The Mech Touch

Chapter 3248: Flanking Maneuvers

Compared to the center, the flanks did not come under as much fire. The rifleman mechs on both sides were mostly targeting each other. Though they were more than willing to level their guns at the mechs that threatened to attack them from the sides, they couldn’t afford to let the enemy ranged mechs destroy them first!

In this way, the massive battlefield involving over 50,000 mechs slowly delineated into several different sections, each of which were largely self-contained.

Though senior officers such as General Verle looked at the battlefield in a much more detailed and comprehensive manner, laymen like Ves lacked the training and expertise to see that much.

He had enough experience to be able to tell what was going on. As someone who was always sensitive towards life, he could intuitively sense that the dance of life and death had just erupted at the sides!

He leaned forward and switched the feeds of the projections to gain a better view of the action in those areas.

Ferocious Piranhas swept past the formations of the Hivar Roarers. Each time they swept close, the bestial mechs piloted by the dwarves shuddered a bit. These Vulcanites had never come into contact with glows in their life. In fact, they never heard of them except when their superiors held hasty briefings on the known capabilities of the mechs employed by the Larkinson Clan.

The dwarven mech pilots should have been more prepared for a measure that they knew what was coming. After all, a lot of industry insiders had written about the capabilities of the Ferocious Piranhas back in the Yeina Star Cluster. The third-class version of this mech model was currently the highest selling product of the Living Mech Corporation!

Yet reading about its effects was different from experiencing it themselves. The analysts and lower officers who described the effects of the Ferocious Piranhas don’t even know what they were talking about. How could the mech pilots possibly anticipate and guard against a phenomenon that they couldn’t even describe with their own words?

It was this initial surprise that gave the dwarven mech pilots an awful surprise. The odd shifts between feeling angry and feeling emotionless at such a rapid frequency made them all dizzy to the point where they were no longer able to maintain their concentration!

These brief interruptions were extremely deadly to the affected mech pilots as the Ferocious Piranhas piloted by the Flagrant Vandals flew just ahead of other friendly mech units!

“They’re open!”

“Kill them all!”

“Drive our swords through their throats!”

The other Larkinson mech pilots had long known about the properties of the Ferocious Piranhas. They even trained alongside the Flagrant Vandals in order to maximize the utility of the light skirmisher’s extremely useful glow.

Swords cut through metal without encountering any opposition. Blades thrust through weak points with much greater ease than before. Hundreds of Vulcanite mechs instantly fell into a disadvantage as they incurred a lot of damage at once!

If not for the fact that the bestial mechs were larger and a bit more massive than other mechs, many more would have fallen at the first blow!

Even so, the injuries they sustained in the first clash were so significant that their performance could no longer keep up with the heat of the battle. Their lack of power quickly stalled the momentum of the Hivar Roarers, which the Larkinsons and Glory Seekers did not miss.

“They’ve stalled. Keep pushing them back!” A Glory Seeker captain roared.

“The Superior Mother is with us today!”

The disarray among the dwarves granted the defenders an opportunity to launch a counter-attack. The Glory Seekers mechs that had previously hung back and fired their submachine guns at the enemy units all holstered their guns and brought out their spears.

They soon circled above and below the disrupted enemy formations before initiating a deathly charge!

“The Superior Mother demands your death!”

The dwarven mech pilots of the Hivar Roarers weren’t rookies. Though they lacked real battle experience for the most part, their training was impeccable and their discipline was high. They soon learned to cope with the disruption caused by the Ferocious Piranhas. Even if they weren’t able to maintain their full concentration, they wouldn’t lose control like last time.

In fact, the main reason why they were able to regain control was their intense belief in Vulcan and their undying hatred against the tall folk!

“The tall folk gods seek to muddle us up!”

“Do not let the evil gods and their slaves confuse our purpose!”

“Dwarves shall never falter against the tall folk!”

The Dwarven God Cult and its ideology held a lot of sway in the Hivar Roarers. The dwarven mech pilots in the vanguard, ashamed at their poor performance,  whipped themselves up to such a frenzy that their intense fury and other emotions forcibly kept themselves cool in the face of suppressive glows!

Yet just as the dwarves became accustomed to the harassment conducted by the Flagrant Vandals, the Valkyrie Interceptors of the Glory Seekers had closed in on the enemy bestial mechs!

Different from the Penitent Sisters, the Glory Seekers preferred to pilot more specialized models. The Valkyrie Interceptor was completely optimized for spaceborn engagements. By sacrificing a lot of effective performance on land and aerial environments, they were able to perform a fraction better in space.

The Glory Seekers previously retained the Valkyrie Hurricane as well. This was the aerial variant of the Valkyrie Redeemer and performed a lot better under atmospheric conditions.

However, the Battle of Reckoning had taught the Glory Seekers a painful lesson about bringing the wrong mechs to a battle. Ever since then, Marshal Ariadne Wodin and other senior officers decided that it was unlikely for them to need mechs that were optimized to fight in planetary environments. They all converted their existing Hurricanes to Interceptors and only procured the latter from that point onwards.

Now, these variant marauder mechs were about to activate one of their signature features!

The Glory Seekers did not opt to activate it when they were further away. Perhaps aware that these stubborn dwarves were not that easy to intimidate, the Hexer officers all commanded their subordinates to hold back until their Valkyrie mechs all came closer.

