As the aftermath of the missile detonations subsided, the Scarlet Rose stopped shaking from all of the shockwaves. Ves opened his eyes and studied the exterior feed from the Scarlet Rose. The bunker appeared to be in a very bad shape! The potency of the missiles fired by the mechs of the Coalition surpassed that of the missiles fired by the Kravon! "That’s unfair!" The enemy not only came prepared, but also better equipped! That had been clear through the initial appearance of the Terrinac. Unlike Aisling’s bodyguard mechs which were mainly designed to repel opportunistic attacks, the mechs of the Terrinac were fully kitted out for battle. This reflected in the increased amount of mechs the Terrinac was capable of deploying as well as the quality of their missiles! Ves waited for another wave of missiles to appear, but none ever arrived. The small CRC strike force didn’t seem to rely too much on missiles. Of course, the effect of their initial salvos of misiles had been quite potent. After suffering from 160 different missile explosions, the bunker appeared to be a shell of its former self! A jagged hole had formed at the top which negated virtually all of the frontal protection afforded the mechs inside! The Kravon and the Selzer both suffered from their extremely close proximity to the detonations. Their surface layer and supplemental Breyer armor plating all featured a significant amount of cracks, indicating that they suffered considerably! What worried Ves even more was that both mech sustained significant damage to their weapons. While the gauss cannon and dual-type rifle were robust enough to withstand at least some damage, Ves noted that their telemetry conveyed various warning signals. He couldn’t afford to stress the weapons any further! Seeing that he had no choice, Ves altered the Kravon and the Selzer’s instructions, causing them to leave the bunker and take up other positions while slowly firing at the approaching mechs. At least they knew where to fire this time. Since one of the rifleman mechs stopped releasing particles, the other rifleman mech stopped as well. Just one source of particles was not enough to block out the Scarlet Rose’s sensor systems, especially as the distance between them had closed! As enemy flew closer and closer, their counterattack intensified. With the Kravon and the Selzer firing their weapons at a much-reduced firing rate, the Coalition mechs came under much less suppression! Though the shards fired by the Kravon and the laser blasts fired by the Selzer had inflicted a significant toll on the two rifleman mechs, the most threatening mechs still remained intact! The space knight’s shield happened to have been struck by a missile or two as well, causing most of the shards embedded onto its surface to be blown away. What was left of the shield was not sufficient to cover the space knight anymore, but that was hardly a problem for the defensive mech! Its sheer bulk and armor was enough to endure the damage outputted by the two ranged mechs. The striker mech, which had to withstand the sporadic attacks without any shield, all took the damage in stride. Its defensive prowess was just as good as the space knight, so the mech hadn’t lost any functionality even as its surface layers looked awful! The only mechs that suffered the most happened to be the pair of rifleman mechs. They weren’t as strong in defense as the space knight, had they been able to avoid all of the spread attacks. Though they were still firing particle beams at the Kravon, their cadence had dropped. Ves flicked his gaze to one of the sensor readouts and noted that the rifleman mechs had heated up considerably! Though it appeared they came with an excellent heat management system, they had still reached their limit. If the mechs fired their rifles any faster, they were bound to overheat! "Still, the damage is done, more or less." Ves muttered. The Kravon became a sitting duck due to its lack of mobility. Particle beam after particle beam continued to hit the mech even as it flew behind the Scarlet Rose in order to shelter behind her bulk! At this distance, the accuracy of the ranged fire of both sides increased. Even if they didn’t fire as frequently, the hits kept on coming! Knowing that there was only a short time left before the enemy melee mechs reached the Scarlet Rose, Ves issued two commands. First, the Paravin and the Fliskin stopped hiding behind the Scarlet Rose and started take position while firing their secondary armaments. While neither mechs were very strong at ranged combat, at least they contributed a little bit in making the enemy ranged mechs a little uncomfortable! Second, the Kravon and the Selzer concentrated all of their remaining firepower on the striker mech! As a mech type designed to counter melee mechs, Ves dreaded it the most. If its energy projector released plasma or some other potent matter, the Fliskin wouldn’t stand a chance! For this reason, he did not hesitate to order his two ranged mechs to concentrate their fire on this mech as opposed to the other possible targets! The enemy rifleman mechs had already expended much of their firepower while the space knight had already lost its shield. The two light skirmishers remained the biggest threat, but Ves had no way of getting at them as they continued to shelter behind the space knight. Though the Striker mech already endured a lot of damage, the defensive mech hardly incurred any damage to the internals. This soon changed as the Kravon started to pound the mech with solid gauss cannon slugs! Since the range between the two sides had decreased, Ves no longer bothered to chamber the Kravon’s gauss cannon with fragmenting rounds. Instead, the former artillery mech soon started to fire solid slugs at the striker mech! As a defensive mech whose bulk rivaled that of the space knight, the striker mech was not very agile. Its evasion pattern wasn’t too impressive, though its ECM system was enough to ensure that most of the slugs missed the mech! However, even as only 10 percent of the shots hit their