After a long and harrowing battle, victory was in sight!

Aboard all of the ships of the expeditionary fleet, every member of the Larkinson Clan, the Glory Seekers and the Cross Clan felt jubilant at what they accomplished.

Their combined forces accomplished a legendary feat!

They fought against a force that comprised entirely of military mech pilots and gained the upper hand. The Friday Coalition even fielded some of their best elites to no avail!

Yet before the Golden Skull Alliance could celebrate their first official victory in combat, the enemy still had one card left to play.

A single surviving expert mech was racing towards the Spirit of Bentheim as fast as possible!

The entire Larkinson Clan trembled in fear as they realized what was happening.

"No!"

"The enemy wants to spite us! Damn these barbaric Vicious Mountainers!"

No vessel ever wanted to be approached by a hostile mech. It didn't matter what mech type it was or how much it cost. As long as the mech managed to fly right next to a starship, then they could easily employ several ways to damage, cripple or doom the ship entirely.

This was especially the case for expert mechs. Their destructive potential was at least an order of magnitude above regular mechs and they were extremely difficult to fend off due to their excellent defenses.

What concerned people like Ves the most was that artillery mechs mostly became invalid when a hostile mech came close.

Most of the surviving bunker mechs on the Spirit of Bentheim wouldn't even have a good angle to shoot at a target that stuck close to a hull.

In fact, a considerable number of bunkers would likely be situated on the opposite side of the ship, thereby rendering them completely useless!

"I should have acquired more missile mechs!" Ves cursed as he tried to rein in his panic when he saw the Trost flying closer.

"Stop it! Our families are aboard the Spirit of Bentheim!"

This was bad. Before the start of the battle, the Larkinson Clan preemptively moved every civilian and non-essential crew member aboard the sub-capital ships to the Spirit of Bentheim.

The factory ship was by far the toughest and most defensible ship of the Larkinson Clan.

The decision made a lot of sense. The Larkinson Clan had lost around a dozen combat carriers from enemy bombardment. While most of their crews were able to evacuate in time, casualties were unavoidable.

If those vessels were still occupied by family and an excess of personnel, then the casualty figures would have risen by a couple of thousand.

However, now this decision might easily kill over half of the members of the Larkinson Clan at once if the Trost was able to finish the deed!

Ves quickly turned to Captain Vraken, who was urgently trying to button down the capital ship she commanded as much as possible.

Shield generators were ready to be overloaded.

Peripheral compartments were being evacuated and filled with ballistic foam in order to form additional barriers.

Damage control teams were being moved around to critical sections.

Maneuvering and orientation thrusters were trying to put the Spirit of Bentheim into the fastest spin it could manage in a short time.

If Ves patched into a feed that looked out of the side of his flagship, then he probably would have become dizzy pretty quickly. It was not easy for someone to keep their bearings when the ship they were on was rolling like a drill!

However, this was the only way to make it more difficult for the Trost to reach the side of a ship and attack a single point in order to excavate a hole through the hull.

"This isn't enough!" Captain Vraken concluded. "Our bow and sterns are still easy targets."

The only way to fix this was to spin the ship like a thrown axe. Soon enough, powerful thrusters came to life which caused the Spirit of Bentheim's nose to dive down while lifting her rear end upwards.

Through precise calculations, the thrusters activated when they reached the right orientation and deactivated when the angle was no longer right.

Anyone looking out of the ship would quickly become dizzy regardless where they stood!

"Deactivate the forward view!"

The panorama in front of the bridge had become so disorientating that it had to be shut down. The projections that simulated the front view instantly disappeared. In place of that, Captain Vraken summoned a giant map of the immediate area around the Spirit of Bentheim.

The tumbling and rolling representation of the Spirit of Bentheim attracted a lot of attention. It looked as if the helmsman had become completely drunk and started to take the capital ship on a chaotic joyride.

Even though the flagship of the Larkinson Clan looked as if it had gone completely out of control, in fact the grand captain, the engineers, the helmsmen and every other relevant professional completely had everything under control.

"This will buy a lot of time for us, but we cannot guarantee that the hostile expert mech possesses a means to penetrate the hull regardless of our measures."

You couldn't tell with expert mechs. Even though the Trost was a hybrid mech that didn't seem to possess any weapons that could quickly tear a hole in the hull of a capital ship, who knew what siege weapons it carried.

The Trost was not a basic expert mech. It was a fully-fledged mid-tier expert mech that was only a notch below the Bolvar Rage and the Erin Tear in quality and destructive potential!

Combined with a mature Garlaner expert pilot who possessed ample battle experience, neither Ves nor any other Larkinson dared to underestimate the Trost.

Ves, Gloriana and every other mech designer in the fleet urgently analyzed the current condition of the rapidly-approaching expert mech.

While the Valkyrie Prime was too far away to lend its Odineye, the expeditionary fleet already collected a wealth of data on the Praetor expert mech.

It had just come away from an intensive clash where it had fought and displayed a myriad of weapon systems against the Crosser expert mechs.

Ves rapidly accessed the footage through his implant and skimmed through the footage in order to get a quick impression of the expert mech in question.

