Chapter 6664 Final Skirmishes The final battle of Viola Magnifica had begun just before the start of the fourth year of the Age of Dawn. The native aliens had completed their preparations and began to advance on the planet that had frustrated them for so long. The human defenders had done their best to prepare, but the fighting that took place in the months preceding to this momentous day had continually worn down a portion of the orbital defense network and the mech forces that sought to hold the native aliens back. Although every offensive push made by the aliens caused them to lose a lot more hardware and lives than their human adversaries, the calculus was still in their favor due to their heavy numerical advantage! Now that numerous powerful ace pilots abided by the orders of High Human Command and transferred to the much more strategically important Upper Zones, the native alien commanders behind in the Middle Zones recognized an excellent opportunity to make a lot of inroads into the Middle Zones. The aliens remained patient for the time being. They did not launch all of their forces all at once, but instead began to send out their scouts and skirmishing forces to gather more intelligence and confirm that the human defenders had not secretly called in reinforcements in order to lay an ambush. Space was big and largely empty, so it was very hard to hide a large concentration of troops. However, there were still numerous planets, moons and asteroid belts that could be used to hide a number of surprises. The aliens were concerned whether the humans had hidden any secret bases or fleets in these locations, so they sent out huge swarms of phasefighters and occasionally a few fast and light warships to investigate their current situations. At the same time, the human defenders were also suspicious whether their adversaries had brought in additional warships or an extra phase lord or two. It wouldn't be the first time the native alien commanders tried to be clever and try to take the humans by surprise. Both sides therefore had a strong interest in deploying enough scouts and skirmishers to all of these satellites and fight an information war. The goal of both sides was to collect as much intelligence of their enemies as possible while denying them the opportunity to gather their own information! Hundreds of small fights ensued across the star system. The fights surrounding the empty and undeveloped planets generally lasted an hour or so before the human defenders took the initiative to withdraw. Enough time had passed for the formidable industrial machine of the native aliens to pump them out by the millions! The only reason why the native aliens couldn't deploy more phasefighters to the frontlines was the lack of trained pilots and the limited amount of transportation capacity. If not for these problems holding the aliens back, they would have chosen to deploy at least three times more phasefighters! Even so, the intelligence reports indicated that the aliens already deployed at least 50 percent more phasefighters than all of the mechs in the star system. The ratio may even be higher! This made the fight to gather intelligence a lot more dangerous to the participating mech units. Each of them had to face the prospect of getting outnumbered whenever they made contact with the enemy. Due to the fact that every phasefighter was equipped with a small transphasic energy shield or the more advanced azure energy shield, each of them took effort to disable and destroy. The numerical and material advantage of the native aliens did much to compensate for the inherent lack of flexibility of the alien strike craft and the utter lack of skill and experience of their pilots! Aside from the more elite phasefighter units that were better geared and piloted by real soldiers, the most of the craft were piloted by alien conscripts or alien soldiers who used to serve in other capacities. While they were able to understand the basics of operating the simplified control scheme of a typical phasefighter relatively quickly, they were still very far behind their professional human mech pilot counterparts! This caused the two sides to adopt different doctrines when it came to deploying their small craft and what sort of tactics they should employ when they were locked in combat. The human mechs tried to avoid fighting in the open whenever possible. It was best to take advantage of nearby hard cover, whether that was a moon, an asteroid field or the hull of a friendly starship. Since they were almost always outnumbered, the mechs needed to make use of complex maneuvers and impeccable teamwork to grind down their tough opponents. What was even more important for the mech pilots was that they needed to be ready to disengage at all times. They couldn't afford to suffer an even greater disadvantage in the numbers game. If the mech could not be saved, then the mech pilot should at least be given a chance to flee to safety. Even if the Viola Magnifica System was doomed to fall in the hands of the aliens, the mech pilots could still recover and fight in other contested star systems! 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞 The native aliens on the other hand were a lot more straightforward. They were generally much less capable of complex maneuvering. They also lacked the training and awareness to follow complicated orders. Most alien races found it best to just point at a target and tell the alien fighter pilots to pounce! While the direct approach caused the aliens to yield mixed results, they didn't care so long as the alien phasefighters took down at least one mech before they went down themselves! Certain alien races did not even bother to put much effort into picking up their fighter pilots after they ejected from their cockpits. The nunsers for example nearly always tried to recover their lost brethren that were floating around in space. The orvens did not even bother to include ejection seats in the cockpits of their weakest phasefighters at all, as their high-caste masters held great contempt towards the low-caste members of their race! Given how easily the native aliens were able to replenish their phasefighters and fighter pilots, the human mech pilots bore great pressure. They constantly had to fight at their best. Any victory only inflicted a temporary setback to the enemy forces. The mech pilots still chose to persevere. They had no other choice. They weren't about to give up and allow the aliens to roll over human space