The enemy warships were getting felled in greater numbers.
After the Rubarthan commanders and champions chose to go for the second plan, they shifted their emphasis to destroying the warships, which served as the foundation of the enemy force composition.
The native aliens could not rely on phasefighters alone to win any battles. The alien strike craft simply did not play an important enough role to merit greater expectations.
The alien phase whale and phase lords may have been able to press the assault and dismantle the entire orbital defense network by themselves.
However, they could only accomplish this goal by disregarding their own health and safety. If they valued duty above their own selfish interests, then they might be able to brave death and allow for at least three-quarters of their numbers or more to lay down their lives to conquer Kayana VIII-E.
As if.
Aside from rare exceptions such as the Divine Supplicant of the Great Ones, most phase lords were too arrogant and too full of themselves to think about sacrificing their lives to conquer just one of three fortified planets in the Kayana System.
The phase lords were much likely to attempt a withdrawal as soon as their spatial barriers and raiments no longer offered enough protection.
That made it a lot more difficult to kill the alien champions, but the Rubarthans already decided that killing them was not a priority.
While there were numerous ace pilots that were secretly disappointed that they wouldn’t be able to earn glory on the battlefield by killing the alien phase lords, the defense of the Kayan System superseded all other concerns.
"Attack!"
"Kill the warships!"
Since the ace pilots and expert pilots already had their hands full with holding back the alien phase leaders, the Rubarthan commanders decided to make the costly decision to command an elite mech corps to bypass the alien small craft and assault the enemy warships directly.
This was difficult to accomplish. The enemy phasefighters were completely dedicated towards entangling as many human mechs as possible. They were extremely stubborn and kept chasing after mechs that tried to bypass them and move close to the alien warships.
The fighting so far had caused the downfall of many phasefighters, but the latter still outnumbered human mechs by a significant margin!
The only way to make this work was for the remaining mechs to work harder to keep the phasefighters occupied.
Human mechs pulled out all of the stops in order to kill more phasefighters and threaten the remaining ones into fighting the more immediate threats.
There were machines that allowed their azure energy shields to get shredded and their mech frames to get filled with holes just to be able to chase after a pair of phasefighters and attack them in the rear until they finally changed course!
It was through these efforts that roughly half of the mech corps was able to distance themselves from most of the phasefighters.
Several thousands of first-class multipurpose mechs found themselves ordered to turn around and entangle the elite phasefighters that were still on the chase.
Only after that were the remaining first-class multipurpose mechs able to approach the nearest alien warship formation.
The enemy was not stupid. Despite the rapidly rising interference and other disruptions, the warships were able to see the mechs coming and made the appropriate adjustments.
Their formations changed so that they could better cover each other. The alien crew transferred more energy, processing power and alien hands to the tertiary gun batteries. They also loaded any available missile launchers with more potent anti-small craft munitions.
When the tens of thousands of mechs began to swarm the entire enemy naval squadron, a huge amount of explosions and rapid-fire kinetic and energy beam fire surrounded the warships in question!
Many mechs began to falter as the high-intensity barrage of firepower rapidly dismantled their azure energy shields and tore their mech frames apart.
With at least three separate multi-barrelled gun turrets focusing on one mech at a time, the targeted machines could do little to defend against all of the focused firepower aside from circling around the warships.
That did not help too much as the partially automated gun turrets tracked the battle damage incurred by every human mech and prioritized the targeting of damaged machines!
Many first-class multipurpose mechs therefore found themselves getting struck with a relentless amount of attacks no matter where they moved!
Even if they circled on the other side of the hull, the gun turrets over there would gleefully continue to destroy the damaged machines!
If the first-class multipurpose mechs under threat were able to back off, they were liable to get targeted by other enemy warships that happened to be closer!
The casualties were horrendous. The modernized enemy warships were far too well-equipped and prepared to tear down entire regiments of human mechs.
The vaunted first-class technologies and materials that elevated the performance of these powerful machines did not avail the Rubarthans all that much today.
The aliens had made sure to allocate their best and most advanced warships to the Upper Zones.
The warships even began to engage in electronic warfare, but despite the upgrades provided by the cosmopolitans, the Rubarthan mechs were too hardened to get seriously affected by the interference.
While the expensive Rubarthan mechs were getting blasted so heavily that many of their mech pilots weren’t able to eject or make it out of this killing frenzy alive, their sacrifice bought valuable opportunities for themselves and other defenders.
Their high-quality space suppressors worked extremely well in weakening the azure energy shields employed by all of the warships.
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Their segmented energy shields were getting stripped at record speed. The first-class multipurpose mechs did not dare to slow down so that they could strike at the energy shields with their melee armaments.
Their formidable collection of ranged armaments were already enough to deplete the suppressed energy shields!
"Your blood shall not be spilled in vain!"
Seeing the proud and earnest Rubarthan mech pilots lay down their lives for the defense of their superstate and red humanity made Saint Stark incensed!
