The Mech Touch

Chapter 7558 Early Strike

The giants were ready.

Each of them had donned their raiments and equipped their respective weapons.

Their morale had risen to a new height.

Their willingness to venture into darkness under the leadership of their polemarchos had just peaked!

The Dark Apostle grinned with satisfaction. With this formidable troop of giants under his command, he could truly reshape the entire battlefield.

The deployment of over 30 Ascended Giants at once could never be underestimated. Even if they were not well-equipped for the current battlefield environment, their hard power and sieging capabilities could never be denied.

Just as the Dark Apostle was about to order his men and women to disembark the ship, all hell suddenly broke loose.

Nobody received a warning.

In one moment, everything aboard the Armitage worked normally.

In the next moment, a blinding flash and a wrenchingly powerful physical impact suddenly smashed against everyone, causing them to cry out in pain and surprise!

Nobody braced for the impact that had suddenly engulfed their entire awareness.

It happened so quickly and without any possible warning that by the time that the giants who recovered the fastest noticed the disaster unfolding to the side, they struggled to make sense of what just happened.

Several more seconds passed in confusion before the Armitage's alarms belatedly started to ring.

The once-glorious assembly hall started to flash with alarming red lights. No sounds could be transmitted because whatever struck the giant carrier had torn a rent along the entire length of the hull!

This wound was not trivial in the slightest. The mere fact that an unknown sneak attack managed to carve through the entire side of the assembly hall meant that many other compartments had been affected even worse!

Entire spaces had been blasted into pieces!

Hundreds of unsuspecting human crew members got vaporized in an instant!

Other major compartments lost pressure, and the emergency shielding measures meant to plug the gaps did not always activate!

Supplies spilled into open space.

High-tech instruments became misaligned due to the strong physical impact or became miscalibrated due to intense radiation exposure.

Many ship systems abruptly failed as their energy and data channels all got cut off at once.

Though the crew assigned to the Armitage consisted of seasoned officers and spacers for the most part, they lacked the veterancy and cohesion of a truly elite and reliable force.

It couldn't be helped. The Red Collective's naval traditions were still too new and young. Its naval personnel mostly consisted of members of many different states. It was already a small miracle that this eclectic band of people managed to form an effective hierarchy in so little time.

As such, the surviving personnel reacted slowly to this sudden calamity.

Confusion remained the dominant thought as far too many people asked what just happened when they should have been thinking about conducting rescue and damage control operations.

Fortunately, the surviving officers gradually managed to get their act together. They organized at a local scale first, and gradually began to coordinate their actions once they sorted out their communications.

"We… were just attacked." The Fiery Axe transmitted over their communication channel as her armored form wobbled on the damaged deck. "The audacity… this insult… cannot stand!"

Several other giants echoed their indignation of what just happened. The clues could not be denied. Their alien adversaries had already made the first move!

The Dark Apostle felt just as outraged as his underlings, but he knew better than to lose his cool.

The vast scientific knowledge reserve that he had access to made him much more aware of the practical difficulties of launching an attack at this range.

The native aliens absolutely could not have launched an attack from such an enormous distance!

Yet they managed to do so with devastating results!

"An attack of this scale cannot come from an ordinary alien battleship." Blinky spoke. "Not unless she mounts a spinal mount, which has never been their style. Spinal mounts pose a greater threat towards their 'native gods'. This has to be a relatively new construction, one built for the express purpose of countering humans. My personal speculation is that the attack was either launched from one of the orbital fortresses or that bizarre planetary temple. Accuracy is an enormous problem. Even if the Armitage is a capital ship, she still followed a random trajectory, just like any other warship operating in a hostile environment. The probability of landing a hit with a kinetic strike at this range should have been statistically insignificant."

The Dark Apostle scowled. "Well, whatever math you are thinking about doesn't apply here. The aliens somehow made it happen."

Blinky dipped his feline head in agreement. "That is unfortunately the case. The native aliens of the Red Ocean have the capability to build such a powerful weapon, but I doubt they possess the ability to achieve such a miraculously high hit rate. The best explanation that I can think of is…"

"The deathborn. You suspect that they have already teamed up with the native aliens to help them guide their aim."

If this was the case, then the combined fleet was in for a much bigger fight.

It was one thing for the native aliens and the deathborn to fight alongside each other.

So long as they maintained separate systems and combat approaches, they could both be fought by applying relatively simple and straightforward approaches.

After all, each group possessed very distinctive strengths and weaknesses. The Saint Commander and her staff had prepared many countermeasures against known and speculative threats.

However, it was much more difficult to plan against radically different enemies that cooperated with each other on a deeper level!

