Lieutenant Edmund Corsica of the Destiny Hamrs piloted his heavy artillery ch with great proficiency.
Ard with as much as ten energy and physical cannons, the ch expended both energy and ammunition at a judicious rate as it pumled one of the Hexer-built combat carriers of the Larkinson Clan.
The only downside to carrying so much armant was that the ch was rapidly heating up while expending much of its ammunition and energy!
As the limited ammo reserves of his ch started to bottom out, the hatch into the bunker slid open. A porter ch along with so cargo bots arrived just in ti to deliver fresh supplies.
The thick and heavyset ch ceased fire and opened up a rear port that exposed its spent ammunition and energy cell canisters.
Jets of cooling fluids sprayed from the sides of the bunker, causing it to fill up with steam. The artillery ch was already cooling down once it silenced its guns, but the extra cooling asures accelerated its recovery!
The porter ch proficiently removed the depleted canisters and put fresh ones in their place. The ch slapped its heavy palm against the rear port that had just closed.
"You're set! Good luck, Edmund!"
"Keep up the good work, Benny."
As a proud soldier and ch officer of the Vanguard Group, he knew the importance of this battle.
The creator of glows and one of the most influential supporters of the Hexadric Hegemony was aboard the factory ship of the enemy fleet.
Ending the life of the forr Brighter known as Ves Larkinson was their primary objective!
The increasingly more intensive engagent took a greater toll on both sides. Starships began to receive crippling damage while various chs were starting to collapse after being subjected to focused fire.
The duel between the Transcendent Punishers and the Destiny Hamrs had beco the focal point of the struggle between the Larkinsons and the Fridayn in the battle.
The latter numbered less, but their heavy artillery chs were superior on almost every front! Compared to a Transcendent Punisher, the machine piloted by Lieutenant Corsica possessed greater mass, possessed more guns, carried greater armor and incorporated so of the best targeting systems developed by the Coalition!
The Destiny Hamr ch pilots themselves exhibited much greater proficiency than any of their Ylvainan counterparts.
The latter only took up piloting heavy chs only recently. What was even worse was that the Ylvainan ch pilots were barely accustod to piloting second-class chs.
Lieutenant Corsica and his comrades were different. They attended the best ch academies of the Vanguard Group and committed to an artillery track early on. They spent many years learning the ins and outs of the various skills needed to utilize the most advanced functions of artillery chs.
The Destiny Hamrs was made up of the best graduates that ca out of these ch academies. Once they entered the elite ch regint, they weren't allowed to pilot one of the powerful machines right away. They had to spend years polishing their marksmanship and control abilities before they were even ready to pilot the advanced heavy artillery chs!
All of the effort put into their training paid off. Edmund and his comrades exhibited as much as 50 percent greater accuracy!
Their superior marksmanship compared with all of the technical assistance provided by their ch inflicted thodical, controlled destruction onto their targets!
And this was despite the fact the Forward Montum was slowly spinning along her length!
It was much harder for the Destiny Hamrs to keep their aim consistent while their firing platforms constantly moved, yet ch pilots such as Edmund Corsica considered it routine.
In fact, it was not necessarily bad for the individual chs to lose line of sight for a ti.
Not only did it spoil every attempt made by the enemy to breach their bunkers, the maneuvers also granted the Destiny Hamr chs precious ti to cool down their rapidly-heating chs.
If there was one notable flaw to their chs, it was that there was no way to avoid excessive heat generation!
This was a rule that every artillery ch designer had to grapple with. More firepower always generated more waste heat due to lots of energy being converted to one form or another. The Destiny Hamrs happened to love their guns a lot, so it was a given that all of their artillery chs boasted a multitude of guns, allowing them to output a huge burst of damage in a very short ti!
While that made them very great at penetrating armor and fortified positions, their ch pilots constantly had to keep track of the condition of every single cannon as well as the rest of their chs.
A flood of data continued to flow back and forth between Lieutenant Corsica and his familiar machine. Normally, he wouldn't fire his guns so rapidly, but the critical nature of this battle left him and his fellow Destiny Hamrs with little choice.
If they failed their crucial mission, then dying was the least of his concerns. The Vanguard Group was already one of the underdogs of the Komodo War. If he couldn't stop the nace of glows right now, then the Coalition partner that Edmund regarded as ho might not be able to last!
"Ever Forward!" Edmund cried out the motto of the Vanguard Army!
