Chapter 7010: 14 Large SaboteursThe Red Cabal established two strongholds in the Screed Tanner System. The first was the fortified starbase along with a string of defensive platforms that orbited Screed Tanner VI-F. The second was the base built on the surface of the moon. These defenses ensured that even if a mishap occurred to the alien warships or gods, they could still withdraw to a position of relative safety. Sure, a powerful and determined human force could lay siege on the strongholds and topple them eventually, but this was bound to take a lot of time. This was also the last reliance of the jureg-led fleet that served the Protector of Karnak. Yet even as their surviving phasefighters and warships retreated to an orbital position that they assumed was safe, the alien soldiers found to their horror that their bases were already on the verge of collapse! It only took a relatively short amount of time for the Viscounts fighting under the gaze of the Victrix to strip the powerful starbase of all of its protection! This shouldn't be possible! The starbase was built to resist the momentous attacks of multiple warships, including large and formidable battleships! One of the defining characteristics of the starbase was that it relied on a single immense energy shield generator as its main source of protection, similar to human titan shield technology. The difference was that the alien version utilized by the Red Cabal derived a number of its working principles from the spatial barriers of phase lords and phase whales. This effectively meant that getting past the starbase's energy shield was almost as difficult as overcoming the spatial barrier of a greater phase lord! How could the humans possibly breach this immensely powerful barrier by relying on just 57 mechs? It turned out the answer was simple. The massive energy shield had never been rated to defend against 57 first-class mid-tier expert mechs! When the Enfeoffed Dracoloids struck with all of their fury on a single point, the huge but ponderous energy shield generator struggled to resist the reality-distorting attacks! A torrent of resonance-empowered gauss rounds, plasma bolts and claws strikes already started to cause a weak point in this section of the energy shield. When the Dracoloids subsequently released and ignited all of the phasewater-infused propellant that was left in their internal tanks, they overwhelmed the energy shield with so much unnaturally hot and spatially disrupting flames that a temporary gap had formed! It was as if a fire had taken a bite out of the massive energy sphere! The starbase's energy shield generator urgently worked to close this gap as soon as possible. The alien engineers responsible for overseeing its operation understood how dire the situation had become. They switched off all of the safeties and overloaded numerous systems, causing the energy shield generator to quickly close the gap and restore its total coverage. Yet this brief delay proved crucial. 14 Dracoloids managed to slip through the narrow gap during this short interval of time! More Dracoloids attempted to go through as well, but the gap was too small to allow too many mechs to squeeze through.𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚 By the time the other dragon mechs wanted to get through, the energy shield had already restored full coverage! Fortunately for the Larkinsons, this was already enough. The Dracoloids that remained stuck outside had ceased their attacks and directed all of their spare energies towards defense and evasion. As for the 14 machines that managed to get inside quickly enough, nothing stood in their way as they split up and began to assail the secondary and tertiary gun batteries that covered this side of the starbase! The native aliens never envisioned that the humans would be able to slip past their all-powerful energy shield at this junction. The aliens also assumed that the starbase would enjoy the protection of phasefighters and other defenses. These assumptions no longer applied this time as the Viscounts had already shredded the defending phasefighters while enduring the attacks of starbase and the surrounding platforms. Now that a bunch of Dracoloids reached the surface of the starbase's exterior, they immediately began to savage any gun battery within their reach! The Dracoloids entered into a frenzy! They employed a savage combination of ranged attacks and claws strikes to quickly disable as many turrets as possible. It took too much effort to destroy the gun batteries entirely, but they did not need to go that far just to make the gun emplacements inoperable. The Dracoloids worked slowly at first, but as the Saint Commander who controlled the Viscounts became more familiar with the designs of the base turrets, she quickly directed the dragon mechs to disable the critical surface components that fulfilled essential functions. So long as these parts got trashed, the rest of the turret assembly turned into useless lumps of metal! It would take an entire alien crew to come out and replace the broken parts. This could only be done after the battle had ended. Casella Ingvar did not intend to give the native aliens a chance to do so. She wanted to do nothing less than to destroy this critical alien asset! As the Dracoloids efficiently cleared out all of the gun turrets on this side of the starbase, the remaining 43 dragon mechs that lingered outside of the large energy shield immediately experienced a lot of relief. While the starbase still retained its turrets on the other side, there was no way they could angle their guns in their direction. The job of the 14 Dracoloids was not over, though. Instead of wasting more time on disabling gun batteries that posed no immediate threat, the machines simultaneously began to breach into the base by clawing their way into the hangar bay, cargo loading docks and other weak points. Once inside, they continued to burrow through the compartments. It was not particularly difficult for the Dracoloids to burrow deeper into the starbase. Although the starbase's