The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3688

Chapter 3688 Bug Extermination

The main battle had been won!

The pakklaton refugee fleet posed no significant threat to the expeditionary fleet anymore. All of the warships had been trashed and the remaining vessels did not contain any notable weapons to begin with. As long as the ships of the Golden Skull Alliance kept their distance, the chances were low that the aliens could damage a human mech or ship.

The voribugs weren't in a better shape either. While the insects still ate away the guts of the pakklaton ships, pretty much all of their elder voribugs had died when they attempted to jump onto the much larger human fleet.

The juvenile and adult voribugs may be incredibly difficult to get rid of entirely once they took root inside a starship, but they were too small and weak to traverse through space and navigate towards another vessel.

Right now, the main priorities of the Golden Skull Alliance were twofold.

First, they had to make sure to neutralize any active opposition inside the alien ships. Neither the pakklatons nor the voribugs must be allowed to ruin anything of value inside the hulls!

Second, the humans had to secure any high-priority treasures that the evacuation ship and the other disabled ships were carrying at the moment. This included phasewater and other high-grade exotics.

It was for this reason that the Golden Skull Alliance deployed a lot of assault shuttles carrying lots of different infantry units.

Although the Golden Skull Alliance mostly depended on its mechs to fight its battles, infantry soldiers were also indispensable.

Whether they were utilized as guards or employed as marines that specialized in performing boarding action, the Larkinson Clan had not neglected the necessity of raising and training thousands troops.

Of course, most of the time they melted into the background. They were the faceless troops that manned the checkpoints, inspected incoming and outgoing shuttles and escorted VIPs such as Ves and the other leaders.

It was quite rare for them to play an active role in a battle!

Although mechs could easily penetrate through the hulls of the crippled starships and annihilate any alien holdouts stirring up trouble inside, the damage the mechs would inflict in the process was way too high!

Any samples of phasewater or delicate pieces of valuable alien technology could easily get crushed by the sheer amount of collateral damage that mechs unavoidably inflicted!

This was why the infantry forces came out in full force. They all suited and boarded the shuttles in batches in order to head to different crippled alien vessels.

Most of them proceeded towards the evacuation ship, but the expeditionary forces made sure to dispatch enough units to secure the most critical compartments of other vessels.

The takeover did not go smoothly in many cases.

"CAWW!"

Over twenty different birds in armor flew above the heads of the Glory Seeker soldiers that had just entered and launched attacks by dropping bombs and firing their wing-mounted laser cannons.

Such an assault would have taken a light assault squad by surprise, but the squad that had entered was much more resistant against damage!

The Glory Seeker troops were taken aback at the ferocity of the attack, but they happened to carry a shield generator that blocked much of the initial strikes.

Even if the attacks went through, the heavy combat armor worn by the female soldiers were not for decoration. Their heavily armor plating could take quite a beating before they succumbed.

Several of them raised their positron rifles and tried their best to aim at the armored wings of the pakklaton troops.

These strikes dealt substantial damage as the pakklatons rarely employed heavy armor as far as the humans were aware of. As a race evolved from alien birds, the pakklatons favored flight and mobility in all of their combat approaches.

While the pakklaton race once raised heavily-armored units, these elite soldiers had long been crushed under the heel of the Big Two's boots. The alien troopers that accompanied the pakklaton refugee fleet were merely grunts that were lucky enough to enter an evacuation ship in time.

Even if they honed and polished their combat skills against the voribugs for several weeks, human troops were much more versatile than mindless insects!

"Bring these birds down onto the deck!"

A couple of heavily-armored soldiers brought their fluid projectors to bear and began to fire concentrated streams of slime that rapidly dried and solidified upon contact!

Often used for riot control, the slime was designed to trap, immobilize and incapacitate anyone and anything engulfed in the substance.

The slime formula used by the Glory Seekers was much more effective than the ones used by states such as the Bright Republic.

The slime not only stuck more effectively onto surfaces, but also reached an impressive degree of hardness within a minute!

Even if the slime did not have time to dry out, their inherent viscosity and thick consistency already glued up the movements and surface modules of the pakklaton soldiers in the air.

Soon enough, they fell helplessly onto the deck as they were unable to maintain flight with all of the hardening glue-like substances engulfing their armored forms!

At this point, killing them was as easy as slaughtering chickens.

Perhaps a more elite or well-funded unit would have been able to prevent or mitigate these actions, but the human attackers were considerably better in this regard!

"Heh. Stupid birds." A female soldier contemptuously stomped the beak of a dying pakklaton soldier. "The chickens just don't learn. Instead of hiding behind cover and relying on the defensive advantages of fighting on home ground, they would much rather fly out in the open inside a cramped starship. It's as if they never got rid of their primal way of fighting."

"Shut up, Costella. I am glad these pakklatons employ the same tactic over and over again. Now let's secure the bridge or whatever they call it. Why must they build so high?"

The bridge of the alien vessels was built like a forest or a giant nest. Though the heavily-armored troops were able to levitate, their bulk made it difficult to move quickly.

Fortunately, none of them had to know how all of the alien devices worked. Their tech specialist just pulled out a special data container and pressed it onto an alien console.

Soon enough, the various control panels switched off, signifying that much of the ship was locked down.

Elsewhere, another squad of heavy assault troops dispatched by the Cross Clan advanced towards a dangerous voribug nest where a lot of new insects were being hatched.

An elder voribug had stayed behind in order to protect the nest. When the insect learned that human invaders were on the way, the creature let out an invisible noise that caused many voribugs in the vicinity to stop their previous actions and converge upon the nest!

"Hsssssss!"

"Shaaaa!"

The flood of voribugs that descended upon the approaching Crosser troopers was great!

If a dozen of the small hand-sized insects were able to jump onto the armor of the human troops, they could use their metal-tearing limbs and maws to drill inside and mutilate the vulnerable bodies within.

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