Chapter 7459 The Starting Move
Chapter 7459 The Starting Move
The first assault commenced.
The combined fleet of Larkinsons, mechers, fleeters and Terrans fell upon the gathering of mixed alien enemies like a pack of sharks.
Relying on their sophisticated tech and their blazing fast superdrives, the relatively small but formidable human armada managed to shorten the time between detection and contact to the point where most alien commanders had yet to form a coherent response!
The inherent arrogance of the major alien races was on full display as multiple different fleets and racial groups failed to unite and coordinate properly against the sudden assault.
The orvens and nunsers worked fairly well together, but the puelmers and juregs fought in separate formations that isolated them from other alien 'allies'.
Even children could recognize that their timings, positioning and strategies were all misaligned!
The only major advantage that they possessed was their numbers. These were all fleets that were either on the cusp of assaulting the human regions or prepared to go a little deeper to hunt supply convoys.
Yet despite outnumbering the invading humans by more than 10-to-1, the attackers still remained completely confident in their ability to achieve victory on the battlefield!
As the unwieldy and uncoordinated alien defenders brought their forces to bear against the sharp thrust of the human foes, one particular machine had gone ahead of the rest!
The Dark Zephyr Mark III Revision 2 relied on his blazing mobility to fly way ahead of the main force and harass the enemy defenders!
Though enemy sensors managed to detect the powerful machine's approach in advance, they struggled to track the living mech as he began to flit around like a flighty bird.
Long-ranged interception fire bombarded his coordinates, but the ace light skirmisher dodged and weaved through every attack without letting anything strike his masterwork armor plating!
This could not last forever.
The alien barrages grew denser and more coordinated by the second. The alien spacers began to employ systematic firing solutions that enabled them to saturate entire regions with firepower.
The Dark Zephyr Mark III became increasingly more boxed in by all of the energy beams and kinetic projectiles!
As the distance shrunk at an alarming rate, the probability of getting hit also began to rise.
If the Dark Zephyr Mark III sported a superdimensional armor system, then the ace mech might have been willing to brave the attacks head-on.
Unfortunately for the ace pilot and his battle partner, the downside of being the first of the Larkinsons to achieve sainthood and receive an ace mech upgrade was to miss out on the superdimensional revolution.
The Dark Zephyr Mark III was still clad in tranphasic hyper archmetal!
The light skirmisher did not boast thick layers of armor plating to begin with. Though its transphasic hyper alloy still boasted comprehensively good performance compared to other comparable high-end light mech, its defensive capabilities could not even come close to matching that of the much newer First Sword Mark III or the Minerva Mark II.
Saint Tusa Billingsley-Larkinson sighed inside his cockpit.
"How long do we need to wait until you get an upgrade?"
"AS LONG AS IT TAKES." The Dark Zephyr replied. "I HAVE MANY BROTHERS AND SISTERS THAT HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR YEARS. THEY SHOULD GET A TURN FIRST."
Though Tusa felt envious of the few peers that already managed to pilot a real superdimensional mech, he did not truly feel upset about being put on a waiting list.
After all, the Dark Zephyr was the ace mech that relied the least on armor to protect himself on the battlefield!
As the aggressive ace mech continued to fly closer to the enemy positions, the machine finally veered to the side in order to target one of the flanks.
Diving right in the middle of all of the enemy formations was too much even if the Dark Zephyr could rely on his Saint Kingdom to mitigate a lot of incoming hits!
By approaching one of the outermost enemy fleets, the Dark Zephyr could not only make it more difficult for distant enemies to land their hits, but also use the nearby alien vessels as his makeshift shields!
That was exactly what happened. When the ace light skirmisher finally arrived, the machine only bled off a bit of speed, but displayed a huge amount of agility in turn.
Even as phasefighters tried to corner the Dark Zephyr from all sides while the point defenses of every warship sought to overwhelm his defenses, the ace light skirmisher still remained virtually free from harm!
The experienced Tusa skillfully threaded through the formation of jureg homeships and caused many gun turrets to end up hitting their fellow ships instead of the sole enemy unit!
What was worse was that the enemy targeting systems experienced further difficulties.
The ace light skirmisher's Electronic Gremlin System began to produce a large amount of interference. The custom ECM system had received numerous updates over its lifetime as Ariana Roux, its developer, became increasingly more familiar with the military software and hardware employed by different major alien races.
Though the Electronic Gremlin System could only be considered a minor feature of the Dark Zephyr Mark III, its effects still received an unreasonable degree of amplification from his Saint Kingdom.
The relatively outdated and disposable alien warships could not fully defend themselves against this interference!
All of this ensured that the Dark Zephyr got hit way less than it should.
Even if the Dark Zephyr could not evade every attack, the mitigating properties of his Saint Kingdom combined with his azure energy shield left his thin armor system untouched for the time being.
Though the constant attacks still drained Tusa's willpower and his battle partner's energy reserves at an elevated rate, the ace pilot knew that he only had to keep this up for a moderate amount of time.
Though Tusa had to direct much of his attention to evasion and damage mitigation, he did not intend to remain harmless.
