[201-400] THE MECH'S TOUCH

Chapter 317: Last Stand

As the commander of the Blood Claws instructed their men, Raella sighed and opened a channel to Fadah. "I bet I can take out more mechs than you. I'm not the Raella you've seen before."

"Fat chance!" The light mech specialist laughed. "Even with your fancy new mech, it still pales in comparison to what your cousin designed. There's no contest which mech is better!"

Ever since her Sliverath bought the farm, the Blood Claws prepared another mech for her to use. Though someone else had originally reserved the mech, the brass decided to hand it to her on account of her skill. Many of the mech pilots in the employ of the Blood Claws never enjoyed the amount of systematic training that any Larkinson potentate had gone through.

"Here they come!"

A wave of pirate mechs braved the base with fanaticism driven by greed and brainwashing. By now, everyone had heard of how the Dragons of the Void messed with the heads of the pirates and made them pliable to their orders. If the Dragons of the Void wanted to throw away a thousand mechs, they could easily do so without any consequences.

It took a lot of courage to assault the Mech Corps directly. Many of the smarter pirate outfits had shown up on the battlefield but cleverly hung behind the first wave of idiots that had stormed ahead. Nobody sober wanted to lead the charge.

"Watch out for their energy cells! Take them out at a distance if you can!"

The defending side brought more ranged mechs than melee mechs this time. Once the pirates came within a certain range, all of the rifles and cannons spat out beams and projectiles at the incoming mechs.

Their fire focused first and foremost on the light mechs. The downside to charging forth in a massive uncoordinated swarm was that the light mechs didn't have much room for maneuver. They risked a collision if they juked too much and bumped into another mech.

Even then, it took a fair amount of firepower to score the first kills. Half of the mechs collapsed in a lifeless heap, but the other half exploded violently.

Some of those explosions affected the mechs next to them. A portion of the mechs that suffered the most substantial damage exploded as well as their overcharged energy cells discharged all at once.

The subsequent chain reaction disrupted the charge and plunged the formation into momentary confusion.

"This is our chance! Charge!"

The Blood Claws surged forward, closing the short distance that remained, and hammered into the confused huddle of pirates.

One thing the Mech Corps learned about these brainwashed pirates was that they lost their edge. In practice, they became more dim-witted and couldn't really think for themselves.

It was as if they had turned into human-form bots. Once you forced them into a loop of errors, you could easily shut them down.

Right now, the Raella sprung forth with her new mech. She piloted an advanced skirmisher mech called the Nimue, which notably featured a partial rainmant of compressed armor.

The Nimue blitzed past the front ranks of the pirates and sliced away at their arms. Though the strikes hadn't penetrated deep, she did manage to cut through some of the thinner armor around the arms and inflict some internal damage, therefore weakening the limbs.

"Hey! You're going in too deep!" Fadah called as he brought his Blackbeak in front of a sluggish knight. "Come back here, Raella!"

The enemy pilot in front of him recovered just in time to parry Fadah's sword with its shield. Still, he couldn't prevent Fadah from slipping to his flanks and sink the sharp edge of the Blackbeak's phoenix shield into its legs.