without opposition. Most of the mech units that participated in the skirmishes consisted of light and medium mechs. Out of the Larkinson Army, the Flagrant Vandals excelled in this mode of combat the most. Their tried and true Ferocious Piranha Mark III's might not be as new and equipped with the latest technologies as the newer mech releases, but each of them had received light upgrades and modifications by one of the many low-ranking mech designers in the past few years. They hadn't developed any official variants of the Ferocious Piranha Mark III design, but instead provided customization services for Vandal pilots that were willing to spend their merits. These upgrades ranged from stronger armor plating, sharper weapons, upgraded sensor systems and maybe even a compact external azure shield generator! This was one of several ways the Flagrant. Vandal mech pilots were able to cope with the period before the Design Department released the much-anticipated Ferocious Piranha Mark IV. Director Gloriana had already allocated update projects of many staple Larkinson mech designs to numerous different design teams, and shouldn't take much longer for them to present their initial batch. However, it was too late for the mech pilots stationed in Viola Magnifica as they all had to make do with lastgen mechs! "I'm under heavy fire!" A Ferocious Piranha mech pilot shouted as his Mark III weaved through the asteroids in the way. "I've got three orven phasefighters on my tail, and they have already blown away one of my mech's arms!" The Flagrant Vandal pilot already considered himself a veteran, but he should have been more vigilant before a trio of phasefighters ambushed his machine while they had huddled behind an asteroid with their power shut down. As the light skirmisher continued to maneuver around asteroids, incoming laser beams took a lot of effort from the mech pilot to evade as pelted at the rear of the machine. many of these beams as possible. He did not always succeed, but whenever a laser beam was about to strike a more delicate section such as the flight system, the Ferocious Piranha automatically took action and forcibly juked it to the side. The Ferocious Piranha had become a third order living mech a long time ago. It had grown rapidly during the Red War and could be considered a veteran among its kind! The Vandal mech pilot did not show any irritation whenever his battle partner overruled his piloting decisions and performed a different action. The two had developed a lot of trust over the years. They also refined their teamwork to the point where the living mech knew exactly what he was allowed to do at specific times. Right now, the Vandal mech pilot entrusted his Ferocious Piranha to help dodge attacks that launched far too fast for any reasonable human being to evade an incoming laser beam attack in time! A more skilled mech pilot would have been able to rely on his or her intuition to evade such attacks, but the Ferocious Piranha mech pilot was not demigod material. This made it viable to rely on the mech to evade the most difficult attacks instead. Even so, the light skirmisher was suffering more and more damaged to its rear plating as well as a few internals. It would not last long if it failed to shake off its pursuers. Fortunately, after passing a certain asteroid, two additional light mechs emerged from the cover of nearby space rocks and began to chase and open fire at the enemy phasefighters! The Stingripper Mark II's were ranged light mechs armed with luminar crystal submachine guns. These light and compact weapons did not pack much a punch, but they were able to spit out energy beams at a fairly high firing rate, thereby making them perfect for harassment as well as gunning down fast and maneuverable targets! The two Stingrippers concentrated their fire on one phasefighter, seeking to overwhelm its azure energy shield and rip apart its vulnerable body. However, this took quite a lot of attacks due to the lack of space suppressors weakening the enemy azure energy shield up close. "Come on! Attack us! We are right here!" "Damn. The orven pilots aren't falling for it anymore. They've learned." The phasefighters doggedly pursued the Ferocious Piranha Mark III even though it had already been half-crippled. The orven mech pilots had apparently been instructed to ignore the Stingrippers. They had made the right decision! The Stingripper Mark II, while only a bit less outdated than the Ferocious Piranha Mark III, had turned out to be one of the best and most cost-effective counters against alien phasefighters! The highly evasive properties of the Stingripper model made it a nightmare for alien strike craft to land their shots on the light mech. They became especially more difficult to target if they fought in unison with Ferocious Piranhas as their glows synergized very well with each other! Therefore, if the orven pilots wanted to avoid getting disturbed by the Ferocious Piranha's suppressive glow while at the same time getting deceived by the Stingripper's own glow, it was best if they could take out one of them first! The Stingripper pilots felt angry at being ignored, but they took advantage of the situation to finally pop the energy shield of their target and disable it with a torrent of energy beams! However, the remaining two phasefighters were ultimately able to finish the job. The Ferocious Piranha lost propulsion as its flight system had suffered too much damage to remain operational! The Vandal mech pilot only hesitated briefly about evacuating from his machine. However, the third order living mech did not want both of them to perish, "Go. Don't try to save me. Leave so that you can take revenge with a better living mech. I have lived a short but good life already. As a mech, I have fulfilled my purpose throughout all of these years. Let me do my duty one last time." Though the mech pilot still felt unwilling, he couldn't allow himself to abandon his fellow Larkinsons. "...Ejecting" The Ferocious Piranha rapidly turned around before ejecting its cockpit away from the pursuing phasefighters. This left the two remaining phasefighters in a confrontation against two Stingrippers piloted by angry Vandal mech pilots! "Finish them off! Don't let the pair get away!" The mech pilots did not forget that they needed to down more phasefighters if they wanted to make the final fight more bearable. The more strike craft they eliminated in the asteroid field, the less the aliens were able to deploy in the main battle!