5683 Cory Grimly
Much to the surprise of everyone on the battlefield, the four mercenary outfits managed to overcome their period of adversity!
When the battle started, the mechs of the Pellicky Praetorians, the Five Fingers Club, the Rutherford Family and the Desiccators faced an uphill battle that was so steep that they saw little hope of climbing their way to the top.
The treachery of the Grimly Brothers and the rapid collapse of the Hullsi Wardogs should have turned the mercenaries into sitting ducks when they squared off against the formidable native alien raiding fleet bearing down on their positions.
Yet the sudden outbreak of Ultimatum One changed their entire fate.
Mechs got obliterated while combat carriers sundered apart at an alarming rate, but with the help of an abnormality that could not be explained, the four mercenary outfits managed to strike back and inflict serious losses onto the alien fleet!
Now, the aliens had lost their flagship while rendering multiple other capital ships vulnerable.
The nunser battleship that acted as the minder of the alien fleet had received such a pounding that the mercenary melee mechs tore into her guts with no hesitation, causing her to collapse from within!
The remaining alien warships started to slow down and fight less vigorously as the alien crew members clearly became shaken at the continuous setbacks.
The downfall of pretty much all of their capital ships had caused the remaining aliens to become disorganized and less willing to press the attack.
This caused them to become easier prey to the melee mechs that dove on them like a swarm of piranhas!
Equipped with the newfangled space suppressors, the melee mechs visibly destabilized any transphasic energy shield they came close to. Even if an individual module was not too effective due to the lack of phasewater integrated in their specific models, the sheer quantity of mechs was too much for most warships to resist, especially if they belonged to the smaller ship classes.
This was one of the many instances that proved that the Hyper Generation had given red humanity a fighting chance in the Red War!
It would have been a lot more difficult for the Red Two to encourage the masses to pilot mechs into battle against huge alien warships if they did not have a readily available solution to overcome the notoriously powerful defenses of the latter!
Though the non-transphasic space suppressors were only effective when employed in larger numbers, second-class and third-class mech forces were not short on them for the time being!
So long as the production of mechs remained strong and the pool of manpower remained abundant, many human forces were more than willing to throw lots of mechs into the fray in the hopes of earning war merits and other massive rewards!
"Come on, men! We need to finish off these warships as fast as possible! If we take too long, we won't have motherships to return to. Take down these transphasic shields no matter the cost!"
As long as the mercenary fleet and its escort mechs could continue to provide support from a distance, the downfall of the alien raiding fleet became increasingly more likely!
Yet even as the human mercenaries were on the verge of repelling the alien fleet and earning huge rewards in the process, the assault from the rear threatened to undo much of their gains!
The Grimy Brothers proved their determination to act against red humanity's interests by attacking the mercenary fleet from the opposite direction, thereby making it a lot more difficult for the defenders to properly handle both threats.
The Ultimatums helped a lot. Their heavy artillery cannons usually merited very little attention due to how ordinary they seem compared to the powerful Onyx Cannon.
This was not a surprise. The Onyx Cannon was the star of the heavy artillery mech. The entire design was clearly based around this incredibly cumbersome and oversized super-heavy gauss cannon. It was a weapon that aspired to be a shipkiller and had proven this capacity in several instances during this battle!
Yet it was the extreme characteristics that also sabotaged the Onyx Cannon from posing an effective threat against small fast-moving objects such as mechs.
Once the Onyx Cannon opened fire, the heavy artillery mech had to work hard to charge the weapon back up. Even if the pilot decided to launch the weapon at half-charge, it still took far too many seconds to prepare the weapon to fire again!
The consequences of missing a shot were too great as a consequence. The Ultimatums bought by the Praetorians therefore did not bother to employ this weapon system against the enemy mechs.
The only way to make them viable was to successfully pair them up with the Guided Aim embedded ability, but the Praetorian mech pilots were unable to reach out to Ylvaine due to lack of practice and other factors.
This was a major product flaw and significantly complicated the use of the Ultimatum. Commander Pellicky and many of her mercenaries put much of their hopes onto the seemingly magical features of this fantastic new hyper mech.
"The learning curve of this heavy artillery mech is much steeper than expected."
"It is an excellent siege weapon, but it has its limitations."
Fortunately for the mercenaries, the spaceburst shells launched by the heavy artillery cannons more than made up for this shortcoming.
Though their muzzle velocities were fairly low, the spaceburst shells were remarkably effective at damaging and ultimately blasting melee mechs to pieces!
No matter how much the mechs tried to evade or maneuver around the field of explosions, there was no way for them to continually evade the spaceburst shells as they kept pouring in at a moderate rate!
More than half of the melee mechs dispatched by the treacherous Grimly Brothers had already fallen. The remaining ones already lost a lot of momentum, but the traitor mech pilots pushed their machines forward regardless because there was no way out for them anymore!
"Take these mercenaries down and sow terror in the hearts of red humanity!" Cory Grimly roared over an open channel as his custom space knight led the charge! "The Genlock Cell's plan must prevail! Do not let my brother's sacrifice be in vain! Let us bring a new multi-racial utopia to reality by showing these people the folly of human supremacy! For the great cause!"
"FOR THE GREAT CAUSE!"
"For progress!"
"FOR PROGRESS!"
"For a pluralistic society!"
"FOR A PLURALISTIC SOCIETY!"
Before their sudden betrayal, the two Grimlys established a reputation for being leaders who were good at uplifting other people.
To see Cory Grimly leverage his leadership ability onto his fellow cosmopolitans made their betrayal even more incomprehensible to the mercenaries.
How could these smart and successful mercenaries be so stupid enough to embrace the cosmopolitan cause?
There was no way for them to find any answers. The situation had become more dire even as their enemies had already started to drop like flies.
Even though the mechs of the Grimly Brothers suffered heavy damage, the remaining ones could still pose a threat to the vulnerable combat carriers of the mercenary forces.
The mercenary commanders had already dispatched most of their melee mechs to the alien fleet!
The ones left behind might be able to slow down the mechs of the Grimly Brothers for a time, but the damage wrought by the alien raiding fleet heavily impacted their ability to fend off any remaining enemies.
No one was in a good shape anymore!
The only machine that still appeared to be going strong was the offensive space knight piloted by Cory Grimly.
The expensive transphasic machine had done a remarkably good job at resisting all of the spaceburst shells that struck its hardy kite shield and its resilient armor plating.
As a high-quality mech that combined offense, defense and mobility in a particularly dangerous combination, the offensive space knight could pose a massive threat to any combat carrier once it got close!