The Mech Touch

Though Kravon and the Selzer made a very powerful impression on the Echo Spears, Ves knew that his newly-converted battle bots weren't as invincible as they appeared.

Just like expert mechs, superior mechs could easily be overwhelmed by a mob of inferior mechs!

Quality only went so far in reducing the quantity disparity.

Fortunately, the mechs built by Aisling happened to be expensive custom mechs even by the wealthy standards of the Friday Coalition.

Not only did they feature numerous systems, their base performance parameters were also far superior to any third-class mech!

In terms of battle capability, all of the four machines performed better or on par to a third-class expert mech!

Of course, in an actual battle, the expert mech was liable to win any battle against a superior standard mech.

The difference in skill between an expert pilot and an ordinary mech pilot was too big!

Even when piloting lesser machines, any expert pilot from the Bright Republic could definitely run rings around a Coalition mech unless the mech type matchup was too unfavorable.

What all of this meant was that the four mechs of the Scarlet Rose were very much capable of defeating the 170 spaceborn mechs of the Echo Spears!

"It's too bad I can't field mechs." Ves regretfully muttered. "I can only make do with improvised battle bots."

As hard as he worked, his conversion efforts were still rather crude. Compared to battle bots designed to operate autonomously from the ground up, the four machines weren't capable of bringing out more than half of their potential.

Almost all of the strength currently exerted by the battle bots relied solely on its superior quality. The disparity in materials and tech resulted in an undeniable firepower advantage that Ves had to employ to the best effect.

When Ves initially observed the Echo Spears, he had to make a very important choice.

What should he target first?

He first considered directing the Kravon and Selzer against the 170 mechs deployed by the enemy mercenary corps.

The spaceborn mechs consisted of a balanced arrangement of rifleman mechs screened by a large number of melee mechs.

As suggested by their name, the Echo Spears appeared to have a preference of spear-wielding mechs. Ves spotted a powerful subformation of thirty-or-so lancer mechs that could definitely inflict a lot of damage when they managed to complete their charge.

Ves did not fear the ranged mechs. Regardless of whether they were armed with ballistic, kinetic or laser weapons, the budget mechs didn't bring enough firepower to take down the Scarlet Rose or his battle bots in a brief amount of time!

What Ves truly feared was the melee mechs. While the ranged mechs needed a lot of time to penetrate the armor of his assets, the melee mechs were much more variable in this regard.

As long as dozens of melee mechs mobbed the Kravon and Selzer from all sides, his ranged battle bots would definitely lose battle effectiveness!

He only had two melee battle bots to screen his ranged assets.

The Paravin, the space knight, featured exceptional defense, but was rather mediocre in fending off melee mechs, especially without a mech pilot skilled in swordsmanship in control.

The Fliskin, the light skirmisher, was in an even worse position! The high-speed melee combat that a light mech excelled in was heavily dependent on the judgement and battle sense of a skilled mech pilot.

His cousin Raella happened to be very deadly when piloting landbound light skirmishers! Even if she piloted lighter and cheaper mechs, she often came on top in her duels by relying on her excellent skills!

"A light mech scales even more with piloting skill."

The skill expression of this weight class was very high! This meant that while excellent mech pilots were capable of achieving astounding results, bad mech pilots were liable to trash their machines!

The problem that Ves faced right now was that the Fliskin didn't even have a bad mech pilot.

It didn't have any mech pilot at all!

The rudimentary AI controlling its basic operations wasn't customized for the Fliskin at all. Without customizing its programming to the parameters of the mech, the skirmisher mech would only perform as well as a typical bot.

Perhaps the Fliskin could still rely on its superior performance to crush three or four mechs at once, but once the Echo Spears threw over a dozen mechs at it, the pilotless light skirmisher would quickly expose its shortcomings!

"I can't let any of the Echo Spears get close!" Ves concluded.

As long as the Echo Spears were willing to absorb some losses and bull through the firepower that he brought to bear with his battle bots, they could definitely overwhelm his bots and ship!

This was why he directed the Kravon and the Selzer on the enemy ships rather than mechs.

He wanted to discourage the Echo Spears from pursuing him any further!

His goal wasn't to defeat the Echo Spears or kill Commander Quint. Ves could care less about these Zonan mercenaries.

What he truly wanted was to get away!

To achieve this goal, it was enough to force the Echo Spears into a retreat. As long as they gave up the chase, the Scarlet Rose's FTL drive would finish cycling and allow him to jump away from this star system!

"What better way than to distress a mercenary corps than by attacking their ships?" He grinned.

Every seasoned outfit was always prepared to lose some mechs over the course of an intensive battle.

While it was a bit more painful to lose their mech pilots, as long as they ejected fast enough, the loss of life would probably be bearable even if the Echo Spears lost half of their spaceborn mechs.

Were the mercenaries willing to sacrifice so many mechs to complete this mission?

Ordinarily, no, but this was different! The Coalition Reserve Corps issued this mission itself, and as a mighty arm of a powerful second-rate state, it was not short on money!

