Chapter 2169 Easy Pickings
A horde of over 300 panicked pirate mechs stormed right in the direction of around 120 Living Sentinels mechs.
Aside from being fortified by a number of Bright Warriors belonging to the Avatars of Myth, the rookie pilots who had donned the grey-and-white uniforms of the Sentinels had to fend for themselves!
Most of them consisted of commoners from the Sentinel Kingdom that the Larkinson Clan had picked up at Cinach VI. Though they had received a heap of piloting training and received a lot of indoctrination, none of them had been bloodied in their short careers.
The Larkinsons sought to hire talents. Though all of them possessed enough potential to become second-class mech pilots, raw ability was not enough to succeed.
The mech pilots had to be able to pull the trigger when it counted!
Even though the Sentinel mech pilots had killed thousands, if not tens of thousands of virtual mechs in simulations, it was entirely different now that they confronted real mechs piloted by actual humans!
The stakes were higher. Unlike before when the only suffering they inflicted was on a bunch of computer bits, now they needed to bring their weapons to bear on machines that possessed the power to end their lives!
Everyone in the expeditionary fleet paid attention to the ensuing clash. Each of them wanted to see how the outnumbered Sentinels mechs dealt with Davy's Ghosts.
Would their inexperience lead to blunders and unnecessary casualties? Would Davy's Ghosts collapse and split apart after realizing the Sentinels weren't soft at all? Anything could happen!
Within the design lab of the Scarlet Rose all of the assistant mech designers aboard the ship had gathered together. Each of them watched the plethora of projections that showcased the battle from multiple angles while at the same time presenting technical readouts as sophisticated scanners deciphered every observable attribute of the pirate mechs.
"I hope that each of you have developed a good impression of the pirate mechs." Ves spoke like a teacher. "Now, what can you tell me about their overall state?"
"The pirates don't have a mech designer. If they did, their mechs wouldn't be in such an awful state!"
"They don't have enough mech technicians either. Aside from the mechs that are presumably piloted by their sergeants and officers, the lowest-performing mechs are also those that are neglected the most."
"There are too many different models in their lineup. There is hardly any synergy at all. I think Davy's Ghosts likely stole them from their victims or salvaged them from the battlefield."
"How could they possibly salvage the mechs themselves?! They are clearly devoid of technical personnel!"
Ves clapped. "Alright, everyone here has made some good points. Almost all of what you have said has matched my judgement. Now, in many confrontations like this, the pirates usually outnumber their opponents by at least two-to-one. Yet the quality of their mechs isn't even half as good. Victory and defeat depends on many more variables. Now, my question here to you all is to make a judgement. Who do you think will win this clash? How many losses do you think our Sentinels will suffer before the pirates will go down? Will our Sentinels be able to succeed in blocking the pirate mechs from breaking through?"
A projection appeared in front of everyone's faces. Ves had already prepared a form for them to fill. The assistants soon began to input their answers according to their judgement.
Shortly afterwards, the projections disappeared. A small AI routine rapidly scanned through the answers and determined the overall sentiment.
Ves smiled in an amusing fashion. "Well, it looks like you are all confident in our Sentinels! Do you really think that 120 Sentinel mechs will be able to demolish 300 pirate mechs while only losing 5 to 10 mechs at most?"
That was a huge disparity in losses!
Someone raised her hand. "Sir, the Sentinels might be outnumbered, but they are piloting premium mechs in excellent condition. Almost all of them are clad with compressed armor, which can take a lot of punishment, so they won't go down quickly. If any Sentinel mech is in trouble, the other Sentinels will come to the rescue. That is how they are trained."
"The condition of the mechs matter as well. The Sentinel mechs are all new machines that the clan has acquired in the last four months. Not only are the mechs at the beginning of their product life cycle, but they have each received excellent care from our well-trained mech technicians. As for the pirate mechs, most of their fodders still feature unrepaired battle damage. It is trivially easy for our Sentinels to exploit the holes in their defense."
If both of these factors were taken into account, then it was indeed plausible that the Sentinel mechs could overcome the pirate mechs with ease!
"Let us see whether your optimism holds true." Ves said and turned his attention towards the main projection.
By now, the ranged mechs of both sides opened fire. An abundance of weak but rapid-firing laser beams sizzled against the resilient armor of the Sentinel mechs, blackening and vaporizing their silver coating in quick order.
To their credit, the ranged mechs of Davy's Ghosts exhibited at least some coordination. Every squad focused their fire on their designated targets. Though the accuracy of their weapons during flight and at longer ranges left much to be desired, numerous scorching red laser beams still impacted the targeted Sentinel mechs with alarming frequency!
The Sentinel reacted according to their training. The space knights in the formation shifted their positions and covered the targeted mechs with their shields.
This largely frustrated the pirates. It took way too many laser beams to chew through the defenses of the space knights!
The pirates began to shift their targets, but the space knights kept covering every focused target with ease.
Eventually, the coordination of the pirates fell apart, and their lasers just crashed against the entire formation of Sentinel mechs with hardly any discernible pattern!
Though the rain of incoming laser fire looked intimidating, in truth the pirates had given up any hope of disabling a Sentinel mech before both sides collided against each other.
