The Mech Touch

5040 Minor Losses and Gains

The battle wound down after the three ace mechs of the Golden Skull Alliance disarmed the orven battleship and disabled many of her systems.

By this time, only a handful of wheednar warships retained the ability to resist, but their straining transphasic energy shields were already faltering under the combined attacks of thousands of mechs!

The other alien warships had either been torn apart or drifted lifelessly in space.

The mech pilots had all been ordered to refrain from inflicting excessive damage to the alien warships.

While it was not possible for all of the mechs to show perfect restraint, the amount of relatively intact warships drifting into space was more than satisfactory!

The expeditionary fleet had already begun to accelerate forward by this time.

The main battle was pretty much over at this point. The mechs had already reformed into units and begun to secure the expanding debris field.

The mechs still maintained a respectable distance from the crippled warships. Even if all of their gun batteries had been knocked offline, there was still a decent risk that the desperate and cornered alien crew members would decide to blow up their vessels in a final act of spite!

However, the Golden Skull Alliance had already prepared for this. A few mechs began to throw EMP bombs into any breaches.

These bombs subsequently exploded and knocked out a lot of hardware!

Ranged mechs armed with luminar crystal rifles also fired disruptor beams and other damaging beams at select angles and points in the hulls. These precision attacks struck power generators and critical systems that could give the alien crew a chance to retaliate.

If that was not enough, a large number of Ferocious Piranhas flew close to the hulls of different mechs and made sure to use their glows to reduce the resistance of any alien survivors within range!

General Verle had even instructed the Everchanger to hover close to the disabled orven battleship and activate an amplified tranquility glow to envelop the entire vessel.

The Everchanger looked remarkably holy and pristine at this time. Faint silhouettes of angel wings even started to appear onto his back as Lufa's calming influence descended across the entire warship.

While this did not guarantee that every surviving orven spacer would cease their resistance and stop fighting, they should at least be a lot less fervent about resorting to extreme measures!

By the time the expeditionary fleet had drawn close to the debris field, thousands of shuttles launched from the various starships in order to begin rescue and salvage operations.

Not every mech that had been struck by the aliens collapsed into pieces.

There were still rare cases where the larger gun batteries only managed to inflict glancing blows that only cut off parts of a mech.

The alien starfighters also managed to damage a score of mechs before they all went down.

However, most of the shuttles were not assigned to perform search and rescue, but had instead been assigned to board and secure the crippled but mostly intact hulls!

This was already a familiar process to the older members of the Golden Skull Alliance.

Every boarding action was inherently risky and the resistance inside the vessels was bound to make the human boarding troops bleed.

Nonetheless, this was the only way to preserve the value of the alien warships to the greatest extent possible.

In any case, the lives of ordinary footsoldiers were much more expendable than mech pilots.

The pool of potentates in the Red Ocean was a lot smaller than the total population of humans. It also took years to convert potentates into qualified mech pilots.

It was a lot easier to train entire batches of infantry soldiers as they were not limited by conditions such as genetic aptitude.

It also took a lot less time to train a basic trooper that could adequately take part in dangerous boarding operations.

Ves did not bother to pay too much attention to the progress of the boarding actions. He only spared a brief amount of concern when he checked on the status of one of his closest friends and subordinates.

He groaned. "Damnit, Ketis. Not again."

Ketis was a Journeyman Mech Designer as well as a Swordmaster.

As a woman who held great ambitions, she could not resist the opportunity to put her excellent swordsmanship to good use and board another hostile alien warship!

The only consolation that eased Ves' concerns was that she had chosen to join a bunch of Swordmaidens in boarding a crippled wheednar heavy cruiser.

She probably did not consider the orvens to be worthy prey for her Bloodsinger after they had been tranquilized by her husband's expert mech.

"Well, let her have her fun. Venerable Dise should be able respond quickly enough if any unforeseen threats have appeared."

As the various forces continued to conduct rescue, salvage and capture operations, Ves eventually received a preliminary report from General Verle.

"We have just received the casualty list, sir. 112 of our mech pilots have lost their lives in this battle." The projected figure stated. "I know how you feel about this, but this amount of losses falls well within our more optimistic projections. Don't forget that we managed to attain a clean victory against a formidable alien raiding fleet. The combined firepower of all of the warships is enough to tear our entire expeditionary fleet to shreds in a direct confrontation. Any other second-class mech force that has attempted to fight against a similar hostile force of warships have sustained losses up to thousands of mech pilots."

"Yeah, but they don't have battle formations, an abundance of expert mechs and three ace mechs." Ves retorted.

"We all knew what we were getting into, sir. We are still in the process of building up our strength. The warships and the salvage that we have managed to score today will go a long way into helping us upgrade our mechs to higher standards."

