The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1980

Chapter 1980 Positron-Electron Annihilation

The Battle of Bentheim stretched on for hours, then days. The sandman monoliths kept advancing to the critical planet which the aliens seemed hellbent on reaching!

Over the course of the battle, the Mech Corps, the Starfighter Corps and the myriad of domestic and foreign outfights learned one brutal lesson.

They were wholly outmatched.

The sandmen previously posed a considerable challenge to these forces. The general consensus that humans settled on was that the sandmen were individually weak, but extremely numerous and very willing to go all out to achieve their objectives!

Against weak and numerous enemies, the Bright Republic thought it was enough to bring numbers of their own in order to reduce the quantity disparity. For this reason, the government didn't hesitate to station over half of the entire Mech Corps and Starfighter Corps in the Bentheim System!

The military should have brought more mech divisions and starfighter divisions.

"Where did these hellspawn obtain such good shielding technology?! Where are they getting all of the power needed to sustain these shields? It's as if we are attacking CFA warships instead of weak sandman monoliths!"

Before the Battle of Bentheim, no one thought too highly of sandman monoliths. While they were big and formidable damage sponges, their lack of mobility and huge size meant that it was trivially easy to bombard it with a multitude of rounds and missiles!

The conventional strategy to defeat them was to deploy a large number of mechs and starfighters and shower the approaching threat with ordnance while flying backwards. This was where all of the footage and images of the so-called 'Stripes of Humanity' came about.

No such heroic sights occurred today. Part of it was because the many clashes had grown too chaotic and hectic to allow mechs to fight the upgraded sandman monoliths in orderly formations.

Another reason was that the Bright Republic had mostly phased out the Soldier product line!

This decision was mostly motivated by politics. Now that the Bright Republic aligned itself more closely to the Friday Coalition, the LMC's products had suddenly become poisonous.

Despite their incredible value, the government simply couldn't justify the continued use of mechs such as the Desolate Soldier, Prideful Soldier and Peaceful Soldier when their patron hated the designer to the core!

"It's as egregious as piloting a mech designed by a Hexer!"

Through various excuses, the government forced the military, the Planetary Guard organizations and the private sector to trade in their LMC mechs for recycling and reprocessing.

In exchange, the Bright Republic offered these forces replacement mechs that performed mildly to substantially better.

This trade scheme wasn't just a way to get rid of all of the LMC mechs circulating in the Bright Republic. It was also a way of upgrading the comprehensive strength of the defenders of Bentheim!

Initially, protests were fairly muted. Though the mech pilots of the LMC mechs had become very attached to their machines, the mech commanders and owners of the various outfits came around faster due to the easy profit they gained.

Yet now that mechs were falling left and right due to the multitude of positron beams raining down in their direction, morale throughout the entire system quickly dropped like a rock!

"Ahhhh! Jimmy! Why did they take you?!"

"Help! Help! My escape pod is leaking air! Please rescue me! I can still pilot a spare mech!"

"Our ship! It's gone! Our home is gone!"

An incredible amount of debris started to fling into space as mech after mech got wrecked in an instant after being struck by a powerful positron beam!

Positron beams weren't as fast as laser beams, but in these circumstances, the differences might as well be negligible!

Unlike ordinary laser beams which most mechs and starfighters could resist a couple of times as long as they didn't land on the spot, positron beams were completely different in terms of lethality!

Considered the evil goatee-wearing counterparts of electrons, these tiny antiparticles were incredibly light and possessed no other remarkable properties aside from their positive charge.

It was only after they collided with electrons that they started to reveal their amazing destructive potential!

In a material realm where negatively-charged electrons were predominant, antiparticles such as positrons were extremely deadly!

This was because of the phenomenon known as annihilation. Electrons and positrons both canceled each other out when they bumped into each other. The particles and antiparticles disappeared from the material realm, but due to the law of conservation of mass and energy, a lot of energy took their place!

In truth, a single electron and positron didn't release that much energy. Just someone lifting an arm in the air took more energy than the output of a single electron-positron annihilation reaction!

Yet the positron beams didn't just contain a single positron. It was packed with an uncountable amount of antiparticles, all accelerated towards their targets at relativistic or near-relativistic speeds!

No third-class mech could withstand a blow. Hardly any second-class mech escaped unscatched. Even first-class mechs encountered significant difficulties when subjected to sustained attacks!

The sandman monoliths recklessly discharged a humongous amount of energy at their targets! By now, the energies they unleashed was more than enough to destroy the planet of Bentheim dozens of times over!

Though the targeting systems of the monoliths hadn't been upgraded as well as their weapon systems, the alien dreadnoughts still managed to kill scores of mechs and starfighters before each of them could be overwhelmed!

"We're bleeding assets at a rapid rate!"

"Hardly any mech or starfighter pilot is able to eject after being hit! The sandman positron beams are too lethal!"

"It's as if we are being attacked by the Fridaymen or Hexers!"

In the first couple of hours, the forces that met the sandman monoliths in combat lost over half of their numbers!

This was a devastating loss! The savaged mech regiments and outfits were forced to keep their distance and attack the sandman monoliths at a far greater distance to reduce the effectiveness of their targeting somewhat. Through heavy jamming and several other methods, the positron beams failed to harvest as much lives as before.

However, the increased range also reduced the effectiveness and intensity of the attacks directed towards the monoliths, allowing the aliens greater room to advance!

"What is the MTA doing?!"

"They're busy hunkering down while they attract the bulk of the sandman monoliths!"

The sandman seemed to reserve most of their ire towards the stricken and heavily-outnumbered MTA task force! With their ships being raked by positron beam after positron beam, their mechs were finding it a lot harder to achieve success!

"No! Save the Wolf Mother! Don't let her die!"

"It's too late, captain! Her engineering is gone! Colonel Lowenfield has ordered the crew to abandon ship!"

The great factory ship had no place on the battlefield. Expecting a much lower-intensity conflict, the Flagrant Vandals and many other mech regiments had made a huge mistake in bringing their logistical vessels along!

"Major Verle said Colonel Lowenfield is out of contact! We can't find her escape pod among the ones that escaped the derelict Wolf Mother!" A communications officer hollered in the channel. _{freewebnøvel.coɱ}

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