The Mech Touch

Seeing the Unspoken battleship known as the V'gahnt-Zezne was like seeing a piece of moving art.

Every mech pilot, every mech designer and every supporter of mechs derived a lot of confidence and satisfaction from seeing 'their' mechs vanquish over the big bad warship.

A part of them saw the future in this single confrontation. Though warships still possessed an undeniable advantage in inflicting mass destruction at the greatest possible scale for a mobile combat asset, their ability to fight against small, tiny but incredibly powerful mechs was simply not as good!

It was not difficult for people to imagine that this battle was a representative reflection of the rivalry between the Mech Trade Association and the Common Fleet Alliance.

Though the orven-built battleship was not even close to matching the performance of a modern CFA armed vessel of the same size, it still operated along the same fundamental principles that underpinned the strength of warships.

In the same way, the seven ace mechs of the temporary coalition were far from matching the insane level of performance of the MTA ace mechs that generally led the charge in the ongoing invasion of the Red Ocean.

That did not take away the fact that the Mars and all of the other ace mechs taking part in the Battle of the Boryan Belt relied on many of the same principles to gain an edge over their opponents.

Ves gained a lot of stimulation from this fight. Ace mechs may be way out of his league considering that he was 'just' a Journeyman at the moment, but that did not stop him from fantasizing about designing powerful mechs that could effectively counter similar warships to the formidable V'gahnt-Zezne.

As Ves imagined a future where mechs decisively pushed warships of any kind to their knees, his wife interrupted his train of thought.

"Ahem, have you forgotten about something?"

"Like what?"

"It took seven ace mechs to defeat one battleship." Gloriana told him. "That does not exactly make for a glorious victory. The amount of time, effort and resources needed to raise seven ace pilots and develop seven suitable ace mechs for them all is enormous."

"I am pretty sure that the orven battleship is much more expensive than seven ace mechs in absolute terms." Ves retorted. "Just look at how many tons of metal it took to build the alien battleship. The quality of the materials may not be the best, but the sheer quantity it took to build up her structure is enough to bankrupt our clan several times over."

"The requirements to build up a complete infrastructure for warships is much simpler than that of ace mechs. It is easy enough to obtain the resources and develop the right tech for them. Crewing the ships also isn't a problem. You just need to erect as many schools as needed to produce the graduates required to obtain trained naval engineers and naval officers. In contrast, no amount of investment is guaranteed to produce another ace pilot. There are too many variables that cannot be controlled."

Ves turned and smirked at her. "Really? That argument might work on anyone else, but I am different."

His wife blinked and quickly recalled one of her husband's most important innovations.

"You… may be right, but… are you ready to unveil the new possibilities to the rest of humanity?"

"Er…"

"Exactly." Gloriana huffed at him. "Don't talk about changed paradigms if no one can actually benefit from them yet. For now, we live in a reality where the emergence of ace pilots is highly constrained. You can build hundreds if not thousands of warships with every ace mech. The amount of people it takes to crew the former may be a million times higher than the latter, but you can train all of the spacers you want with a large enough population base. Personnel is no bottleneck at all. The only major restriction to building more warships is resources, but that can easily be solved by conquering more territories, which is exactly what the Big Two is doing in the new frontier."

Ves looked back at the unfolding destruction of the V'gahnt-Zezne. The alien battleship that used to cast an oppressive shadow over the Palace of Shame had been rendered completely impotent in the might of the 'flies' that attacked her hull with impunity.

The Jedda Sandivar had already destroyed all 14 primary plasma cannons that could have overwhelmed their Saint Kingdoms through brute force.

The hundreds of secondary and tertiary gun batteries were pretty much irrelevant. They were too slow and too weak to threaten the ace mechs. Many of them couldn't even angle their muzzles at a low enough angle to repel the ace mechs that had landed on the surface of the hull!

Every ace mech tried to inflict as much damage as possible in their own ways.

The Thunderer Mark II that had opted to remain in the rear truly showed its worth as a high-end engine of destruction.

As the mech type that most closely matched a battleship on a conceptual level, the formidable heavy gauss cannons of the ace heavy artillery mech was beginning to treat the V'gahnt-Zezne as if she was a highly fortified space bulwark!

Each salvo from the Thunderer Mark II that struck the exterior of the orven battleship did not produce any powerful impacts.

Instead, the extreme penetration rounds largely phased right through the outer hull of the massive vessel and continued to pierce through dozens of compartments, bulkheads, delicate parts and even the bodies of alien crew members that just happened to be in the way!

Though the rounds were eventually blocked by the armored citadel that protected the core of the alien battleship, they had managed to inflict serious damage to the internals of the vessel.

This decreased the V'gahnt-Zezne's ability to defend herself and escape her current predicament.

In contrast to the Thunderer Mark II, the Mars was a lot more hands-on in its quest to dismantle the massive battleship.

