Chapter 5674 Forced Last Stand 5674 Forced Last Stand In a certain star system within the sphere of control of the Rubarthan Pact, everything was falling apart! Pure chaos had engulfed the planetary settlement on the surface! Meanwhile, the mech forces still in orbit were about to get hammered by the approaching alien warships! It did not appear as if the alien raiders actively colluded with the Grimly Brothers, but that did not ease the pressure for the defenders that much. They still faced an awful prospect where they had to fight off a complete alien raiding fleet at the front while simultaneously fend off human traitors at the rear! "We're getting torn apart out here! We need backup!" "Damn Grimly Brothers! Red humanity is doomed if these 'heroic mercenaries' turned out to be traitors all this time." "Run! Run as far as you can! Nobody can be trusted anymore!" None of the mercs could have imagined that a group of mercenaries founded by a pair of noble-minded brothers actually served as agents of the Genlock Cell of the Cosmopolitan Movement. Though no one among the mercenaries stationed in the star system was familiar with the Genlock Cell, it held a notorious reputation among those in the know. Even among the radicals, the Genlock Cell had a reputation for being more extreme than others. Their main characteristic was that they were impatient. The Cosmopolitan Movement had been fighting for the same cause for millenia. The human adherents of this notorious organization sought to erase the barriers between humans and aliens, but in the years following the Age of Stars, the divisions only grew greater. This indicated that the cosmopolitans had not attained any fruitful results after all of these years! Perhaps they had prevented interspecies relations from deteriorating even further, but it hardly made a difference when it was already close to the bottom. How much longer did they need to wait in order for humanity to get its act together? Would their children and grandchildren live long enough to see their great cause fulfilled? Nothing was going to change! That was the conclusion drawn by the cosmopolitans that had become disillusioned by their own movement. Human supremacy still remained the dominant school of thought in both galaxies. Even when red humanity got cut off from the Milky Way and had suddenly become outnumbered and outgunned, people still held delusions of grandeur about conquering the Red Ocean as if they were reliving the days of the Age of Conquest! Given the abject failure of the Cosmopolitan Movement, a lot of disgruntled members left their previous cells and came together with one common purpose in mind. Since the Great Severing hadn't been enough to force red humanity to compromise with the native aliens, then the latter needed to be put into an even more desperate situation! Only when people had no other choice but to seek compromise with the aliens would interspecies cooperation finally become an acceptable practice! This was the strong belief and conviction that drove the indoctrinated members of the Grimly Brothers into turning their weapons against their fellow humans! "Your sacrifice shall not be in vain." Alexander Grimy exclaimed over a public channel as his rifleman mech shot down a fleeing mech of another mercenary outfit. "Your noble deaths shall pave the way for a necessary change. Through our collective effort, humanity shall no longer brave the universe alone, but stand side-by-side with our new alien brothers." His brother Cory Grimly sounded just as fanatical. "Why are you running? Fleeing is futile! Even if you can run away from our mechs, you won't be able to escape the pursuit of warp drive-equipped warships. Give in to the inevitable, and we shall make it quick!" "SHUT UP! We just toasted together the night before, and now you want to kill us all. You guys are sick! There is no place in human space anymore for traitors like you. Evidence of all of your crimes have already been transmitted to the Red Two." "Good! The more the mechers and fleeters are aware of us, the more our beliefs will spread. Only by confronting them with their failures will they have the heart to change their minds!" "Crazy! You cosmopolitans are all crazy!" The scattered and broken Hullsi Wardogs continually suffered more and more casualties as the mechs of the Grimly Brothers easily picked them off one at a time. The complete breakdown of any form of coordination had turned lots of mechs and starships of the Wardogs into isolated targets. They pretty much only fought back when they were actively being targeted. It was rather tragic. The Wardogs obviously could have stood a better chance at surviving if they banded together and fought the Grimly Brothers to the bitter end, but the cowardly and short-sighted nature of mercenaries instead led to a circumstance where they made the worst possible choice! The Wardogs not only got shot down at a fast rate as they readily exposed their vulnerable rear sides to the pursuing mechs of the Grimly Brothers, but failed to reciprocate the damage! By the time the Grimly Brothers had finished nearly every fleeing Wardog combat asset, the traitor troops still remained in remarkably good condition. The Grimly Brothers were more than ready to finish off the other 4 remaining mercenary outfits that still resisted the inevitable outcome. "Reverse course, brothers!" Alexander Grimly called. "There are still many more unenlightened fools that have yet to embrace the truth. If we want our plan to succeed, then we must wipe out all defenders! Let the people of the new frontier experience the despair of losing ground while they maintain their stubborn human-centric attitude." While the Grimly Brothers finished off the Hullsi Wardogs and began to swing around to finish the job, the Pellicky Praetorians along with the other mercenaries realized that they had too few options at their disposal. "Staying here was a mistake! We should have run away the first chance we got!" The commander of the Five Fingers Club complained as his flagship fended off another long-ranged barrage from the incoming alien warships. "Now, it is