She hated the necessity of these suicidal gambits. Ordinary soldiers shouldn’t be asked to sacrifice their lives. It was a sign of weakness on their part that they had to employ desperate measures to win the battle.
Saint Stark did not allow her fury to overtake her common sense. Instead, she tried to channel it through her Instrument of Vengeance.
While she found herself unable to convert her mounting fury into a more productive means of attacking, she still found it easier to resonate with her firearm.
The Instrument of Vengeance not only glowed brighter, but each resonance-empowered light beam unleashed by the weapon easily punched through the defenses of the weakened enemy vessels!
Whereas before the Amaranto had no choice but to wait precious seconds in order to fell an enemy ship, this time she was able to achieve the same results while doubling or tripling her firing rate!
The mass space suppression played a huge role in softening up the defenses of the enemy warships. This was especially the case when the Rubarthan mech pilots went out of their way to weaken the sections of the azure energy shields that directly face the Amaranto!
While the Amaranto Mark III’s cooperation with the first-class mech corps produced impressive results, the Obsidian Orb did not let the ace mech steal the show.
Much to the surprise of the native aliens, the black and reflective superweapon underwent a transformation that caused the mighty Star Caster to disappear from sight.
It instead began to expose 24 smaller but still very potent ’Star Lancer’ Hyper Plasma Cannons!
Each Star Lancer was roughly the size of the primary gun battery of a sizable battleship.
However, once they began to accumulate power, it was clear that their firepower surpassed that of their ship-based counterparts!
Every masterwork Star Lancer absorbed a huge amount of E energy from the environment.
High concentrations of stellar energy, fire energy and so on began to power up and enhance the properties of every accumulating concentration of plasma.
The weapon mounts impressively remained fairly cool even as the buildup of plasma reached critical levels.
"FIRE!"
A huge chunk of the battlefield briefly became overwhelmed by the 24 bolts of plasma that streaked out of all of the Star Lancers!
The bolts converged on 6 enemy battleships in total.
All of them had incurred light damage and maintained close to intact defenses.
Yet when each of them got struck by the first plasma bolts that arrived with pinpoint precision, multiple layers of azure energy shields succumbed to the explosive discharge of heat and plasma!
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Successive plasma bolts arrived in quick succession. They further peeled away the segmented energy shields and immediately exposed the hull of the warships for a brief amount of time.
The subsequent plasma bolts were delayed just long enough to pass through this gap without any hindrances and strike straight at the hulls!
Each contact between plasma and transphasic hyper alloys did not end well for the latter!
No matter how much damage they were designed to resist, none of them were equipped to resist what might as well be matter that was taken straight from an extremely hot star!
By the time the incredible discharge of thermal energy had overwhelmed the hull plating, the entire sides of the targeted hulls had vaporized or melted away!
Naturally, the Obsidian Orb had targeted the trajectories of their Star Lancers in such a way that they always ensured the destruction of the main thrusters and many of the power generators of the alien vessels.
Even if the enemy battleships were technically operational due to the protection offered by their immense size, they had lost much of their defenses and mobility, making them easy targets for demolition by other forces!
There was no need for the Obsidian Orb to waste its precious firepower to finish off these targets.
Instead, its 24 Star Lancers were already charging up at a surprisingly fast rate in preparation to fell 6 more battleships!
Again and again the battlefield lit up as both the Amaranto and the Obsidian Orb did all they could to fell as many battleships as possible.
Saint Stark found it extremely impressive that a superweapon created by a Star Designer was able to exceed the raw firepower of the Amaranto Mark III without needing to rely on the help of an ace pilot.
More importantly, the Obsidian Orb did not need to rely on the sacrifices of thousands of first-class mechs and mech pilots in order to soften up the enemy defenses.
Its Plasma Lancers were able to demolish all alien warships while their defenses were running at full strength!
The degree of optimization, precision and timing was impeccable.
Saint Stark had already sensed that the crew operating the Obsidian Orb were mortals.
At best, they had all become qi cultivators in order to make them better at their jobs, but that was of little consequence to the functioning of the super fortress.
In fact, a lot of people fighting or observing this battle had become impressed at Saint STark and the Amaranto.
They were amazed that this junior ace mech was able to repeatedly take down so many battleships by relying on the firepower of a single mech rifle.
Not everyone figured out that the mech frame itself played a huge role in amplifying the firepower of the Instrument of Vengeance.
The Amaranto and the mech rifle glowed brighter than ever before as Saint Stark had completely found her element.
Every shot became a little brighter and more powerful. Stark became driven by the incessant need to take down the alien warships. Each of them represented a harbinger of death and ruination to human civilians!
Just as Saint Stark was about to unleash her next potent shot, her Amaranto suddenly detected extremely strong spatial activity!
"Watch out, Saint Stark! We are detecting a forceful teleportation attempt! Our warp interdiction fields are being overpowered!"
Seconds later, thousands of first-class mechs appeared between the Amaranto and the Obsidian Orb!
Their arrival may have been reassuring if not for the fact that they openly bore cosmopolitan colors and markings!