The Mech Touch

6023 Illusionary Dream

As the forces of the expeditionary fleet struggled to defeat the warships of the Torment Fleet, one notable asset remained in reserve.

The Dark Zephyr remained active but silent as the living mech continued to huddle inside the hangar bay of the Spirit of Bentheim.

The fresh ace pilot inside the cockpit impatiently tapped his foot as he observed the battlefield from multiple different live feeds.

He carefully observed and studied the performance of the Eminence of Torment, the recently developed alien hyper battleships and the more powerful hyper phasefighters.

Saint Tusa-Billingsley-Larkinson wished his Dark Zephyr could sortie into battle and tip the scales in the favor of the Golden Skull Alliance.

However, all of the leaders of the expeditionary fleet insisted that Tusa and his upgraded expert light skirmisher remain in reserve.

Tusa did not believe he was being held back just because the Golden Skull Alliance wanted to have a powerful troubleshooter on hand that could quickly respond to any unexpected surprises.

The Torment Fleet may have sprung several surprises after getting ambushed, but the aliens have likely brought out everything they had in their arsenal.

It did not make much sense to hold his powerful new Dark Zephyr back unless the Golden Skull Alliance had other reasons to justify this decision.

As Tusa witnessed many of the breakthroughs that occurred across the battlefield, he becincreasingly certain what this battle was truly about.

He opened a communication channel to the Minerva.

"Commander."

"It is not yet time, Saint Tusa. Please be patient for another minute. Your twill csoon."

"I do not have much patience to begin with!" Tusa barked as he slammed his fist against the armrest of his piloting chair! "Is it truly worth it to let so many of our clansmen die in order to trigger all of these breakthroughs?!"

Commander Casella sighed. "That is not our call to make. Our patriarch has recently changed the priorities of our expeditionary fleet. Our former goal was to focus on resource acquisition and minimizing our losses. Now that our clan urgently needs to build a small but powerful first-class fleet and mech force, our strategy needs to shift. We must focus on promoting as many talents among our mech pilots as possible. We must give them a better stage for them to perform beyond their limits, even if it means that many of their compatriots may die in the process. As you can see, our new strategy is already bearing fruit."

Tusa let out a frustrated sound. "I am not blind enough to deny that this approach makes a certain amount of sense, but don't you think this is a little too much?! How much longer do you have to make our clan bleed?! How many lives are you willing to trade in order to obtain another expert pilot? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?"

"Do not think that I am in complete agreement with this approach!" Casella defensively shot back! "However, we must build up our high-end combat assets as extensively as possible. The patriarch has already warnedthat our clan may be forced to fend off much more powerful alien adversaries in the future. Ordinary mech pilots cannot play a significant role anymore. Even if they do, we can easily hire as many of them as we want. What cannot be bought with money are expert pilots and ace pilots. Not only can they be transferred to the Premier Branch as long as their mechs are upgraded to first-class standards, they can also train and inspire our troops if they remain in the expeditionary fleet."

"..."

Tusa felt conflicted. Just because he becan ace pilot did not mean he gained absolute certainty in everything. In matters unrelated to his conviction, he was just as ignorant and indecisive as any other soldier!

"The survival of the Larkinson Clan and all of our dependents is at stake." Casella emphasized. "Whatever suffering we incur today is much less than what we will endure if we fail to nurture enough high-ranking mech pilots. Our previous strategy was more appropriate for the Age of Mechs. Now that we have entered the Age of Dawn, we cannot afford to pursue steady development anymore. Our patriarch has stepped up his game, and so must we. This battle shall be one of many crucibles that will strengthen the foundation of our clan."

The Sentinel Commander sounded way too callous when she easily dismissed the bloody price for this change in strategy.

There were many human lives in the balance!

Tusa feared that this battle would not be the last of its kind. He thought that the Larkinsons had already done away with fighting pitched battles against enemies strong enough to make the Larkinson Clan bleed.

However, it would be intellectually dishonest for him to deny that these sorts of difficult battles also tended to produce the most breakthroughs!

Tusa found it difficult to deny the logic behind this shift. He just felt disgusted by the fact at how easily Casella succumbed so easily to the trap that the ends justify the means.

He himself found it difficult to make up his mind whether this was the right call. It depended upon whether Ves' opinions about future threats were credible enough. If the patriarch exaggerated the threat posed by the native aliens because he was greedy for more high-ranking mech pilots, then Tusa could not say whether he was willing to becan accomplice to his cousin's bloody schemes!

It was only because that Ves often turned out to be right in his decisions that the Saint was willing to give the mech designer the benefit of the doubt.

"Do you think that our clansmen are unwilling, Tusa?"

"What do you mean?"

"I am their commander. I know what is on their minds. I understand their dreams and aspirations. Do not forget that service in the expeditionary fleet is completely voluntary. Many Larkinsons that value their lives over ascension have already transferred to the side branches. The soldiers that remain have already signed an implicit contract that conveys their willingness to put their lives at risk for a chance of obtaining glory. What we are doing is fulfilling their dreams, more or less. Do not forget that you used to be one of these hopeful mech pilots. You still are in a sense."

That was true. Battles were also unpredictable. It was unreasonable to expect that the clan had a total grasp of the enemies they confronted.

In fact, many of the battles as of late had gotten too predictable. The expeditionary fleet had becincreasingly more proficient at defeating the rabble that ranked at the bottom of native alien society.

