The 76th Dominators Warfleet… dominated their opponents. The 53 years worth of preparation and technological development paid off as the Cybers proved that they possessed the tools to effectively counter the defenses that the native aliens relied upon to stay in the fight. It was surprising to many viewers how the ordnance used by the CE mechs and warships immediately shut down any attempts of the enemy to make a comeback. The Dominators did not appear to rely on any other notable gimmicks to produce these devastating results. Their performance was definitely higher than normal, but this was not reason enough for them to be able to inflict serious losses against the native aliens while incurring little damage in return. "These mechs and warships are not alive." Ves concluded with certainty. "There is also not that much hyper technology in them. Much of their power comes from regular exotics and phasewater. What is notable is that their phasewater content is not high, but outperforms anything we currently have." This was what two mech generations worth of progress looked like. The Cybernetic Empire had to do the best they could with limited amounts of exotics and phasewater at their disposal. "There is also another factor that is affecting their performance." Gloriana mentioned. "Have you noticed how the mechs and warships are so well-controlled? Their responsiveness is higher than average and their targeting is excellent." "What have you guessed, honey?" "I think that the extensive cybernetics allows the crew members to interface with any compatible equipment. This allows them to control their stations much better and more extensively than normal. I think that they also leverage the power of AIs at the same time, but I cannot verify that from an outsider's perspective." Ves could see why his wife came up with those guesses. The performance of the mechs and warships were a bit too smooth and optimal. As Ves continued to ponder over this subject, the Dominators continued to dominate their opponents. So far, the CE warfleet only lost a few dozen mechs. Many more machines remained spotless due to their superior energy shields and the added insurance provided by their active shield links. None of the warships incurred significant damage despite the best efforts of the enemy vessels. This was mainly because the CE vessels produced results too quickly! Each time they targeted an enemy warship, they first launched a salvo of what the annotation in the live feed described as 'Dynapulse Disruptor Missiles' that inflicted low material damage but possessed exceptionally strong spatial disruptive effects against all manner of transphasic energy defenses. The Polymath apparently developed the initial version of the Dynapulse in person to give her forces a relatively cost-effective way to bypass the ubiquitous transphasic energy defenses of the enemy. Subsequent uses of the Dynapulse Disruptor Missiles revealed that the pulsed spatial disruption effect was exceptionally strong. Their effects were similar to the space suppressor modules that had become ubiquitous in melee mechs. The difference between the two was that the Dynapulse concentrated all of its power in a single potent pulse effect! This successfully enabled the transphasic warheads to 'banish' any nearby energy shielding, but only for as long as the spatial disruption weakened, which only amounted to a few seconds most of the time! A few seconds sounded like nothing. It was an exceedingly short window of opportunity for most humans. If mechs happened to be nearby, then they may be able to slip through the temporary gaps produced by the Dynapulses, but only if it was fast enough and already built up a head start! It was much more practical to use this temporary gap in the defenses to slip in attacks, which was exactly what the Dominators were doing. The warships timed their attacks perfectly. Their cannons opened fire just before the Dynapulses created a gap in the defenses of the enemy vessels. This made it so that the explosive rounds could always slip through the openings before they closed up again and never fail to strike the hull! There was nothing particularly special about the explosive rounds aside from their unusually fast muzzle velocity and impressive accuracy at this range. While none of the attacks penetrated deep into the hull, it was not necessary as plenty of surface components and other shallow systems got wrecked in the process. Besides, when several CE warships concentrated their firepower on a single enemy vessel, the sheer amount of attacks landing on the alien hull was enough to crack the vessel apart after enduring a few brutal salvos! As the alien fleet immediately began to diminish in numbers, it became increasingly clear that there was no way for the native aliens to win this bout. Their phasefighters get completely shredded by the homing flechettes shot by the mechs. Their warships were unable to tank a lot of damage with the help of their segmented multi-layered azure energy shields because the Dynapulse Disruptor Missiles exploited all of their weaknesses! If nothing else happened, this alien fleet was doomed to fall despite the fact that it outnumbered the 76th Dominators. Yet the native aliens could field more than phasefighters and warships. The alien leaders clearly thought that since the Dominators did not bring their own high-ranking mechs, they would become easy pickings. That was not what happened at all. The CE mechs and warships seemingly came from a different era. They employed refined and optimized ordnance that the Heavy Ordnance Tower had spent multiple decades on iterating! Perhaps the native aliens might still be able to fend off the Dynapulse Mark I or whatever, but became completely helpless when they had to defend against the Dynapulse Mark XV! Ves and every other experienced engineer could detect a hundred different ways the Dynapulse had been improved upon over the years. This was not an experimental product. It was a mature product that could breach open the defenses of damn near any alien warship so long as enough warheads detonated in the same place at the right times! "Oh boy." Gloriana said. "The Cybers have made the native aliens truly angry now. Their phase lords finally feel compelled to take action." The enemy phase lords previously disdained to take action when they saw that a human fleet sought to attack their mortal minions. Yet now that the humans deployed several unexpectedly powerful new tech, the phase lords realized quite quickly that they needed to take action in person if they wanted to prevent their forces from collapsing! A total of 2 greater phase lords and 15 lesser phase lords simultaneously took action! This was a formidable number of phase lords. The Larkinsons managed to defeat a similar force by relying on a superdimensional ace mech, but the 76th Dominators likely did not bring any champions to this fight. What did they intend to rely upon to kill or deter all of these phase lords? "The greater phase lords and several lesser phase lords are equipped with Saint Piercers