walls were actually thicker and more solid than the bulkheads of alien battleships, they still could not withstand the claws and other attacks of the Viscounts! Soon enough, the Dracoloids managed to disable numerous functional parts and systems, ranging from life support to fire control systems. Even if the starbase was designed and built with a lot of redundancy in mind, the damage caused by the 14 Dracoloids was considerable! The intruding machines did not engage in mindless destruction, though. They bypassed many vital sub-systems in order to dig their way straight to the center of the starbase. The native alien soldiers stationed in the large orbital fortification did everything they could to stop that from happening. They employed measures ranging from hastily barricading the walls with spare materials to detonating torpedoes when a mech got close enough. A few of these desperation measures could have worked if not for one important fact. The alien officers and ratings were plotting all of these radical plans while they were within the range of Casella Ingvar's Command Field! It was as if they had entered her actual domain, but weaker. The native aliens certainly felt her presence from the Command Field propagated by the Victrix, but they did not have a full understanding of what that meant. It was hard to surprise the Saint Commander when she was able to monitor everyone and anything that had entered her Command Field! Even hostiles could not escape her gaze! The language barrier and the instinctive resistance of the alien soldiers may prevent Casella from understanding them completely, but she could already devise a lot of theories through observation alone! In fact, every ace pilot could do what Casella was doing and more. Certain ace pilots such as Saint Dise could even weaponize her domain field and rely on it to defeat a lot of enemies! Casella was unable to do so innately, both because her domain attributes were not suited for direct attacks and because she never gained a proper Saint Kingdom in the first place. It didn't matter. The Saint Commander already gained the ability to attack directly with the help of Mindstorm Alloy, though the truth was a little more complicated. The resonating material was embedded into the mech frame of the Minerva Mark II. This meant that Casella was best able to leverage its power within her ace mech's own domain field. She could feel that it was possible for her to generate a psychic storm over longer distances by using the Victrix as a medium. She had tried it out during her previous practice sessions, but never managed to pull off this feat. Perhaps she needed to develop a specialized technique. It could also be that her resonance strength was too low to support this advanced operation. Whatever the case, she would master this method sooner or later. She just needed to be patient. "Detecting high energy readings consistent with large power generators and an enormous azure shield generator!" "We are closing in on the main shield generator!" The mech pilots could feel that they were moving closer to their goal. Their Dracoloids kept digging towards the center by following different routes, taking care to avoid the most destructive and troublesome traps. This delayed their arrival to the center of the starbase, but it was better than getting blown up or electrocuted! The native aliens did not understand how the Dracoloids managed to evade all their improved but effective traps. They continued to plot new ways to waylay the mechs, only to realize that they had run out of options! The engineers and other aliens stationed in the center could only watch on with despair as the first dragon mechs successfully breached the thick armored walls and immediately opened fire on the massive shield generator! To its credit, the shield generator was wrapped in a thick and solid transphasic hyper metal shell. It was not as easy to destroy as the other systems of the starbase! The Dracoloids did not give up. Seeing that their primary target was being so difficult, the dragon mechs flew over the heads of the helpless alien engineers and attacked the shield energy generator with their claws and teeth! This finally caused the main shield generator to destabilize and eventually collapse! "The Starbase is open!" The remaining Dracoloids that previously had no choice but to linger outside of the massive energy shield could now join their 14 brethren! The new arrivals immediately got to work by wiping out entire compartments and ripping apart the remaining gun batteries that still remained functional after all of this effort. The orbital starbase was finished! Not a lot of time has passed between the arrival of the Viscounts and their remarkably quick feat of creating a breach in the defenses of the opposing mech. The survivors of the first battle all felt as if they had been cursed. How come they suffered so many setbacks in a row? The demise of the orbital starbase meant that it was almost impossible for the native aliens to maintain control over Screed Tanner VI-F and its orbit. If the native aliens did not evacuate in time, then the humans would swoop in and conquer everything! The only other location that could give the retreating alien forces a bit of reprieve was Karnak Base built on the surface of the moon, but without orbital protection, it became exceedingly risky to rely on it to weather the storm. At this point, more and more of the native aliens "Look! The phasefighters and warships that previously withdrew from the main battlefield are altering course!" The native aliens fought against human mechs many times. The former's ability to deduce the future and determined the best path forward discovered that This was a testament to how deadly it was to confront strange and bizarre enemies openly. "The aliens have lost all semblance of courage. They are broken. This… this is amazing!" The starbase continued to suffer from secondary explosions and partial collapses as the Dracoloids dug their way out into open space. "The aliens should be finished this time!"