The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3170

Chapter 3170: New Trick

The first two expert mechs developed and employed by the Larkinson Clan were about to test their mettle against each other.

Every Larkinson who was able to watch the feed of the test session paid rapt attention to the coming confrontation. Even though both mechs were subject to numerous restrictions in order to prevent any accidents from occurring, this was still a tense moment as the winner of this scenario would definitely affect the ranking of expert pilots in the Larkinson Clan.

Joshua, Jannzi, Orfan and Dise had all gathered in a private observation room. They studied the expert mechs displayed on the large projections with a great amount of attention.

"Who do you think will come out on top?" Orfan grinned as she lazily placed her hand on Jannzi's shoulder and pulled her closer. "Do you think that flighty little Tusa will be able to remain untouched or do you think that big bad Stark will be able to nail him down?"

Venerable Jannzi emphatically shoved Venerable Orfan's arm away. "I can't tell for sure. On the one hand, Tusa already spent several months with his expert mech. He knows all of the Dark Zephyr's nuances and is able to push it exactly as far as he needs it to go. On the other hand, the Amaranto is a masterwork. That gives Venerable Stark an immediate advantage."

"I don't think the power of the two mechs have much to do with who will win." Venerable Joshua said. "Just look at the mech types. Masterwork or not, I doubt the Amaranto is equipped with sensors that are good enough to uncover the Dark Zephyr's true coordinates."

He was right. As much as the Design Department tried to equip the Amaranto with good sensor systems, sophisticated data processing systems and advanced target acquisition systems, the Dark Zephyr's resonance ability was not something that pure technology could easily solve.

Venerable Dise nodded. "The only way for Davia to win is if she can figure out the Dark Zephyr's coordinates without relying on what her mech is telling her. The ability to go beyond the limitations of a mech is what separates good pilots from the bad ones."

This was the principal reason why piloted mechs continued to remain popular even when there were pilotless alternatives out there. Humanity's technology had advanced far enough to make battle bots viable enough to deploy on the battlefield.

Yet aside from the fact that their programming was always vulnerable to subversion, the fact that battle bots were never able to exceed their technical parameters made them a lot less exciting.

Mechs piloted by real human beings possessed an undeniable allure that humanity simply couldn't resist!

The emergence of expert pilots, ace pilots and god pilots breathed a lot of life in this seemingly idiosyncratic concept. This was why Joshua and his fellow peers did not completely count Venerable Stark out despite all of the odds stacked against her. They knew most of all that expert pilots were quite proficient in breaking the rules.

That also made every confrontation between expert mechs such a pain to predict. Striker mechs might not necessarily be able to beat light skirmishers and there was always a chance that knight mechs could defeat lancer mechs.

"It's starting."

Back inside the interference zone, the Amaranto finally began to fire its gun. Venerable Stark had kept the weapon warm, so from the moment she received permission to begin, she immediately fired a couple of light ranging shots.

Just as predicted, the thin red lances hit nothing substantial. Even if a couple of beams struck the visual shape of the Dark Zephyr, it was nothing but a distorted image that was able to fool nearly every method used to ascertain the position of an expert mech!

Despite the clear and obvious misses, Venerable Tusa did not relax in the slightest. Venerable Stark surely knew what the Dark Zephyr was capable of. This was just the start.

After firing dozens of low-powered single beams without accomplishing anything, Venerable Stark started to split the beams up. This was a special feature that was standard in many advanced laser weapons.

By using extra components to split the beam up and minutely angle them away from each other, it was possible for a single weapon to fire multiple beams that were spread in an expanding cone.

This was quite a difficult weapon system to handle proficiently. It was extremely difficult for both a mech and a mech pilot to precisely angle the splitting laser beams in a way that allowed them to accurately intercept multiple targets or hit multiple weak points of a mech or starship at once.

"Heh, it's too bad you aren't an Ylvainan, Davia!" Tusa couldn't help but grow cocky as the actual Dark Zephyr always managed to stay far away from the split beams. "If this is all you've got, then you can forget about laying a hand on my mech."

Each time the Amaranto fired a split shot, the Dark Zephyr danced and dodged an instant before as if it was just about to get hit. Even if that wasn't the case, Tusa diligently kept up the charade in order to give away as little clues as possible.

Venerable Stark maintained an impassive expression as she continued to pepper the spaces in front of her with laser beams.

She paid careful attention to the sensor and targeting data that her new expert mech fed to her. As much as the Amaranto tried to nail down the Dark Zephyr's actual coordinates, the data it supplied to her continued to miss the mark by at least dozens of meters.

No matter whether her mech tried to judge the Dark Zephyr's position by analyzing visible light, heat trails, gravitic positioning or anything else, the results were fundamentally skewed in different directions and different magnitudes.

Venerable Stark had already attempted to decipher some sort of pattern in the Dark Zephyr's deviation from its perceived coordinates, but Venerable Tusa already had months to work out a sophisticated system in which he made his actual hidden position as dynamic as possible.

Perhaps in one second his actual expert mech was a little bit to the right, while in the next second it had pivoted as far to the left as it could go. Tusa had also become quite good at reading the firing patterns of enemy ranged mechs after challenging himself in so many practice sessions. An average approach would never work against his expert mech!

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