The Mech Touch

The existence of dreadnoughts was not a secret to the upper echelon of human civilization.

However, the Common Fleet Alliance had kept them secret for so long that most people never knew about their existence.

At most, they heard rumors that the fleeters had once invested in the development of warships that were over 12 kilometers long.

To be honest, battleships around this size already became far too sluggish and cumbersome to make them worthwhile enough to deploy.

Their mass had increased to such an enormous extent that even the strongest thrusters couldn't propel them fast enough to meet the minimum maneuverability standards of the CFA.

Their other disadvantages also became more pronounced. The fleeters eventually figured out that it was much more efficient to construct two 6-kilometer long battleships in the place of a single 12-kilometer long abomination.

The fleeters never gave up on building bigger warships, though.

The rise of god mechs put a lot of pressure onto the CFA. Every simulation and every exercise showed that god mechs could wipe out entire fleets composed of the best battleships imaginable!

While the CFA battleships usually possessed more than enough combined firepower to overwhelm a God Kingdom by relying on brute force, a god mech never stupidly allowed itself to get hit so many times!

God mechs were blazingly fast as well and could easily maneuver themselves inside a ship formation.

It was pretty much game over once they got close enough to swallow the CFA battleships in their formidable God Kingdoms. Their willpower was so oppressive that they could make human crew members faint and render lots of electronic systems inoperable!

The fleeters discovered that there were limits to focusing on quantity.

While it may be true that the CFA could deploy many more warfleets at many different locations, each encounter between a warfleet and a single god mech would cause the former to suffer a total loss without exception!

The development of dreadnoughts was an attempt to prevent this nightmare scenario from happening.

There were many secrets related to their development and their secret tech. Scant few individuals understood their full details.

Those who were vaguely aware of their existence only knew that the CFA ultimately failed to develop an effective counter against god mechs.

The fleeters were supposedly so embarrassed by their incompetence that they kept their experimental warships out of sight.

Operation Night Jazz was the first time that the general public of red humanity became introduced to these mythical dreadnoughts!

"I thought that they couldn't possibly exist!" Gloriana gasped as she witnessed the majestic arrival of the dreadnoughts of the First Armada on the live feed. "Won't they attract an enormous amount of firepower? Their defenses can't possibly withstand so much focused fire."

"We should reserve our judgment for the time being." Ves cautioned her. "The Red Two have clearly planned this for a long time. The Red Fleet definitely haven't sent out their dreadnoughts to die in their first public appearance."

"So cool!" Andraste cheered. "I like the bigger one. She has so many big guns!"

"What does the Throne of Lies do?" Marvaine frowned in puzzlement. "The ship doesn't have a lot of cannons."

From the moment the two dreadnoughts made an appearance, many different alien warships and defensive installations redirected their heaviest gun batteries towards the new arrivals.

Even the aliens figured out that the human flagships were vital components to the human force composition!

Taking them out early was doubtlessly beneficial to the defenders!

However, before the first laser beams and projectiles struck the long and enormous hulls of the dreadnoughts, strong and glowing blue energy shields came online.

It already became clear that these new energy shields were different from the more conventional transphasic energy shields utilized by both sides.

Attack after attack continued to rain down on the two dreadnoughts.

Surprisingly enough, the enormous vessels did little to evade the incoming attacks!

A significant proportion of the outer defensive sphere tried and failed to overcome the defenses of the two dreadnoughts.

Hundreds of formidable alien warships and defensive installations fired all of their anti-ship weapons at the two human vessels, only for the glowing energy shields to ripple like water.

Both human and alien observers became gobsmacked by how much damage the dreadnoughts were able to withstand!

Entire cities and continents would have been razed by now if they endured the same amount of attacks, but the Throne of Lies and the Guns of Armageddon remained calm and stable behind the protection of their new energy shields!

Fleet Admiral Amelie Jameson smirked as she witnessed how little the incoming attacks accomplished.

She continued to convey absolute confidence and superiority as she stood in the middle of the command center of the Guns of Armaddon.

Her arms remained folded behind her back as she continued to track many different data points with the help of her unique cranial implant.

The projected map in front of her was just for show. She derived a lot of satisfaction from seeing so much alien firepower being wasted on trying to whittle down the defenses of one of the greatest human warships to exist.

"Our new azure energy shields have not yet reached their limits. They can fully sustain their current states for approximately 8 hours at the current rate of enemy output."

"The engineers report that the azure energy shield generators remain in good condition."

"Our Spark Reactors are still operating well below full capacity. They are more than able to supply additional power to our azure energy shield reactors if necessary."

"Dozens of alien warships have begun to give up on attacking our dreadnoughts and are starting to redirect their firepower towards our more vulnerable assets."

"Unacceptable." The fleet admiral frowned. "We have not yet even begun to test the limits of our new tech. This is the first time that we have managed to pair our Spark Reactors with energy shields enhanced by hyper technology. Let us give the alien defenders a reason to keep their attacks on our dreadnoughts. Send a command to the Throne of Lies to activate her new hyper ECM systems."

