The first two expert chs developed and employed by the Larkinson Clan were about to test their ttle against each other.
Every Larkinson who was able to watch the feed of the test session paid rapt attention to the coming confrontation. Even though both chs were subject to nurous restrictions in order to prevent any accidents from occurring, this was still a tense mont as the winner of this scenario would definitely affect the ranking of expert pilots in the Larkinson Clan.
Joshua, Jannzi, Orfan and Dise had all gathered in a private observation room. They studied the expert chs displayed on the large projections with a great amount of attention.
"Who do you think will co out on top?" Orfan grinned as she lazily placed her hand on Jannzi's shoulder and pulled her closer. "Do you think that flighty little Tusa will be able to remain untouched or do you think that big bad Stark will be able to nail him down?"
Venerable Jannzi emphatically shoved Venerable Orfan's arm away. "I can't tell for sure. On the one hand, Tusa already spent several months with his expert ch. He knows all of the Dark Zephyr's nuances and is able to push it exactly as far as he needs it to go. On the other hand, the Amaranto is a masterwork. That gives Venerable Stark an imdiate advantage."
"I don't think the power of the two chs have much to do with who will win." Venerable Joshua said. "Just look at the ch types. Masterwork or not, I doubt the Amaranto is equipped with sensors that are good enough to uncover the Dark Zephyr's true coordinates."
He was right. As much as the Design Departnt tried to equip the Amaranto with good sensor systems, sophisticated data processing systems and advanced target acquisition systems, the Dark Zephyr's resonance ability was not sothing that pure technology could easily solve.
Venerable Dise nodded. "The only way for Davia to win is if she can figure out the Dark Zephyr's coordinates without relying on what her ch is telling her. The ability to go beyond the limitations of a ch is what separates good pilots from the bad ones."
This was the principal reason why piloted chs continued to remain popular even when there were pilotless alternatives out there. Humanity's technology had advanced far enough to make battle bots viable enough to deploy on the battlefield.
Yet aside from the fact that their programming was always vulnerable to subversion, the fact that battle bots were never able to exceed their technical paraters made them a lot less exciting.
chs piloted by real human beings possessed an undeniable allure that humanity simply couldn't resist!
The ergence of expert pilots, ace pilots and god pilots breathed a lot of life in this seemingly idiosyncratic concept. This was why Joshua and his fellow peers did not completely count Venerable Stark out despite all of the odds stacked against her. They knew most of all that expert pilots were quite proficient in breaking the rules.
That also made every confrontation between expert chs such a pain to predict. Striker chs might not necessarily be able to beat light skirmishers and there was always a chance that knight chs could defeat lancer chs.
"It's starting."
Back inside the interference zone, the Amaranto finally began to fire its gun. Venerable Stark had kept the weapon warm, so from the mont she received permission to begin, she imdiately fired a couple of light ranging shots.
Just as predicted, the thin red lances hit nothing substantial. Even if a couple of beams struck the visual shape of the Dark Zephyr, it was nothing but a distorted image that was able to fool nearly every thod used to ascertain the position of an expert ch!
Despite the clear and obvious misses, Venerable Tusa did not relax in the slightest. Venerable Stark surely knew what the Dark Zephyr was capable of. This was just the start.
After firing dozens of low-powered single beams without accomplishing anything, Venerable Stark started to split the beams up. This was a special feature that was standard in many advanced laser weapons.
By using extra components to split the beam up and minutely angle them away from each other, it was possible for a single weapon to fire multiple beams that were spread in an expanding cone.
This was quite a difficult weapon system to handle proficiently. It was extrely difficult for both a ch and a ch pilot to precisely angle the splitting laser beams in a way that allowed them to accurately intercept multiple targets or hit multiple weak points of a ch or starship at once.
"Heh, it's too bad you aren't an Ylvainan, Davia!" Tusa couldn't help but grow cocky as the actual Dark Zephyr always managed to stay far away from the split beams. "If this is all you've got, then you can forget about laying a hand on my ch."
Each ti the Amaranto fired a split shot, the Dark Zephyr danced and dodged an instant before as if it was just about to get hit. Even if that wasn't the case, Tusa diligently kept up the charade in order to give away as little clues as possible.
Venerable Stark maintained an impassive expression as she continued to pepper the spaces in front of her with laser beams.
She paid careful attention to the sensor and targeting data that her new expert ch fed to her. As much as the Amaranto tried to nail down the Dark Zephyr's actual coordinates, the data it supplied to her continued to miss the mark by at least dozens of ters.
No matter whether her ch tried to judge the Dark Zephyr's position by analyzing visible light, heat trails, gravitic positioning or anything else, the results were fundantally skewed in different directions and different magnitudes.
Venerable Stark had already attempted to decipher so sort of pattern in the Dark Zephyr's deviation from its perceived coordinates, but Venerable Tusa already had months to work out a sophisticated system in which he made his actual hidden position as dynamic as possible.
