The Mech Touch Chapter 7266

[ … words ]

The ‘skirmish’ lasted for a while.

Even if the Goliath Hive did not make a serious commitment, the mutated voribugs still
threw a formidable quantity of cannon fodder at the defenses.

Every defensive platform had to fire their weapons and expend resources in order to
repel the defenses.

From a strategic perspective, the difference it made was fairly limited, but so long as the
Goliath Hive kept up the pressure, systems would break down sooner or later.

Most machines were never meant to be used at such a high intensity. Every part and
component possessed a life span, and this attribute rapidly diminished during active
use.

Proper servicing, maintenance and repairs could bring back some of the life span that
was lost, but that required valuable time where the assets became unavailable for a
time.

The defenders of the Philaster Crestia System could not afford to put too much of its
assets in reserve.

While it was still able to place a substantial share of its mechs and warships in reserve,
the defensive platforms and orbital fortresses had to keep working in order to ensure
that not a single voribug was able to slip past the orbital network and infiltrate the
surface of the planet.

When Ves pulled up the status of all of the defensive platforms, he could clearly see that
many of the sections turned yellow or even red.

The proportion of parts that had turned yellow were particularly high. The parts in red
were much less prevalent, which told Ves that the maintenance crews focused most of
their efforts on addressing complete breakdowns as opposed to preventative
maintenance.

The latter had become a luxury on the new front.

The defense of Philaster Crestia lll was likely doomed at this point. Even with
reinforcements, the continued breakdown of so many assets made the act of holding
this planet untenable.

Sure, Ves brought hundreds of mechs, dozens of sub-capital ships and a whopping 30
Ascended Giants to the star system, but none of them possessed the right means to
defeat swarms and swarms of voribugs.

Once those defensive platforms and other hardware broke down during an
overwhelming assault, the two squads of Ascended Giants would have to retreat if they
wanted to avoid getting exhausted and gnawed to death!

The same applied to the expert mechs and ace mechs in the star system.

To Ves, it didn’t matter if Saint Rosa Orphan finally woke up from her coma and was able
to make good use of the Riot Mark Ill.

Even after upgrading the latter to a proper ace mech, it could still get exhausted.

The only way to beat an enemy that was able to send in an astronomical amount of
cannon fodder was to bring a large enough force.

The orbital defenses were not enough. No matter how many more platforms the
Rubarthans built, they could only be used in a defensive capacity.

To eliminate the threat posed by the mutated voribugs, the Rubarthans would have to
bring in lots of mechs and warships before sending them off to cleanse the satellites
being used as resource points by the enemy.

This was an incredibly tedious and time-consuming effort. It was also beyond the
Rubarthan Pact’s means to bring out so many troops when it was already straining to
fend off the native aliens.

Ves directed his attention to the mechs in the field.

They were very clearly differentiated from each other. The contingent of Gamma
Scorchers dispatched by the Cybernetic Empire stood out the most due to their
extensive use of high-powered energy weapons.

Many of the mechs of this unit no longer fired narrow gamma laser beams because most
of the energy would end up going to waste.

The mutated voribugs had studied the Gamma Scorchers a long time ago and adapted
their attack approach. The bugs assumed a very thin and shallow sheet-like formation
and sent them forward in the form of regular attack waves.

Each time an energy beam struck an individual voribug, there were no bugs behind it, so
the remainder of the energy of the attack would end up hitting nothing.

Through this simple solution, the voribugs managed to put quite a lot of pressure on the
Gamma Scorcher mechs until the Cybers had finally adapted them to local
circumstances.

The mech designers and mech technicians had modified the multipurpose mechs so
that they drastically tuned down the frequencies while simultaneously decreasing the
focus and coherency of their attack output.

The result was that the Gamma Scorcher mechs wielded the equivalent of energy
The result was that the Gamma Scorcher mechs wielded the equivalent of energy
shotguns.

Each pull of the trigger resulted in large and very visible cones of light that spread out
rapidly but did not possess much range.

While this forced the powerful machines to fight against the swarms much closer than
they were comfortable with, their killing efficiency had skyrocketed!

Even so, Ves did not think the Gamma Scorchers could keep up this performance for
long without enduring problems.

Since the Cyber contingent belonged to a third party, Ves did not gain access to their
detailed status data.

However, Ves was still able to glean lots of clues by zooming in and observing them in
action.

The Cyber mech industry was approximately two mech generations ahead. That
resulted in many small technological improvements and innovations, but it did not give
the Cybers enough time to revolutionize the concept of mechs.

These machines were all powerful and demanding first-class multipurpose mechs. Their
complexity was dizzyingly high. This enabled them to carry a large amount of integrated
weapon systems and put up a ferocious fight when put into use.

However, Ves did not get the sense that the mechs of the 24th Gamma Scorchers
Warfleet were designed to be used so frequently.

Their superior tech and craftsmanship may have allowed them to remain in better
condition than usual, but even well-built systems failed sooner or later.

Compared to the relatively pristine mechs of the Gamma Scorchers, the mechs fielded
by other forces were in significantly worse conditions.