It wasn’t until the charging mechs armed with spears and shields almost reached the hastily-prepared formations of the Hivar Roarer mechs that they performed their well-practiced routine!

“DEATH!”

The Valkyrie Interceptors all activated their Marked For Death triggered ability. Even though this feature did not have the support of prime resonance or true resonance, the inherent life of the mechs themselves was enough to power this ability to an effective degree!

In an instant, the bestial mechs targeted by individual Valkyrie Interceptors stagnated yet again.

This time, thousands of affected dwarven mech pilots felt as if they were staring right into death, which came in the form of a woman that seemed to be able to snuff out their souls with her stare alone.

A portion of strong-willed officers and mech pilots managed to shake themselves out of this paralysis.

“Don’t be confused by this evil human god! Vulcan shall protect our souls!”

Unfortunately, they woke up too late. By the time their mechs were just about to evade or brace for impacts, waves of spears pierced through their armor and sank into their internals!

Many more dwarven mechs were rendered inoperable at this time!

“Starburst!” The Glory Seeker officers ordered.

The Valkyrie Interceptors that had pulled off their charges and became vulnerable to counter-attack quickly launched their grenades in unison.

When these grenades detonated, they released a hugely disorienting blast of light, particles and other forms of interference. Though short-ranged, these Starburst grenades successfully disrupted the rhythm of the vengeful Hivar Roarers mechs that were still advancing from behind.

The Valkyrie Interceptors did not linger in order to fight the bestial mechs up close but instead retreated in a smooth and organized fashion.

These were the maneuvers that the Hex Army had refined and perfected over the course of the Komodo War. The Glory Seekers still shared a close relationship with the Wodin Dynasty and by extension the Hexadric Hegemony, so their mech pilots benefited from many of the state’s latest advancements.

In fact, this was just the most basic routine. The Fridaymen mech pilots had developed so many different countermeasures against this classic charge that the Hexers had to become more inventive in order to make good use of the Valkyrie product line.

One of these aspects was the follow-up. While the Valkyrie mechs were able to work well by themselves, they were even more effective if they worked alongside other units!

At this point, the vanguard of the dwarven flanking units had suffered multiple continuous surprises and setbacks in rapid succession. The tall folk that were fighting against them weren’t playing by the rules!

“It’s those swordsman mechs again!”

The impact caused by the Valkyrie Interceptors provided the Heavensworders with an excellent opening!

Buoyed by the continuous successes, the confident Heavensworders dove into the ranks of the Hivar Roarers and began to batter them with unrelenting aggression.

Though the Hivar Roarers all possessed sufficient training in how to cope against normal melee mechs, the swordsman mechs and the mech pilots of the Heavensword Association were far from average!

The swordsman mech models employed by the Heavensword Association were all designed to channel and complement specific sword styles.

One model was swift and agile and wielded shorter blades that allowed it to fight like a pseudo-light skirmisher.

Another model was thick and sturdy and wielded two hefty blades which allowed it to be able to entangle enemy melee mechs with great ease.

There were many more models among the Heavensworders, so much so that there was little cohesion and coherence in their formations. The only real organization they displayed was when they fought alongside similar mechs that belonged to the same sword school.

Even so, their individual prowess was incredibly formidable. They outfought many different kinds of opposing mechs with practiced moves and excellent battle sense. Though the sword styles displayed by the typical Heavensworder mechs weren’t empowered by any extraordinary element, just the exquisite techniques alone put them far ahead from the Hivar Roarer mech pilots who never fought against such insanely skilled opponents!

“Wait for backup! They’re just catching up. These tall folk must never break our lines!”

Though the combination of Glory Seekers, Heavensworders and Flagrant Vandals dealt a serious blow to the enemy flanking forces, the fact of the matter was that the Hivar Roarer still outnumbered them. There were many more mechs that had yet to join the fray but were rapidly coming closer.

The dwarves brought a lot more mechs!

Commander Sendra of the Swordmaidens felt a bit chilled at the sight of thousands more bestial mechs preparing to confront the Larkinsons and Glory Seekers.

Though she was proud of the performance of her side, they had only managed to repel the enemy vanguard because they exposed many of their strengths.

Now that the dwarves had seen how effective they were and how they worked, they would inevitably come better prepared this time!

Soon, dozens of Heavensworder mechs were blasted by enemy fire. Though they were amazing attackers, their defensive properties were not stellar. Aside from a number of exceptions, most of the swordsman mechs were not able to cope with being targeted by large caliber or intensive firepower.

“It’s those damn turtle mechs! They finally caught up and are opening fire!”

This was one of the signature models of the Hivar Roarers. Their spaceborn version of a Doom Crawler had to take its time to reach a location, but once they did, they could suppress enemy units by performing continuous bombardment!

The way they did this was rather ingenious. Despite the slow and heavy firing rate of the cannons poking out from the four holes of their turtle shells, the turtle mechs simply spun around so that one cannon was able to fire at a target before spinning 90 degrees to allow another cannon to fire right after!

This continuous firing pattern allowed the turtle mechs to put their targets under continuous fire, which was very hard to cope with. The Heavensworder mechs were no longer able to fight as unscrupulous as before. Their momentum visibly faltered!