The Living Sentinels weren't as helpless. Their rifleman mechs, though much smaller in number, all focused their firepower at the mechs in the center of the pirate formation.
The momentum of the pirate mechs soon began to flag a bit as the lead mechs came under intense fire!
The disparity in power between the beams quickly became evident. Most rifles in the hands of the pirate mechs were not only cheap, ill-maintained and lower-powered, they were also outdated!
The new mech generation had only swept the galaxy for a year. While the mech forces in civilized space promptly swapped their older models for modern ones at a decent pace, the pirates were much further behind!
The premium rifle models in the hands of premium ranged mechs hit incomparably harder. This was especially so because the new mech generation introduced several innovations related to directed energy weapons technology!
The cheap, second-hand mechs of Davy's Ghosts endured a lot of terror. Some mechs fell apart after suffering only a dozen hits. Others lasted longer, but the constant barrage of high-powered laser beams steadily chewed through their armor!
"Focus fire on their officers!"
When the range grew close enough to reliably target individual mechs, the ranged Sentinels suddenly shifted their fire to the pirate mechs that presumably led the pirate mechs!
A lot of sensor data recorded by the Larkinson mechs were being transferred back to the ships of the task force. The Scarlet Rose, the Princely Jackal and many other vessels collectively analyzed the data and rapidly came up with informed guesses on which pirate mechs hosted the leaders!
The analysis not only focused on the quality and condition of the mechs, but also looked out for the transmission of data.
The accuracy of these guesses were very high! As soon as the Sentinels knew which mechs to target, they systematically dismantled every mech piloted by a leader or sub-leader!
Panic began to spread among the pirates! The swarm grew less cohesive and less united as their officers were put out of action in quick order! Without any leaders, the horde of pirate mechs already showed signs of falling apart!
"Haha! Without their bosses to take charge, the pirates are easy pickings!"
"Don't underestimate them! Coordination or no coordination, they still outnumber us by quite a margin!"
As the distance rapidly decreased, the ranged mechs of both sides subsided down and flew to the sides. Both of them fired at each other and the ranged mechs that rapidly closed in on each other.
In truth, because the goal of the Sentinel mechs was to intercept the pirates and block them from advancing further, they had been accelerating in the opposite direction for a while.
If they did not do so, they would essentially perform a very rapid drive-by confrontation and rapidly zip very far away shortly afterwards!
The mobility of the Sentinel mechs wasn't good enough to swing around and catch up to the fleeing pirate mechs without wasting lots of time. The Sentinel mechs all had to modulate their flight systems carefully in order to stick to their enemies!
Shortly before the melee mechs speared against each other, a sudden change happened in the Sentinel formation.
"Avatars, change course!"
The Bright Warriors that basked every Sentinel mech in the vicinity with the Golden Cat's glow suddenly shot upwards and departed from the main formation!
The rookie Sentinel mech pilots quickly lost the psychological support provided by the Larkinson Clan's exclusive mechs. It was as if they all lost confidence. The absense of the glow came so abrupt and without warning that the Sentinel mech pilots became too distracted to maintain a tight formation.
"Get yourselves together! The enemy is right on top of us! We can still defeat with or without a glow!"
No sound traveled in space, but the collision of so many mechs would have caused a huge number of crunching sounds!
Spears thundered through chest plating, swords sliced off entire arms and legs, shields bashed against the entire frame of lighter mechs, causing their entire to rattle.
Sheer violence at its most primitive and brutal form had commenced!
Though the pirate mechs that clashed against the more solid and resilient Sentinel mechs all sustained serious damage, there were plenty of other pirate mechs that escaped the initial clash unscathed!
They swiped their weapons at the Sentinel mechs from the front or from the flanks. Some even swung around in order to attack the vulnerable rear of their opponents!
The Sentinel mechs desperately tried to finish off their opponents at the front in order to defend against attacks from the rear, but they didn't always succeed!
"I thought these pirates are leaderless! Shouldn't these cowardly scum be running away as fast as possible?!"
The behavior of the mech pilots of Davy's Ghosts didn't conform to their expectations. Amazingly, even without a pirate officers issuing any orders, the cruel and selfish pirate mech pilots still banded together and chose the correct strategy that made the most out of their advantage in numbers!
In truth, the Sentinel mechs and mech pilots should have been good enough to chop up some of the pirate mechs without wasting too much time.
However, the sudden disappearance of the Bright Warriors along with the pressure exerted by the pirates caused many of the rookie mech pilots to panic or forget portions of their training.
Without any veterans or blooded mech pilots in their midst to rally them or restore their confidence, the Sentinel mechs started to suffer serious damage!
A lot of clansmen observing the battle began to drop their anticipatory smiles. The thorough pirate thrashing that all of them had expected did not arise.
Instead, the rookie Sentinel mech pilots began to falter against their desperate pirate counterparts who litterally fought with their lives on the line!
Soon enough, the first Sentinel mechs started to fall. Cockpits suddenly ejected from the fallen silver-coated machines. Some of the ranged pirate mechs even started to target the cockpits!
"No!"