On the other side of the battlefield, the Twin Stars Mecha Pilots saw that the drone swarm had tied down Earth's Mecha Forces behind them. As the distance between the two sides widened, their expressions relaxed.
"Hahaha! We finally shook them off!"
"Those bastards sure know how to hide. They actually had this many mecha lying in ambush here. Good thing we brought plenty of drones this time."
"So what if they're good at hiding? All we have to do now is tie up a few firing positions for a while, and victory is ours!"
"..."
Amid their slightly excited chatter, shrill alarms suddenly blared from every onboard radar at once.
The Twin Stars Mecha Pilots tensed. Then, on their mecha displays, they saw countless points of starlight rising from the Floating Fortress—a huge wave of missiles hurtling toward them like a curtain of rain...
"Long-range missiles! Five thousand, in three waves! All units, intercept in Shotgun Mode!"
The Twin Stars mecha were no strangers to this type of attack and responded swiftly.
Although the number of missiles launched by the Earth Army was somewhat alarming, the Twin Stars Mecha Pilots were not intimidated.
In fact, in space warfare, where radar targeting had grown increasingly precise and laser weapons were immensely powerful, long-range missiles posed little threat to highly maneuverable small targets such as mecha and fighters. They had no defenses, followed simple trajectories, and were not particularly fast.
Nearly two hundred Twin Stars mecha raised their guns in unison and switched to Shotgun Mode. Amid a continuous series of beeps, their automatic fire-control radars rapidly locked onto one target after another.
Shotgun Mode: a high-energy laser beam could be split by a simple beam splitter into several, or even a dozen or more, shotgun lasers of equal power. It