Twenty seconds later, the Throne of Lies drastically began to increase her power consumption.

Cutting-edge ECM systems that had recently been upgraded with hyper materials started to absorb a huge amount of ambient E energy.

The black dreadnought's hull began to deploy many different arrays that were all pointed towards the alien defenders.

Soon enough, the Throne of Lies began to emit a powerful directional field that instantly produced a lot of interference!

Many different aliens let out screams in frustration as their sensor readings became a lot fuzzier.

The closer to the Throne of Lies, the more severe the interference effect!

While the alien assets that were further away from the dreadnought endured minimal interface, that did not provide any consolation to the ones that fell within the stupendous effective range of the new hyper ECM systems!

Phasefighters chasing after human mechs started to miss their shots and lose their targeting locks.

The massive transphasic gun batteries of many different defensive installations began to miss their shots even though they previously boasted a high rate.

Alien sensor systems failed to detect the approach of smaller and lighter first-class mechs, enabling these lurking machines to bypass many defenses and strike against critical targets!

Chaos began to unfold as the aliens tried and failed to coordinate a coherent response against the Throne of Lies.

Even though the orven and puelmer defenders had access to the best and up to date technologies that had been mastered by the native aliens, their countermeasures failed to mitigate the debilitating effects.

The only viable solution that the aliens could think of was to aim their guns in the direction of the Throne of Lies and hope that this nightmare could finally end!

It was a pity that her azure energy shield remained completely intact. The Throne of Lies actually endured even less attacks than before because her hyper ECM systems caused many more alien guns to miss their shots!

Even if that wasn't the case, the azure energy shield fully demonstrated their superiority against massed alien firepower.

Different from ordinary shields, the fleeters had incorporated water hyper materials in their generators.

This caused the resulting energy shields to take on strange and mystical water properties.

Attacking them was like attacking a supernatural water bubble. They resisted, absorbed or redirected the power of every incoming strike with unnatural ease!

Of course, the Red Fleet's brand new azure energy shield generators could not resist all of these attacks for free.

The greatest downside to this new tech was that they consumed an even greater amount of energy than before!

No ordinary RF battleship was able to sustain their current level of energy consumption!

What was even worse was that the azure energy shield generators also required a huge amount of E energy in order to perform at their best.

Their demand for E energy was so great that it was impossible for a medium energy environment to sate their needs!

How could the RF dreadnoughts possibly power their azure energy shields when they were unable to draw enough ambient E energy from the environment?

Only a minority of people knew the truth.

The true secret behind the power of dreadnoughts was their power generators.

Every dreadnought was equipped with many power generators, but most of them were categorized as secondary systems. They merely served as backups in case the primary energy source had become compromised.

The true source of power was the Spark Reactor.

Different from all of the fancy new hyper technology, the fleeters had developed the first Spark Reactors centuries ago. Even then, their power output was so enormous at the time that they completely fell outside of the scope of first-class technology.

The fleeters claimed to have developed the first super-class technology!

Spark Reactors were powerful in many different ways. Their energy output was ridiculously high. Their efficiency was so great that they only produced a modest amount of waste heat. They were inexhaustible and could theoretically last until the universe itself came to an end.

The development of the Spark Reactor gave the CFA hope of being able to counter god mechs, if not today, then in the future!

At this time, the RF did not entertain much thoughts about employing the few dreadnoughts in its possession against their fellow red humans.

The native aliens posed a much more acute threat!

Different from god mechs whose existence distorted reality in a wide area, the alien defenders were much more vulnerable to the unreasonable nature of dreadnoughts.

This was not just because their Spark Reactors not only generated a huge amount of E energy for some reason.

What truly allowed the Red Fleet to bring out their dreadnoughts with pride was because hyper technology allowed them to make proper use of this new energy type for the first time!

The Throne of Lies possessed the least amount of firepower of all of the dreadnoughts stationed in the Red Ocean, but her auxiliary functions had become so powerful that they sped up the collapse of the outer defensive sphere by 30 percent!

The aliens still failed to come up with a countermeasure. Every affected alien unit fought as if they were drunk or unable to see as well as before.

As the Throne of Lies continued to attract an increasing amount of alien attention, the Guns of Armageddon quietly approached the alien defenses from a different direction.

Though the larger dreadnought did not possess so many ridiculous hyper ECM systems, her hull boasted a lot more gun batteries!

Many of them happened to be energy weapon systems, as this enabled the warship to best make use of the stupendously high energy output of her Spark Reactor.

As the powerful energy cannons started to accumulate energy, the very space around the dreadnought started to grow hotter as a huge E energy vortex surrounded the 18-kilometer long vessel.

"FIRE!"

Pure devastation rained down on the unfortunate alien targets!