[1-200] THE MECH TOUCH

Chapter 197: Jaded Serpent

With the obligatory offer of surrender over with, the pirate mechs began their assault. They carefully pelted the star-shaped base walls from a single direction with lasers and shells.

It became clear that the quality of mechs and weapons used by the pirates adhered to the standard of a third-rate state. They matched relatively poorly against the better armed mechs of House Kaine and their mercenary partners from the Grey Willow Star Sector.

However, the local mercs enjoyed very little superiority in this regard as they obtained their mechs from similar sources.

The defenses held up better than Ves had thought. House Kaine hadn't skimped on the prefabricated walls that had been anchored into the hardy soil. As they were meant to withstand a horde of hexapods, they took little damage from kinetic and explosive projectiles.

Unfortunately, the alloys used in the construction of the walls fared a little worse against lasers. The pirates quickly wised up and started to concentrate their laser armament at a single spot, trying to carve a very large hole in the defenses.

The defenders gave it as good as they got, though only half of the mechs had been equipped with ranged weapons. The fixed emplacements picked up the slack. The turrets had been designed to take a beating and dish it out in turn, and they fired back with accurate volleys that chewed up the pirates in the forest.

The dense, hardy metallic forest provided some level of cover to the pirate mechs. The trees proves to be incredibly resilient, though they were too thin to cover a mech's entire frame.

Losses piled up on both sides as a low-intensity firefight extended for half an hour. The pirates slowly softened up the expedition's formidable fixed defenses. The walls and turrets couldn't move, so the pirates simply aimed to wear them down by focusing their fire.

Before the pirates committed to a full assault, they wanted to lay the groundwork first. The defenses bought valuable time to the groundside team with their sacrifices. Yet with every turret down, the pirates faced a little bit less pressure, allowing them to position their forces more aggressively.

In the meantime, the Kaius stayed hidden and out of sight. The partially repaired and improved chimera mech had no place in this long-ranged firefight. To maximize its impact, Commander Tregis ordered it to be revealed at the last possible moment.

The situation changed for the worse when missiles rained from above! They ended their arc flight paths straight into the interior of the base, focusing mostly on the mech workshops and other critical infrastructure.

The base only possessed a limited amount of anti-air emplacements that took out half of the incoming ordnance. The rest impacted against the workshops with debilitating explosions that deformed their roofs but didn't manage to break through.

Like the walls, the other prefab structures had been formed out of highly durable alloys that didn't lose out too much compared to those utilized in mechs.

Still, another volley of missiles arrived right after the first wave! Explosions continued to rain down in the same area of the base, weakening the targeted structures until their roofs finally collapsed. Distant screams emerged as some of the subsequent volleys killed and wounded mech technicians ready to service damaged mechs.

Ves could have been one of them. If not for the special dispensation he received from Tregis for being an integral part in killing Jutland, he'd be among the thick of it. "Don't we have any countermeasures?"

"Missiles aren't useful against the hexapod, so we left them out of the defense plan." D'Amato explained. "The base planners never took into account that we had to face a pirate invasion alone."