The fight gradually entered a heated stage. The two fleets started to get close enough to enable a measure of precision and focus from both sides!
The damage continued to pile up until the ships in question started to suffer more serious damage!
In order to prevent the incoming attacks from concentrating the damage on weak points, the vessels continually changed their orientation.
This made it considerably more difficult to launch successive attacks on vulnerable sections.
However, the pakklaton ships were less capable of employing this tactic due to the damage they had already sustained. The wounds sustained in previous battles along with the incredibly persistent infestation of voribugs severely affected their mobility.
The most immediate consequence of that was that they were considerably easier to damage!
After piling up damage on two of the nine alien warships, the alien fleet finally displayed true vulnerability.
"Warship Gamma's armor integrity has dropped across the board. The alien vessel's weak points have also expanded. If we can land one or more numerous powerful attacks on this section to the upper side of her hull, then there is a chance we can detonate the nearby electrical systems and weaken the structural supports over there, thereby inflicting major internal damage to the forward section of the warship."
"Venerable Stark, do your best to target this weak point."
"With pleasure." The expert pilot grinned.
Throughout this battle, Venerable Davia Stark had been holding back for a long time.
Unlike the soft-minded Larkinsons who were acting squeamish about targeting an alien refugee fleet that was on the ropes, Stark only saw an enemy that needed to be eliminated at all costs.
After witnessing her entire state and almost all of its population being scoured by the sandmen, she had developed a lifelong vendetta against aliens of all kinds.
Though the Big Two belatedly wiped out the sandman race from existence, it wasn't enough for Stark.
She realized that humanity would always be vulnerable against the predations of other jealous, cruel and callous species.
There was no justice in the galaxies.
Therefore, she had made it her mission to enact retribution to any race that could one day rob human children of their parents.
No one deserved to endure the unimaginable scale of loss that took place in the Sand War!
Even though the pakklatons were by all accounts weak and relatively unimportant by human standards, Venerable Stark did not look down on these supposedly weak aliens.
After all, wasn't that what people said about the sandmen as well?
While the Big Two could easily roll over the sandmen whenever they wished, they instead allowed the vermin to prosper and accumulate strength.
When the rats flooded out of their nests, their aggression quickly overwhelmed the third-rate states in their way.
Though Venerable Stark was a second-rater now, she could never forget her roots as a humble third-rater.
At that level, the enemies that the MTA and CFA considered to be too trivial to clean up had killed trillions of hapless human victims before they finally got the end they deserved!
Just thinking about those dark days that had almost broken her to pieces caused the dark flame of retribution in Venerable Stark's heart to burn hotter.
Her eyes sparked with the spark of vengeance as she condemned the remnants of the pakklaton race to death.
"The aliens must die so humanity can live in peace."
She did not concern herself with the fact that humanity invaded the Red Ocean first. She also did not care that this initiative was led by the Big Two to whom she harbored deep grudges.
In any situation where humans were under threat or potential threat by an alien race, her answer to the problem was simple.
"Death!"
As her powerful emotions surged, the Amaranto surged in turn.
The masterwork expert mech that she had partnered with for many months had not only fed off her strength, but also took in her hatred of the alien and developed the same drive to rid the cosmos of inhuman threats.
Mech and mech pilot fell in sync as their stimulating emotions brought their cooperation to a new level!
Stark's elevated force of will produced so much resonance with the Amaranto that the two actually broke a new record for themselves!
The expert pilot did not pay attention to that, though. Her entire mind and will was focused on her immediate task.
Thousands of energy beams lanced from the expeditionary fleet to the distant pakklaton refugee fleet.
Occasionally, the slower-firing laser cannons of the alien warships lanced back towards the expeditionary fleet.
With each devastating salvo, four to ten of the laser beams struck the vanguard of the human fleet, burning off more armor plating while dealing peripheral damage to their systems.
All of the energies being traded back and forth produced different levels of interference that made it a bit harder for the Amaranto to land a blow at the precise weak point designed by the Larkinson Army.
Venerable Stark had to fall back to her experience and intuition. She narrowed her eyes as she delved deeper into the man-machine connection.
At the same time, she resonated with the Amaranto's powerful luminar crystal rifle. Though she did not find it necessary to activate the Beam Bending resonance ability, she still resonated with it in a more general sense in order to empower its impending attack with a touch of her own will and hatred.
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