Anyone who looked at the outcome of this battle would think that the Golden Skull Alliance scored an overwhelming victory!

There should be nothing to complain about as the aliens failed to touch any of the truly important assets such as the starships and the high-ranking mech pilots of the expeditionary fleet!

It was a pity that Ves could not feel so much joy at this time.

"We need to work on solutions that can decrease the amount of losses even further." He said. "If the disparity between our forces and the forces of the enemy has grown to this extent, then we should be able to win an engagement with near-zero casualties. Many more alien fleets like these will come from the depths of the Red Ocean and assault red humanity's space. We may need to be ready to fight many battles in quick succession."

They briefly talked a bit more about what sort of measures they could take to prepare for the future.

It was not easy to reduce the loss rate in the short term. The only way to completely reduce the risks to all mech pilots was to deploy the ace mechs by themselves.

In truth, everyone knew that the Macharia Excelsia, the Jedda Sandivar and the Royal Jeem could have defeated the alien raiding fleet by themselves.

They would have taken a lot more time to overcome the defenses of every shielded warship and a lot of alien vessels would doubtlessly succeed in splitting up and escaping from the battlefield, but at least this was a safe and guaranteed way to harvest a lot of spoils!

This was not conducive to the development of the Larkinson Clan and the other organizations, though.

The mech forces all needed to accumulate more experience and give their mech pilots enough opportunities to grow in battle.

"Have there been any notable breakthroughs in this battle?" Ves asked.

"Not particularly." General Verle shook his head. "This battle is actually relatively tame by our standards all-considered. The only pilots that broke through this time belong to the Adelaides and the Boojays."

"I see. I expected more, but I guess the Age of Dawn has only just begun."

Ves hoped to observe whether the influence of exotic radiation had loosened the bottlenecks of his mech pilots just enough to trigger a wave of breakthroughs, but his expectations were wildly off the mark.

He understood that it was not just the lack of time that played a role.

The relatively short duration of the battle and the amount of high-level support in the battle also caused the mech pilots to endure less pressure.

Ves did not really mind, though. There were plenty of opportunities in the future for his mech pilots to break through in a natural fashion. Lanie Larkinson and Taon Melin would have their day when they were truly ready to step up and become the heroes that the Larkinson Clan needed.

"What do the estimates of the plunder look like?" Ves asked.

General Verle briefly consulted a couple of reports. "The good news is that the cargo holds of the alien warships are filled with fairly valuable stolen plunder. Many warships are still close to intact sans their gun batteries, so it is possible for shipyards to refurbish them into hulls that are suitable for human use. Now that no more starships are pouring in from the greater beyonder gate, the market prices for relatively intact alien hulls has multiplied by an order of magnitude. Oh, we are also entitled to a merit reward from the Red MTA, though it won't be much."

The bounties on the alien raiding fleets were not that impressive because the mechers and fleeters already took the salvage value of the alien warships into account.

MTA merits were not that easy to earn!

"What's the bad news, general?"

"Well, the tech and materials of the wheednar warships are not that good. They are roughly equivalent or inferior to the ordinary alien warships we managed to defeat during Battle of the Boryan Belt. The wheednars are a minor race in the Red Ocean so their warships are not that interesting even if we managed to secure so many hulls. They haven't integrated a lot of phasewater into their hulls."

"What about the orven battleship?"

"That ship is the only one that is worthwhile among our prizes. Her hull structure is made out of considerably more valuable alloys, although they are still weaker than the other alien warship materials that we have obtained in the past. The ship can be sold for quite a hefty sum of MTA credits if kept whole, but we can also stockpile a lot of bulk first-class materials to produce a large quantity of quasi-first-class mechs in the future. It is up to you and the other leaders to decide which option you prefer."

This was not a simple decision to make as Ves did not have any designs on hand that could make good use of all of those salvaged first-class materials.

"We'll figure this out later. What about phasewater?"

The projection of General Verle released a laugh. "Hahaha! No chance. You can forget about it. While you can still recover a marginal amount of phasewater from salvaged transphasic materials, we can be certain that the aliens have not kept any containers filled with pure and unadulterated phasewater for us. All of the raiding fleets that the aliens have sent out have already been marked for death. Placing excess phasewater into any of the ships will only play into our hands in the end."

"Damn."

Ves already expected as much. The warships all looked like castoffs so it was unlikely for the native aliens to invest anything truly important into them. He could think of hundreds of better uses of phasewater than to load them into expendable warships!

"What about intelligence?"

"We should be able to obtain a lot more relevant and up to date information from the alien data banks." General Verle grinned. "It will take a lot of time and effort to unlock and translate the encrypted alien data, but once we do, we should have a good picture on the actual state of alien space beyond the borders of the Torald Middle Zone."

"Good. We need that information for our next operations. This is just the beginning."