The Mech Touch

The Medallion Guards was one of the more celebrated mech divisions of the Sundered Phalanx.

Their martial tradition placed a great emphasis on defense and steady attrition warfare.

While their approach towards battle didn't exactly sound flashy or exciting, the advantages they accrued during the Komodo War proved that the Medallion Guards grasped a winning formula!

Plenty of other Fridayman mech divisions suffered crippling losses because their leaders and soldiers took risks and launched attacks against the ferocious Hexers.

The Medallion Guards did not go along with this approach but stuck to its own slow but steady strategies.

It worked for the most part. Though there were times where the Medallion Guards endured the brunt of Hexer offensives, the core of the mech division had never broken, allowing its units to recuperate quickly and fight another battle.

The Medallion Guards therefore earned more and more awards and honors as the Komodo War progressed.

By the end of this great conflict, the Gauge Dynasty had put the Medallion Guards on the list of units to be transferred to the Red Ocean.

This was a great honor. Its members along with their families overwhelmingly accepted the generous offer and moved to the Friday Colonies in the expectation of becoming part of the new colonial elite.

The early colonists might even have a chance of becoming a part of the landowners, industry magnates and other powerful individuals of a colony!

In the meantime, the Medallion Guards were on the waiting list to undergo a complete renewal of its mech rosters. Several mech divisions had already received this treatment so it wouldn't take more than a couple of years to replace swap 10,000 outdated mechs with 10,000 modern mechs.

Regretfully, Task Force Fury and the Golden Skull Alliance preempted this move, thereby putting the Medallion Guards in an awkward position!

Their mechs stood no chance against the Riot. The only meaningful damage they could do was slightly exhaust the Riot's resonance shield as the enemy expert spearman mech used its bulk and momentum to smash the Medallion Guard mechs in their way.

Even then, the armor and structural strength of their outdated mechs had fallen so far behind that they didn't even hurt the Riot all that much!

The Sundered Phalanx had to take action immediately or else Venerable Orfan would single-handedly be able to collapse the Medallion Guards before they played out their roles!

Venerable Orfan already had a goal in mind when her Riot brazenly tore through the Medallion Guard lines.

The old but honored mech division happened to produce an old but powerful high-tier expert pilot.

Venerable Rebecca Andus started out as a relatively unassuming mech pilot almost a century ago. Back then, large-scale wars were rare and most soldiers were only able to gain combat experience by going on expeditions.

It was a lot more difficult for mech pilots and expert pilots to progress in such a relatively peaceful environment, but Rebecca Andus didn't seem to obey this rule.

No one knew how she did it exactly, but she broke through the ranks at a steady and consistent pace.

She took around a decade to advance to expert candidate.

She took another decade to undergo apotheosis.

After that, her growth rate had slowed down, but her resonance strength grew by at least 1 laveres with each passing year, only slowing down as she began to near the 50's.

According to the intelligence leaks that the Larkinsons obtained, Venerable Rebecca's resonance strength measured at 57.3 laveres.

This was an extremely dangerous figure, and wasn't that much lower than that of Patriarch Reginald shortly before he became a new Saint!

No matter whether the reported number was true or not, Venerable Rebecca had become a powerful and respected expert pilot after all of these years.

In fact, her threat towards the Hexers and the Golden Skullers was greater than her current status implied!

Her long precipitation, her relative ease in overcoming her bottlenecks, her advanced age and wisdom, her abundant battle experience by participating in the Komodo War all added up to a frightening possibility.

Venerable Rebecca Andus had a high chance of being an ace pilot candidate!

Of course, the status of ace pilot candidate was merely an informal designation, but this notorious label nonetheless represented a horrifying risk factor.

If her enemies ever pushed and stimulated her in battle to a certain degree, Venerable Rebecca had a small but real chance of advancing to ace pilot!

Every mech pilot of the Golden Skull Alliance only had to recall the powerful explosion of Patriarch Reginald when he test piloted the Mars for the first time to understand how such a calamity could completely swing the battle in the favor of the enemy!

An outcome like this had to be prevented at all costs. No one was willing to gamble whether the Larkinson Clan's powerful battle formations were capable of overcoming Venerable Rebecca's second breakthrough event!

"No one knows how much potential this high-tier expert pilot has left." Ves explained to his Larkinson expert pilots during a meeting. "She's 120 years old and that is definitely on the older side as far as expert pilots are concerned, but at this stage of her evolution I'm not sure the decline of her body matters that much anymore. We have to assume that she will be in her peak condition when she enters into battle."

"How do we fight against such a monster?" Venerable Joshua furrowed his brows. "From what you're telling us, we can't press Venerable Rebecca too hard because we risk helping her advance to ace pilot. On the other hand, if we hold back too much and don't fight at our best, there is a great chance she'll beat us in battle!"

Everyone else looked grave when they thought about how they should possibly handle such a situation.

