The Mech Touch novel Chapter 323

Back aboard the Happy Jelly, Ves constantly monitored the situation in space. He even turned his attention to the expert pirate mechs when they flew into range.

Their incredible performance and amazing construction dazzled his imagination. He continuously tried to figure out their principles but failed to make any progress beyond some rudimentary generalizations.

"My study into metaphysics and exotic alloys are still too shallow for me to understand designs at this level."

He still had a long way to go before he reached the threshold of understanding and designing his own expert mech.

And this was just the start of elite mechs. Ace mech pilots and god mech pilots demanded their own specialized machines in order to make full use of their strengths.

The ambition welling inside Ves kept burning brighter as he witnessed the extraordinary performance of each expert mech. The battle became much more exciting once the Mech Corps sent out their own experts.

Only three arrived because they hardly required additional help. The Mech Corps sent out the Fire Worm against the pirate swordsman mech because it directly countered its type.

In the same vein, they sent out an expert skirmisher to deal with the enemy rifleman mech and an expert rifleman to suppress the enemy space knight.

"Even experts can’t escape the limitations of their type." Ves concluded as he witnessed the pirate mechs getting beaten back by the well-chosen expert mechs from the Republic.

The pirates only had themselves to blame for sending out their expert pilots first. The main reason it took so long for the Mech Corps to respond was because they kept their experts back in their hangars until they saw fit to deploy them. They could have sent twice as many experts, but that would have revealed their trump cards.

Neither Ves nor the Mech Corps forgot that the Mech Legion constantly monitored their performance.

The Brighters and the Vesians continuously fended off the pirate waves as they neared each other’s position. No matter how many mechs the pirate alliances threw at them, they never managed to break through their defensive lines.

Though the pirates continuously bled the ranks of both military fleets, they suffered at least twice as much casualties in return. Eventually, their cowardice overshadowed their greed, and many of them cut and run without a hint of any organized retreat.

Still, it mattered little as the Mech Corps wasn’t in a shape to pursue. The pirates pushed them close to their breaking point and required a lot of rest and replenishment before they regained their strength.

The battle against the pirates had ended, but the struggle against the Mech Legion only started from here. With the pirate alliances in disarray, they failed to stop the two military fleets before they converged.

Naturally, the Mech Corps kept its distance from the ships and mechs of their rivals. A tense half hour went by as the commanders of the two fleet negotiated behind the scenes. Once they came to an accord, the two fleets flew closer, but not enough to merge their assets into a single whole.

Rather than consider their formation a combined fleet, Ves figured it was more as if they reluctantly chose to use the same bathroom at once. The Brighters and the Vesians hardly trusted each other to maintain their current state of ceasefire.

The only question was who would pull the trigger first.

"Sparks will fly at the end of this retreat." He surmised. Once the fleets reached the edge of the Glowing Zone, they’d be able to engage their FTL drives and transition back to friendly territory. "I bet the Vesians can’t resist at that point."

Until then, the two fleets benefited more if they held back their animosity for each other. THe only way the massive blob of ships and mechs could deter the pirates from launching another attack was to present a united front.

As of now, none of the pirate fleets had dared to stand in their way as the two fleets slingshotted their way out of orbit. The extra speed granted by their maneuver made it difficult for other fleets to catch up to them unless they followed a similar trajectory.

Of course, this would betray their intentions and potentially isolate them for a devastating counter-attack.

"So no one chased in the end." Ves remarked as he turned away from the plot. Nothing more exciting would happen for a few days.

Fadah crossed his arms and leaned back against an empty container. "The pirates are greedy, but they aren’t stupid. As long as the Mech Corps and the Mech Legion split up, they could conceivably overwhelm any single one of their fleets. The moment that possibility went out the window, the pirates don’t have a reason to pester us anymore. They’d be able to harvest much more riches from the surface of the planet."

"They still lost way too much mechs in this campaign. Even if they bloodied the nose of the Mech Corps, it doesn’t change the fact that they’ve lost a hundred-thousand mechs or more."

Thinking about such an astounding loss of mechs quaked his heart. Ves could not even imagine the amount of lives and money the pirates discarded in their ultimately futile attempts at stealing someone else’s gains. It would have made some sense if they attacked an isolated mercenary corps, but where did they summon the courage to fight against the Mech Corps directly.

"Sometimes, it’s worth it. Everyone knows the Mech Corps harvested big, to the tune of earning trillions of credits worth of exotics. Felling a single ore-laden transport ship is enough for a gang of pirates to live like kings for the rest of their lives."

Ves truly couldn’t get a grip around such a remark. It all sounded reasonable, but the pirates had to be a special brand of stupid to think they could vanquish the Mech Corps without paying a ruinous price.