also came with tradeoffs such as increased energy consumption and higher heat generation.

While these were definitely problems to most mech designers, Master Benedict just happened to excel in these areas!

By taking advantage of his specialty, Master Benedict mitigated these downsides, thereby allowing his ranged mechs to punch just as hard as their Larkinson counterparts!

"Well, that's certainly a way to solve a problem." Ves remarked.

There were pros and cons to both approaches. Ves' mechs were not only smaller and more efficient, but also a lot more versatile.

The machines designed by Master Benedict packed more raw power and might even be able to keep firing a bit longer as well.

"It would have been nice if we could combine our strengths." Ves idly thought. "If we could combine my luminar crystal weapons with his energetic mechs, we could probably design a powerhouse of a ranged mech!"