too late for us to flee." "If you wanted to run, you should have done so from the moment we detected the aliens approaching from the edge of the star system. We could have reached the nearest Lagrange point and entered into FTL travel just in time. It is too late now!" "I agree with Commander Pellicky. Those alien warships may be slower in intersystem travel, but their warp drives grant them an enormous advantage in interplanetary travel. Even without the unexpected treachery of the Grimly Brothers, we never had a chance of escaping to begin with. The only way for us to survive is if we can defeat our enemies outright!" "How do we do that?" "That is the hard part..." "We have no other choice than to go all out! Don't be as stupid as the Hullsi Wardogs and throw away all your cohesion for an illusionary chance of running away. Be prepared to sacrifice all of your starships and most of your troops in order to get away. Only by throwing aside all other considerations will some of us have a chance to live to the end!" Everyone had to fight. There was no other choice. This was an agonizing position for mercenaries to be in. No matter what background they originally possessed, they all possessed similar natures once they became soldiers of fortune. They prized their lives above almost everything else. Dying wasn't supposed to be an intrinsic part of the job! To be forced into a last stand with no other recourse could break ordinary mercenaries! However, with the negative example set by the Hullsi Wardogs, the remainder gritted their teeth and fought as if they were determined soldiers. The courage of most mercenaries who were willing to fight against alien warships was not too bad in most cases. Commander Pellicky desperately sought a pathway for survival. "We can't defeat an alien raiding fleet that consists of 32 sub-capital warships and 6 capital ships anymore now that we have been reduced to this state. Our only chance of repelling them is if we imitate the Grimly Brothers. Target their flagships. Sow confusion. Scare the remaining survivors into preserving their lives by abandoning their missions. Most native aliens aren't actually motivated into fighting against humans. It is the Red Cabal and the most aggressive major alien races that are driving them into fighting. As long as we can break their will, they will run just as desperately as the Hullsi Wardogs." That was easier said than done. Up to 38 warships bore down onto the diminished defenders. One of them was even a nunser battleship that possessed far more powerful defenses than the remaining vessels in the enemy fleet. As the alien warships began to land more accurate shots, the human defenders no longer dared to procrastinate any further. "Go! We have no other choice but to advance!" The best way to damage the enemy starships was to send enough melee mechs up close so that their space suppressors could weaken the surrounding transphasic energy shields. The four remaining mercenary outfits had all come to a consensus and sent their carrier vessels forward as well, knowing that they would all become sitting ducks to the increasingly more accurate gun batteries of the alien raiding fleet! At this time, it would be better if the aliens directed their firepower towards the mercenary carriers. The more they attracted enemy fire, the more the melee mechs deployed in the field had a chance to get close without getting shot before they reached their targets. As the two sides continued to exchange fire, it became clear that the disparity in firepower was too great! "Our carriers can't take this pounding! Unlike our mechs, our ships aren't small and agile enough to evade the incoming shots." "Three of our combat carriers have already blown up, and two more are about to join them. Most of the crews didn't even have enough time to evacuate!" "Our ranged attacks are hardly doing anything! Each time we concentrate our fire against an enemy warship, other warships swoop in before we can break through a transphasic energy shield." "We need to split up and attack the alien ships from multiple angles." "That will only make it easier for the aliens to defeat us in detail!" The cooperation between the four forces immediately started to get strained again when it became clear that approaching from a single direction wouldn't work. However, each of them were afraid that once they started to split up, the others might choose to take their chances and flee outright! Lack of trust held them together for the time being, but without enough hope, it remained questionable whether they would maintain any cohesion. Throughout all of these difficult struggles, the newly purchased Ultimatums had to go through a baptism of fire. All of the mech pilots struggled to put their recently arrived mechs to good use, but the stress and upheaval of the moment prevented them from employing the mech model's iconic embedded abilities. Neither Ylvaine's foresight nor Emma's destructive power empowered their attacks! 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺 Fortunately, the Ultimatums were still strong enough without these gimmicks, but the aliens coped against their attacks so well that it was hard for the mech pilots to figure out whether they were making any difference. Yuri Enfame gritted his teeth as he tried to breach the defenses of an opposing warship fast enough before the vessel could use other alien hulls as cover. The deadly Onyx Cannon launched another full-powered attack that accurately struck one of the larger vessels. At the same time, 13 other Onyx Cannons struck the same target in quick succession! However, the target's transphasic energy shield managed to resist this salvo without breaking. Despite the obvious stress to the ship's transphasic energy shield, the attacks of other mechs were too scattered to take advantage of this temporary weakness. The time it took for the Onyx Cannons to charge up for another full-powered attack was way too long. By the time the Ultimatums were ready to fire again from their bunkers, their original target had already moved to the rear of the enemy formation! "This isn't working!"