The battle in Fordilla Zentra had reached a new stage after the Amaranto quickly got rid of the two Slug Ranger expert rifleman mechs in quick succession!
Almost no one was able to adjust to this rapid turn of events in time!
Both the expeditionary forces and the dwarven soldiers respected the masterwork expert mech a lot. In fact, the latter dreaded the Amaranto so much that they fully dedicated two of their expert mechs to suppressing it when they could have been more useful elsewhere.
Though the calculations of General Kebrinore and his staff were on point, they never expected the Amaranto to possess an unreasonably strong energy shield and kinetic beam discharge!
The sensors registered a huge amount of anomalous data. The kinetic beam was something completely foreign to the dwarves and the dual empowerment of resonance and Worclaw energy produced an astonishing amount of firepower that the Amaranto’s first solo kill could never resist!
The expert mech fell unjustly as far as the Ferrils were concerned. It had done so well in pressuring and cornering the Amaranto for a long time. The dwarven expert pilot not only made sure to never let Venerable Stark take a proper breath, but also anticipated many of her moves and ploys ahead of time.
The characteristic dwarven toughness of the Slug Ranger expert mechs were not for show. Compared to other expert mechs, the dwarves generally built their dwarf-statured machines shorter but much more robust. Paired with a slightly oversized flight system, the dwarven expert mechs turned into surprisingly effective duelists who excelled at taking down enemy expert ranged mechs!
The only major shortcoming of the Slug Ranger’s take on the expert rifleman mech was that it did not allocate enough capacity on bolstering its offensive power. The caliber of the gauss rifles were lighter than they could be in order to make sure the machines carried enough ammunition and energy cells to last a fairly long time.
Of course, this lack of firepower was relative. Other than performing a bit inadequately against heavy-armored expert mechs, their damage potential was more than sufficient enough to defeat other powerful machines, including the lightly-armored Amaranto!
“By Vulcan’s bushy beard!”
“Our expert mechs…” A dwarven voice despairingly said.
“How can the Slug Rangers fail so badly all of a sudden? First they lost the Gauss Baron by a single expert light skirmisher, now they lost two-to-one. They’re dragging us down!”
The overall state of the battle hadn’t changed yet, but everyone knew that this sudden turn of events would have a highly profound influence on the rest of the large and complicated battlefield. The careful balance that existed before could potentially be broken at any time.
This was the oppressive nature of a powerful offense-oriented rifleman mech! Even if the Amaranto continued to remain at the near, its unparalleled firepower and precision meant it could participate in any other duel between mechs in this open battlefield.
The pressure that Venerable Stark’s expert mech exerted on the dwarves was so great that many of their great machines were already fighting more cautiously than before.
“Look at them reign in their arrogance.” Commander Melkor smirked for the first time in a very long time. “Get ready, men! This is the time to turn the tables against the dwarves! They’ve been picking on us for a long time by relying on their superior numbers. Now let’s see how they will fare when they’re on the backfoot!”
The expeditionary forces moved quickly to switch to a more offensive posture. While there were still plenty of strong and sturdy dwarven mechs left on the battlefield, the morale of their mech pilots had taken a lot of hits.
During all of this fighting, the human mech forces had yet to lose a single expert mech. Sure, the Dark Zephyr, the Riot and the First Sword had all lost most of their battle effectiveness and were all in bad shape, but their resilient and largely-intact Unending alloy exterior caused the dwarves to have the impression that the human expert mechs were still in good condition!
In contrast, the Ferrils had started off the battle by bringing twice the amount of expert mechs but already lost four of them! This was a disastrous result that caused many Vulcanites to doubt the strength of their own expert mechs.
Were the enemy expert pilots that much better than their dwarven heroes? Had the Vulcan Empire been lying to them about the superiority of dwarven craftsmanship? How else could the dwarven expert mechs fall so easily?
The contrast in performance between the resilient human expert mechs and the sudden failures of the dwarven expert mechs was too shocking!
General Verle had always played close attention to the behavior of the dwarven soldiers. He clearly sensed the wave of doubt and confusion spreading throughout the Ferril mech forces.
He immediately sensed a great opportunity! He opened a communication channel to Calabast right away.
“General?” The spymaster asked.
“Do it. I want to see as much confusion as possible.”
“Roger that, sir.”
Calabast closed the communication channel and smirked. “I’ve been waiting for this. It’s finally time for us to party.”
“Squeak…” Arnold responded as he laid lethargically on a floating cushion next to his owner’s throne in the command center of the Blinding Banshee.
“Commence Plan A! Take down their warnet!” She ordered!
The Black Cats had remained so low-key during this battle that everyone forgot about them. Though they provided various forms of intelligence support, they never showed any teeth.
Instead, they bided their time and kept building up their preparations.
It was not as if the Black Cats wanted to do more, but their ability to interfere and disrupt the enemy’s military-grade command and communication systems were limited.
The Molten Hammers, the Slug Rangers and the Hivar Roarers were well-funded and well-rounded mech divisions that had all of their bases covered. Their counterintelligence and virtual security experts were all professionals who not only did their best to protect their own systems, but also attacked the various virtual networks of the Larkinsons, Glory Seekers and Crossers on a constant basis!