This was not conducive to the development of the Larkinson Army. Winning lots of battles against the alien equivalent of cannon fodder only made the Larkinsons better at bullying the weak.

Battles against more formidable enemies such as the Torment Fleet were essential to improving the ability for the Larkinson Clan to cope against its more powerful adversaries of the future!

"We have." Casella smiled. "According to our analysis, most of the mech pilots that have accumulated enough and were most prone to breaking through have done so. Continuing to maintain the current status quo will only lead to escalating losses without the corresponding benefits. You are free to sortie into the field, Saint Tusa."

"Finally! I have a lot of repressed energy that I urgently want to vent onto these orvens!"

The Dark Zephyr already exited the hangar bay of the lightly damaged Spirit of Bentheim and began to activate a warp bubble that quickly accelerated the high-tier expert mech towards the battlefield!

"Which target should I attack first, Casella?"

"You decide. If you are confident you are up to the task, then you can attempt to team up with Saint Kalasandra Boojay into defeating the Eminence of Torment. If you think that you cannot land an immediate crippling blow onto the phase lord, then it is better to let the Royal Jeem grind away at his defenses. You can make a more immediate impact on the battle by helping our troops eliminate the hyper battleships."

Tusa faced a difficult choice. He could make an enormous impact on the battle in one fell swoop by inflicting a crippling blow onto the Eminence of Torment.

However, he was not quite certain whether his current level of strength was enough to allow him to damage a phase lord that had proven to be much stronger and more cunning than anyone expected!

As much as Tusa wanted to make the most powerful possible impression in his debut as an ace pilot, he decided that it may be better to go for the sure bet this time.

"I shall take on the surviving hyper battleships." He conveyed.

"Good choice. You do not have to expend your resources to eliminate all of them. You can already make a large difference by eliminating half of them if you can do so quickly."

"I can handle it." Tusa confidently replied. "Get ready to follow up on my results."

As the machine surged towards the action, Saint Tusa did not unfold his complete Saint Kingdom right away.

Doing so would make his Dark Zephyr way too conspicuous on the battlefield. The living mech instead began to attract a lot of shadow energy with the help of his Ultimate Module in order to reduce his emissions and energy signature.

In the middle of a red-hot battlefield, none of the aliens had any tor attention to spare in surveying the battlefield for incoming threats that were difficult to detect! They already had their hands full with their most immediate human enemies!

The Dark Zephyr did not excel at rapid long-range traversal, but the expert light skirmisher was still fast enough that he managed to approach one of the hyper battleships relatively quickly.

The kilometers-long alien homeship had proven to be a formidable terror on the battlefield so far. Hundreds of tertiary transphasic hyper laser batteries had already scythed down many mechs belonging to the Larkinsons, the Glory Seekers, the Crossers, the Adelaides and the Boojays!

No matter what sort of mech fell into the orven hyper battleship's crosshairs, none of them could withstand the barrages for long!

Tusa had deliberately chosen this target as the hyper battleship was only subject to light suppression. Every human mech force had long learned that it was counterproductive to spread their firepower across multiple heavily shielded targets.

Since the mech forces had decided to focus their attacks on other targets, this left Tusa's target with fully intact segmented multi-layer azure energy shield coverage!

This was among the higher defensive configurations that the native aliens applied to their more valued homeships.

It would have taken the Jedda Sandivar or the Royal Jeem an awful amount of tto drill through all of these potent energy shields!

Yet when the comparatively weaker Dark Zephyr charged towards the salien battleship, Saint Tusa did not consider any situation where he would have to take just as much tto eliminate the vessel!

"Blackwing!"

"Chip chip chip!"

His companion spirit had already begun to reinforce the Dark Wind Module.

The Ultimate Module had been accumulating energy all this time. This meant that as soon as the Dark Zephyr was getting close to crashing against the alien vessel's energy shields, the living mech was ready to activate his latest and most powerful ability in an instant!

Alarms began to ring inside the bridge of the alien homeship. The high-caste orven captain becalarmed when the resonance meters derived from human technology began to sound a particularly scary alarm!

Before the orven captain could begin to issue his orders with the assumption that his homeship's energy shields would hold, the Dark Zephyr had already made his move!

"<nullb>Leap of True Freedom!"

"<nullb>Dark Wind Passage!"

Though it strained Tusa and his battle partner a lot to trigger multiple powerful abilities at once, the pair nonetheless managed to pull them off without missing their timing!

A thin but very conspicuous streak of shadow ran straight through the orven battleship from the side!

What was remarkable was that the streak briefly becinterrupted just before and after running through both sides of the battleship's energy shield cover!

Seconds later, the hyper battleship's gun batteries interrupted their fire as the hull began to suffer from multiple severe malfunctions and internal explosions!

Many segmented azure energy shields lost power and disappeared, making it clear that the vessel had just suffered a powerful blow, one that the latest mech to enter the battlefield had inflicted without any regard for the orven battleship's defenses!

"Tusa!"

"Hah! That's our Saint!"

The best part about this was that Tusa looked anything but done. The Dark Zephyr had already changed his trajectory so that he initiated another attack run against a different orven battleship!

Both the ace pilot and his upgraded mech bechungry to earn more achievements in battle.

Having witnessed so many Larkinsons losing their lives in order to chase after an illusionary dream, Tusa vowed to never rest until he utterly crushed every alien on the battlefield today!

"FOR THE LARKINSON CLAN!"