The Mech Touch

Chapter 3678  Opening Strike

While all of the mechs held fire for the moment, the Amaranto carefully anchored its frame against the hull of the Graveyard.

The masterwork expert mech raised its impressive luminar crystal rifle and aimed at a speck that was practically invisible to the naked eye.

The mech leveraged its advanced stabilization systems to keep the machine as steady as possible. Not only did they compensate for any wobbling produced by the mech, they also compensated for the vibrations and shifts in movement of the capital ship underneath.

The rifle glowed as Venerable Stark charged the weapon up. After the light grew intense enough to illuminate the entire fleet, the rifle fired, causing a white-hot beam to lance through thousands of kilometers before striking a distant alien warship in the far distance!

"We have struck a successful blow!"

The Amaranto proved that the Larkinsons possessed the ability to threaten the distant enemy ships at this range!

Of course, not every mech or mech pilot was able to replicate this feat.

After the expert rifleman mech paved the way, other mech units tested their mettle.

The Bright Warriors, the Transcendent Punishers, the Valkyrie Redeemers as well as the ranged mechs hailing from the other alliance partners all fired a single salvo at the distant targets.

The vast majority of the mechs missed their shots. Even if they tried their best to control all of the different variables that could cause them to deviate in their aim, the tolerances at this range were far too brutal.

If the machines weren't as well-designed, well-constructed and well-maintained as the Amaranto, then it was nearly impossible to achieve a successful hit at this distance!

It was like asking someone to throw a basketball through a hoop that was situated on the other side of a large stadium!

Assuming that the ball thrower possessed the strength to throw the ball across such a great distance, the odds of tossing the basketball through the hoop were still miniscule!

The expeditionary forces did not intend to bombard the alien fleet in earnest. Not yet, at least.

The point of this action was to set a baseline of the accuracy and hit rate of the different mech units.

How precise were they? Did the mech units achieve more hits or less hits than estimated? How far did their shots deviate from the target? How much distance did the expeditionary fleet need to traverse in order to raise the hit rate to an acceptable level?

As the number crunchers performed all of the calculations needed to answer these questions, Ves had made his own conclusion after seeing the initial results.

"Well, we suck at long-ranged combat."

"Meow." Lucky nodded his head as he sat on top of the Unending Regalia's helmet.

The results did not come as a surprise to Ves. As a mech designer, he knew exactly what it took for laser weapons to get everything just right to achieve reliable hits at these extreme ranges.

Just a miniscule deviation in the firing angle was enough to make a shot go wide by several kilometers!

The Amaranto achieved the best results, but that was to be expected. No other mech in the Larkinson Army was designed solely for the purpose of long-range sniping.

"The Transcendent Punishers aren't faring any better, I see."

Ves paid special attention to the Eye of Ylvaine. He especially instructed the Ylvainan mech pilots to activate the Guided Aim ability in order to obtain additional support for their actions.

It turned out that even if Ylvaine was able to nudge the aim of the devout Ylvainan mech pilots, minor errors in execution along with interference from all kinds of other variables such as the vibrations and minor course changes of the ship they were on all scrambling the aim of the heavy artillery mechs to the point where they missed anyway.

Not even design spirits could help the mech pilots increase their hit rate. Not at such an extreme range.

The only positive note was that the luminar crystal rifles were so cohesive and well-constructed that their laser beams remained straight and true at satisfactory ranges.

Their divergence was fairly minimal and while Ves detected hundreds of bad batches, these flaws would grow much less severe once the expeditionary fleet closed the distance to an extent.

All of this meant that the mechs of Larkinson Clan could deal effective, if sporadic damage at this ultra-extreme range.

"Please report the actions of the pakklaton fleet. How have the aliens reacted to our initial volley?"

"We aren't detecting any major movements as of yet. They are still maintaining a ballistic course without any attempts to accelerate in any direction or rearrange their formation."

"Strange." Ves frowned. "Are the pakklatons asleep or something? Not even aliens should remain silent when under direct attack."

"Sir! We have detected elevated energy readings from the pakklaton warships! They are beginning to move and change their orientations. They are turning their bows in our direction!"

"Here it comes! Brace yourselves!"

Laser weapons didn't actually inflict any kinetic damage. Ships rarely shook as if they had gotten struck by a giant hammer when hit by laser beams.

That didn't mean that well-aimed laser attacks could hit a critical or volatile ship component that could trigger secondary explosions.

"Detecting rising energy spikes! The enemy warships are discharging their primary cannons!"

The space between the two sides lit up as over a hundred thick and bright violet laser beams lanced towards the human fleet!

The power and energy of the laser beams fired by the large, warship-grade laser cannons vastly exceeded what mechs like the Transcendent Punisher and even the Amaranto could output at full power!

Yet as the avian alien race demonstrated their determination to defend their ships, the results… were not as overwhelming as the Larkinsons feared.

Only one one of those large laser beams managed to strike the bow of the Indigo Tremor!

