Chapter 2076. The Purple Hangmen (1/2)
The sales of the Doom Guard continued to explode in popularity. After some delays, practically every state in Hegemony-aligned space aside from the ones with extremely restrictive economies put the model on the market.
Sales continued to grow apace, though the constant production challenges related with production continued to hamper its supply.
The mech industry suddenly generated a huge demand for strong-willed mech technicians! After a lot of trial and error, the mech manufacturing companies finally concluded that veterans performed the best when assigned to fabricate the Doom Guard mechs.
It made a lot of sense. Those who had served in the military and experienced war should not be so easy to crack.
Even if the veterans hadn't seen much action, the discipline and confidence they gained during their service time was of inestimable value. Ordinarily civilians couldn't hope to match their resilience against hardships and adversity!
As the mech community continued to explore the Doom Guard model, more and more knowledge was being shared. Everyone realized that there were a lot of facets of the mechs that weren't immediately apparent.
A new community around the Doom Guard had sprung up. Enthusiasts and professionals both gathered together to drool over the model and swap various theories.
An increasing amount of guidelines formed from this community.
They described what kind of traits a mech pilot needed to have in order to pilot the Doom Guard at its best.
They outlined what kind of methods should be used to repair or service the mech.
They suggested various battle tactics and deployment strategies to make the best use of the Doom Guard in battle.
They also elaborated on the distances that people should stay from an active Doom Guard in order to train their minds without the risk of suffering breakdowns.
More importantly, the community also started to describe possible counters to the Doom Guard.
The most obvious counter to the Doom Guard was focusing on it with an abundance of ranged fire.
Though the Doom Guard was 'technically' a ranged mech, it effectively posed no threat to a mech that floated a kilometer away. The Enison Spreader at its tightest concentration simply couldn't reach that far ahead!
The Doom Guard fit the striker mech archetype too well. It inherited all of the strengths as well as the weaknesses of this mech type.
However, though its vulnerabilities were obvious to everyone, that didn't mean that the enemy could exploit it so easily!
Those who bought the Doom Guard never let this precious mech fend off the enemy alone. Oftentimes, the outfits who fielded this mech carefully covered it with a host of ranged mechs.
Additionally, in order to protect it from ranged fire, the mech commanders also deployed at least one space knight piloted by a strong-willed mech pilot to serve as its shield!
Such fortress formations soon began to proliferate among the buyers of the Doom Guard. The tactics they utilized rapidly began to frustrate the pirates beyond belief!
”Ves Larkinson deserves to be killed! I lost half my boys and mechs due to his damnable new mech!”
”I'm putting a bounty on his head! Oh, he already has one? Well, I'll add some more, then! I can't stand the sight of another Doom Guard!”
In a state close to the Sentinel Kingdom, a medium-sized asteroid mining base came under assault.
The base had been built into the structure of a large asteroid floating in a large belt. The mining company put the base in operation for over ten years now, expanding its fleet of mining vehicles on a steady basis.
Prospectors had long discovered the presence of various junk exotics and low-grade exotics in the asteroid belt. The only problem was that their concentration and incidence was rather low. The prospectors at the mining base had to scan and inspect new asteroids every day in order to find a rock with a meaningful quantity of valuable materials.
Even though the efficiency and scale of mining operations was rather low, the base still generated a tidy profit for the mining company.
However, due to the relatively low value of the minerals being mined, the company never invested too much in its security. It merely contracted a local security company to garrison the base and man its handful of turrets.
Since the establishment of the base, it had never suffered an attack.
Until now.
”Why are the pirates attacking us of all people?! We're just mining bulk exotics, for heaven's sake!”
”They must have heard our warehouses are almost full! The company was supposed to dispatch a convoy to us in less than a week!”
The pirate gang called the Purple Hangmen came prepared. Commander Brian Zecs was not an average criminal who worked his way up the ranks, but used to serve in a mech army before deserting!
Over the years, Commander Zecs managed to build a decent gang of pirates that employed a bit more tactics than was common among their ilk. Combined with the ferocity that was typical to their kind, the Hangmen made a name for themselves with their iconic purple mechs!
”Boss, you were right! The outdated guard mechs are no match against our new lasers!”
”Haha! Our inside man has come true! One of the turrets has just blown up and another is malfunctioning!”
Commander Zecs flicked his long silver hair and grinned as his axeman mech hung back. Two companies of melee mechs closed in. Though the makeshift shields they carried slowed down their advance, the firepower of the guard mechs weren't sufficient to repel the advance, especially since their turrets were rapidly being taken out through a combination of sabotage and focused fire.
While the defenders still fielded a lot of ranged mechs, the mining company had skimped on them and instead relied on a large number of stationary turrets to make up for the shortfall!
Now, that decision came to haunt the decision makers. Commander Zecs never initiated a blind assault. Owing to his officer training, he always researched his targets carefully and tried his best to stack the deck in his favor long before he launched his attack!
His favored tactic was to bribe a man on the inside to sabotage the defenses prior to an assault.
The deserter knew quite well that a typical security technician or security guard didn't earn that well. They worked long, monotonous jobs in isolated regions without any cities of settlements within reach. There wasn't much they could do in their off-time since they were pretty much stuck in the middle of nowhere!
The frustration of living in a drab environment combined with a lack of rich compensation always generated some malcontents.
For this attack, Zecs didn't just bribe a single worker. He threw money at several of them, each holding separate positions!
The money he spent on converting these greedy idiots was enough to add two or three cheap mechs to his lineup.
Yet the pirate commander knew very well that the benefit from adding a couple more mechs to his battle lineup paled in comparison to paying those bribes!
Even as the assault continued, the effects of the sabotage became more and more evident.
More and more turrets inexplicably lost power as some critical components malfunctioned.