Chapter 7009: Dragon Mech Appreciation (FIXED) The Battle of Screed Tanner VI-F had most definitely reached its later stages. It may even be almost over. So long as the human forces managed to destroy the remaining organized alien fleet and completely demolish the fixed defenses over at the lightly fortified moon, nothing could stop the Larkinsons and their allies from plundering the intact alien stockpiles! There were many advantages to achieving a decisive victory in this star system. Many Larkinsons looked forward to enriching the clan even further. The native aliens clearly stashed a lot of stolen plunder on this moon. Once the Premier Fleet recovered it all, the Larkinsons had no obligations to return any of the treasures to their proper owners. After all, if the original owners lacked the strength or willingness to fight to take it all back, then they were not worth this consideration. This was another instance where the power of the fist trumped over the power of law and the power of reason. What mattered to the Larkinson Clan was that it possessed a proper legal basis to claim the goods that the aliens originally stole. No matter how murky the background may be, most ordinary folk did not want to get involved in anything dangerous.𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚 More importantly to the people living in the Caesarion Upper Zone and beyond, a decisive defeat of the aliens stationed in this key location would make them all a bit safer! Every Larkinson was still motivated to fight for the common good. Being able to fight these battles may be a burden to some mech pilots, but not to the mech pilots! The more enemy warships and bases they shattered, the more experience they accrued, which had very real effects! Many humans derived great satisfaction from seeing the forces of seeing the native alien aggressors taken down a notch. It would be even better if they could take complete control over Karnak Base! This was why the Saint Commander and many others paid close attention to the Viscounts sent ahead of the main forces. The Enfeoffed Dracoloids attracted a lot of attention no matter where they traveled. These machines originally did not warrant so much attention. Their performance in the past was decent, but not exceptional. That changed as soon as they got Enfeoffed into Viscounts. The performance of the Enfeoffed mechs had been nothing less than astonishing. The Larkinsons as well as others who had been paying attention became even more optimistic about their performance. It was not impossible for them to be able to inflict a lot of damage to the alien defenses and disrupt the enemy's arrangements over at their occupied moon. However, it seemed a little risky to place so much responsibility on the shoulders of empowered Draculoids. "Saint Commander, are you sure you want to move ahead with a force of Viscounts comprised of only Dracoloids?" High Captain Gilbert couldn't help but ask. "Is it not better to replace a quarter of them with Omega Threshers? I fear that their unbalanced weapon configuration will cause them to suffer a disadvantage. The base defenders have not directly suffered all of the blows to their morale. They are still organized and able to resist. They also have an abundant amount of guns at their disposal. If the Viscounts are not accompanied by E-MULES or friendly warships, their linked energy shields will only be able to resist so much damage before they all reach their limits." The Saint Commander did not harbor the same doubts. "I understand your skepticism, but I have taken the measure of our enemies… as well as our newfound strength. I did not dispatch the Dracoloids to their fortified starbase on a whim. I have confidence that they can destroy it and eliminate the closest thing to a safe harbor that the aliens have left in this star system. The Omega Threshers and E-MULES will only slow down the current batch of Viscounts." Casella sounded as if she had fallen in love with the Dracoloid mech model. This was not strange as she was hardly the only one that had become enamoured by this close combat-oriented dragon mech model. So long as no one demanded it to fight at longer ranges, the Dracoloid performed extremely well at close ranges! It possessed the right balance between protection and mobility. The dragon mech's gimmick of breathing fire also happened to be a lot stronger when empowered by true resonance. The raw damage inflicted by this resonance-empowered spray of fire exceeded that of normal melee attacks! This made the fire breathing attacks much better suited for quickly taking down azure energy shields as well as more material targets. The only limitation was that the Dracoloids only had a limited reserve of propellant, but they could get more out of it by biting and ingesting transphasic materials. So far, the Dracoloids had little need to do so, because the alien warships were not powerful enough to warrant such measures. However, the Saint Commander already anticipated that the dragon mechs needed a bit of extra power, so she had already commanded them to devour moderate quantities of hull plating earlier. Their special stomachs 'digested' the pieces of transphasic alloys and efficiently separated the phasewater from the remaining materials. Anything flammable went into one pocket while the rest got ejected from the dragon mechs through a strategically located rear port. If necessary, the Dracoloids could keep eating more transphasic alloys in order to extract more phasewater, but time was of the essence. The Dracoloids only needed a slight amount of phasewater in order to amplify the power of their breath attacks! The question was whether this was enough to quickly take down the most powerful orbital space station. As the Dracoloids continued to close in on their primary target, the alien orbital defenses had finally begun to greet them with a myriad of attacks! The Dracoloids separated from each other and began to engage in their own individual evasive maneuvers. Through the Command Field spread by the accompanying Victrix, every mech pilot felt as if Casella Ingvar was standing right behind them and controlling their piloting in person. The Larkinson mech pilots felt extremely honored that they had been chosen to become her temporary vessels, though they would have preferred to maintain control over their mechs. However, they recognized that what