[201-400] THE MECH'S TOUCH

Chapter 289: Apparition

Ghanso Larkinson suffered from an unlucky sequence of events. The Vesians hadn't been able to get past Alex's space knight, so they turned their firepower to an unprotected mech from a nearby squad.

The Starhawk mech in question hadn't expected to be targeted by an entire Vesian squad. The knight in his squad was already shielding another squad mate, so the targeted mech lacked any form of support.

The mech blew up as soon as its pilot ejected into the distance. Some of the shards of the exploded mech happened to have hit Ghanso's mech from behind, thereby dealing significant damage to its fragile flight system

The damage hadn't been extensive, but it took a long time for the flight system to regain its functionality. As Ghanso halted the uncontrolled spin, he looked back to the Starhawk formation to see how well they fared.

"Overall, they held up better than the Grand Chasers. The Starhawks suffered relatively few casualties, but most of the affected mechs had to be written off due to the intensive amount of firepower they sustained.

Even Alex's space knight had its shield chewed up at the end, causing his mech to endure the final volleys on its frontal armor.

"Don't look at me. I'm fine. This is all in a day's work for a space knight."

As the Grand Chasers arced their way back to their own fleet, the Volari Starhawks started to police the battlefield. They turned their formation around and methodically recovered the wrecks while rescuing mech pilots from both sides.

No matter how heated the war between the Vesians and the Brighters got, they quietly maintained a couple of basic rules of conduct. The most important of which was to take prisoners whenever they could and exchange them with each other at a later date.

It helped the two sides conserve their most precious and limited resources, which were trained and capable mech pilots. Such agreements hadn't always been the norm, but after several generations of endless rivalry, both sides saw the need to civilize their conflict in order to prevent their neighbors from casting their aspirations upon them once they exhausted most of their manpower at the end of another war.

Eventually, Ghanso's Vhendra-S had to be hauled back to the fleet carrier. Her hangars had become stuffed with mechs as she welcomed an influx of homeless mechs who lost their original berths aboard the ships targeted by the torpedoes.

Ghanso felt a little bad about the engagement. Any excitement about being a part of the first formal action between the Bright Republic and the Vesia kingdom had disappeared.

"Did we lose the battle?"

"It's hard to say." Old Man Alex replied as he zipped down from the cockpit of his beaten mech.The space knight looked like it had taken a stroll through a micrometeor storm. Its frame showed off lots of smaller impact marks. "The Grand Chasers underestimated us. We took out more mechs from our firing pass, and we've been able to capture every living Vesian trapped alive in their cockpits."

"Yeah, but we lost so many ships."

"It could have been worse. Twelve-hundred torpedoes is nothing special. Wait until they gather an entire division and throw out a wave of ten-thousand torpedoes. You'll really taste despair at that point."

In terms of war materiel, the Vesians clearly won the exchange. They took out seventeen ships at the cost of a lot of expensive but ultimately disposable torpedoes.

Yet all was not in vain. The Grand Chasers ships and mechs had to extend past the Vesian lines in order to perform their attack, which made them vulnerable to pursuit. After expending so much torpedoes and mechs, the exhausted Chasers had suddenly become the prey as another regiment of the 4th division initiated pursuit.