The Mech Touch

Chapter 7469  The Need to Narrow the Gap

The archecruiser was a decidedly inhuman warship.

Its interior layout did not conform to that of human standards. The ceiling was a little too low and it lacked many of the amenities that humans found commonplace in other starships, including that of other major alien races.

The air mixture was filled with exotic particulates that could wreck a baseline human's lungs long before he could choke to death.

The temperature fell considerably outside of that same human's comfort zone.

Even the light levels were decidedly a little too bright to the point where a person could be blinded if they looked at a reflective surface for too long!

Then there was the architecture. The interior of the archecruiser was a lot more confining than people were comfortable with. Despite the relatively large size of her hull, a greater proportion of her hull consisted of solid archemetal.

It was as if the arche tried their best to emulate the solidity and the sheer functionality of their own archeshells but at a much larger scale!

There were many implications to this architectural approach. For one, sensor systems and other means of detection could not penetrate very far before encountering successive layers of interference and blockages.

The human boarding troops also found it incredibly difficult and time-consuming to breach their way past solid bulkheads and locked gates.

Furthermore, the interior of the vessel also created an invisible atmosphere that the boarding troops found oppressive.

The further they entered the belly of this alien archemetal beast, the more they felt removed from everything they found human and familiar.

Strange sights that appeared to be decorative pressed on the psyches of the soldiers more and more.

For example, one troop passed by a memorial of sorts that mounted a collection of exquisite archeshells.

The arche mounted them in an upright chevron shape while also placing offerings on the altar before them. These sacrifices disturbed the passing human soldiers, because the ones doing the honoring had literally sliced a piece of their own archeshells, which were still stained by their own alien blood!

According to what they knew about the arche, they prized their shells above their own lives, so the act of cutting a piece of their own pride must have been as sickening as a man cutting off a piece of his own manhood!

Still, despite how much the invading troopers felt disturbed by their surroundings, they resolutely shoved their concerns and fears to the side and focused on their respective missions.

They were all soldiers. Each of them had a responsibility to do their duty. Their training already accounted for situations like these. If they faltered in the face of the unfamiliar, they would not only disappoint their superiors, but also their comrades and themselves.

That was not acceptable.

Among the hundreds or so human troopers that had set on inside the immobilized archecruiser so far, no unit performed better than the heavily armed and armored Apocalypse Wardens.

Despite their relatively slow advancement speed, their strength was so formidable that the arche soldiers found it impossible to impede their march!

When the Apocalypse Wardens came across another guarded funnel, they wrecked the fixed defenses from afar while demolishing the 'archeshell line' that the resident aliens often resorted to in battle.

When the elite collie footsoldiers faced a closed gate that the arche had hastily reinforced with additional archemetal debris, the Apocalypse Wardens came close and struck at the obstructions with their superdimensional hammers!

The extraordinary materials inflicted kinetic blows that literally destroyed the transphasic effects that made the archemetal so abnormally tough!

Together with the use of sharp superdimensional implements, the Apocalypse Warden squad only got delayed by a minute or so before they reached the next compartment.

Their progress only started to slow when they encountered the more elite and better-equipped arche defenders.

If the arche soldiers stationed close to the exterior of the hull comprised of cannon fodder that the alien leaders had already written off, then the ones stationed close to or inside the citadel consisted of the true mainstays of the arche race!

Their shells were all bright, colorful and beautiful at first sight. Even the lowest-ranking soldier possessed an archeshell of such quality that he could have been an officer of a typical archefrigate.

Yet instead of following the alien version of an officer track, these elites dedicated themselves to personal or infantry-scale combat. Their archeshells all followed one of multiple different standard development tracks.

While their degree of uniqueness and individualism was much lower, the advantage was that multiple arche with the same type of archeshells could combine their forces more easily, thereby producing much greater results than if they fought as separate individuals!

Not that this made too much of a difference. The Apocalypse Wardens had already consumed a significant amount of resources up to this point, but they still possessed plenty of power to eradicate these tougher enemies!

The Apocalypse Wardens no longer leisurely opened fire with their integrated ranged armaments. Their reserves had run low, so it was better to save them for emergencies.

Their advance abruptly sped up, as if their previous plodding pace had been an illusion!

In fact, these troops could have advanced faster, but doing so significantly raised their energy consumption.

They not only had to activate a module that reduced the force of gravity acting upon their superdimensional combat armor, also channel a significant amount of energy into boosters that could speed them up and allow them to maneuver a lot more nimbly than they should!

This abrupt change in tactics completely caught the defending elite arche soldiers off-guard. They had seemingly learned their lesson and no longer congregated into one big line that could serve as an easy target.

Instead, they split up their troops into half-a-dozen different squads that were stationed all around the compartment in a way that enabled them to mutually cover each other from different angles.

While this may indeed protect them from getting flattened by a single flaming hammer all at once, it also made them vulnerable to getting defeated in detail!

