The Mech Touch novel Chapter 488

The battle between the two sides went badly for the Vandals and the rebels. They lost a third of their total forces without downing a single enemy mech. The disparity in mech quality proved to be the decisive factor keeping Lord Javier aloft.

While the Loquacious Raphael attracted a lot of attention and firepower, its excellent armor and generous energy reserves allowed the mech to sustain itself in battle without declining in performance. Constantine Reeve deliberately designed the Raphael as a hero mech that uplifted its allies through perseverance.

Ves understood the Senior Mech Designer’s intentions. "The Raphael leads by example. It excels in chaotic battlefields and lengthy campaigns. Its dependence on a sword and a ballistic rifle allows it to ration its energy consumption and relegate heat management to a distant concern."

As a mech designer whose only original designs echoed similar principles, Ves appreciated Mr. Reeve’s design choices for the Raphael.

Much like the Blackbeak and the Crystal Lord, the Raphael could keep on fighting for a very long time.

Unlike the two regular designs, the highly advanced Raphael enjoyed some of the best designs and materials the Vesia Kingdom had to offer. This enabled the mech’s performance curve to stay at a very high base level, to the point where it wouldn’t lose out to peak-performance mechs meant to unleash all of their might in a brief interval.

"This is the power of money."

When it came to mechs, you often got what you paid for. While mech buyers did often purchase a premium based on subjective qualities such as brand and current trends, every mech charged a price based on the quality of its materials and the quality of their designs.

This was bad news for the Vandals that clashed head-on against the Raphael, because none of their looted or refurbished Vesian mechs appeared to be premium mechs. Ves loosely estimated that the average value of their mechs didn’t surpass 30 million credits.

Though their robust training and inclusion of some military-grade technologies narrowed the gap, it still left a wide gulf between the Vandals and the Raphael.

Nonetheless, the story was slightly different with the honor guard mechs. Though they lasted for an admirable amount of time, they hadn’t been built to withstand long sieges.

Ves recognized that they’d been designed by someone else, and had been tasked with meeting very different criteria.

What was a honor guard mech?

"They need to guard their charges from sudden threats."

These threats often approached covertly and sprung their attack within a split-second. This was why the honor guard mechs all possessed excellent close-ranged sensors. Right now, the honor guard mechs utilized this trait to their advantage by forestalling every flanking attempts made by the Vandals.

Pervasive jamming along with all the interference released in the air from the meteorite impacts reduced the reliability of sensors in the vicinity. Even the observation bugs that relayed live footage of the battle to the rebel base glitched out or lagged a number of times.

The cheaper Vesian-built mechs piloted by the Vandals would sometimes be as blind as a bat, and needed to rely on those same observation bugs to pin down the locations of their adversaries. This took too much time, and the enemy often responded well before the Vandals completed their latest maneuvers.

The second advantage turned out to be a double-edged sword for the honor guard mechs. Designed to fend off assassin mechs as quickly as possible, their performance curve was a lot steeper. They could deliver a formidable amount of combat power in the first twenty minutes or so of combat.

This served them well as they miraculously avoided any losses so far. While a few honor guard mechs got beaten up a bit, none of them lost any major functionality.

However, their energy reserves obviously expended at a much faster rate, or better said, they didn’t possess as much reserves as the Raphael. In ten minutes or less, they would quickly run out of steam.

The only problem was that they might taken a dozen or more Vandal mechs out of the equation in the meantime. Therefore, the attackers couldn’t afford to drag out the fight until the honor guard mechs exhausted themselves.

"Reinforcements are also on the way."

Overall, fewer Vesian mechs remained in Neron City, yet the ones that lasted up until now still fought on their home ground. They utilized secret tunnels and other means to rapidly convey themselves across the battlefield. The first wave of reinforcements shouldn’t take much more than five minutes to arrive.

The Loquacious Raphael and the honor guard mechs needed to be taken care of by that time, or else the attackers had to divide their attention on two fronts.

"Are you certain the Raphael has expended most of its ammunition?" Addy carefully asked Ves in the rebel base.

Ves nodded with confidence. "I’ve counted every shot. From the size of the magazines, to the diameter of the muzzle, I’ve made a pretty good estimate on how many shells the Raphael is carrying. His backpack module is a smaller and lighter variant, which prevents it from being a hindrance to the custom mech, but it also limits the amount of magazines it can store."

And now that the artificial meteorites crumbled all the tunnels and weapon caches, the Raphael wouldn’t be able to replenish its supplies anywhere.

The plan Addy proposed sounded fairly risky, as they only had a single shot to make it happen. If the sacrifices failed to achieve the desired effect, then Lord Javier and his escorts might even be able to turn the battle around.

They could not let him get away!

Ves, Addy and the rest only spent a brief minute to refine their proposal before she contacted Commander Breskin and filled him in. Time was of the essence so they needed to make a quick decision.

The rebel leader responded in a decisive tone. "We’ll do it. Help coordinate the hovertanks. Their trajectories need to be precise."