A horde of over 300 panicked pirate chs stord right in the direction of around 120 Living Sentinels chs.
Aside from being fortified by a number of Bright Warriors belonging to the Avatars of Myth, the rookie pilots who had donned the grey-and-white uniforms of the Sentinels had to fend for themselves!
Most of them consisted of commoners from the Sentinel Kingdom that the Larkinson Clan had picked up at Cinach VI. Though they had received a heap of piloting training and received a lot of indoctrination, none of them had been bloodied in their short careers.
The Larkinsons sought to hire talents. Though all of them possessed enough potential to beco second-class ch pilots, raw ability was not enough to succeed.
The ch pilots had to be able to pull the trigger when it counted!
Even though the Sentinel ch pilots had killed thousands, if not tens of thousands of virtual chs in simulations, it was entirely different now that they confronted real chs piloted by actual humans!
The stakes were higher. Unlike before when the only suffering they inflicted was on a bunch of computer bits, now they needed to bring their weapons to bear on machines that possessed the power to end their lives!
Everyone in the expeditionary fleet paid attention to the ensuing clash. Each of them wanted to see how the outnumbered Sentinels chs dealt with Davy's Ghosts.
Would their inexperience lead to blunders and unnecessary casualties? Would Davy's Ghosts collapse and split apart after realizing the Sentinels weren't soft at all? Anything could happen!
Within the design lab of the Scarlet Rose all of the assistant ch designers aboard the ship had gathered together. Each of them watched the plethora of projections that showcased the battle from multiple angles while at the sa ti presenting technical readouts as sophisticated scanners deciphered every observable attribute of the pirate chs.
"I hope that each of you have developed a good impression of the pirate chs." Ves spoke like a teacher. "Now, what can you tell about their overall state?"
"The pirates don't have a ch designer. If they did, their chs wouldn't be in such an awful state!"
"They don't have enough ch technicians either. Aside from the chs that are presumably piloted by their sergeants and officers, the lowest-performing chs are also those that are neglected the most."
"There are too many different models in their lineup. There is hardly any synergy at all. I think Davy's Ghosts likely stole them from their victims or salvaged them from the battlefield."
"How could they possibly salvage the chs themselves?! They are clearly devoid of technical personnel!"
Ves clapped. "Alright, everyone here has made so good points. Almost all of what you have said has matched my judgent. Now, in many confrontations like this, the pirates usually outnumber their opponents by at least two-to-one. Yet the quality of their chs isn't even half as good. Victory and defeat depends on many more variables. Now, my question here to you all is to make a judgent. Who do you think will win this clash? How many losses do you think our Sentinels will suffer before the pirates will go down? Will our Sentinels be able to succeed in blocking the pirate chs from breaking through?"
A projection appeared in front of everyone's faces. Ves had already prepared a form for them to fill. The assistants soon began to input their answers according to their judgent.
Shortly afterwards, the projections disappeared. A small AI routine rapidly scanned through the answers and determined the overall sentint.
Ves smiled in an amusing fashion. "Well, it looks like you are all confident in our Sentinels! Do you really think that 120 Sentinel chs will be able to demolish 300 pirate chs while only losing 5 to 10 chs at most?"
That was a huge disparity in losses!
Soone raised her hand. "Sir, the Sentinels might be outnumbered, but they are piloting premium chs in excellent condition. Almost all of them are clad with compressed armor, which can take a lot of punishnt, so they won't go down quickly. If any Sentinel ch is in trouble, the other Sentinels will co to the rescue. That is how they are trained."
"The condition of the chs matter as well. The Sentinel chs are all new machines that the clan has acquired in the last four months. Not only are the chs at the beginning of their product life cycle, but they have each received excellent care from our well-trained ch technicians. As for the pirate chs, most of their fodders still feature unrepaired battle damage. It is trivially easy for our Sentinels to exploit the holes in their defense."
If both of these factors were taken into account, then it was indeed plausible that the Sentinel chs could overco the pirate chs with ease!
"Let us see whether your optimism holds true." Ves said and turned his attention towards the main projection.
By now, the ranged chs of both sides opened fire. An abundance of weak but rapid-firing laser beams sizzled against the resilient armor of the Sentinel chs, blackening and vaporizing their silver coating in quick order.
To their credit, the ranged chs of Davy's Ghosts exhibited at least so coordination. Every squad focused their fire on their designated targets. Though the accuracy of their weapons during flight and at longer ranges left much to be desired, nurous scorching red laser beams still impacted the targeted Sentinel chs with alarming frequency!
The Sentinel reacted according to their training. The space knights in the formation shifted their positions and covered the targeted chs with their shields.
This largely frustrated the pirates. It took way too many laser beams to chew through the defenses of the space knights!
The pirates began to shift their targets, but the space knights kept covering every focused target with ease.
Eventually, the coordination of the pirates fell apart, and their lasers just crashed against the entire formation of Sentinel chs with hardly any discernible pattern!
Though the rain of incoming laser fire looked intimidating, in truth the pirates had given up any hope of disabling a Sentinel ch before both sides collided against each other.
