The Mech Touch novel Chapter 2657

Chapter 2657: Combination Mechs

Thousands of rifleman mechs entered the fray in earnest!

As the two fleets entered medium range, the hit rate of rifleman mechs shot up quite considerably! They were able to land hits on vulnerable ship modules and even distant mechs on a reliable basis.

This has caused the two fleets to incur damage at a considerably greater rate than before! While the amount of ships that were put out of action did not increase that quickly, many ships were still bearing a lot of new scars as the huge volume of fire steadily diminished their overall durability!

Of the two sides, the expeditionary fleet possessed a slight advantage.

Although the quality of the mechs of the Larkinson Clan was inconsistent, their superior numbers along with the survival of much of their artillery mechs allowed them to exert a lot of pressure on their opponents!

Ideally, the Larkinson Clan wanted to prolong this state as much as possible. Without the intervention of the Destiny Hammers and the Witch Slayers, the Transcendent Punishers outputted so much siege damage that none of the Fridaymen fleet carriers felt very good!

Though the mech pilots of the Transcendent Punishers weren't very accurate now that they had put aside the Great Prophet's blessing, at this range they didn't need too much skill to methodically demolish the bunkers on the enemy ships.

With dozens of Transcendent Punishers focusing their fire on individual bunkers, it didn't matter if most of their shots went wide!

The damage inflicted onto the sections next to the bunkers not only affected the functioning of the artillery mech inside, but also compromised the integrity of the bunker structure.

As long as the Transcendent Punishers kept up their heavy attacks, the bunkers they targeted went down sooner or later!

Of course, the Fridaymen did not let the Transcendent Punishers go unanswered. The rifleman mechs of the Corundian Giants, Holvein Grenadiers and several smaller units all brought their firepower to bear on the threatening bunker mechs.

"Don't let those ranged mechs shoot at our artillery mechs for free!"

The Vima Suns of the Larkinson Clan . As a budget second-class rifleman mech, the Vima Sun was a relatively fragile and basic machine that was designed with energy weapons in mind.

Though the mech was not that impressive, they were very good in performing their primary purpose, which was outputting a lot of damage. Otherwise, Ves wouldn't have chosen to acquire a lot of copies of this model.

As an added bonus, the Larkinson Clan supplied the Vima Suns with modified laser rifles that were upgraded with luminar crystals and some other components. This allowed the Vima Suns to inflict as much damage as midrange mechs, though not without a few limitations.

Sadly, as much as the Vima Suns were successful in suppressing a lot of enemy rifleman mechs, they weren't as good at taking damage!

Their relative lack of armor was doubtlessly a calculated tradeoff meant to keep them light and affordable. They were ordinarily supposed to rely on hard cover to shield them from damage. If that wasn't possible, then they needed to depend on their decent mobility to remain elusive.

Right now, the Vima Suns did not need to resort to the latter. Even if the enemy strike force split up in two different splinters, it would take a lot more time before they caught the expeditionary fleet in a vulnerable position.

This meant that the battle at range was only going to keep tilting in the favor of the defenders!

General Vander Pierce was well aware of this development. Pain and frustration welled up in his body as he witnessed the results of the artillery duel. The Witch Slayers could still contribute to the battle once they no longer became a priority target, but the Destiny Hammers were pretty much done for in this battle!

"It appears we'll have to resort to harder measures." He muttered.

Ideally, he would have liked to lean more on his ranged mechs to carry the fight. That would have resulted in less casualties and a cleaner victory.

It was not to be. With the Fridaymen absorbing a lot of damage, they were on a time limit.

At the general's command, the melee mechs as well as the expert mechs made an appearance!

As soon as thousands of additions emerged in open space, the Transcendent Punishers, Vima Suns and other Larkinson mechs instantly changed their targets!

Rather than wasting most of their firepower on cracking bunkers and disabling starships, it was much more meaningful to take out as many enemy mechs as possible!

"They finally couldn't hold back any longer!"

A handful of elite Fridaymen mechs already exploded as a torrent of focused attacks impacted their frames and bombarded the space around them!

The true lethality of the Transcendent Punishers was on full display at this moment as their heavy cannons were much more effective at blasting through the much-thinner armor plating mechs than penetrating much heavier layers of starship hull plating!

The only problem was that mechs were much more elusive targets in space. The formidable Fridayman mechs did not float like sitting ducks. Instead, they immediately accelerated forward and to the side in order to close the distance to the enemy.

Only by getting close would the Fridaymen be able to render the Transcendent Punishers useless! The advancing mech pilots possessed great confidence in their melee combat abilities. This was Task Force Umbra's strong point!

As the Larkinson Clan and its allies directed much of their firepower against the advancing enemies, around 6 mech companies of the Corundian Giants deployed in earnest.

Their unique space knights formed a large and dispersed wall in space as they slowly advanced to a flanking position.

A matching number of cannoneer mechs flew behind the space knights as the latter already started to bounce away positron beams and gauss rounds.

Once the space knights accelerated for a long enough time, their flight systems parted in half and exposed an open slot on their backs.

The cannonneer mechs all flew forward and expertly mated themselves to the backs of the space knights.

Verify captcha to read the contentVerify