Though the Glory Seeker fleet carrier sustained considerable damage from that single strike, the Indigo Tremor was built to withstand attacks from thousands of mechs for a decent amount of time.

The fleet carrier hadn't sustained any damage despite getting hit. One of her energy shields managed to intercept the heavy laser attack, though not without ease.

What mattered was that energy shields could soon regain cohesion if they didn't do any damage in quick succession! This would essentially allow the Indigo Tremor to withstand way more damage than her bow plating could endure.

"That's… it?" Someone bewilderingly whispered.

"Stay sharp! This is just their first salvo. It will get much worse as we get closer!"

As the fleet's various sensor systems gathered more data on the state and the behavior of the alien ships, it became increasingly more clear that they were unable to perform as well as the ships recorded in the MTA database.

It took over half a minute for the warships to fire another powerful shot!

This time, the aliens had better luck!

"The Gorgoneion has been struck once and the Hemmington Cross has been struck twice!"

"What's the damage?!"

"Both ships have not sustained any surface damage as of yet. Their directional energy shields are still holding!"

The pakklaton warships varied in size, so their main cannons differed by size and power as well.

The weapons that managed to inflict the successful hits dealt far more damage than any mech, but was unable to overwhelm the energy shields sustained by capital ship-grade power reactors with single hits.

The same could not be said for the other vessels, so the Golden Skull Alliance made sure to make their formation as narrow and long as possible.

The more vulnerable ships such as the non-combat capital ships were positioned behind the heavier and better-armored vessels. Highly strategic vessels such as the Andrenidae and the Diligent Ovenbird would fare much worse if they got struck by any of the heavy lasers!

The combat carriers were put in the rear as well since their hull plating was much thinner. A few hits from a warship-grade weapon could easily burn through every layer and demolish several compartments if the aliens were lucky!

For now, the pakklaton warships were only able to target the fleet carriers and other heavily-protected vessels at the front. It helped a lot that their warships were clustered closely around their civilian ships. This prevented them from employing raking fire against the human ships!

One of the logical courses of action that the pakklaton leaders could take was to split their warships up in order to gain more favorable angles against their adversaries.

Yet as time went by, the alien ships didn't move at all! The lack of acceleration of any kind bewildered the Larkinsons and the analysts worked hard in order to figure out why this was the case.

Soon enough, detailed observation on the pakklaton vessels while they were operating their weapons and responding to the aggression from the humans yielded a fruitful result!

"Sir! We have developed a theory why the pakklaton ships are unwilling to move. At least a third of their vessels exhibit significant damage to their sub-light propulsion systems. They're stranded while they effect repairs on their damaged systems!"

"There is also something else going on with the enemy vessels, sir." Another bridge officer spoke up. "Under ordinary circumstances, any repair work performed on starships should improve their structural integrity. However, according to our observations, their structural integrity keeps rising and falling at inconsistent times. The pakklatons are having trouble keeping their ships in one piece. Certain vessels are much shakier than others!"

All of this was welcome news to Ves and the Larkinsons. Though they didn't know what was going on with the alien fleet, anything that suggested that they had their hands full with problems was an excellent development to the attackers!

Ves grinned. "Proceed with our advance. Please prioritize the analysis of the reason why these alien ships are in poor condition. Have they just fled from a battle against another hostile fleet? If so, we need to take into account that a third, potentially hostile fleet might emerge."

"We have already deployed an expansive sensor net that can give us advance warning of any incoming warping ships."

"Good."

Ves focused on the increasing amount of technical data gathered by the fleet's many sensors.

None of the nine alien warships were in prime condition. Some were in an even worse state than they initially thought! More than half of their fearsome main cannons hadn't fired as of yet while the remaining ones were so inconsistent that they missed by surprisingly wide margins.

For a moment, Ves was tempted to order his fleet to slow down its advance so they could prolong this extreme-range duel, but he thought better of it a few seconds later.

All of the expeditionary fleet's mechs were exceptionally inefficient in long-ranged combat. Their staying power wasn't anything to boast about either. Once they reached their limits, they wouldn't be able to fire their weapons as often as before.

In contrast, the alien warships should be a bit more robust on account of the advantages inherent in vessels of this scale. They could probably fire their weapons for many hours if not days if they were well-designed!

It was best to keep closing the distance so that all of the mechs would become drastically more accurate and effective at dealing damage.

As the minutes went by, the differences didn't seem obvious at first, but Ves knew he had to be patient.

The pakklaton warships weren't giving up, though. Even if their main cannons were in poor shape, they still fired at the ships of the Golden Skull Alliance as if they were hoping to achieve a lucky hit that could cripple a hull.

No luck so far. The forward ships were all protected by shield generators that could take quite a beating.

The biggest problem was that the pakklaton warships weren't accurate enough to concentrate their attacks on any of their targets! At this range, the aliens would be lucky to achieve more than six hits with a single volley!

"How long will this last, though?"