Perhaps in one second his actual expert ch was a little bit to the right, while in the next second it had pivoted as far to the left as it could go. Tusa had also beco quite good at reading the firing patterns of enemy ranged chs after challenging himself in so many practice sessions. An average approach would never work against his expert ch!
The Amaranto was beginning to run low on energy. Though the ch ca with additional energy cells, it had already fired its weapon plenty of tis during this entire session.
While the luminar crystal rifle was currently firing its beams at the lowest power setting, the sheer number of tis that Venerable Stark pulled the trigger was taking a toll on the energy her expert ch had left. Not even a masterwork was able to generate an infinite amount of energy!
"Hmm, it's a pity. My intuition and judgent hasn't improved to the point where I can pin this fast ch down." Venerable Stark frowned.
She was hoping that piloting an expert ch would improve her battle sense and make her more sensitive towards the Dark Zephyr's actual coordinates.
While she did experience a lot of improvents, she never excelled in this skillset. She was still dependent on the data that her ch provided to her. If the Amaranto made a misjudgent, then Venerable Stark wasn't easily able to correct for such a mistake.
Still, if Venerable Tusa thought that she was unable to strike his ch without converting to the Ylvainan Faith, then he was sorely wrong!
"Amaranto! Let our light dispel the darkness that clouds our eyes! ILLUMINATE!"
This was not a resonance ability that the ch designers had incorporated into the expert ch design. Instead, Venerable Stark leveraged the pri ch aspect of her machine, sothing which she had always been able to explore back when she piloted the Bright Beam Pri.
Different from her forr pri ch, the Amaranto was much more intricately tied to the Illustrious One, which had been designed to accommodate the design spirit from the ground up. She was able to make a much more substantive connection to the alien entity.
The Amaranto's red glow began to grow brighter. At the sa ti, it began to light up in different shades.
Back on the Spirit of Bentheim, Ves was perhaps the only other person who knew what was taking place.
"Pri resonance! She's calling upon the Illustrious One!"
Through Venerable Stark's unceasing efforts, the design spirit was able to descend a lot closer to the Amaranto than what should ordinarily be the case. Even though the strain was taking a greater toll on her already weary mind, her will did not allow her to return in failure!
"We'll be facing far more difficult opponents in the future, so we cannot accept weakness! Dispel the darkness and light our way forward!"
After the Amaranto glowed so bright that it had turned into a rainbow, its third eye projected a broad and expanding field of subtle white light that instantly illuminated an entire section of space!
The false Dark Zephyr's black-coated surface grew a little brighter when shone with this constant flood of light, but that did not necessarily an anything.
A few seconds passed before the Amaranto shifted the aim of its rifle and snapped a single, straight beam that unerringly hit a seemingly empty patch of space!
Unlike the previous tis, the beam did not continue to course into space. Instead, it halted abruptly and seemingly disappeared. At the sa ti, the false image suddenly showed that it had been struck by an invisible attack!
Though the effect sounded complicated, the simple fact was that Venerable Stark successfully managed to identify and strike at the true coordinates of the Dark Zephyr!
Even when the light skirmisher activated its boosters in order to jerk aside, Venerable Stark was still able to read Tusa's actions ahead of ti!
"That's cheating!" Tusa shouted over the communication channel! "You cheated! It's gotta be Ylvainans, right? Did you ask them for tips or sothing?!"
Venerable Stark shook her head as her expert ch slowly grew dimr. As far as she was concerned, she had passed the challenge. Now that she ca up with this trick, she could rely on it to identify the Dark Zephyr's actual coordinates at any ti.
"You just don't use your expert ch well enough, Tusa." She calmly replied, though she wasn't able to hold back her sense of superiority. "There is more to your expert ch than ets the eye. What I just did was activating so of the hidden potential of my machine. I suggest you explore your own a little more thoroughly instead of sticking to your usual routine. Who knows, maybe you'll be able to block next ti."
In truth, the trick she employed was not flawless. One of the factors that allowed her to find the real Dark Zephyr so easily was the limited range between the two chs. Due to the inverse-square law, at greater distances the illuminating light beca more and more feeble. At longer ranges, it was unlikely for it to detect anything hidden.
Still, Venerable Stark was already satisfied with what she got. She judged that she could cooperate with the Illustrious One in more ways than just this improvised ability.
The session had finally ended. The two expert chs flew side by side and returned to the Spirit of Bentheim without any incident.
The bots deployed by the Larkinson Clan all returned to their respective berths as well. However, in order to prevent any third parties from figuring out any sensitive clues about the Amaranto's performance, the Larkinsons dispatched a large salvaging party to scoop up all of the loose debris that could give away certain clues.
Once everything was cleaned up, the fleet transitioned back into FTL and resud its journey across the Bardo Star Cluster.
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