The battle's in full swing, and back on Earth, Shine is shown worrying about everyone fighting up here in space. Her butler's kind enough to join her in prayer for our safety, and we'll probably need all the prayers we can get. While we're doing pretty well, Earth's fleet as a whole is taking a severe beating and the Hagane is the only ship still holding the first defensive line. The Hiryu and Shirogane are still intact, though Norman's ship has been lost, as we had seen in the previous chapter.
At this point, Daitetsu figures the best choice will be to attempt a breakthrough and directly attack the White Star, counting on the Tronium Cannon to sufficiently damage its shields. And so the Hagane charges ahead, covered by the other ships and getting ready to play its ultimate trump card. Charging the cannon, getting near the shields and unleashing the blast will all have to happen in an instant, or at least within the span of a few minutes. No sweat, these have been timed missions all along, so I'm an expert on them by now.
Our objective: bring the Hagane to the designated spot within 4 minutes, at all costs.
Make that 3 minutes if we want the Battle Mastery. Not too hard, it can get there even at a slow pace. Enemies don't seem too tough either, and there's lots of cover...I can guess what's going to happen. Still, the Hagane has no armor upgrades or anything, so I'm gonna start with clearing a path first, even if they're weak enemies. They mostly open a lot of fire on me and miss, and I defeat them with counterattacks. Some of them have 10000 HP or more, which justifies using my super moves to some extent, I guess. I casually wipe them out within a few turns, and the Hagane reaches its firing position after safely inching forward behind my troops.
VILETTA: (So, they plan to break the shield using the Tronium Cannon? I'd rather not have to send mechs to attack them...but I can't let up on them while Judecca is still in control. And, where's Gaza? I hope he's not up to something...)
Surprise, here he comes! Laughing mad as usual, he's not gonna let us use "that big gun", and attacks the Hagane as it's about to fire. They must've accidentally programmed Elzam's schtick into his brain. The Tronium Cannon still works this time, fortunately, though the Hagane's been thrown off course and their targeting's dead. Looks like this guy's the true challenge of the level, and he's brought a whole lot of battleships with him as well. I still hate these things as much as I did them in the previous chapter, they take so long to kill.
Time to start brainstorming some random-ass backup plan. Daitetsu wants to have his potential Heroic Sacrifice and have everyone abandon ship so he can ram the Hagane into the shields and fire the cannon at point blank range, but Tetsuya and Eita refuse to budge. Neither of them is going to run at this point, and Tetsuya has another plan anyway. He's not saying yet what it is, only that it's a special feature of the ship. This will certainly end well. The Hiryu's ready to give them cover, at any rate.
And now Gaza has decided he's gonna slaughter himself some Earthlings, even if that is against Levi's orders. In fact, he argues that he has already completed his orders and so he can now do as he pleases, even if that contradicts the previously completed orders. Even Viletta can see he's gone totally bonkers now. Before this point, there was at least some vague reasoning behind his actions, even if it consisted of "kill all humans". And what a surprise, his first target is Viletta!
GAZA: Hyaha! Everyone knows that you're a double agent! So...DIE! Viletta! Hyaha!
I'm curious who ISN'T a spy of some sort at this point. Really, they're all one step away from realizing they're all on each other's sides. He destroys her mech, but it's left rather uncertain whether she really died or not. Meanwhile, our troops have all been watching aghast at Gaza taking out one of his allies without remorse, and wonder what's going on. Now he turns his attention to them, and things keep looking worse since they're heavily outnumbered now...
???: Why don't you let us give you a hand?
Don't tell me that's—
[BGM Change: Trombe!]
It is! How the hell does this guy keep doing that!? We're in the middle of SPACE! Even Batman would have trouble pulling off something like this. Well, at least he's brought his own ship along, which can serve as backup for our side. He's brought along his old pal Sanger too, which means more Colossal Blade fun on this stage! Gilliam joins them, and their spirit rises even further upon the realization that no less than three of the original Aggressors have been reunited for this battle. Shame Kai couldn't be here, or they'd be complete.
So now we've gained the Kurogane and Grungust Type-0 as additional units, and it's time to take out this fleet of theirs. I'm putting as many units as I can on the surface of Neviim, given its terrain bonus, although this also applies to all the units that spawned there. To take those down, I'm gonna focus on one target at a time, because they get HP regen each turn as well. The only one who really poses a threat is Gaza himself, since none of the ships can shoot worth a damn.
That is...if they stayed where they are. After a few turns of jolly ship-bludgeoning I notice most of them aren't attacking my main force — they're going around it, and they're all going for the Hagane! I scramble to have all my units break off their current battles and focus on blocking the ships from advancing towards the Hagane. Glad to see Drone Jam tactics still work like a charm. Some almost slip through, but are taken out at the last moment by the troops that stayed behind. This must not last much longer, though, because I'm rapidly running out of ammo and my resupply units can't be everywhere at once. Ultimately I bring their numbers down to a few and encircle them, giving me a bit of time to do ammo refills. I left Gilliam behind with Gaza to keep him distracted, just in case he was gonna come after us as well. I did occasionally send troops back to the White Star to recharge as well, but only if they weren't crucially needed in fighting the ship swarm.
After spending a long time bringing down these ships one by one, only Gaza remains standing. My troops are intact, though slightly drained of power. Still, taking him down shouldn't be too difficult, right? I have everyone surround him and beat on him, and his health slowly dwindles...and then just regenerates it the next turn. Eurgh. You know what? I'm sure that if I really tried, it would be possible for me to take him down, but at this point I don't really give a damn anymore. I'm just gonna bring in the Hagane instead of continuing with this fool's errand.
The Hagane is ready to fire as it hits the shield, and Gaza tries attacking once again. This time, however, he's on the business end of the Tronium Cannon. Now Tetsuya's special plan comes into action: the cannon is fired, and at that exact moment the Hagane releases its gravity brakes and detaches the cannon module, sending the Hagane flying backwards. And this is exactly why Tetsuya gets to run the ship. The cannon's beam breaks through the shield, also vaporizing Gaza who happened to be in its way.
The way is now clear, and the Kurogane creates an entry into the White Star's interior by plowing through the hull with its Titanic Drill. Now it's a matter of sending mechs towards the core, to finally end this battle in a showdown with Levi Tolar herself.
Since they've been added to my roster now, I'm putting all my money into upgrading the Type-0 and Huckebein Trombe. They're definitely worth keeping, since they were already kicking ass even before applying any upgrades. I think my team's pretty damn close to unstoppable now.
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