The Mech Touch novel Chapter 296

Raella Larkinson strode among the vanguard of the Blood Claws horde. Over two hundred mechs spent days trying to traverse the rugged and uneven terrain of the Glowing Planet.

Since she didn’t bring her own mech along, the Blood Claws lent her a mech that fit her well.

The Sliverath wasn’t like her Vectrix at all.

Her previous duelling-oriented mech excelled at quick bursts of performance, offering a lot of power at the cost of poor efficiency.

That didn’t mean the Sliverath turned those parameters around, but it offered a much flatter performance curve in order to extend its uptime. At their current power-saving pace of marching, the Sliverath could easily last a couple of days without replenishing its energy cells.

The Blood Claws still did so after each day in case they met an ambush. A couple of low hovering transports followed far behind them to supply the mechs. Everyone kept an extremely lengthy distance from the transport vessels, since they carried so many energy cells that the explosion could mimic a weapon of mass destruction if they all set off.

The overcharge phenomenon manifested more changes than that. Each mech kept a healthy distance from each other as well in order to avoid a chain reaction.

They even knew precisely how far they had to disperse. Some of the scientists from the Mech Corps came up with a formula that determined the volatility of each mech from how many energy cells they carried and how much overcharge they held.

The results would be indexed from a number from 0 to 10. The number 0 represented no risk while the number 10 meant that a kilometer wide area would be scoured from end to end.

The Sliverath only received a score of 3, as the light skirmisher didn’t offer much space to store a lot of energy cells. It also didn’t drain as much as energy as a laser rifleman, so the smaller capacity didn’t hinder the mech.

"Hey Dietrich." She called over her private channel with her boyfriend. "How’s it going? Do you miss the feeling of flying in the air?"

"Not really. It’s way too dangerous to pilot an aerial mech on this cursed planet. I’d rather hide behind some solid cover this time."

The Glowing Planet’s abundant exotic minerals emitted constant interference fields that made flying a bad choice. Besides having to deal with unstable flight, any aerial mech would only need to be hit once before they popped like firework due to their light armor and heightened energy consumption.

Thus, Dietrich borrowed an average rifleman mech model instead of a mech identical to his Harrier. Even if he disliked being bound to the land, he didn’t want to leave his girlfriend alone when she was about to embark on her first actual battle.

The attack force reached the pirate base a couple of hours later. A scout mech that had been watching over their activities met with Kanaan, the head of the force.

"Report."

"It’s just like the boss predicted. The rats have just found out about the overcharge stuff and are scrambling to get their mechs back online. They even stopped their digging activities because of that. Most of their mechs and assets are still above ground.

The scout passed a detailed topographic map of the base to everyone in the attack force. Raella studied it with her own eyes and saw that the pirates circled their grounded carriers as makeshift walls.

"Are these carriers vulnerable?"

"No. The ship crews dismantled and hauled away their energy cells. They’re solely running on ship-grade fuel now."

"A shame, but to be expected. The pirates aren’t that stupid." Kanaan flatly remarked. "Have you identified the leaders?"

"Yeah. There’s a squad of mechs that look fancier than the rest. They’re probably part of the Dragons of the Void."

A number of dragon-themed mechs appeared over the projection. The command squad featured a high proportion of swordsman mechs and only included a couple of rifleman mechs for posterity.

"Damn, these swordsman mechs look slippery. It will be hard to pin them down, let alone blow up their energy cells."

After projecting the elite mechs, the scout also showed off some of the regular pirate mechs. "The rest of the pirate models are typical low-tier mechs. They’re very diverse, but they’re all crappy to an extent."

"What about fixed defenses? Do we have to worry about turrets and such?"

"Oh, they erected a couple of turrets, but as far as I’m aware of, they still run on their own energy cells. Focus at the base of the turrets if you want to pop those cells."

"Noted. Anything else we should know?"

"Yeah. Those ship-grade energy cells I just mentioned? The pirates chucked them to the other side of that mountain over there. I got a marksman stationed far away but with a direct line of sight of that pile."

"You’re not thinking of..."

"Oh yeah, let’s say we blow it up."

Everyone grinned at that suggestion. Pirates had never been very smart, and these ones seem dimmer than usual for dumping all of their excess energy cells in the same place. Even if the cells had been dumped a couple of kilometers away, the magnitude of the explosion should be unlike anything they had ever seen before.

Kanaan formed a quick adjustment to the plan. "Alright men, let’s do it like this. Instead of surrounding the base from all sides, we’ll be waiting behind those low hills on the opposite side of the big bang. That should shelter our mechs enough from the blast."

Once the massive explosion ran its course, the Blood Claws and their subordinate forces would rise up from the hills and shoot at the disoriented pirates. However, Kanaan didn’t want to let the melee mechs like Raella’s Sliverath go forth.

"It’s too easy for mechs to clump up this way. It only takes one suicidal pirate to decide he wants to take his opponent with him to the grave. Stay with the ranged mechs and guard them against any incoming pirates."

With the plan set, the attack force moved to their new coordinates. Even though they tried to hide their maneuvers, somehow the pirates got wind of their presence. Alarms sounded out in their comm channels, alerted them of an imminent attack.

"No time! Everyone, hug the ground! Scouts, blow up the energy cells!"