The Mech Touch novel Chapter 197

With the obligatory offer of surrender over with, the pirate mechs began their assault. They carefully pelted the star-shaped base walls from a single direction with lasers and shells.

It became clear that the quality of mechs and weapons used by the pirates adhered to the standard of a third-rate state. They matched relatively poorly against the better armed mechs of House Kaine and their mercenary partners from the Grey Willow Star Sector.

However, the local mercs enjoyed very little superiority in this regard as they obtained their mechs from similar sources.

The defenses held up better than Ves had thought. House Kaine hadn’t skimped on the prefabricated walls that had been anchored into the hardy soil. As they were meant to withstand a horde of hexapods, they took little damage from kinetic and explosive projectiles.

Unfortunately, the alloys used in the construction of the walls fared a little worse against lasers. The pirates quickly wised up and started to concentrate their laser armament at a single spot, trying to carve a very large hole in the defenses.

The defenders gave it as good as they got, though only half of the mechs had been equipped with ranged weapons. The fixed emplacements picked up the slack. The turrets had been designed to take a beating and dish it out in turn, and they fired back with accurate volleys that chewed up the pirates in the forest.

The dense, hardy metallic forest provided some level of cover to the pirate mechs. The trees proves to be incredibly resilient, though they were too thin to cover a mech’s entire frame.

Losses piled up on both sides as a low-intensity firefight extended for half an hour. The pirates slowly softened up the expedition’s formidable fixed defenses. The walls and turrets couldn’t move, so the pirates simply aimed to wear them down by focusing their fire.

Before the pirates committed to a full assault, they wanted to lay the groundwork first. The defenses bought valuable time to the groundside team with their sacrifices. Yet with every turret down, the pirates faced a little bit less pressure, allowing them to position their forces more aggressively.

In the meantime, the Kaius stayed hidden and out of sight. The partially repaired and improved chimera mech had no place in this long-ranged firefight. To maximize its impact, Commander Tregis ordered it to be revealed at the last possible moment.

The situation changed for the worse when missiles rained from above! They ended their arc flight paths straight into the interior of the base, focusing mostly on the mech workshops and other critical infrastructure.

The base only possessed a limited amount of anti-air emplacements that took out half of the incoming ordnance. The rest impacted against the workshops with debilitating explosions that deformed their roofs but didn’t manage to break through.

Like the walls, the other prefab structures had been formed out of highly durable alloys that didn’t lose out too much compared to those utilized in mechs.

Still, another volley of missiles arrived right after the first wave! Explosions continued to rain down in the same area of the base, weakening the targeted structures until their roofs finally collapsed. Distant screams emerged as some of the subsequent volleys killed and wounded mech technicians ready to service damaged mechs.

Ves could have been one of them. If not for the special dispensation he received from Tregis for being an integral part in killing Jutland, he’d be among the thick of it. "Don’t we have any countermeasures?"

"Missiles aren’t useful against the hexapod, so we left them out of the defense plan." D’Amato explained. "The base planners never took into account that we had to face a pirate invasion alone."

The missiles continued to wreak havoc while the mechs that launched them stayed far away. A couple of light mechs acted as relays that sent back targeting data for them to focus their missiles on. The Empyreans harassed them with their extremely powerful railguns, but they had little effect against the agile mechs.

"Something has to be done against those missiles!" Ves screamed over the din as the missiles started to drift over their direction. He imagined that the pirates brought plenty ordnance in order to force the base into a quick surrender.

Boom!

A large explosion set off in the distance. The volleys of missiles suddenly cut off. A couple of nearby officers cheered.

"That’s the hunting platoon at work! They succeeded in sneaking up on their artillery!"

Ves looked around and noticed that the Cathrec had quietly disappeared from the walls. Captain Kaine must have brought the Volmars along to strike at the artillery mechs quickly before they could seek refuge from their guards.

The Cathrec and its fellow melee mechs returned triumphantly a half hour later. From the rumor mill, Ves heard that they not only took out the artillery mechs, but also destroyed some of their spare supplies.

"It’s a pity their transports are tightly guarded. They’re holding back a solid number of mechs to keep their escape route open."

The removal of the artillery mechs and the earlier mishap that had befallen the aerial mechs had taken out a lot options for the pirates. They ran out of tricks to pressure the base except for a straight-on slugging match.

A normal commander would have pulled back and given up the fight. The losses far outweighed the gains, unless they heard an inkling of the windfall the expedition earned so far. So many kilograms of monoexurite made plenty of people see red.

In fact, Jaded Serpent even urged his mechs to intensify the attack. "Stop pussyfooting around! Get closer and disable all of the turrets! We won’t be able to bypass the walls with them intact!"

As the champion of the pirates, his sleek black adorned with twin red dragons attracted a lot of fire. However, the pirate commander possessed a sly sense of evasion, managing to dart in and out of cover just in time to spoil the aim of the most heaviest guns arrayed against him. Sometimes his mech even dodged in a bewildering pattern that made Ves spin his eyes.

"That’s the Roulette Spin! Not every advanced pilot knows how to perform that maneuver!"

The Roulette Spin could only be done with light and medium mechs focused on agility and flexibility. The mech half-spun into arcing paths that made it difficult to predict how far the mech moved and where it would orient itself next. It worked great against automated targeting systems and less skilled pilots, which happened to include most of the local mercs.

"That Jaded Serpent is a tough customer." An analyst remarked. "His mech can outmaneuver most of our melee mechs that focused more on brute force than finesse. Even our Volmars would be hard-pressed to match blows against his mech."