The Mech Touch

　　When all of these traits and more combined in a single species, the result was a pest that could gnaw entire starships if given time to proliferate!

　　Though they could multiply to vast numbers if they found enough sustenance, they had not taken over the Red Ocean due to numerous limitations.

　　First, they were unable to traverse the stars. Their ability to move in space notwithstanding, no amount of mutation or morphing could allow them to replicate the insanely complicated functions of a warp drive!

　　The local aliens therefore considered the voribugs to be parasitic in that the insects had to resort to hitchhiking on other ships to move around.

　　Second, the voribugs were not invincible. The other alien races had long developed solutions against them and many native exobeasts were also capable of crushing their shells.

　　Even if they did not encounter any significant resistance, the voribugs possessed such endless appetites that they eventually ran out of food to eat. At that point, they could only feed on each other, which often produced a lot of chaotic outcomes.

　　Third, the voribugs were not intelligent. As far as everyone knew, the voribugs had not evolved to the point where their intelligence grew on par with that of the sentient alien races.

　　The oldest voribugs encountered by different civilizations may have grown smart enough to lead other voribugs, but they were still incapable of moving beyond the instincts of their race.

　　That said, if the aliens weren't careful enough, the voribugs could still cause the collapse of many starships, space stations and planets!

　　There had been instances in the past where entire alien species went extinct because they failed to repel the voribugs that had managed to land on their planets!

　　The native alien civilizations of the Red Ocean had to come to an accord to wipe them all out, which didn't happen all that often!

　　Now, this voracious threat was advancing straight towards the expeditionary fleet in large and deadly swarms.

　　Yet before they could reach any of the ships and mechs of the Larkinson Clan, two energy silhouettes briefly came into existence.

　　The bugs all shuddered as two identical battle formations unleashed their waves of death!

　　One of them managed to blast through a single swarm that consisted of thousands of elder voribugs!

　　As soon as the death wave passed through their bodies, the elder voribugs along with all of the smaller bugs sheltering inside their bodies turned comatose.

　　Though their bodies were still functional, their minds had been snuffed out by the Superior Mother's merciless energies.

　　The voribugs would have been able to resist the effect if their minds were stronger, but they were ultimately insects. All of their tenacity and resilience was based around their bodies!

　　While the death wave unleashed by the Glory Seekers only destroyed a single swarm, the one released by the Penitent Sisters was much more effective!

　　With Venerable Joshua controlling the battle formation, the death wave partially fell under his control. With great effort, he was able to take advantage of the fact that he bestowed life to the extraordinary attack to steer it around and wipe out a few other nearby swarms!

　　Once the Penitent Sisters were no longer able to support the battle formation, over a third of the insect swarms fell apart!

　　"There's still more!"

　　The remaining voribugs still posed a substantial threat. They had dispersed too much to get caught by a single area attack.

　　They needed to be eliminated the old-fashioned way.

　　"Ranged mechs, shoot them down! Melee mechs, get ready to put away your rifles! We need to cut the voribugs down if they get close!"

　　The expeditionary forces didn't expect that their melee mechs would play a role this time!

　　However, it was better to block the advancing voribugs with a mech rather than a starship. Any mech that confronted one of the insects in battle could easily be cleansed once the battle was over.

　　More and more bugs fell as they got struck by weapons fire.

　　The desperate pakklaton ships also faltered as they lost their various systems to targeted fire.

　　Ves and the others remained on guard for any further surprises.

　　The Larkinsons and their allies no longer perceived the pakklaton ships as a threat. Their warships were all neutralized by now and their civilian ships were too fragile in front of massed firepower.

　　What truly concerned Ves and the others was the voribugs. There weren't enough mechs to intercept the approaching bugs at range!

　　Though this was bad news for most people, the melee mech pilots reacted differently towards this threat.

　　Many of them were grinning at the moment!

　　The mechs either holstered or tossed aside their spare energy rifles and drew their swords and other melee weapons.

　　All of this shooting business was not their cup of tea. Even if they possessed adequate marksmanship training, their mechs weren't suitable for this mode of combat.

　　"What they really wanted was to chop the bugs in pieces!

　　"Our time has come!"

　　"Chop these bugs apart!"

　　"Don't let any of the voribugs proceed any further!"

　　Soon, the first wave of voribugs crashed against the hastily-prepared formation of melee mechs!

　　Swordmaidens, Glory Seekers and Crossers dueled and danced against the tide of voribugs that mainly sought to reach the many ships of the expeditionary fleet!

　　The battle quickly grew intense. Though the melee mechs were able to chop or stab the voribugs easily enough, the problem was that there were still thousands more that were able to pass without being impeded!

　　The Valkyrie mechs of the Penitent Sisters and the Glory Seekers tried their best to catch up to these voribugs, but their pilots were no longer in their best condition. The battle formations they employed had already drained most of their mental energies!

　　Not even Venerable Brutus and Venerable Joshua were able to function as sharp and energetic as before.