Its ARCEUS System charged and fired a salvo of nine resonance-empowered positron beams at the highest possible frequency onto anything that happened to be in front.

In the meantime, the Mars had holstered its transphasic axe and transphasic shotgun and drew out the long and heavy mech saber that had been resting on its back.

The Whale-Cutting Saber had been designed for just these kinds of occasions!

Patriarch Reginald became a lot more satisfied when he saw how much more damage he could do with each mighty swing of his heavy weapon.

The saber cut through solid matter with much greater ease. Combined with its longer reach, this enabled the Mars to drill towards the center of the alien battleship a lot faster!

Another ace mech managed to beat the Mars in this race, though.

Compared to the ace hybrid mech that needed to make slow and heavy swings in order to go forward, the Royal Jeem constantly moved forward at a slow but constant pace with every thrust of its spear.

The ace spearman mech was practically in its element right now. Similar to the spearman mechs designed by Mr. Dulo Voiken, the Royal Jeem just happened to excel at unleashing rapid stabbing attacks!

When these attacks were all empowered by Saint Kalasandra Boojay's powerful true resonance, each rapid stab struck like a directional explosion that caved in a lot of structural elements and deepened the tunnel by at least a dozen meters.

Soon enough, the Royal Jeem breached its way past the citadel and began to inflict serious damage onto the many systems that kept the alien battleship running!

Other ace mechs were doing their own part to clean up the V'gahnt-Zezne before any enemy reinforcements arrived.

The Embodiments of Love and Sacrifice opted to maintain a modest distance from the alien battleship in order to remain on guard against any surprises. In the meantime, the ace rifleman mech and the ace space knight leisurely destroyed the exterior modules of the powerful battleship.

The fast and elusive Jedda Sandivar that had earned great credit in opening up the battleship to destruction was currently zipping around.

Once the crew of the V'gahnt-Zezne started to evacuate, the Jedda Sandivar ruthlessly hunted down every starfighter, shuttle or other craft that attempted to escape the battlefield or run back to the Palace of Shame!

Aside from that, the Jedda Sandivar also continued to make the lives of the determined alien pirates miserable by blinding them inside its smokey domain field.

Now that the ace mech had drawn closer to the hull of the orven battleship than before, many more alien spacers became affected by Saint Marissa Lewandowski's unique method of interference!

As the V'gahnt-Zezne continued to incur more and more damage as time went on, the signs of incoming reinforcements became more obvious.

No one knew why the area around the Palace of Shame began to exhibit more and more spatial fluctuations.

It was as if a calm lake gradually started to get affected by a distant storm that was slowly starting to draw closer. The winds whipped up by the approaching weather disturbance might not be strong at the moment, but the fact that they continued to grow more and more violent and unstable painted an ominous picture about what was coming.

"What the hell is going on?" Ves demanded from his crew.

"We cannot say, sir. This is completely different from all of the other known spatial phenomena that we have witnessed before. We have even attempted to find a match for the patterns that we are registering to the entries in the MTA database, but we have failed to find any at our current access level."

That did not necessarily mean that the MTA could provide no answers, but if they did, Ves and the Larkinson Clan weren't qualified to know.

Ves studied the sensor readings himself and spotted so many oddities that he felt that the mechers probably wouldn't be able to come up with any answers either.

The readings were too abnormal!

"If we extrapolate the escalating figures, then what is coming… is bigger than anything else we have encountered. Let alone an alien battleship or a phase whale, I don't think a warfleet can produce spatial fluctuations of this magnitude!"

His wife grew alarmed as well and pulled up the sensor readings to confirm his assessment.

"You… you're right. What is happening is far greater than any form of phasewater manipulation that we have ever encountered before, barring our transit from the Milky Way to the Red Ocean. This isn't the sort of displacement that can be accomplished with an ordinary warp drive or teleportation device. A phenomenon of this scale can only be produced by making use of hundreds of kilograms of phasewater at a time! It may even be more than a thousand kilograms phasewater!"

Ves almost had a heart attack when he heard this extravagant sum!

The limit to what the Larkinson Clan was capable of using was the recently acquired Gravity Net.

While the Gravity Net had played a critical role in preventing the alien warships from speeding away with the help of their warp drives, this powerful inhibition device completely failed to suppress the escalating spatial disturbances.

Ves recalled that the Gravity Net incorporated a whopping 26.5 kilograms of phasewater. This should have granted the advanced technological marvel enough strength to prevent almost any ship from going in or out, but right now its strength turned out to be completely inadequate to handle the ensuing crisis.

Whatever was responsible for producing such powerful spatial fluctuations was definitely a lot more powerful than the Unspoken and all of the other pirate groups that had just suffered a total defeat!

Many scientists and other specialists were doing their best to gather more information and come up with potential solutions.

Eventually, a science officer made a bold and shocking hypothesis!

"Our assumptions are wrong, sir!"

Ves immediately turned to the science officer that just spoke out. "Explain!"