The CRC could definitely compensate all of the material losses suffered by the Echo Spears and issue a rich reward on top of this princely sum!

So attacking the mechs would not do much to force the mercenaries into abandoning their mission, especially when they were led by determined military veterans.

This left their ships!

As long as a company of mechs lost their motherships, the Echo Spears would suffer a devastating blow!

A light carrier was worth more than the cost to commission the vessel. While already worth a hefty investment of funds on their own, the mech technicians, ship ratings, officers and captains were all precious assets of the mercenary corps.

As long as they lost their lives, the Echo Spears would lose decades worth of trained and loyal subordinates, whose costs could be measured with money!

In addition to losing all of the men, the mercenary corps would also lose all of the expensive materials and supplies stored on the mechs. This would certainly worsen the outfit's financial position.

Aside from this, destroying the ships also affected the mechs they carried in a very significant fashion!

The 170 mechs in space wouldn't be able to last long in space on their own. In this lifeless star system, it would definitely take at least a couple of days to rescue the stranded mechs.

All the while, the mechs would have to conserve their energy while their mech pilots had to subside off the emergency stashes and life support systems built into the cockpits.

This was a very frightening prospect!

Who wanted to drift for days or weeks through space while locked inside a metal coffin?

Anyone could drop by and mess with mechs, whether they were friendly, neutral or hostile.

Heavens forbid if a pirate gang, which were quite common in the periphery of the Great Zona Rebpulic, happened to encounter over a hundred homeless mechs!

Ves did not give the Echo Spears too much time to consider their options calmly.

"Fire! Keep firing!" He shouted excitedly as he manually tweaked the targeting priorities of the Kravon and the Selzer.

While the battle bots would definitely fare poorly in a battle against actual second-class mechs, against a huge and lumbering ship, they never missed!

Light carriers might include the word light, but that was only relative to the carrier classes. Any ship that possessed enough capacity to carry dozens of mechs inevitably flew like a sluggish tub in space!

Distressed by the crippling of the flagship, the Echo Spears responded according to their training. Their melee mechs sped up faster while their ranged mechs started to fire at the distant battle bots and mobile supply frigate.

Unfortunately, they didn't have enough to close into the effective range of their weapons!

There was no single standard for the effective ranges of weapons. It depended heavily on their quality, tech, design, materials and other factors such as the effectiveness of the sensor and targeting systems.

One thing was for sure though. The effective range of second-class weapons often exceeded that of their third-class equivalents!

That meant that while the Kravon and Selzer continued to pound a second light carrier with unerring accuracy, the enemy laser beams and ballistic projectiles often flew wide without coming close to hitting their targets!

Ves briefly directed his attention away from controlling the battle bots to adjusting the navigation instructions of the Scarlet Rose.

The relatively nimble mobile supply frigate started to adopt a vigorous evasion pattern. Side thrusters frequently engaged at abrupt intervals as the ship appeared to roll or sidestep a significant amount of enemy fire!

Though plenty of ballistic and kinetic rounds missed the mark, a lot of lasers still managed to hit her exterior.

So what?

The weak laser rifles employed by the mechs of his opposition only inflicted shallow scorch marks on the hull plating of his ship!

While the Scarlet Rose was fairly light by the standards of the ships of the Friday Coalition, her exterior hull plating was actually tougher than the armor plating of a typical second-class mech!

"If you think that will hurt me at all, then think again! Hahahaha!"

Even the weak points of the ship was far more resilient than the Echo Spears could handle.

Seeing that it would take many hours to whittle down the exceptional armor of the Scarlet Rose, the mechs instead poured their firepower towards the battle bots!

In this, the mercenary mechs barely achieved better results.

The Selzer possessed decently high mobility. As long as its flight system flitted randomly in many different directions, it was able to evade a lot of firepower!

What little attacks impacted the Selzer might leave some marks, but without repeated attacks, the chance of penetration was too low!

The Kravon was a bit too big and did not possess the mobility to evade many attacks. Ves addressed this shortcoming by assigning the Paravin to shield it from most damage.

The Paravin's large kite shield withstood or absorbed countless attacks, many of them leaving just tiny marks on its surface!

Even if an errant laser beam or ballistic shell impacted the frame of the mech, the damage was likewise superficial!

However, Ves quickly noticed that the quantity of hits was a little distressing. A thousand pinpricks could still destroy the space knight!

He therefore decided to frustrate his attackers by repositioning the mechs to take cover behind the Scarlet Rose.

Most of the attacks started to impact the almost-impervious exterior of his ship, preventing his battle bots from enduring the attacks directly!

With the safety of his battle bots guaranteed, the Kravon and Selzer completely let go and pounded the second light carrier until all of her bow sections turned into scrap!

Though the Echo Spears hesitated to change the ship's orientation, they soon had no choice!

When the targeted ship rotated a little bit on her axis, Ves pounced on the tiny opening.

"Launch missiles!"

The Kravon finally employed its secondary weapon system. A salvo of twenty small and compact missiles flew from its shoulder launchers and rapidly accelerated towards the distant fleet!