The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

5680 Directing A Monster

The monster had awoken.

It was clearly angry.

"Yuri! What has happened to you?! Are you still alive down there?! What has happened to your mech? It is no longer transmitting any telemetry! Please respond!"

The machine remained unresponsive. It completely ignored Commander Pellicky's transmissions and channeled all of its pain and rage towards its enemies!

At this point, it became completely unclear who was in control of the Ultimatum that had suddenly bulked up, grown a random collection of extra parts and looked a lot more dangerous for whatever reason.

If Yuri was still in control, then the mech should have at least made an attempt to communicate and coordinate with the Pellicky Praetorians.

However, its behavior at the moment indicated that whoever was in control was less than rational!

Not only did the mech radiate a huge amount of anger and desire to destroy, but it was also firing its mutated Onyx Cannon with power that was far in excess of the physical performance of its model!

Commander Pellicky had only witnessed such might from more formidable high-level mechs!

No ordinary second-class mech was able to produce such damage. Not even transphasic hyper gauss rounds could punch through both the transphasic energy shield and the exterior hull plating of an alien battleship in a single attack.

If this was a more normal instance, then Commander Pellicky would have thought that Yuri Enfame finally managed to step up and advance to the rank of expert candidate.

No. The power demonstrated by the machine was too great for that. Perhaps Yuri had managed to luck out big time and attained apotheosis right away!

Yuri may have experienced the mythical double breakthrough event. This was an extremely rare and exceptional circumstance where mortals turned into demigods in a single leap, thereby proving that they possessed outstanding talent and potential!

However, from the reports of the nearby mech technicians trying in vain to get close enough to inspect the monstrous machine, Commander Pellicky realized that this did not match those uplifting events.

"Yuri! Are you still alive?!"

"..."

The machine did not respond to any of the commander's inquiries. She had little choice but to resign to the fact that Yuri had either died or had gone crazy for whatever reason.

Either way, this mysterious accident might not be as bad as it looked.

This was because the Ultimatum that had somehow transformed into a half-organic monstrosity not only resumed its fight against the foes of the Pellicky Praetorians, but had also become at one if not two orders of magnitude more powerful!

Commander Pellicky could make use of that. She had no time to mourn the apparent loss of her friend. All she could do at this point was to do her best by preserving the lives of the men she had left.

A dampened shockwave ran throughout the command center of the Hooligan Barke. Together with the sensors that struggled to record the massively empowered projectile that struck the flagship of the alien raiding fleet with overwhelming force, this was a clear sign that the Ultimatum had opened fire yet again!

"Ultimatum One has opened fire with its abnormal Onyx Cannon yet again!"

"The alien flagship has suffered catastrophic damage to three transphasic shield generators and one secondary power generator! Two of her primary gun batteries have lost power. Her combat effectiveness has dropped by at least 40 percent. It took only three Onyx Cannon discharges for Ultimatum One to break the alien battleship's defenses and partially cripple her functions."

"Our ranged mechs along with the ranged mechs of our surviving allies are throwing everything they have at the flagship. Her hull integrity is dropping rapidly! The alien crew are already in the process of abandoning ship!"

The sudden and abnormal downfall of the alien flagship produced a lot of ripple effects.

Not only were all of the aliens taken aback by this sudden turn of events, but the friendly mercenaries also regained a lot of hope!

The surprisingly powerful weapon discharges from the Hooligan Barke was exactly the sort of miracle that the mercenaries had been praying for! Each of them thought that one of the mech pilots of the recently purchased Ultimatums had broken through!

Although their assumptions were mistaken, the mercenary mech pilots fought a lot harder now that they believed they had a chance of making it out of this battle alive.

"What is Ultimatum One doing?!"

"It is charging up its transformed Onyx Cannon for another full-powered attack. According to the alignment of its barrel, Ultimatum One is still determined to attack the alien flagship."

"That is not necessary anymore. It is a waste of its firepower to attack a ship that is already goig down. Have you told the mech to change its target?"

"We have tried to do so multiple times, but Ultimatum One remains unresponsive!"

"Damn." Pellicky cursed. "Then let us force it to shift its target. Spin and orient the hull around so that it can no longer angle its Onyx Cannon towards the enemy flagship. Force the Ultimatum to break the transphasic energy shields of the remaining 5 alien battleships including the accompanying nunser vessel. Our greatest issue with these ships has always been our inability to get past their energy defenses. So long as their hulls have become exposed, our remaining Ultimatums and our melee mechs can make short of what is left!"

While the enemy warships had been focusing a lot of their fire towards the combat carriers of the mercenary outfits, more and more of their guns had begun to fire towards the approaching melee mechs.

This not only gave the starships a bit more reprieve, but also signaled that the enemy vessels were about to get in a lot more trouble!

Unless the aliens had brought a lot of starfighters, it would be difficult for them to fend off the threat posed by the melee mechs.

The mech pilots of those machines were hungry for revenge and eager to fight for their lives.

They initially thought that it would have taken a lot of effort for them to get past the transphasic energy shields of the enemy vessels, but now that Yuri's transformed Ultimatum had gained the power to complete this step in advance, the melee mech pilots became a lot more optimistic!