It was not easy for the Black Cats to sabotage the dwarven mech fleet.
Fortunately, the Ferril Provincial Army possessed one fatal weakness.
They brought less cats than their opponents.
As soon as the Black Cats went into action, a large amount of disruption erupted from the dwarven fleet.
The Great Ram, the Lemogo Distat and the Roost simultaneously experienced information warfare attacks that somehow bypassed all of their security measures!
Data centers blew up, command centers became disconnected and various backup systems failed to active properly.
Though not all of the crucial command and control systems had been affected, many essential processing and data analysis systems glitched out to varying degrees!
Coordinates were erroneously shifted by as much as hundreds of meters. Many ranged volleys went wide before the dwarven ranged mechs woke up and stopped acting in coordination with central command.
Dwarven mech units received false orders from their supposed superiors. This caused them to open up holes in their defensive lines or prevent them from overrunning a weakened human position.
Human mech units weren’t being registered on the warnet, thereby giving the dwarven tacticians a false impression of the state of the battlefield. Units being sent to stop a single human mech company were instead being overrun as there were actually three times as many enemies in those positions!
Chaos erupted across the dwarven lines as all of these sabotage measures took effect!
The dwarven warnet which had previously been responsible for making tens of thousands of dwarven mechs work in lockstep with each other had suddenly turned into a giant liability!
“Why are we getting all of this junk data?”
“Our flagships have gone crazy!”
“Forget about the instructions from the rear! We’re on our own now! Cut off your connection from the warnet and don’t accept any transmissions from the fleet until the techies have fixed their miss.”
The unreliability of the dwarven warnet and the lack of proper communications from their superiors caused many mech units on the battlefield to fall back to local control. Though this did not affect their direct battle strength, They lost their ability to act according to a greater strategy and position themselves where they were most needed!
In addition, their compromised morale took yet another plunge as the dwarven mech pilots felt as if they were increasingly losing control over the situation.
If that was not enough, the Blinding Banshee finally showed off her own capabilities! Though many clans criticized the acquisition of a dedicated capital-grade espionage ship, Calabast was determined to lay those voices to rest today!
The thin, needle-like hull of the Blinding Banshee began to expand as hundreds of ECM arrays unfolded along her hull. The ship poured a lot of power in them, causing them to project a powerful interference field that engulfed the Hivar Roarer mech units that had previously been doing well on the expeditionary fleet’s left flank!
“Our channels are blocked!”
“Our backup networks are getting flooded with false data!”
“How did they manage to solve our encryption?!”
The momentum of the dwarven mech divisions had been completely stalled at this time now that even their most successful units were unable to press their advantages!
The sabotage wasn’t total, though. Calabast never anticipated that this act of sabotage would confound the dwarven security experts for long. After two minutes of fumbling, the dwarves quickly restored most of the functionality of their warnet. They largely did this by leaving their flagships out of the equation.
The damage was already done, though. The dwarves no longer trusted the warnet as much. The three flagships that had turned into a liability were unable to provide any support, which was very inconvenient since they not only hosted the most competent and authoritative personnel such as General Kebrinore, but also contained the most processing power and the most extensive databases!
The replacement warnet that the dwarves managed to put up simply wasn’t the same, and it showed.
The unsung hero responsible for sabotaging the three flagships wasn’t in a condition to admire his handiwork.
Among the huge amount of debris that was drifting away from the battlefield was a certain mechanical pet.
“Meow! Meow!” The cat silently cried out!
Lucky’s Misfortune Harness was in bad condition right now. A portion of its left side had shattered and many places also showed signs of melting.
One particularly powerful blow even went on to damage Lucky’s resilient tiger-striped body. Though his Rorach’s Bone-infused structure was already trying to restore the damage, the cat was woefully short of energy to accelerate the process.
The stealth shuttle that had quietly transported him behind enemy lines and allowed him to hop onto the crucial dwarven flagships were nowhere to be seen.
The dwarven fleet had eventually sussed out the stealth shuttle’s presence and shot it to pieces, leading to the deaths of all of its crew and the involuntary space walk of the only cat aboard!
Though Lucky possessed limited means of moving in space, it was wholly inadequate in a huge and expensive battlefield in space. What was even more troublesome was that the active combatants were slowly moving further and further away from the battle debris.
“Meow!”
Though Lucky already transmitted a distress signal to the Larkinson fleet, who knew when they were able to pick him up.
In the worst case scenario, the expeditionary fleet might get beaten or find itself in a hurry to leave the star system!
Even if he was not an organic creature who would die when exposed to space, he didn’t want to drift outside the star system and spend millions of years crossing hundreds if not thousands of light-years of distance while encountering absolutely nothing while in deep space.
Lucky would rather defect to the dwarves than drive himself crazy from isolation!
“Meeeeeeooow!”
If the cat gained much better maneuverability in space, he wouldn’t need to rely on other vehicles to move himself around. He definitely needed to remedy this shortcoming in the future!