The Living Sentinels weren't as helpless. Their rifleman chs, though much smaller in number, all focused their firepower at the chs in the center of the pirate formation.
The montum of the pirate chs soon began to flag a bit as the lead chs ca under intense fire!
The disparity in power between the beams quickly beca evident. Most rifles in the hands of the pirate chs were not only cheap, ill-maintained and lower-powered, they were also outdated!
The new ch generation had only swept the galaxy for a year. While the ch forces in civilized space promptly swapped their older models for modern ones at a decent pace, the pirates were much further behind!
The premium rifle models in the hands of premium ranged chs hit incomparably harder. This was especially so because the new ch generation introduced several innovations related to directed energy weapons technology!
The cheap, second-hand chs of Davy's Ghosts endured a lot of terror. So chs fell apart after suffering only a dozen hits. Others lasted longer, but the constant barrage of high-powered laser beams steadily chewed through their armor!
"Focus fire on their officers!"
When the range grew close enough to reliably target individual chs, the ranged Sentinels suddenly shifted their fire to the pirate chs that presumably led the pirate chs!
A lot of sensor data recorded by the Larkinson chs were being transferred back to the ships of the task force. The Scarlet Rose, the Princely Jackal and many other vessels collectively analyzed the data and rapidly ca up with inford guesses on which pirate chs hosted the leaders!
The analysis not only focused on the quality and condition of the chs, but also looked out for the transmission of data.
The accuracy of these guesses were very high! As soon as the Sentinels knew which chs to target, they systematically dismantled every ch piloted by a leader or sub-leader!
Panic began to spread among the pirates! The swarm grew less cohesive and less united as their officers were put out of action in quick order! Without any leaders, the horde of pirate chs already showed signs of falling apart!
"Haha! Without their bosses to take charge, the pirates are easy pickings!"
"Don't underestimate them! Coordination or no coordination, they still outnumber us by quite a margin!"
As the distance rapidly decreased, the ranged chs of both sides subsided down and flew to the sides. Both of them fired at each other and the ranged chs that rapidly closed in on each other.
In truth, because the goal of the Sentinel chs was to intercept the pirates and block them from advancing further, they had been accelerating in the opposite direction for a while.
If they did not do so, they would essentially perform a very rapid drive-by confrontation and rapidly zip very far away shortly afterwards!
The mobility of the Sentinel chs wasn't good enough to swing around and catch up to the fleeing pirate chs without wasting lots of ti. The Sentinel chs all had to modulate their flight systems carefully in order to stick to their enemies!
Shortly before the lee chs speared against each other, a sudden change happened in the Sentinel formation.
"Avatars, change course!"
The Bright Warriors that basked every Sentinel ch in the vicinity with the Golden Cat's glow suddenly shot upwards and departed from the main formation!
The rookie Sentinel ch pilots quickly lost the psychological support provided by the Larkinson Clan's exclusive chs. It was as if they all lost confidence. The absense of the glow ca so abrupt and without warning that the Sentinel ch pilots beca too distracted to maintain a tight formation.
"Get yourselves together! The enemy is right on top of us! We can still defeat with or without a glow!"
No sound traveled in space, but the collision of so many chs would have caused a huge number of crunching sounds!
Spears thundered through chest plating, swords sliced off entire arms and legs, shields bashed against the entire fra of lighter chs, causing their entire to rattle.
Sheer violence at its most primitive and brutal form had comnced!
Though the pirate chs that clashed against the more solid and resilient Sentinel chs all sustained serious damage, there were plenty of other pirate chs that escaped the initial clash unscathed!
They swiped their weapons at the Sentinel chs from the front or from the flanks. So even swung around in order to attack the vulnerable rear of their opponents!
The Sentinel chs desperately tried to finish off their opponents at the front in order to defend against attacks from the rear, but they didn't always succeed!
"I thought these pirates are leaderless! Shouldn't these cowardly scum be running away as fast as possible?!"
The behavior of the ch pilots of Davy's Ghosts didn't conform to their expectations. Amazingly, even without a pirate officers issuing any orders, the cruel and selfish pirate ch pilots still banded together and chose the correct strategy that made the most out of their advantage in numbers!
In truth, the Sentinel chs and ch pilots should have been good enough to chop up so of the pirate chs without wasting too much ti.
However, the sudden disappearance of the Bright Warriors along with the pressure exerted by the pirates caused many of the rookie ch pilots to panic or forget portions of their training.
Without any veterans or blooded ch pilots in their midst to rally them or restore their confidence, the Sentinel chs started to suffer serious damage!
A lot of clansn observing the battle began to drop their anticipatory smiles. The thorough pirate thrashing that all of them had expected did not arise.
Instead, the rookie Sentinel ch pilots began to falter against their desperate pirate counterparts who litterally fought with their lives on the line!
Soon enough, the first Sentinel chs started to fall. Cockpits suddenly ejected from the fallen silver-coated machines. So of the ranged pirate chs even started to target the cockpits!
"No!"
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