The Mech Touch

Pima Prime V-A came under assault!

Normally, nothing much happened at the first moon that orbited the most important planet in the star system.

Unlike Pima Prime V-B that operated as a stopover point and a logistical hub, the first moon was supposed to function as a defensive bulwark.

The Gauge Dynasty drafted grand plans that sought to turn Pima Prime V-A into the main headquarters of the Sundered Phalanx in the entire Friday Colonies!

By turning large parts of its surface as well as its underground terrain into military facilities, the moon was meant to become so formidable that its mere existence would deter many attackers from launching an attack on Pima Prime!

However, the amount of funding required to transform the moon to this extent was astronomical. The amount of resources and industrial capacity needed to build up all of those military-grade defenses and constructs simply weren’t present.

The Gauge Dynasty was already preoccupied with absorbing the large chunks of territory it had conquered from the former Hexadric Hegemony. The Gaugers also had to rebuild their military and reinforcements in their home state in order to deter other parties from taking advantage of their weakened conditions.

Considering that the Gaugers had already stationed 14 veteran mech divisions and one powerful ace pilot in the port system, none of the Fridaymen thought that there would be any rush to bolster Pima Prime’s defenses any further.

This was why the grand construction process centered around Pima Prime V-A was not scheduled to be finished until 30 years later!

It appeared that the Gauge Dynasty had gravely underestimated the threat level of the Red Ocean.

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Though the Magair Middle Zone did indeed suffer a lot less alien incursions in the past few years, the amount of human-to-human conflicts increased dramatically!

Now, the Gaugers suffered from their grave miscalculation as their powerful military base on Pima Prime V-A came under heavy bombardment!

The invasion fleet which was still barreling towards the main planet had opened fire as soon as they reached extreme range.

The ironically-named Crosshair Base fell into the targeting sights of tens of thousands of heavy artillery mechs, cannoneer mechs and even rifleman mechs!

With so much firepower bearing down onto the stationary fortress, its formidable titan shield immediately endured an enormous battering!

In comparison, the defensive turrets sheltering underneath the powerful energy shield made a courageous but lackluster attempt to exact a price from the attackers.

The massive fleet easily dealt with the attacks. Many different carrier vessels absorbed the incoming attacks with the help of their ship-grade shield generators before retreating behind the hulls of other ships when their shield capacities began to reach their limits.

This way, the fleet effectively suffered no material damage!

The long-ranged fire from the artillery mechs stationed all the way at the Kosic Ring were able to inflict more damage due to their greater volume of fire.

However, the enormous range made it too impractical to fire physical weapons, so the Sundered Phalanx mech units and the stationary turrets of the Kosic Ring mostly limited their output to laser beam attacks.

By leveraging the advantages of the fastest and most precise attack method in their arsenal, the defenders were able to concentrate their attacks on specific starships and put a lot of pressure on them, overwhelming their shield generators and inflicting serious damage to their hulls before they could take shelter behind other friendly ships!

Even so, many long-ranged attacks missed more often than not due to a combination of heavy ECM and other clever measures.

General Alisky Victrix didn’t even bat an eye as she observed the stricken ships on the large battle map projection in the middle of the command center.

One of them received such a great blast that the combat carrier lost power and drifted out of formation!

“Have her mechs deployed already?”

“Everything aside from her bunker mechs, ma’am.”

“Pull them out as well. Carve them out of their bunkers if you will have to. We need their firepower for the engagement to come.”

Though Task Force Fury was already beginning to suffer its first real casualties, the thick and powerful titan shield surrounding Crosshair Base was destabilizing by the minute!

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Crosshair Base was just the first phase of a larger fortification project.

In addition to that, tens of thousands of mechs should have been stationed in and around the defensive works.

If Pima Prime V-A had become the defensive bulwark envisioned by the Gauge Dynasty, then not even a massive mech army numbering over a million mechs would have been able to overpower it with ease!

As it was, all of the money and resources spent on building up the initial base pretty much went down the drain.

The expensive strategic titan shield generator that was buried deep underneath the moon surface began to whine and overheat, much to the consternation of the few patriotic engineers that had volunteered to man their stations to the bitter end!

“We can’t hold it much longer! We’ve pulled out every trick in the box that we can come up with, but we’ve squeezed the last bit of potential out of this damn titan shield generator. There’s nothing left to give! If the dynamic rings don’t blow apart from the stress, then the internal structure will begin to melt from the excessive heat build-up! It would be a miracle if it lasts 5 more minutes!”

“Then we will do our best to last 5 minutes! The more time we buy for the rest of our boys, the more we tire out the Hexers in advance. Every second counts!”

Despite the best efforts of the sacrificial engineers, the enormous titan shield generator finally shut down and became inoperable just 2 minutes later!

“Nooo!”

Even though the shield generator didn’t blow up and merely radiated a lot of heat in the enormous chamber, the engineers all knelt in despair as their primary defensive measure finally failed.

“It’s over!”

Task Force Fury immediately noticed the changes. The Hexer ranged mechs quickly tightened their aim and specifically targeted the exposed turrets and other critical defensive modules.