The elite human soldiers and cultivators knew exactly what to do. Their active battle network constantly kept their thoughts perfectly in sync, and now they began to split up into three so that they would always be able to overpower any single alien squad!

Though the native alien defenders tried to pummel one of the human fireteams with concentrated firepower, all of the attacks still accomplished little aside from scratching or heating up the surface of their superdimensional armor.

Even if it looked as if the excessive quantity of transphasic attacks could slowly dig deeper into the armor, the Apocalypse Wardens were not stupid enough to present themselves as easy targets.

They took advantage of their newly gained mobility and changed the orientations of their combat armor.

They never allowed their enemies to attack the same sections of armor for too long!

Aside from that, other soldiers routinely stepped into incoming attack waves in order to relieve the pressure and spread out enemy firepower even further.

They did all of this while going on the offensive!

As soon as a team of Apocalypse Wardens came close, there was nothing the elite arche soldiers could do to come out on top.

Even though the latter put up a valiant attempt at killing the humans by going down on all fours before attempting to impale them with the shard archemetal spikes of their improved combat armor, the Apocalypse Wardens easily managed to block or evade these counterattacks.

Not a single arche soldier or arche officer could withstand several direct impacts by a superdimensional hammer!

Even if their archeshell did not immediately show cracks after a single blow, a handful more would definitely do the job!

The victorious cultivator soldiers even had the leisure to raise their bloodied hammers and voice out their warcries!

"DEATH BEFORE RUINATION!"

"RUINATION BEFORE DEATH!"

A single drone witnessed all of this action from behind.

Andraste looked completely gobsmacked as she observed the exploits of the men and women who appeared unstoppable ever since they embarked on their mission.

She already had high expectations for this elite infantry unit, but her imagination never conjured a scenario that was this lopsided!

Among the Larkinsons, perhaps only Swordmaster Ketis could do better, and that was largely due to her high-quality superdimensional gear as opposed to her extraordinary skills and powers alone.

Even if the Apocalypse Wardens depended heavily on superdimensional gear themselves, their impeccable training and unflinching confidence raised their effectiveness to the peak!

"To think these are the castoffs." She muttered under her breath as she watched this all from the safety of the Tarrasque.

As proud as these soldiers may be, they never considered themselves to be best of their kind.

Their leader once shared their collective frustration to Andraste.

"As you may have learned, we are detached from the 2nd Apocalypse Warden Battalion. Since there is a second, there is also a first. The 1st Apocalypse Wardens are the true masters at combining infantry and cultivator combat methods. During the selection, training and elimination processes, the trainees who scored high managed to enter this prestigious unit. The 1st always gets the best. Their superdimensional equipment is more powerful and expensive than ours. Their postings are public and highly prized due to their greater importance. They also receive the best support when it comes to subsequent training and skills development."

Andraste looked up at the officer with an uncertain look. "Then what about the 2nd?"

"Us? We fell short of that standard. We had been relegated to being treated as the workhorses of the Enforcement Department. Even if the 2nd Apocalypse Warden Battalion sits at the head of our group, we are denied the greatest honor that we can earn. This is why none are truly satisfied. We often thought of ourselves as the best, yet the aforementioned processes have exposed the lie that we told ourselves. Under fair and equal conditions, we have learned that there are still soldiers who are better and more talented in us in the areas that matter. Nothing we can do can change this fact."

"You do not sound reconciled."

The officer made a humorless grin. "We are not arrogant enough to think we can outperform the monsters from the 1st. While my men and I of the 2nd are determined to improve ourselves, the ones from the 1st are not staying still either. The entire Enforcement Department is committed to strengthening them as much as possible. The only thing we can do is make sure to make the gap between us as narrow as possible. We do not dare to hope for more. This is why we are eager to prove ourselves in the field. The only distinctive advantage that we have compared to many other units is that we are assigned to follow your father. Unlike other mech designers, our client is known to be a risk taker and battle maniac. We will never find ourselves short of opportunities to refine our methods on the battlefield. This is the only advantage that we can take, so you can be assured that we will exploit it to the limit."

The Red Collective positioned the 1st and 2nd Apocalypse Wardens as elite bodyguard units. The former usually answered directly to the RC while the latter was usually loaned out to various different allies and associates.

This also meant that the probability of encountering actual combat was fairly low in most cases. Only in this instance did a squad from the 2nd Apocalypse Wardens get pulled into an offensive campaign that promised plenty of encounters against the native aliens!

Considering this dynamic, Andraste should not be surprised that the soldiers she was interning with fought so well and so seriously.

They did not want to deliver an average performance.

The Apocalypse Wardens wanted to prove themselves at their very first action, thereby making a powerful impression on Ves and other leaders!

Only by delivering a smashing success would they be able increase the likelihood for getting chosen to fulfill other offensive missions in the future!