they were about to do was extremely dangerous. Their margin of error was exceedingly thin. Only the superhuman skills and judgement of an ace pilot could enable them to tackle the next challenge without suffering excessive casualties. Under normal circumstances, it was impossible for just 57 first-class multipurpose mechs to challenge an orbital starbase of this caliber! Yet the Dracoloids dared to do so. Given what the soldiers stationed at the fortified space station had witnessed up ahead, they had become extremely wary of the mechs blessed by the power of a human false god. "We have detected the launch of elite phasefighters! The native aliens are scrambling them as fast as physically possible! We estimate that the space station still houses over 300 small craft. Each of the phasefighters are configured for high-speed interception and are also armed with transphasic missiles!" These were the kind of alien strike craft that human mech pilots least wanted to fight against! Their superior mobility meant that it was not only difficult to shoot them down from a distance, but also very difficult to get close enough to strike them down with melee weapons. Their armament of transphasic missiles enabled them to punch above their weight and inflict heavily damaging blows on all mechs, including Enfeoffed ones! In any case, their numbers may be too small to defeat the Viscounts, but they could still inflict a lot of damage under the right circumstances. As the phasefighters rapidly flew in the direction of the incoming mechs, they began to split up into multiple squadrons. This already told the Saint Commander that the elite phasefighters likely did not intend to dogfight the empowered Dracoloids, but instead rely on hit-and-run attacks to exert pressure and be in a position to punish mistakes. As long as these phasefighters could keep this up, they could become a serious problem. This was why the Dracoloids opened fire at them even though there was still a bit of distance between the two groups. The Dracoloids were all armed with 4 compact gauss guns and 2 plasma guns. Their quantity, size and firepower left much to be desired, but that did not mean they were useless! First-class multipurpose mechs were designed to be useful at every range. Even if the Dracoloid model was heavily slanted towards closer ranges did not mean it was incompetent in ranged combat! Under the tight control of the Saint Commander, over a hundred resonance-empowered plasma bolts rapidly crossed the distance and struck the azure energy shields of the enemy interceptor craft! Immediately afterwards, the Dracoloids launched a larger salvo of resonance-empowered gauss projectiles at the same enemy phasefighter! The combination of attacks proved too much to the enemy craft. The fastest and most skilled among them had engaged in last-second evasive maneuvers, but their efforts proved to be in vain as the Saint Commander successfully read their future movements! The Dracoloids proceeded to repeat the earlier routine, this time producing a much more dramatic result! In just a short amount of time, over 50 phasefighters succumbed to the precise and highly coordinated attacks from a first-class multipurpose mech that wasn't even supposed to excel in ranged combat! The Dracoloids did not rest on their laurels. They immediately reoriented their guns and began to exhaust the defenses of the next batch of alien phasefighters! No matter how the alien pilots tried to dodge or evade the incoming attacks, their efforts were no different from child's play in front of an experienced and knowledgeable ace commander. For all of their training, their combat experience was very low. The alien pilots possessed far too much rigidity in their actions and lacked the fluency and improvisation of true veterans. All of this meant that as long as the ace commander cracked the code of their training, Casella Ingvar pretty much figured out the evasion patterns of other enemies. By the time the alien phasefighters had been reduced to half, the remaining 150 or so phasefighters quickly lost all of their courage! It was one thing to charge straight at a bunch of uppity standard mechs. It was another thing to charge straight into mechs that tapped into the power of gods in order to become stronger! In the face of certain death, the well-trained phasefighter pilots had turned around and abandoned the mission entirely! "Disappointing. I hoped that they lasted longer." After driving away the mechanical equivalent of pigeons, the Dracoloids had a clear path to the final boss. Soon, the mechs became inundated by the crazy gunfire from the secondary gun batteries! The Dracoloids tried their best to become as slick as possible, but when the space around them became so inundated with firepower, it was difficult for them to find windows where they could evade every incoming attack. No matter if they maintained their course or dodged in a different direction, they would always get hit somehow! The Dracoloids tried their best to resist the attacks, but their mobility was not as exaggerated as that of a light mech. It would have been so much easier to evade the strikes if the machines moved a lot faster. That said, it was not that easy for the aliens to whittle down the number of Viscounts. Although the gun batteries mounted on the alien starbase tried their best to shoot down at least a handful of the Dracoloids, their attacks were not powerful and consistent enough! The Dracoloids relied heavily on their linked energy shields to weather the storm, so much so that they were pushing them to their limits! The energy shields got struck so hard that it was on the verge of collapse, but they had lasted long enough to deliver the Viscounts to the vicinity of the enemy starbase. The Dracoloids managed to get close enough without losing any of their number! The dragon mechs collided against the solid azure energy shield before savaging it with a pair of claws! That was not all. The animalistic machines also opened their maws and spewed a concentrated blast of extremely hot fire! The resonance-empowered and phasewater-catalyzed flame breath unleashed by the dragon mechs savaged the titanic energy shield that protected the alien starbase from harm! Combined with the overlapping effects of 57 resonance-empowered space suppressors, the massive azure energy shield lost its integrity at an astounding rate!