and incomplete Saint Armors." Ves observed. "The ones with good equipment are leading the charge while the ones without this benefit are hanging back in order to use their spatial abilities to disrupt the Dominators." Already, the more erudite-focused phase lords began to constrict and destabilize the fabric of space across a wide area. Multiple Dominator vessels began to slow down as their superdrives were no longer able to maintain their warp travel states. Whether the CE vessels could secretly overcome this interference remained unclear, but for now they behaved similar to any other contemporary human warship. This meant that they lost much of their mobility advantage. The incoming phase lords would definitely be able to catch up to the CE vessels! Without the protection of ace mechs, most human fleets had no way of repelling so many powerful phase lords. Yet this time may be different. As the enemy phase lords continued to close in, the CE mechs conspicuously maintained their distance, making it clear that they did not intend to play any part in what was to come. Instead, the warships all started to launch missiles at the leading greater phase lords! "They are unleashing the same Dynapulse Disruptor Missiles as before!" The native aliens attempted to crush the missiles mid-flight by squeezing it with the fabric of space, but the missiles appeared to be strangely resistant against these effects! They flew unerringly through twisted and folded space until they accurately converged onto the two phase lords! So many missiles detonated against the energy defenses of the two native gods that part of their enlarged bodies became obscured by all of the explosions. Yet even if their views became obscured, Ves and the others keenly noticed that the clustered explosions actually managed to rupture the powerful spatial barriers, but just for a moment! The warships of the 76th Dominator Warfleet had already primed their gun batteries. Each of them soundlessly boomed as they propelled a completely different kind of projectile towards their target than before! Unlike the regular explosive shells that had inflicted effective damage to the hulls of enemy warships on the cheap, these ones were clearly a lot more expensive and high-end! They soared through space at an even faster speed and slipped through the gaps in the spatial barriers with unerring accuracy. Once they struck the bodies of the greater phase lords from various angles, several things happened at once. The rounds that collided against the alien-grade superdimensional raiment actually fractured while only leaving scratches behind! They broke apart far too easily! "The rounds aren't transphasic?" However, the raiments worn by the enemy phase lords did not cover their entire true bodies, so the rounds that managed to slip through the gaps and strike open flesh actually managed to penetrate past the skin and into the flesh. They did not go past that, but this was already a respectable result for a non-transphasic round. Yet that was just the beginning. At first, the greater phase lords ignored the fractured metal that had lodged into their flesh. Yet they soon regretted it as they began to experience a lot of pain from the injured parts of their true body! When they turned their heads to look down at their wounds, they found to their horror that the flesh and other body tissue surrounding their wounds had begun to blacken and weaken! "The rounds are toxic to phase lords somehow!" Gloriana gasped in surprise. "According to the annotations of the live feed, the new rounds are actually corrupting and breaking down the phasewater that sustains the transformed flesh of these phase lords." Ves widened his eyes in shock and also a little fear. Phasewater had become an essential component to sustain the life of every phase lord. If a new weapon was capable of corrupting phasewater into another substance that did not possess the same properties, then it could easily drain the strength of a phase lord and cripple parts of his body! "These Polybite phase corruptor rounds are another invention from the Polymath." Ves noted without too much surprise as the live feed essentially advertised the latest product demonstrated by the Dominators. "They are made from processing high-grade and mid-grade exotics in a special way that allows the finished product to gain a necrotizing effect against phase leader body tissue. The production cost is fairly expensive, but the greatest advantage is that its production does not use up any phasewater." This was a critical advantage that should make the Polybite rounds a lot more accessible to more human forces! At this time, the warships of the 76th Dominator Warfleet started to get serious. They split up into multiple squadrons and began to circle around the greater phase lords. They used the now-classic combo of Dynapulses to briefly open gaps in the spatial barriers before slipping Polybites to hurt the native gods! While the greater phase lords were still able to cope with the damage due to their larger bodies and much higher phasewater content, the lesser phase lords had it much worse! Their spatial barriers were significantly weaker so it took fewer Dynapulse Disruptor Missiles to create a gap in their defenses. They also lacked Saint Armors and so could not defend themselves as effectively against the poisonous rounds. The Polybites also inflicted much more severe damage to their true bodies as losing dozens of liters of phasewater represented a much more severe injury for the lesser phase lords! In a mirror to the Battle of Screed Tanner VI-F, the lesser phase lords lost their nerves first. The Polybite appeared to be especially designed to inflict great pain on these arrogant native gods! That combined with losing any feel or control for their injured parts of their bodies caused them to grow so spooked that some of them proactively used their own blades to cut off their necrotized flesh before the toxins could spread any further! After suffering these heavy blows, the lesser phase lords no longer had any desire to challenge the strange new human warfleet anymore. They all backed away in order to get out of range from the astoundingly effective new missiles and kinetic rounds. This of course left the two greater phase lords without the support they expected. Eventually, the pair of alien leaders made the sensible choice and chose to retreat. Many human viewers became disappointed when they saw that the Dominators did not employ any other miracle weapons in an attempt to kill the retreating phase lords, but they had already delivered a stellar result as far as everyone was concerned. For the first time since the start of the Red War, a fleet of mortal mechs and warships managed to defeat a superior force of alien phasefighters, warships and phase lords without relying on gods and magic! The fleeters must already be salivating at the technological breakthroughs on display! "We have to find a way to get our hands on the production methods of the Dynapulse Disruptor Missile and the Polybite Phase Corruptor Round at all cost!"