As the Unrelenting utilized its superior mobility to rapidly close in on the alien battleship, Saint Neville paid close attention to the state of his father’s fleet.
Since the latter could only travel in one direction at the same time, the human starships tried their best to shift their course to ensure they kept moving away from the powerful threat.
Saint Neville had heard that the aliens mastered powerful warp travel blocking capabilities in order to prevent their targets from escaping all of the time, but this was ridiculous!
He soon figured out why the ships of his father’s fleet failed to overcome the blockade.
Whether it was the warp drives mounted inside the more important ships of the fleet or the expensive superdrive installed inside the Seeker of Wealth, each of them were actually limited in strength.
A first-class warp drive that used up a lot more energy or leveraged a larger quantity of phasewater should have been able to wrench free from the alien battleship’s blockade.
The only possible exception was the Seeker of Wealth. Otrus Magrin invested a lot more in the strength of his flagship, and her superdrive should be able to escape sooner under normal circumstances.
“The enemy battleship is on a direct intercept course to the Seeker of Wealth! The aliens have identified our flagship!”
“It’s not that difficult to determine…”
While that made the flagship a lot stronger and more adept at survival, it also turned it into an obvious priority target!
The thought of his father getting hunted down and butchered like a dog sent him over the edge!
The ace hybrid mech’s long-ranged weapon systems weren’t particularly powerful, but they could still pack a punch.
Neville concentrated on the Unrelenting’s shoulder-mounted gauss cannons and fired a powerful pair of rounds that soared across space and struck one of the segmented energy shields of the alien vessel with great force!
The attack failed to inflict any real damage!
This allowed another orven shield generator to plug the gap with another fully intact energy shield.
This meant that it would take forever to overcome this powerful barrier.
It just so happened that the Unrelenting possessed a powerful means of attack. The ace mech gripped its lance tighter as Neville already decided to build up enough momentum to strike the alien battleship with the most powerful possible blow.
No ace pilot should have to rely completely on himself in battle. It was customary to provide lots of support in the rear. The right information could easily turn defeat into victory, and Neville already understood that he needed to make use of every possible advantage against an opponent as strong as the alien battleship.
“We have completed our calculations.” A staff officer reported. “According to our estimates, the alien battleship can project two or possibly three layers of energy shields at most. We are certain about this conclusion because her hull is not large or broad enough to accommodate more capital ship-grade shield generators. If you want to punch through all three layers of energy shields in an instant, then you will need to accelerate at your maximum rate for at least 218 seconds in order to build up sufficient momentum. We recommend you add a few more seconds just to be sure. You should also mind that we have performed these calculations with the assumption that you will charge into the warship head-on. You will need to spend more time on building up your charge attack if you attack from the sides or rear.”
218 seconds was a relatively short time as far as space battles went, but an ace mech as fast as the Unrelenting could build up a horrible amount of momentum in that time.
The Unrelenting actually had to circle around in order to make sure it did not approach the alien battleship too soon.
“Come on, you alien murderers!” The ace pilot roared as his blood ran hotter than before! “Fire at me with your guns! My gauss cannons are more powerful than that of any other mech! My Unrelenting will soon be ready to inflict a hammer blow on your defenses! If you don’t attack me soon enough, it will be too late for you to stop my assault!”
Saint Neville easily sensed when a powerful primary kinetic gun battery was about to open fire. He jerked his Unrelenting to the side with the help of her maneuvering thrusters and easily evaded the massive transphasic kinetic rounds that could overpenetrate combat carriers.
The alien ship captain must have realized this as well because the other kinetic gun batteries no longer bothered to track the fast and elusive Unrelenting.
Saint Neville had a much harder time with blocking and mitigating incoming attacks!
The Unrelenting’s Saint Kingdom had to expend a considerable amount of strength to weaken and soften the transphasic laser beams that threatened to strike the ace mech.
The shield was incurring a horrible amount of damage. Though it was somewhat tolerable by ace mech standards, Saint Neville knew that he couldn’t keep this up forever!
The powerful vessel only needed a single cannon to destroy a ship in a short amount of time. Saint Neville could sense the massive and continuous loss of human life, but could do nothing about it aside from attracting as many laser beams as possible.
The worst part of it all was that the battleship hadn’t even shown any noticeable drop in combat power!
While the comparably tiny kinetic and energy attacks were definitely having an effect, their collective damage potential was simply too low, especially when hardly any of them were augmented with phasewater.
This was why Saint Neville knew it was crucial for him to wait until his Unrelenting was ready to unleash a devastating charge attack. His mech still wasn’t fast enough to deal the necessary amount of damage, and that infuriated him. The longer he delayed, the more people got killed!
The Seeker of Wealth actually started to slow down despite the fact that her thrusters were burning hotter than ever!
That suddenly caused Saint Neville to connect a few dots.
“That… might work, but it may also be the only reason that the aliens have scruples about blowing up my flagship.”
“…You’re right.”
Two different pieces of alien ship wreckage were soon tossed into open space.
Many human soldiers hoped that the aliens would restrain their firepower now that their true goals became exposed.
However, the phase whale barely showed up to ‘greet’ the incoming alien battleship before it broke apart.
Saint Neville widened his eyes as he realized how the aliens might interpret this sequence of events.
Before he could put his Unrelenting in the right path, one of the primary kinetic cannon batteries had shifted its aim towards the Seeker of Wealth and opened fire!
The flagship bearing his father immediately suffered a massive blow!