"What you are describing is a great dilemma that has plagued many mech forces." Ves calmly said. "There is no obvious solution here. All I can say is that you need to judge the situation and aim for stability rather than victory. The usual approach to fighting against ace pilot candidates is to achieve small advantages and slowly boil the frog in water. If necessary, you should always offer your opponent an escape path and you should never cross your enemy's bottom line. Understanding Venerable Rebecca's character and conviction is crucial to containing her on the battlefield."

Ves and his expert pilots spent a bit of time discussing how they should handle Venerable Rebcca Andus in particular.

"Personally, I don't think it is necessary to defeat her. The difficulty of defeating her is too great since she is a genuine high-tier expert pilot who is matched with a new and modern high-tier expert mech. If beating her is too risky, then it is better to focus on containment. Lock her expert mech in place and wait for other friendly units to carry the battle. Our side might be lacking when it comes to high-tier expert mechs, but I believe we possess a great advantage at the low-tier to mid-tier expert mech duels."

Ves understood his own mechs extremely well and did not think they were inferior to the expert mechs of the Sundered Phalanx!

After enough discussions about this topic, Ves transitioned to a more interesting topic.

"This is the design schematic as well as an image capture of the Shockshell." Ves said as he summoned a new set of projections. "Before I go any further, let me warn you that you should take these details with a grain of salt. Most mech organizations tend to guard the secrets of their high-tier expert mechs quite well. I cannot say whether the intelligence leaks and the additional information collected by our spies can be relied upon. My gut feeling says that the overall concept and configuration are correct, but that the details might not be fully accurate or complete."

Everyone stared closely at the appearance of the Shockshell. Its dull, grayish blue coloration was broken up by bright yellow stripes.

The name and the color scheme of the Shockshell already said a lot about how it was designed to fight!

"It's a hybrid mech." Venerable Tusa stated the obvious. "It vaguely looks like Patriarch Reginald's Bolvos Rage, though with a different weapon loadout."

Venerable Riot gazed admiringly at the Fridayman expert mech. "It looks really powerful, though I'm wondering what those weird rods on the chest can do. Are they weapons?"

Ves smiled. "It is not wrong to compare the Shockshell to the Bolvos Rage. I believe that the overall combat power and weight of fire between the two mechs are roughly similar to each other. This means that if you can't beat the Bolvos Rage, you won't be able to beat the Shockshell."

"If we had to fight this expert mech a few years ago, we wouldn't have stood a chance. Times are different now." Venerable Dise confidently said.

"Yeah. Our expert mechs are all stronger than before."

"Don't underestimate the Shockshell." Ves warned. "Our Design Department might have upgraded your expert mechs, but the Sundered Phalanx has also given Venerable Rebecca a brand-new expert mech that is developed according to heartland-level standards. Take these weapon modules for example. The shock hammer, the concussion shield and the shoulder-mounted gauss cannons are all transphasic, and not sparingly either. Whether it is up close or in a distance, the Shockshell possesses a notable amount of penetration capabilities."

That instantly caused everyone to grow serious again. According to the intelligence they possessed the Sundered Phalanx had already begun to phase in transphasic tech into the latest batch of expert mechs.

There was no reason to believe the Gauge Dynasty had skipped over the Shockshell In this regard!

"How powerful are these transphasic weapons?" Venerable Dise asked.

"Unknown. We don't have any sources that state how much phasewater is put into those weapon systems, but you should assume that the Gaugers have put a medium quantity into them. More is better but I don't believe the Gauge Dynasty is willing to squander so much phasewater on an individual mech. You can see that by the fact that its wrist-mounted positron cannons, the electrorods integrated in the chest and its electrified legs are not transphasic."

The Shockshell was much less luxurious than the initial version of the Mars. The level of commitment and the allocation of resources simply weren't on the same level!

Of course, that was not to say the Shockshell was weak by regional standards.

The Mars was simply too perverted to be used as a standard!

Ves pointed at the other parts of the Shockshell. "Take note of the relatively thick armor plating of this expert hybrid mech. This is the typical configuration of a short-to-medium range assault machine. According to one source, the Gaugers have invested 1.8 kilograms of phasewater to impart its armor system with transphasic properties. Regular attacks will have a difficult time penetrating through its armor, so your best chance to take it out is to target its weak points, not that it will be easy. Even the weakest parts of this expert mech are reinforced."

All of this meant that the Shockshell possessed both strong offensive and defensive properties.

The only shortcoming of its design was that its mobility was relatively mediocre when compared to other high-tier expert mechs. However, it was still a lot faster than many other expert mechs!

"It's impossible for any of us to fight against the Shockshell one-on-one." Commander Casella concluded after they all gained a good idea on what Venerable Rebecca and her new and powerful expert mech were capable of. "We might have a chance if we have a high-tier expert pilot and expert mech at our disposal, but that is not the case. At minimum, we need two expert mechs to force it into a stalemate, and at least one of them needs to possess formidable defenses."

There weren't many Larkinson expert mechs that matched the latter demand.

Everyone looked at each other before Venerable Orfan broke the silence.

"You can leave it to me. I'm not afraid of getting zapped. My Riot can take anything the Shockshell can dish out!" She confidently boasted.

Whether that was true or not remained to be seen, but at least she possessed enough fighting intent!