The Dark Zephyr periodically utilized his Dark Wind Ultimate Module to bypass enemy azure energy shields and strike directly at the hull!
After returning the precious tier 3 Destroyer spear to the Riot Mark III, Tusa's machine no longer possessed a weapon with a long reach.
Fortunately, the Larkinsons had compensated him with a pair of weapon-grade superdimensional knives.
Though their reach was distressingly small, their sharpness and cutting power was unparalleled.
Each time the Dark Zephyr approached an enemy vessel, his arms turned into a blur as he launched dozens of high-speed slashes, each of which demolished powerful gun turrets or dug deep into the hull!
The ace mech could not afford to stick around too long, or else the surrounding enemies would concentrate their fire and attack his relatively static position.
The Dark Zephyr only dared to stay for a few seconds and do as much damage as he could manage.
Due to the sizes of the alien warships, the ace light skirmisher could only manage to cripple a part of their main cannon batteries, power reactors, engines or other relatively important ship systems.
While the ace mech was able to inflict considerable damage to each individual hull, the overall impact was tiny considering there were hundreds more alien warships in this star system alone!
Yet the psychological impact of witnessing a human ace mech attack with impunity was far greater than the material damage he was able to inflict in this short interval!
Within a minute, the hapless jureg fleet not only lost control of its flagship, but also failed to prevent several other capital ships from suffering crippling damage!
All the while, the incredibly fast and annoying Dark Zephyr Mark III still boasted a completely intact mech frame!
Perhaps the agile living mech could have inflicted greater damage if he chose to toss a handful of transphasic grenades in the holes he created, but the ace pilot decided not waste his munitions.
The good times could not last, however.
A pair of lesser jureg phase lords finally arrived and attempted to box in the human ace mech.
Tusa's eyes grew sharp as he took notice of the threat.
Though the jureg phase lords were not equipped with Saint Piercers or Saint Armors, these favored minions of the Red Cabal often possessed stronger and better-developed phasewater organs.
Even if they lacked the qualifications to obtain superdimensional gear, many phase lords assigned to assault the human border regions also began to wear increasingly thicker and more effective transphasic raiments.
The excited side of Tusa felt the urge to test the might of his ace mech's new superdimensional knives against those thickly protected lesser phase lords.
However, his more sensible side reined him in. The Saint Commander had a plan, and it did not call for Saint Tusa to go wild and take unnecessary risks in order to earn glory for himself.
Now that the Dark Zephyr Mark III was no longer the main fighter of a force, Tusa had to get used to being a cog in a formidable war machine.
Instead of clashing against the enemy champions and other assets head-on, it was much more efficient for the ace light skirmisher to continue to play a harassing and disrupting role!
"See you later, losers!"
The Dark Zephyr grabbed a single grenade from his bandolier and tossed it out. An instant later, it exploded and produced a large cloud of particulates that blocked most sensor systems from tracking the living mech!
It also did a fairly good job of blocking the sight of the incoming jureg phase lords!
Though the Dark Zephyr appeared a short time later, the interruption still stumped the jureg enemies long enough for the ace light skirmisher to make a clean getaway!
While Saint Tusa made a temporary retreat, he had no intention of disengaging from the battle entirely.
He steered his battle partner around the enemy fleet positions and began to approach another relatively isolated group.
This time, the puelmers began to suffer from harassment!
While their weapons and targeting systems happened to be more advanced and effective, it hardly made a difference to an ace mech as fast and good as the Dark Zephyr.
Though Tusa had to fight a little more cautiously, his ace mech was able to inflict proportionately greater damage in less time.
Unlike most other races, the puelmers almost never built any capital ships. Their largest hulls only reached the standard of a human heavy cruiser most of the time, which meant that a single ace mech could more easily cripple them most of the time!
Numerous weakened energy beams sparked off the azure energy shield protecting the Dark Zephyr. Its integrity visibly deteriorated, but it bought more than enough time to put the entire puelmer fleet into complete disarray!
Command and control had disintegrated as Tusa precisely targeted the flagship and other possible command ships that the Terrans had identified in advance.
As the puelmers gave into their anger and launched their attacks without much regard for friendly fire or conserving resources, the Dark Zephyr happily retreated before the enemy phase lords ever came close enough to pose a real hindrance.
At this time, the Dark Zephyr's antics had thoroughly degraded any semblance of coordination among the mixed alien fleets.
Not only that, but the phase lords who initially appeared united had already split up to cover their individual fleets!
This was the true result that the invading humans wanted to achieve!
Even if there were individual alien leaders who possessed enough intelligence and detachment to understand what the humans were doing, they lacked a strong enough voice to enact any effective countermeasures!
By the time the Dark Zephyr intended to harass a third alien fleet, other human units were about to enter engagement range.
Thousands of mechs along with many warships and other hulls shone with the radiance of true resonance.
Under the protection and guidance of Saint Commander Casella Ingvar's Command Field, the human soldiers did not fear their opposition despite being heavily outnumbered!
What was even better was that unlike the divided alien soldiers, most of the human attackers had all been brought under the leadership of a single ace commander!
"LET US TEAR THESE ALIEN APART!"