The Mech Touch

The Flagrant Vandals predominantly fielded four different mech models this time.

The Fridaymen already possessed a detailed understanding of the properties of the Ferocious Piranha Mark III.

As one of the bestselling models of the Larkinson Clan, the Friday Coalition easily managed to get their hands on enough models and decipher all of their strengths and weaknesses.

The Sundered Phalanx also possessed a basic understanding of the Stingripper model that the Larkinsons occasionally utilized in many mercenary missions over the years.

The Fridaymen did not know the Light Hunter model that well, but it shouldn’t matter too much considering it was a scout mech.

Yet once they finally started to exchange blows against the Larkinson mechs, the Nidin Vergers soon discovered that fighting against this combination of mechs was far more troublesome than what they trained for during their own simulation training sessions!

“My shots aren’t hitting the annoying Stingrippers!”

“Are you blind?! Your aim was off by over 20 meters!”

“I can’t concentrate on the Stingrippers when these annoying Ferocious Piranhas are buzzing me with their disorienting glows!”

Although the basic battle lineup of the Flagrant Vandals remained fairly simple by centering almost entirely on the Ferocious Piranhas and the Stingrippers, the synergy they produced in battle was an extremely successful formula!

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Despite their training and preparation, the Fridaymen who encountered the signature mechs of the Flagrant Vandals found that their special preparations did not adequately prepare them for the real thing.

They were experiencing a lot more difficulties when fighting against the Flagrant Vandals.

This was an inconceivable result to the Fridaymen soldiers.

The mech pilots of the Nidin Vergers weren’t rookies!

Many of them were veterans of the Komodo War. Those that had been recruited in the mech division after the conclusion of the war received focused training and guidance from those veterans in order to close the gap as much as possible.

As the two sides continued to fight against each other, it became clearer to the Fridaymen why the disparity was so great.

Their technical piloting skills weren’t too far apart. The Sundered Phalanx had always been good at maintaining high training standards. Its more elite mech divisions received substantially greater resources in order to transform them into crack troops that could deal with the worst that the Hexers could throw in their direction!

The Flagrant Vandals along with the rest of the Larkinson Army was not much worse in this regard.

Although the Larkinson Army was not as comprehensive as the Sundered Phalanx, the clan poured a lot more money into raising the skills and proficiencies of its individual mech pilots.

This still wasn’t enough to explain the differences, though.

As the Fridaymen officers and the analysts continued to study the performance of the Flagrant Vandals mechs, they took special note of how well the mech pilots adjusted to the movements and the combat tactics of the Nidin Vergers.

“None of our tactics are working against these Larkinson bastards.”

“It’s as if they are reading us like an open book!”

“Sometimes I get the impression that these Larkinsons know my Remo Targ better than me! Damn, my mech is crippled! Ejecting!”

Although the Glory Seekers and the Crossers were able to read their opponents fairly well, the familiarity exhibited by the Larkinsons was on another level!

Commander Abis Firelight did not look overly surprised at this result.

“All of that time spent in the MSTS is worth it. Training with the help of a much more realistic simulation program makes a huge difference.”

It wasn’t just the mech pilots that gained a lot of ‘experience’ by conducting targeted training against specific opponents such as the Nidin Vergers.

Even the living mechs themselves got pulled into the MSTS!

This allowed the mech and mech pilot to develop a deeper level of synergy and cooperation in combat.

Combined with the new deep exchange technology introduced by the rather odd Cormaunt Hempkamp, the mech pilots of the Larkinson Clan mastered their own living battle partners to a significantly greater degree than their opponents!

The difference in familiarity and deep proficiency simply made the Larkinson mech pilots better.

The fact that the Nidin Vergers had been thrown off their comfort zone and were scrambling to adapt to this unexpected circumstance was an additional bonus that widened the disparity in performance.

In fact, Commander Firelight believed that even if the mech pilots from both sides performed identical to each other, his Flagrant Vandals still would have been able to obtain an advantage!

The main reason why he felt confident?

“Our mechs are simply better!”

The Flagrant Vandals might not have been as numerous as the elements of the Hex Army at the flanks, but the damage they inflicted onto the opposing mechs was considerably more impressive in both relative and absolute terms!

Whereas the Hex Army’s light mechs mostly danced around and only sporadically managed to damage their targets, the Flagrant Vandals were much more productive!

The Ferocious Piranhas and the Stingrippers not only landed their blows with much greater regularity, but knew exactly what parts of the enemy mechs to target in order to achieve maximum effect!

The Nidin Verger mech pilots began to feel more and more distressed as they felt increasingly more exposed.

They could cope against the units of the Hex Army.

They could stall the Crossers and the Glory Seekers by fighting more defensively than usual.

? It was only when they fought against the Flagrant Vandals that they were getting torn to pieces!

No matter what formations they utilized and what kind of coordinated tactics they pulled off, as long as their squads were targeted by both the Ferocious Piranha and the Stingripper, the enemy mech pilots simply failed to measure up against the Larkinson mechs!

“What does it take to shoot you down!?”

A Nidin Verger piloting a Remo Targ mech gritted his teeth as he did his best to resist the persistent glow from a nearby Ferocious Piranha.

