The Skinny Rattlers clearly earned a lot of success in the past by making use of the advantages of the mechs sold by the LMC.
Yet their most valuable gains only became prominent when they were facing a lot of headwinds.
It was in times of adversity where people's true character came to light!
The Skinny Rattlers transitioned from a successful mercenary outfit into defenders for hire.
Though its mech pilots were still soldiers of fortune, they no longer fought against other human forces, but made the determination to fight against the alien menace!
The strength, numbers, composition and tech of the alien raiding fleets were all over the place.
This was because many of them consisted of warships that belonged to all kinds of strange and exotic minor races.
Each of them were forced to obey the directives of the Red Cabal and send out their warships to attack human space one way or another.
While many of the alien raiding fleets were not as powerful and unbeatable as the defending side initially expected, the risks of fighting against them were still higher!
It was difficult to match the superior firepower of ship-mounted weapon batteries.
Odd alien starfighters also swarmed the human mechs in considerable numbers.
While the quality and defenses of many starfighters were generally worse than mechs in the same class, there were still outliers.
The elite starfighters that relied on their own inbuilt transphasic energy shields to shrug off damage often tore apart entire squads of mechs with relative ease!
Many people in the audience who had fought similar battles in the past year all felt as if they were reliving their nightmares.
The Skinny Rattlers incurred more losses in these dire months than they had in entire decades!
The main reason why the Skinny Rattlers managed to persevere despite suffering so much attrition was because the rewards for participating in the defense of vulnerable human colonies were much higher than anything they earned in the past.
Commander Powell remained grim in the face of all of the living mechs that got destroyed in the battle footage.
"We never had any complaints about our earnings during the last year. We earned far more cash than what we needed to replace our lost mechs. We also earned large amounts of MTA merits for the first time. We upgraded our augmentations, bought a few batches of transphasic weapons and increased the pensions for the relatives of those who sacrificed their lives."
The Skinny Rattlers did not perform exceptionally well in the first few months. Their living mechs conveyed limited advantages due to their lack of strong firepower or other hard features.
While the mercenary company partially compensated for these weaknesses by purchasing more powerful mechs sold by other mech companies, they never gave up on living mechs.
"We lost a lot of good men during those difficult times. The friends I knew for decades disappeared in the blink of an eye when warships annihilated their mechs. We had to hire a lot of mech pilots, promising them much higher pay along with the glory of defending our race. More of them died, but we did our part to slow down the alien advance."
Just like many other outfits that volunteered for service, the Skinny Rattlers started to improve after each and every battle.
The aliens exposed all of their weaknesses and forced the mercenaries to squeeze out their potential.
The Skinny Rattlers started to purchase standalone luminar crystal rifles in bulk in order to arm all of their machines with guns that could fire disruptor beams.
These energy beams were more efficient at draining transphasic energy shields.
The more elite mechs piloted by the veterans of the mercenary outfits all began to utilize transphasic weapons that enabled them to make a much greater impact on the battlefield.
The Skinny Rattlers also did not hoard their MTA merits, but exchanged them for valuable support in upgrading and modifying the designs of their living mechs.
More powerful and customized versions of familiar models such as the Ferocious Piranha and the Crystal Lord started to demonstrate their power.
They pressured their alien targets much more effectively than in the past, allowing them to attain much better results than before.
Yet still the aliens pressed on. Their raiding fleets were so numerous and their warships were so difficult to take down that it seemed as if a tide of enemy bulwarks were about to break through the frontlines!
It was during these pressing times where the mechs and mech pilots of the Skinny Rattlers started to show their true potential!
The projection systems depicted a chaotic battle in space.
Numerous defensive stations tried to hold back the incoming alien warships.
Thousands of mechs deployed in the field. The Skinny Rattlers only contributed a few hundred of them, and over half of them were piloted by rookies whose genetic aptitudes previously limited their job prospects.
Nonetheless, under the glows of the Desolate Soldier and other mechs, they fearlessly fought against the alien warships!
What was notable was that the Skinny Rattlers had altered the designs of their favorite mechs so much that they had developed a style of their own.
The Desolate Soldiers, Doom Guards, Ferocious Piranhas and so on all put greater emphasis on speed rather than defenses.
This made them more elusive and difficult to strike, but it also made them vulnerable against the fast-firing weapon systems of alien starfighters and warships.
At one point, the mechs belonging to the Skinny Rattlers suddenly became assailed by a small formation of elite starfighters!
Though their numbers were much less, the elite starfighters took full advantage of their high acceleration and transphasic energy shields to shrug off most of the incoming attacks!
The attack passes made by the elite starfighters destroyed many mechs without incurring a lot of damage in return.
Many observers could see that if nothing else happened, the elite starfighters would definitely be able to crush the mechs of the Skinny Rattlers!
The former mercenaries fought back as best as they could. The mech pilots maintained their composure and tried to increase their hit rates as best as possible, but there were limits to what they could do in this situation.
Seeing comrade after comrade getting torn apart by the rapid-fire laser beams of the elite starfighters, several Crystal Lords that were mounted onto floater platforms couldn't take it any longer.
They took decisive action!
The machines turned their weapons against each other and disabled the safety mechanisms that inhibited friendly fire.
They fired laser beams at the crystals mounted onto their exteriors.
As the Crystal Lords started to glow brighter and brighter, they unleashed all of the accumulated energies in the form of large concentrated energy beams that struck a number of the elite starfighters and broke through their defenses at once!
The sudden turn of events took the alien pilots by surprise and completely disrupted their rhythm.
Other ranged mechs armed with luminar crystal weapons pounced on the opportunity and proceeded to whittle down the remaining elite starfighters until the beleaguered aliens chose to retreat.