If they began to share technologies and agreed to supplement their shortcomings on an active basis, then they would be facing a whole different kind of adversary!

As Ves and the Dark Apostle continued to mull over these concerns, the Saint Commander finally gave the giants an explanation.

"OUR FORWARD SCOUTS DETECTED A HIGH-ENERGY SEQUENCE FROM ONE OF THE FOUR ORBITAL FORTRESSES." Casella spoke in her empowered voice now that she had interfaced with the Minerva Mark II. "THAT IS NOT ALL. THEY ALSO DETECTED DISTURBANCES IN THE DARK MIASMA ALONG WITH MOVEMENT FROM THE SURROUNDING DEATHBORN. THE CONCLUSION IS CLEAR. OUR ENEMIES HAVE ALREADY COMBINED FORCES TO DEVELOP AN ACCURATE, LONG-RANGE SIEGE CANNON."

"..."

Ves did not react with joy when the Saint Commander's words confirmed his speculations.

This was awful news. The enemy effectively stole the initiative with this new capability.

The combined fleet had to race against time and move in quickly. Any procrastination or delay would just prolong their exposure to an insanely accurate and extremely powerful siege cannon!

"THE ENEMY LIKELY STRUCK THE ARMITAGE FIRST BECAUSE SHE IS ONE OF OUR LARGEST HULLS." Casella continued to explain. "THE TORTUOUS SCREAM IS EVEN MORE MASSIVE, BUT SHE IS A KNOWN QUANTITY TO OUR ADVERSARIES. HER HULL IS ORVEN IN ORIGIN, AND SHE HAS ALREADY EXPOSED MUCH OF HER FIREPOWER IN EARLIER ENGAGEMENTS. THE ARMITAGE ON THE OTHER HAND HAS MAINTAINED A LOW PROFILE. SHE REPRESENTS TOO MANY UNKNOWNS. THE ALIENS COULD NOT RESIST THE URGE TO LAUNCH A PREEMPTIVE STRIKE. THE OUTCOME COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE. GIVEN THE POWER OF THIS ATTACK, THE SIEGE CANNON MOST DEFINITELY LAUNCHED A SUPERDIMENSIONAL PROJECTILE."

Ves also made that conclusion.

The Armitage may not be oriented towards strong defenses, but she was still an ultra-modern first-class capital ship!

Ordinary kinetic strikes should have crashed against her multi-layered segmented azure energy shields before ever having the chance to touch her hull plating!

Even if the exterior of the giant carrier got struck, an ordinary kinetic strike absolutely would not have been able to tear a narrow but extremely long gap that measured over a kilometer!

"Let us hope that just one of the orbital fortresses hosts a superdimensional siege cannon." Ves said. "If the other 3 enemy strongholds are identical, then we are in deep trouble."

"We need to smash those orbital fortresses first." The Fiery Axe's eyes burned with battle intent! "They can instantly demolish any of our ships. Our giants might not fare much better despite their superdimensional raiments."

"I HAVE ALREADY INSTRUCTED THE AMARANTO MARK III TO LAUNCH A COUNTERSTRIKE." Casella responded. "THE DIFFICULTY OF HITTING A MASSIVE STRUCTURE IN STABLE ORBIT IS MUCH LOWER, ESPECIALLY TO A MARKSMAN AS EXCELLENT AS SAINT STARK. HOWEVER, I DO NOT THINK THAT STRIKING THIS FACILITY WILL BE AS SIMPLE AS IT SOUNDS. MY INTUITION TELLS ME THAT OUR ALIEN FOES HAVE ALREADY MADE PREPARATIONS TO DEFEND AGAINST A LONG-RANGED STRIKE FROM THE INSTRUMENT OF VENGEANCE."

This was the downside of exposing so much strength in past encounters.

The Amaranto Mark III had long exposed her frighteningly potent firepower on many battlefields. The Red Cabal stationed in the Hypeh-Tekas System shouldn't be stupid or incompetent enough to fail to retrieve the relevant records.

As the Amanto Mark III began to charge up her Instrument of Vengeance in preparation for a retaliatory strike, the Ascended Giants finally launched into open space.

There was no need for them to go through the hangar bay exits.

The giant rent in the hull granted them enough of an opening to squeeze out into open space!

None of the human phase lords took it easy at this time. They all adopted guarded postures as they awaited for a second possible ultra-long-range siege attack.

"Disperse!" The Fiery Axe instructed the men. "Do not bunch up! We cannot make it easy for the aliens to take out multiple of our number at once! Spread out and stay on the move!"