The Mech Touch novel Chapter 4432

A relatively small section of the asteroid belt of the Boryan System was about to become the site of a clash between races and civilizations.

On one side was the temporary coalition formed out of six different fleets from six different pioneering organizations.

On the other side was the complex collection of alien pirate organizations of the hidden asteroid base called the Palace of Shame.

Ves and the rest of the Larkinson Clan possessed a clear understanding of the combat strength of their own side.

Led by the main fleet of the Gemini Family, the fleets of the Golden Skull Alliance, the Adelaide Mercenary Company, the Santana Group, the Lehrer Foundation and the Boojay Family all followed their prearranged instructions and moved to encircle their primary target.

The human coalition deployed over 1000 individual starships and well over 60,000 mechs!

Though the human pioneers did not intend to expose their precious starships to the powerful guns of their alien adversaries, the abundant quantity of mechs alone represented a potent amount of combat power!

However, mechs were not the most effective weapons to deploy against warships. The pioneering groups had to make clever use of their small and vulnerable combat assets. A single careless decision could easily allow the powerful alien warships to shred thousands of exposed mechs into pieces!

Though the human mech forces intended to make abundant use of the nearby asteroids as cover, it was impossible for the opposition to be ignorant of this possibility.

When Ves thought about the strength, technology, tactics and preparations of the opposing force, he soon looked troubled.

"I don't know what we are about to deal with. I don't think anyone, including the aliens themselves, know what they have at their disposal."

This was a reflection of the sheer variety and lack of unity of all of the alien individuals that had found their way to the Palace of Shame!

There were far too many alien races and pirate groups to mention. However, the strongest among the pirates was undoubtedly the Unspoken, a rather mysterious group founded by the supposedly exiled members of the powerful orven race.

Ves previously thought that his next encounter against a major alien race would set his troops against the nunsers or the puelmers.

Both of these powerful races were rather prevalent in this corner of the Red Ocean.

The nunsers were herd animals with a strong collectivist mindset and a penchant for living on massive vertical structures that also doubled as their starships and warships.

This gave the furred intelligent species a strong ability to form a massive warfleet, split off into many different detachments or rendez-vous at a central location in order to form a massive doom armada!

Ves feared the nunsers the most after the phase whales due to the sheer quantity of 'warship homes' they had at their disposal!

The puelmers preferred to concentrate their resources into swarms of smaller but more advanced sophisticated warship homes. Their vessels might not be as large as the warship homes of the nunsers, but they were packed with different technologies, some of which could threaten entire planets!

This approach meant that it was extremely difficult to gauge the effective combat power of a puelmer warship.

There were stories about pioneering fleets stumbling upon a single puelmer warship home, only for the human mechs and fleets to get swallowed by artificial black holes!

The huge disparities in tonnage and numbers were no longer effective indicators of strength when fighting against the puelmers and many other alien races for that matter.

One of the most important lessons that much of humanity had learned for the first time after arriving in the Red Ocean was that the aliens did not abide by the same taboos!

Both sides only had a few rules in common. Aside from that, the alien forces did not uphold any taboos concerning the scale of warships, the limitations on the firepower at their disposal or the use of weapons of mass destruction.

Though the individual alien civilizations may enforce their own set rules upon their subjects, it was doubtful whether any alien law had effect on the lawless pirates of the Mysterious Palace.

"They shouldn't have too many weapons of mass destruction at their disposal." Ves guessed.

The analysts surmised that the Palace of Shame shouldn't contain too many nuclear bombs and other destructive armaments.

The reason for that was because these superweapons threatened the Palace of Shame and its many pirate gangs far more than any external enemy!

There was no way the Unspoken and the other vested interests of the pirate base would permit the existence of so many threatening weapons in the vicinity of their shared home. What if a pirate group decided to engage in blackmail and threatened to blow everything up from the inside?

Aside from that, the production and maintenance of highly destructive weapons that were powerful enough to threaten modern forces were too great. A ramshackle asteroid base did not provide the necessary infrastructure to support the development of too many weapons of mass destruction.

That was no excuse for the human attackers to grow complacent, though.

Distance was the best form of protection against the vast majority of superweapons. This was why almost every mech was ready to fight their opponents from afar.

Even the most quintessential melee mechs such as the First Sword, The Rigid Wall, The Rigid Spine and the Lucid Rage temporarily set aside their melee armaments for energy rifles!

As every ship and mech slowly moved to their respective positions, many humans waited for the first shot to be fired.

Ves sat in his usual chair on the bridge of the Spirit of Bentheim.

He was not sitting alone as his wife and children also accompanied him this time. He wanted them to stay close to him so that he could always be reassured that no weird alien weapon affected them away from his presence.

The children were remarkably more behaved than before. They all wore their cute little protective suits and had all been strapped to their own little chairs.

Ves arranged a simple projected interface for each of them where they could easily browse between different feeds of the upcoming battle.

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