"This mech is not damaged enough!" Ves banged his fist against the armrest.

This was bad. An expert mech without an armor breach somewhere was basically a closed shell. It took a lot of power and effort to overcome its armor. This was the first step to defeating any expert mech.

Yet this hurdle was also the most difficult and time-consuming step!

The Transcendent Punishers had already pounded the Trost with a continuous barrage of positron beams and gauss rounds. In fact, as the hybrid mech came closer, the artillery mechs even activated their secondary armaments, not that it did any good except to create extra heat. The weak rapid-fire pulse cannons did nothing except to splat against the exterior of the Trost like rain hitting an umbrella.

Ves made some quick calculations. According to his estimates, it would take at least 10 minutes of continuous bombardment to breach the exterior of the Trost!

This was way too much time!

"Gloriana!" Ves called out to his wife.

"I'm already on it! Don't disturb me!" She replied as she was directly processing a lot of observation data through her implant. "Right now, I haven't spotted any major vulnerabilities. In my judgement, it's too difficult to neutralize the threat by destroying it. The best way to handle an expert mech like the Trost is to impair its mobility! As long as we strip it of its flight system, it can't do much against our ship. The Amphis will be able to catch up to it and finish the job."

She was right! The Amphis was still trying to close in on the Trost. Unfortunately, the friendly expert space knight was just too damned slow!

"What assets do we have left to stall or block the Trost?!"

Precious few mechs were left. In fact, putting the Spirit of Bentheim in a complex rotation also made it more difficult for her bunker mechs to attack the Trost. The Transcendent Punishers couldn't adjust the aim of their heavy cannons fast enough to keep up with the change in angles.

The only way for them to hit their target was to keep their heavy cannons pointed at a single predetermined direction and fire the instant the Spirit of Bentheim's rotation happened to align their guns to the Trost.

Fortunately, many of the surrounding combat carriers also carried bunker mechs, but the drop in firepower was still noticeable.

"Artillery alone isn't enough." Ves already concluded.

He really wished he completed his Giant Killer design and fabricated a couple of hundred copies. The mech's penetrative cannons were much better suited to damage expert mechs and other ultra-armored targets.

"In fact, the Giant Killers don't have the firepower to threaten the Trost either." Ves muttered.

While the armor of the incoming hybrid mech was not as strong as Unending alloy, it was still leagues better than Breyer alloy. This was exactly what made expert mechs so difficult to defeat by ordinary forces. It was not a surprise that Gloriana suggested that they should target the Trost's flight system.

The expert mech essentially possessed no other weak points at this time!

Ves glanced to Major Verle. The military leader of the Larkinson Clan looked incredibly grave.

"I'm sure you already know that the Swordmaidens are spent." He quietly said. "Our best hope of defeating the Trost is to pit it against the Amphis and the Bright Sword Prime. However, the former is too slow and the latter is too weak against this remaining threat. Our other prime mechs are on their way but it will take even longer for them to reach our side. The Piranha Prime will arrive first, but I'm afraid it doesn't have the damage potential to harm a tough mech like the Trost."

That was his judgement as well. The Ferocious Piranha was fast, light and possessed an extremely effective glow. However, Ves already knew for certain that its thick and unbearable glow posed no threat to other expert pilots.

More reinforcements were on their way, but the mechs that had remained intact up until now were pretty much spent. Their conditions were poor and their mech pilots were almost on the verge of exhaustion. Pitting them against the Trost would likely result in another slaughter!

As Ves studied the overview, he found to his sinking regret that the final line of defense only consisted of three mechs.

The Bright Beam Prime.

The Shield of Samar.

And surprisingly… an obsolete third-class mech that Ves had already forgotten about.

After automatically writing off the latter, Ves focused on the two prime mechs.

While Ves was very impressed by the power of the Bright Beam Prime, he already calculated that its full-powered shot was unable to penetrate the frontal armor of the Trost.

In fact, Venerable Davia wouldn't even be able to pierce the rear of the Trost either! Only the most vulnerable sections of its flight system were weak enough, but it was exceedingly difficult to land a hit on them while the mech in question was moving.

The Bright Beam Prime had already shown what it was capable of, so the Trost would certainly not be stupid enough to expose its rear to the rifleman mech!

Another mech had to confront the Trost in order to stop it in its tracks and create opportunities for Venerable Davia to land a hit on its flight system.

That role should be taken by the Shield of Samar, but the mech was vastly slower than the Amphis! The Trost could just take a detour around the sluggish prime mech!

Already the Trost was arcing around the Shield of Samar. Its expert pilot did not waste any time on trying to take the defensive mech.

Perhaps the only consolation was that the Trost wasn't able to attack the Bright Beam Prime either. It already tried to shoot at the rifleman mech once, but Venerable Jannzi had already moved its heavy shield to block the attack.

"Damn! It's getting close!"

As the Trost came close, it was still under constant bombardment, but the mech still didn't pay any notice. Instead, it pointed the tip of its short halberd in the direction of the Shield of Samar and looked as if it was about to charge into its rotating target!