The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1600

Chapter 1600 Natural Counter

Not a single Larkinson remained unaffected by Ves Larkinson's meteoric rise to prominence.

Now that he designed an incredibly popular mech and earned an immense amount of money, the Larkinson Family no longer resembled the Larkinson Family of the past.

While the changes provoked a lot of discussion among the Larkinsons, the sandman crisis occupied most of their time.

Whatever Ghanso and his faction of like-minded Larkinsons thought, defending the Bright Republic came first.

Many other fortified star systems came under threat. While the sandmen dispersed their forces along the entire length of the border, their numbers seemed inexhaustible.

If not for the first and second line of defense slowing down the sandman offensive, the Bright Republic wouldn't have been able to bolster the defenses of the border system.

Along with the plentiful amount of orbital defensive platforms, the gradual reinforcement of starfighters granted the overextended Mech Corps a great amount of relief.

Casualties among mech pilots had plummeted! Even though their lives had only been preserved at the cost of the lives of hastily-trained starfighter pilots, the Bright Republic didn't care.

The state could draw from an immense pool of manpower to replace the lost starfighter pilots!

By simplifying the designs of their starfighters and automating many complicated functions, even an office worker could be turned into a suitable starfighter pilot!

Though their training standard was barely better than a kid who casually played an immersive starfighter game, that was enough to resist basic sandman fleets.

Yet.. what if the sandman fleets adopted a different configuration? What if the sandman admirals that followed their directive to sweep through human space became more inventive?

In one star system defended by the Apocalypse Heralds, a humongous sandman monolith advanced indominably towards a planet populated by billions!

With so many lives at stake, the Apocalypse Heralds were just one of many forces assigned to defend this critical border system.

Yet the immense firepower unleashed by their numerous medium to heavy artillery mechs caused them to take on the leading role in this battle!

"Unleash the apocalypse on the sandmen! Let them know that their extinction is at hand!"

The Apocalypse Heralds modified their powerful heavy mechs to better cope against the aliens. All of their laser weapon mounts had been removed and replaced by kinetic or ballistic weaponry.

Though it was very cumbersome to modify so many heavy mechs, the Apocalypse Heralds employed sufficient mech technicians to transform all of their mechs in time to defend against the main waves of sandman intruders!

With the help of their immense ammunition capacity, their ranged mechs had become the worst nightmares of many of the sandman fleet that intruded in this star system!

"We are the bane of the sandmen! We are the doom of every alien!"

Ever since a detachment of Apocalypse Heralds arrived at this border system, the sandmen never managed to cross into the inner system. The heavy mechs unleashed such prodigious firepower that not even the biggest sandman mothership could last against weapons powerful enough to annihilate entire asteroids!

Unfortunately, this time was different. The latest sandman fleet to barge into this border system adopted a very different configuration.

Not only did the fleet combine the strengths of at least nine sandman admirals, they all adopted a different configuration.

"The sandmen have adopted a swarm configuration!"

"Damnit! There's too many of them! My sensors can't even track how many of them are buzzing around!"

An immense swarm of small, shuttle-sized sandman drones advanced relentlessly towards the inner system. The first defenders already tangled against the swarm, but aside from swatting a large number of inconsequential sandman drones, they failed to affect the overall strength of the swarm.

Only until the defenders consolidated their forces did their attacks begin to hurt the sandman swarm.

Yet their preliminary success did not cheer up the mech and starfighter pilots.

Instead, a feeling of creeping doom built up in their hearts as they waited for the inevitable.

This was not the first time humanity encountered the swarm configuration.

Different from basic sandman fleets, the swarm accelerated much faster than normal.

One of the lessons that sandman admirals learned when fighting against human forces was that speed mattered! The faster they moved, the easier it was for them to engulf the mechs, starfighters and carriers that hindered their invasion.

Another lesson they learned was that this was no time to conserve their energy!

As a race that depended highly on energy, inexperienced sandman admirals tended to be very conservative in their energy expenditure.

Even as their sandman motherships fell apart, they were highly unwilling to waste more than fifty percent of their energy reserves.

The story was different once they faced how difficult it was to defeat their human opponents on the battlefield.

If the sandmen didn't put in their full effort, then they could forget about winning the battle!

The sandman swarm the Apocalypse Heralds and their allies faced today held nothing back.

Even if the swarm depleted 90 percent of its energy reserves, it could easily recoup its losses by devouring the rich energy sources of the highly-developed planet orbiting the inner system!

"Wait for it! Get ready, men! The real fight starts at any moment!"

After an agonizing wait, the sandman admirals finally issued their latest command!

The entire swarm unleashed a swathe of weak but incredibly numerous laser beams!

Thousands of mechs and starfighters had been struck by these lasers!

Fortunately, the power behind these laser beams were very weak compared to the massive strikes that could easily take out an entire mech.

The sandman drones couldn't fire anything stronger. It was already admirable enough for them to match the power of a light laser rifle.

The problem was that their firing rate was very prodigious!

Every dozen or so seconds, the drones unleashed another salvo of laser beams, striking thousands of machines yet again!