The surviving machines of the original garrison were much worse off than the rest. They
showed plenty of old scars and featured obvious jury-rigged repairs.

The mechs that arrived as reinforcements were in moderately better condition, but they
would deteriorate to the level of the older defenders soon enough.

What stood out to Ves was that very few of the mechs engaged in melee combat.

Most of them conspicuously maintained their distance and relied heavily on ranged
weapons to produce damage.

In fact, many of the mechs armed with weapons that were originally not so suitable
acainst the new alien threat had swapped over to cheap but serviceable shotauns or
The mechs monotonously opened fire whenever a large enough concentration of
cannon fodder bugs got close.

They also had to maneuver backwards in order to avoid getting surrounded and
shredded to pieces.

Whenever the mutated voribugs managed to take a mech by surprise and swarmed it
from multiple directions, nearby mechs did not hesitate to turn their weapons around
and fire right at their beleaguered colleague!

The power of the mech weapons had been carefully calibrated to inflict great damage to
the soft bodies of cannon fodder bugs, but inflict minimal damage to the mechs
themselves.

A few of the more adventurous mech units even used their own machines as bait.
However, this was a reckless move that had been heavily discouraged as the days went
by.

Many mechs had become so worn down at this point that they could easily reach a
tipping point if they suffered a single hit at a critical location.

Only one Rubarthan mech unit stood out from the rest.

It was clearly an elite unit. The mechs were made to a higher standard while their pilots
were more skilled.

Yet what clearly distinguished them from other machines was their dependence on a
rather luxurious modular system!

The mechs were all designed as semi-modular platforms similar to the later iterations of
the Bright Warrior line.

Their backpack modules, their secondary weapon systems, their energy cells and
ammunition canisters had all been turned into easily interchangeable modules.

That was not all. Whenever the mechs had depleted their supplies, the modular energy
cells and ammunition canisters ejected from the mech frame and automatically drifted
back to the rear.

Special Rubarthan supply ships and shuttles retrieved the expended modules and filled
them up again.

At the same time, the Rubarthan logistical vessels launched replacement modules at
high speeds towards the mechs that needed resupply!

These modules rapidly closed the distance before slowing down with the help of one-
time miniature boosters.

Once they approached their targets, the boosters fell off, allowing the modules to close
the remaining distance with the help of more fixed miniboosters and guidance systems.
The modules eventually slotted into place, enabling the replenished mechs to launch
their weapons and keep their azure energy shields active with renewed confidence!

Due to this expensive but effective replenishment system, the elite Rubarthan mechs
were able to last much longer and prevent their mech frames from getting scratched.
While the load to their azure energy shield generator and energy transmission systems
was considerable, these parts could easily be kept in good shape so long as the elite
mech unit maintained a rotation.

Their quantity was rather small on the battlefield, which told Ves that the Rubarthans
probably kept most of them in reserve.

“What do you think, Ves?” Lord Richard Brownstone asked.

“These mechs can play an outsized role under the right circumstances. I am rather
impressed by how smoothly they can exchange their depleted modules for fresh ones. It
looks rather simple, but the technical challenges are considerable, especially when there
are voribugs that try to mess with the exchange.”

“What you are seeing is mechs designed according to the standards of the Brownstone
Modular Mech Ecosystem. It was devised by Master Sirine Brownstone, one of my many
aunts. She has devised this mech ecosystem in preparation for hard campaigning in
future offensive operations against the native aliens. As it is, the mech ecosystem is
seeing surprisingly good use in battles such as this. Master Sirine is currently working
on developing a downmarket version of her mech ecosystem so that it can be applied to
cheaper mech designs.”

Ves could see quite a lot of promise in this mech ecosystem. While it was expensive and
troublesome to set up, once it was up and running, a mech unit that took advantage of it
could maintain a much longer presence on the battlefield than usual.

Supply limitations no longer constrained the machines as much as before.

The main variable that limited the uptime of these mechs was the endurance of the
human mech pilots themselves.

They would get exhausted eventually.

Aside from injecting themselves with dangerous and harmful stimulants, it was best to
rotate them out before they collapsed in their piloting seats.

“Is the Brownstone Principality planning to convert all of their mech units to this new
mech ecosystem?”

Lord Richard shrugged his shoulders. “I am not sure. It depends on whether we can gain
access to better solutions. If not, the Brownstone Modular Mech Ecosystem will serve as
an… acceptable measure to help us in our fight against the mutated voribugs.”

The mech ecosystem would certainly help if it could be popularized, but it was not a true
solution against the endless swarms sent by the enemy.

Killing the bugs meant nothing to the Hives. They could produce them easily enough so
long as they had managed to gain a good foothold in a star system.

The mutated voribugs were essentially leveraging the resources of a partially occupied
star system against its remaining defenders!

In other words, the alien insects excelled at leveraging red humanity’s own territory
against their prey!

Real victory could only be accomplished by retaking all of the territory taken by the
mutated voribugs.

Ves did not think that mechs that made use of this fancy new mech ecosystem
possessed the strength to make this happen.