Crosshair Base quickly lost all of its teeth as its fortifications simply weren’t up to the task of resisting the incoming attacks without the cover of a titan shield.

Once it no longer posed a significant threat against the invading forces, General Alisky Victrix diverted a couple of demolition-oriented mech companies to finish the job and more importantly wreck the 24 underground shipyards that previously produced a lot of combat carriers and other important starships for the Gauge Dynasty.

All of the hulls under construction soon broke apart after suffering sustained bombardment. The intruding Hexer mechs then proceeded to blast all of the construction equipment and other production machines without mercy!

Though the Fridaymen could technically come back and salvage the remains to rebuild a lot of machinery, there was a lot of high-quality precision equipment that could not be easily made in the frontier.

The Gauge Dynasty either had to make them back in their home star sector and ship them over to the Red Ocean at a huge cost and delay, or exchange valuable MTA credits to obtain ready-made goods.

Neither of these options were cost-effective!

Despite the heavy losses suffered at Pima Prime V-A, Governor Mabrius Gauge and the rest of his leadership council did not flinch at the downfall of Crosshair Base and the moonside shipyards.

The real prizes of the port system was concentrated on the surface and just below the ground of Pima Prime V.

The System Governor had a duty to defend the critical industries and infrastructure of the developing planet!

“This is where they stop.” He declared as he put on his most resplendent uniform and personally supervised the defense effort from the Palace of New Beginnings. “We have beaten the Hexers once. We can beat them again. We have taken the measure of their firepower during their assault on an unimportant moon base. However many guns they brought to this fight, we have more! With the Kosic Ring backing us all up, we can shred their mechs apart long before they close the distance!”

This was the greatest reliance of the Sundered Phalanx. Task Force Fury may look overwhelming, but a substantial amount of Hexer mechs were primarily melee mechs that excelled at close-ranged battles!

Unfortunately, the ferocity and hatred that the Hexers channeled towards the Fridaymen did not translate well in ranged combat.

Calm, precision and rationality often served mech pilots better when they needed to fight against opponents at a distance.

Once Pima Prime V-A got demolished, the attack fleet proceeded onwards while splitting off a section of its ships.

Numerous vessels landed on the surface of the moon that was located on its ‘dark side’ which faced away from the planet it orbited.

These ships consisted of logistical vessels, cargo vessels reserved for carrying a lot of plunder and combat carriers that were loaded with landbound mechs and other specialized solutions for the anticipated planetary assault.

The Golden Skull Alliance also left behind a substantial portion of its fleet.

Ships such as the Discentibus, the Diligent Ovenbird, the Dragon’s Den, the Vivacious Wal and many smaller support vessels used the moon as a shield to protect them against bombardment from the main defensive units of the Sundered Phalanx.

The Hexers and Golden Skullers also left behind a reserve consisting of thousands alert spaceborn mech units. These units were assigned to guard the rear until they were needed at the frontlines.

Now that the attack fleet had temporarily stashed away its more burdensome elements, the rest of the starships and mechs continued to barrel forward in order to close the distance as quickly as possible.

Even though both Task Force Fury and the Larkinson Clan possessed ships and mechs that possessed warp travel capabilities, none of them dared speed up at this time.

The expensive assets would just get isolated and picked off with ease if they jumped ahead!

Instead, the predominantly Hexer line advanced at a steady, uniform pace. As many of the leading ships endured hundreds if not thousands of laser beam strikes, the vessels frequently turned and rotated their hulls in order to spread the damage across multiple directional energy shields and hull sections.

“Hahaha! So what if they have a lot of guns? They’re all shooting from the front! Our ships just have to roll over and the Fridaymen have to start all over again!”

A single combat carrier could easily endure up to a hundred times as many attacks if the ship was able to disperse all of the incoming attacks over her entire surface area!

The Sundered Phalanx mech pilots tried to counteract this by concentrating their fire and timing their attacks to inflict huge bursts of damage in the smallest possible time interval.

The experienced and well-trained Fridaymen mech pilots were all proficient in this. Their professional coordination along with abundant support from the rear allowed them to maximize their firepower as best as possible.

The ‘real’ fight hadn’t even begun and already Task Force Fury was losing combat carriers left and right at an increasingly faster pace than before!

Even then, General Alisky Victrix did not show any reaction. The Mother’s Wrath along with many other ships continued to move past the disabled and derelict carriers in grim determination.

“If they are shooting our carriers, they’re not shooting down our mechs.” The female leader remarked with a smirk. “Let them fire at our ships. We will win as long as we retain enough combat capable mechs at the end!”

Compared to the Hexers who were losing a substantial amount of hardware from long-ranged bombardment, the Sundered Phalanx was in a much better position.

Many of its mechs were hiding behind the defensive platforms or within the protective envelopes of the military space stations that comprised the Kosic Ring.

Each space station was protected by a titan shield that was not much weaker than the one that protected Crosshair Base, which meant that they mitigated an enormous amount of damage!

This meant that aside from the occasional accident, the main mech divisions of the Sundered Phalanx had suffered no substantial losses up to this point!

“These Fridaymen are turtling behind their defenses!”

“Then let us tear down their walls! No defense lasts forever!”