　　This was the price they paid to channel the Superior Mother's might!

　　Fortunately, there was an even faster group of mechs that were able to catch up to the bugs that slipped past the initial lines.

　　Ves watched closely as the Ferocious Piranhas of the Battle Criers quickly closed in on the insects.

　　"Huh?"

　　From the moment the light skirmishers got close, the relentless elder voribugs suddenly jerked and went out of control. Their flight trajectories became completely disordered. It was as if the insects became drunk all of a sudden!

　　"Wait… is that how they respond to glows?"

　　Ves had already surmised that while the voribugs possessed impressive biological attributes, their mental and spiritual development was nothing to be impressed about.

　　Now, the Ferocious Piranha happened to be one of the few mechs that could exploit this weakness!

　　The others caught onto this fact as well. General Verle immediately issued another order.

　　"Commander Firelight, disperse your Ferocious Piranhas. Their glows must cover as much space as possible!"

　　"Understood, sir."

　　The Flagrant Vandals quickly adjusted. They no longer flew in whole squads and companies as was standard. Instead, they all split up into individual units and formed a wide net that extended their disorientation glows across a much wider area!

　　A large amount of voribugs that managed to bypass the Avatars, Swordmaidens and other mech legions instantly got caught in the net cast by the Ferocious Piranhas.

　　Although the affected voribugs still drifted forward due to inertia, they were quickly focused down by either ranged attacks or melee attacks.

　　With all of these measures, the Larkinson Clan did not have to resort to any further tricks. The elder voribugs that sought to inhabit the expeditionary fleet eventually died before they reached their destination.

　　The only concern was that the expeditionary fleet was still at risk of getting infected.

　　The elder voribugs all carried a multitude of smaller bugs, some of which may have slipped out and drifted off into space.

　　Since the younger voribugs were all small and weak, they were quite hard to detect in space.

　　Therefore, every ship and mech needed to be checked in order to guarantee that the voribugs didn't become the latest passengers of the expeditionary fleet!

　　Still, with the elder voribugs taken care of, the threat of this major race had passed. Even if a few younger insects managed to slip onto the exterior of the Spirit of Bentheim, it was easy enough to detect them early enough with all of the tools the fleet acquired.

　　As long as the Larkinsons squashed these bugs early, they would have no time to multiply and expand to breathtaking numbers!

　　"Now that this threat is taken care of, there is only one task left."

　　The Larkinsons did not ignore the remaining evacuation ship. Even if most of their mechs became preoccupied with squashing bugs, a handful of units managed to circle around until they came close to the evacuation ship!

　　At this point, the distraction created by the pakklatons succeeded in buying a lot of time for the temporarily-stranded ship.

　　Not only did the pakklaton crew members managed to repair her critical systems in time, her warp drive also became active again!

　　Just as this highly complicated ship system was about to bring the final batch of pakklaton survivors out of the battlefield, a single expert mech rapidly approached and entered one of the open gaps of the damaged vessel!

　　The Dark Zephyr squeezed through until there was no more space. Though it could employ its weapon to carve out a path towards the alien vessel's engineering bay, it wasn't necessary to go any deeper.

　　Venerable Tusa's connection with his expert mech allowed him to see an annotated overlay that displayed a portion of the critical parts and systems that kept the evacuation ship running.

　　The Black Cats had compiled all of the data gathered from the MTA database and their own scans in order to produce a detailed blueprint of the enemy vessel.

　　If Tusa did not possess this data, then he wouldn't be able to figure out what he needed to wreck in order to prevent the final evacuation ship from warping away!

　　He smirked. "The Larkinsons send their regards."

　　The Dark Zephyr did not wield any daggers at this time.

　　Instead, it held a pair of bombs.

　　The expert mech tossed them out in different directions. Each of them landed close to a couple of critical systems and exploded shortly after!

　　The evacuation ship shuddered for a moment.

　　Then, a quarter of the ship lost power!

　　The disruption was so severe that the alien vessel's warp drive shut down yet again! The power-hungry component was quite delicate while it was starting up and could not properly warp while there were so many disturbances taking place!

　　The surviving pakklatons despaired when they observed what had happened.

　　When the Dark Zephyr drew out its daggers and began to dismantle even more critical systems from the inside, the evacuation ship had lost any chance of getting away!

　　The humans had won!

　　As the pakklatons were overtaken by despair, the Golden Skull Alliance moved quickly.

　　Mechs surged forward in order to disable the remaining civilian ships surrounding the key objective.

　　More importantly, scores of armored shuttles flew forward in order to land bots and infantry troops onto the alien ship!

　　Although mechs such as the Dark Zephyr could tear the evacuation ship apart from the inside, Ves and the others did not wish to inflict too much damage to the interior.

　　They were afraid that the alien vessel's warp drive and any phasewater stored inside would get lost in the ensuing destruction spree!

　　This was why it was important to secure the ship with the help of smaller troops.