mark, the damage dealt was extremely considerable! The full might of the gauss cannon not only shattered the damaged armor of the striker mech, but also damaged some of its internal components! The slugs made out of Breyer alloy were just as tough as the armor of the striker mech, which meant that they wholly succeeded in transferring all of their kinetic energy onto the target without wasting any of it by shattering! The high-quality ammunition made a huge difference at this time as each infrequent hit broke down the armor of the striker mech step by step! As the mechs flew nearer and nearer, the accuracy of the Kravon continued to increase! The striker mech’s ECM system started to have less and less of an effect as the Scarlet Rose’s powerful sensor arrays forcibly overpowered it through brute force! No matter how sophisticated a mech’s ECM system worked, it could not compare against the power of an entire starship! The decreasing effectiveness of the enemy’s ECM systems also benefited the Selzer. Though it had already overheated by quite a bit, Ves did not hold back and finally commanded it to switch its dual-type rifle’s firing mode to particle beams! The bright blue beams kept hitting the striker mech with unerring accuracy! At this range, there was little challenge in hitting a relatively immobile target with a large energy signature. Even a bot could reliably land a hit! Under the sustained attacks, the striker mech finally incurred significant damage! Even without firing its short-ranged weapon even once, the mech plainly lost battle effectiveness as an awful tear in its abdomen area caused its internal power systems to be thrown into chaos! "Yes! It’s useless now!" The mech pilot of the striker mech still managed to retain control, but that was only because the mech featured a lot of redundancy. Without all of these backup systems, the striker mech would have been inoperable by now! While the mech was still capable of keeping up with the formation and participate in the battle, the commander of Terrinac evidently thought better. There was no need to sacrifice an entire mech! Soon enough, Ves noted that the half-crippled striker mech as well as the two spent rifleman mechs withdrew from the formation. Ves managed to take out at least half of the Coalition mechs deployed against him! This was an incredible success, especially considering that none of his mechs had been paired with skilled human mech pilots! "Yet.. is it enough?" Though Ves managed to inflict much greater damage onto his enemy than either side expected, his advantage wouldn’t last for long! "They’re getting close!" Ves always possessed a decisive advantage in ranged combat. With the help of his preparations, he managed to make the most out of this advantage. Yet the Terrinac still retained three mechs! The heavily-damaged space knight might have lost its shield, but it was still a considerable threat to the ship! Even now, Ves directed the Kravon and the Selzer to direct their remaining firepower against this hardy mech, but there wasn’t much time left to disable it completely! 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢 "I’m out of time!" The two light skirmishers that the enemy team had protected up to now finally reached the Scarlet Rose! Ves hastily directed the Paravin to entangle the opposite space knight. There was no use in directing this cumbersome battle bot against the light mechs! To deal with the two light skirmishers, Ves directed all three remaining battle bots against these agile target. The Kravon and the Selzer both functioned as fire support. While the Kravon’s gauss cannon was too cumbersome to hit the light skirmishers, at the very least it added to the pressure! Ves placed a bit more hope on the Selzer. Though it was reaching its limits, Ves disabled all of its safety limits and forced it to fire its rifle regardless of all of the damage it sustained by overheating its systems! He would rather wreck the Selzer than lose this battle! Ves did the same for the Fliskin. Since it lacked a human mech pilot, the mech was able to perform maneuvers that surpassed the tolerance of its inertial dampeners, allowing it to accelerate more abruptly and perform more extreme maneuvers! Yet as the Fliskin finally met one of the light skirmishers in battle, his battle bot instantly incurred a huge cut! At the moment the two machines clashed, the Coalition mech cleverly evaded the Fliskin’s predictable charge and swiped its side with one of its ultrasharp daggers! Though the layer of Breyer alloy applied on the Fliskin managed to mitigate some of the damage, the battle bot still suffered significantly! If not for the additional armor plating, the mech might have been disabled straight away! As the two light machines circles around for another pass, the Fliskin lost the exchange yet again! This time, it lost a third of its leg! In the fourth pass, it lost one of its arms, causing its battle effectiveness to drop in half! Finally, the enemy light skirmisher managed to circle behind the faltering Fliskin and damage critical parts of its flight system! "NO!" The Fliskin, which failed to land a single scratch on its opponent, lots all mobility in space as its flight system completely shut down! Even though the Fliskin was still able to move its remaining limbs, without any solid surfaces to step on, the battle bot helplessly drifted away in space! In the meantime, the other light skirmisher hadn’t been idle either. It rapidly flew towards the Kravon and instantly circled around the cumbersome former artillery mech and stabbed out in various places. As if knowing exactly where to strike, the mech pilot of the light skirmisher quickly managed to force the Kravon to lose power entirely! The machine soon joined the Fliskin into drifting off from the battlefield! The two light skirmishers, having disabled half of the battle bots, both approached their remaining targets! Ves practically saw two daggers of doom each striking out at his remaining protectors! There was nothing he could do to stop these attacks!