This was because most enemy warships simply had no way of repelling melee mechs that had reached their hulls and started to carve their way into the interior!

Not even alien starfighters could dislodge melee mechs without inflicting even more damage to the damaged hulls!

Several supercharged attacks launched from the Hooligan Barke in the following minute. The damaged but operational combat carrier deliberately spun her hull to change the targeting of Ultimatum One.

Even though Yuri appeared to be completely unresponsive, his transformed machine still operated as if it was controlled by a relatively basic but competent AI.

The mech always sought to direct its most potent firepower at the largest and most threatening alien warships. It only employed its Onyx Cannon as it was probable that its back-mounted armaments had become inoperable.

It didn't matter. The Ultimatum was primarily a heavy artillery mech that was built around its enormous hyper super-heavy gauss cannon. Now that it had become even more powerful than the typical primary gun battery of an alien warship, this was all the human mercenaries needed to wreck the alien vessels!

"Keep directing Ultimatum One's fire! Prioritize the largest and toughest warships first. We need to strip each of them of their energy defenses before our melee mechs arrive and take advantage of the openings."

The Hooligan Barke quickly became the center of attention as the supercharged shots continually struck the alien warships with overwhelming might!

"The second enemy battleship has lost half of her mobility! The last strike has managed to wipe out her starboard main thrusters along with all of the segmented energy shields on this side!"

"The fourth enemy battleship has suffered a massive power failure! Over 80 percent of her systems have been knocked out! Most of her remaining intact transphasic energy shields are operating on emergency power reserves, but they won't last long at this rate."

"What is the condition of Ultimatum One? Has it weakened after firing so many powerful attacks?"

"The readings are a mess, but if I have to make a preliminary judgment, Ultimatum One has yet to tire itself out. In fact, there are signs that suggest that it may be growing stronger or at least more adept with utilizing its altered systems!"

Suddenly, a loud alert rang throughout all of the compartments of the Hooligan Barke.

"The nunser warship is painting us with her most powerful targeting systems. She is about to open fire on our ship!

"Evade!"

"Too late!"

"Brace yourselves!"

The Hooligan Barke shuddered as the most formidable nunser battleship struck the Praetorian flagship with their formidable gun batteries!

"Did we get hit...?"

"We have lost our energy shields and suffered multiple hull breaches, but our ship's integrity is still at an acceptable level. This... this is another miracle!"

"What happened?! That nunser battleship should have inflicted catastrophic damage to our combat carrier!"

Commander Pellicky had to watch a piece of footage in order to obtain her answer.

It turned out that when the battleship's mixed energy and kinetic attack salvo was on the verge of striking the Hooligan Barke, an invisible energy field rapidly weakened the individual attacks moments before they impacted her flagship.

"Ultimatum One has saved us again! If my analysis is correct, then it may have deployed a domain field that has weakened the incoming attacks before they struck our ship. Right now, the altered heavy artillery mech is exhibiting the traits of being piloted by an ace pilot. The greatest inconsistency is the lack of responses from our resonance meters. None of them have discovered any trace of resonance."

That was highly abnormal! Though red humanity had gradually become more and more exposed to extraordinary phenomena, the only clear manifestations of metaphysical power that they were familiar with had always been associated with expert pilots, ace pilots and god pilots.

They simply could not understand how the Ultimatum One was able to fight like it was being piloted by a Saint, yet clearly wasn't controlled by one. The mech had turned into a giant anomaly that produced far more questions than answers!

However, answering those questions was not a priority at the moment. The surviving the battle was all that mattered!

Commander Pellicky narrowed her eyes as she rewatched the footage of the Ultimatum One's domain field preventing the nunser battleship from crippling her flagship.

"Encourage Ultimatum One to focus fire on the nunser battleship. I do not know how long the mech can keep up its domain field, but if there is a limit to its protection, then we need to eliminate the greatest threat on the battlefield right away! Do not stop until her entire hull has been rent to pieces!"

Ultimatum One gladly obliged with the intentions of the crew. Once the machine that had come to embody the power of destruction had a clear firing angle on the nunser battleship, the formidable heavy artillery mech pounded the much more technologically advanced alien capital ship multiple times!

Though the nunser battleship's more modern and advanced protection held out for the time being, the mutated Onyx Cannon attacks demolished multiple segmented energy shields with every thundering strike!

Just as the exchange of fire between the most powerful combat assets on the battleship continued to heat up, a major development threatened to undo the precious gains made by the Pellicky Praetorians.

"Commander! The melee mechs of the Grimly Brothers have closed the distance to our fleet and have begun to attack our forces from the rear. Their ranged mechs are exerting so much pressure that our ranged mechs are forced to divert their own firepower in order to defend themselves!"

"Over 200 Grimly melee mechs have just swung around and are currently advancing straight in our direction! Their intentions are clear. They intend to take down our ship!"

This was bad! The Hooligan Barke might not be able to cope with enemies attacking from two different directions!

Commander Pellicky actually feared the Grimly Brothers more. Unlike the alien foes, the human enemies understood their own kind a lot more! Their mechs were also more versatile and could employ all kinds of tactics in order to overcome their opposition.

What was worse was that a single heavy weapon like the Onyx Cannon was clearly not suited to wipe out a swarm of small craft!