As a soldier of the Sundered Phalanx, the pilot received a lot of training on how to resist glows.

Though the glow from the Ferocious Piranha strained his mind a lot, his firm training allowed him to resist the effect.

The problem was that regardless of what he was doing, he would always be fighting with a handicap!

With a part of his mind focused on retaining his wits, he had less focus left on tracking his enemies and plotting his next moves.

The weakness of the Remo Targ design became evident in this fight.

While it was capable of getting close and cutting vulnerable opponents down with its light sword, it was difficult for the mech to win a duel against a Ferocious Piranha Mark III!

Although the Larkinson light skirmisher was available on the market, the model employed by the Flagrant Vandals was a variant!

After all, most commercial parties simply couldn’t afford to spend so much on individual light mechs.

Only a few groups were willing to splurge on quality light mechs like the Larkinson Clan!

The Design Department not only raised the specifications of the Ferocious Piranha Mark III, but also added other minor Larkinson-exclusive enhancements to the design.

All of this meant that the Ferocious Piranha was deadlier, tougher and even a little bit faster than the Remo Targ!

In a pure melee bout, this meant that the Ferocious Piranha could defeat the Remo Targ at least 70 percent of the time!

It took the Remo Targs their utmost to fend off the Ferocious Piranhas and preserve their integrity.

The problem with that was that it left the accompanying Stingrippers plenty of opportunity to fire at the Remo Targs with their luminar crystal submachine guns.

Different from luminar crystal rifles that were usually optimized for delivering powerful penetrating shots, the submachine guns that Ves had designed for this model were able to fire beams at an impressively high rate.

Even though the penetration and power of these energy beams were anything but impressive, they were more than powerful enough to chip away at the armor of light mechs!

The Remo Targs simply couldn’t get rid of the tracking of the Stingrippers. The fast firing rate made it a lot easier to achieve at least some hits.

Theoretically, the Remo Targs should have been able to stop the Stingrippers by catching up to them or firing back with their rapid-fire pulse carbines.

In practice, the Stingrippers were so fast and light that it was too difficult for the Remo Targs to catch up to the annoying Larkinson mechs!

The Remo Targs could easily slice the Stingrippers if they could slash their targets with their light swords, but when it came to combat between light mechs, speed was often king!

Therefore, the only other way for the Remo Targs to destroy the Stingrippers was to exchange fire with their ranged weapons.

It was a pity that the Remo Targs were not only armed with a weaker ranged weapon model, but couldn’t even reliably land a hit on the Stingrippers!

“How can these Stingrippers be so difficult to hit?!”

“You need to concentrate extra hard on them! Don’t rely on your instincts and muscle training. The Stingrippers exist to fool your judgment!”

The Gauge Dynasty was not ignorant about the properties of the Stingrippers, but it was a pity that knowing about them was different from fighting against them on a real battlefield.

No virtual simulation training system could ever prepare the Sundered Phalanx mech pilots against the glows of both the Ferocious Piranhas and the Stingrippers at the same time!

It was already awful enough for the opponents of the Flagrant Vandals to deal with one suppressive glow.

Adding another on top of that created so many weaknesses that the Nidin Verger mech pilots assigned to fight against the Flagrant Vandals were almost driven to despair!

“We can’t fight against these demons by ourselves! We need backup!”

“We can’t! We already have our hands full resisting the other Hexer mechs. Don’t aim for a victory. Just do your best to block the Larkinson mechs and we’ll finish them off later.”

“At this rate, we won’t last long enough to prevent them from overrunning our other mech units! We need backup at this instant!”

The officers of the Sundered Phalanx tried various measures to block the Flagrant Vandals from running free.

The Nidin Vergers received fire support from the rear when the ranged mechs of the Blackened Reapers opened fire on the Flagrant Vandals.

Unfortunately, their support had less than the desirable effect!

Though the Blackened Reapers had a reputation for precision and accuracy, it was too difficult for them to take down light mechs at a distance, especially when they were fast, high-quality machines under the control of well-trained mech pilots!

The Fridaymen deployed other units in response. The Nidin Vergers along with other units sent a whole host of different mechs at the Flagrant Vandals in order to break their combination.

Nothing really worked!

The Nidin Verger light skirmishers couldn’t catch up to the Ferocious Piranhas and the Stingrippers and mostly got ripped apart by the latter if they persisted in their chase.

The striker mechs dispatched by another Sundered Phalanx mech division could easily roast a lot of light mechs with their formidable flamethrowers, but their mobility deficit was so high that they could never even catch up to their targets.

In desperation, the Nidin Vergers redirected hundreds of mechs away from their current opponents and threw them onto the Flagrant Vandals in order to crush the annoying Larkinson mechs through numbers.

While the Flagrant Vandals indeed came under a lot of suppression, the problem was that the Hexer light mechs suddenly became unleashed and started to gain a lot more advantages against their remaining opponents!

“Damnit, we can’t go on like this, ma’am! If we don’t obtain relief in two minutes, then our squads will begin to collapse. Forget about holding back. Send in Dukes! Wait, send in Hawkes as well.”

“Understood. Please stand by for further instructions.”

“We won’t be alive anymore if we wait any longer!”