"EVER FORWARD!" His comrades echoed!
As several more combat carriers and bunkers succumbed to their weight of fire, he and his Vanguarders already knew in advance that they were destined to win this artillery duel.
Their enemies were too bad. Whoever the Larkinsons put into the cockpits of their admittedly-decent artillery chs were still too green!
The large number of misses, the lack of focus, the inability to adjust to spinning starships and so on all pointed out that the Larkinson artillery chs were amateurs who were way out of their depth!
"Well, it's not as if I expected more from these third-raters." Edmund contemptuously muttered.
Now that he gained a asure of his opponents and their equipnt, his ch began to inflict greater destruction. He already knew how to dismantle the standard hexagon-shaped bunkers that the Hexers favored in as little ti as possible.
Just as his guns along with the guns of the rest of his squad transford an enemy artillery ch into a piece of scrap, the enemy fire abruptly abated for so reason.
Lieutenant Corsica looked puzzled. "Have the enemy artillery chs overheated?"
It shouldn't be. The enemy chs fired their cannons at a slower rate and more sustainable rate. As soone who knew artillery chs well, Edmund instinctively felt as if the enemy was preparing sothing big.
Of course, that did not an the Destiny Hamrs were willing to abide by the rhythm of their opponents. Their cannons kept launching powerful beams and solid rounds at their targets without interruption. Just like their battle cry, once they attacked, they never stopped until they completed their mission!
Just as Lieutenant Corsica succeeded in felling yet another combat carrier together with his comrades, the enemy artillery chs that possessed clear firing lines all fired their primary armants at the sa ti!
"What?!"
Over 800 positron beams and gauss rounds hit over a dozen different points along the hull of the Forward Montum with practically no deviation in aim!
The attacks shouldn't have been able to shake a capital ship, yet the deep strike fleet carrier sohow vibrated just enough to affect Edmund's artillery ch's aim!
Shortly afterwards, the cooling fluid being sprayed onto the ch ceased to flow!
"What happened?!" He demanded.
"The enemy salvo managed to pierce through the hull of the Forward Montum! Several sensitive compartnts and power lines are damaged. We are doing our best to restore the knocked-out systems, but it will take ti!"
Just as the ch lieutenant pondered over the coordinated strike, the enemy artillery chs unleashed yet another devastating salvo with their kinetic weapons!
This ti, Lieutenant Corsica flinched as nurous kinetic rounds slamd into the bunker above his artillery ch!
What was remarkable was that the rounds all hit the port where his third primary gauss cannon was poking out. While half of the powerful gauss rounds cratered into the solid surface of the bunker, they nonetheless created an opening that just happened to allow another gauss round to rip right into the barrel of his third gun!
"Ahh!"
The Destiny Hamr artillery ch jerked as both its third and fourth gauss cannons were instantly knocked offline due to the direct attack!
"Impossible! How can they be so precise all of sudden?!"
Lieutenant Corsica wasn't able to ponder this question too much. The earlier attack had just blasted apart an entire weapon mount, causing his ch to incur significant damage to a side!
While his ch was too big, tough and heavy to let the damage affect the functioning of the rest of the ch, Edmund still felt concerned!
"Why didn't they fire their positron beams?"
Just a second later, the enemy responded!
Over a dozen beams struck the gap in the bunker! Just like before, a number of hits went slightly wide as there were too many variables at play.
Yet despite all of these conditions, at least five full-powered positron beams managed to thread the needle, causing them to hit straight onto the already-damaged portion of Edmund's ch!
"Ahhh!"
More portions of the stricken ch incurred heavy damage! What was even worse was that the heat levels of the machine rose rapidly, causing the ch to lose its ability to fire its cannons and slowing down its responses.
Lieutenant Corsica's heart beat faster and faster. Once might be a coincidence. Twice was deliberate. What if the enemy artillery chs fired a third ti?
"Damn! I need to withdraw back into the ship while waiting for my ch to cool down!"
He quickly asked permission to withdraw from his captain, which was granted right away.
"Pull back and stabilize the condition of your ch." His superior told him. "Ergency repair bots are already on their way, lieutenant!"
"Roger that!"
While Edmund tried his best to withdraw his ch as quickly as possible, this was not exactly a quick process. Due to the extensive anchoring between his artillery ch and the bunker, it normally took at least 20 seconds to lift the legs of the chs out of slots built into the deck.
In fact, the ch lieutenant estimated it would take twice as much ti due to the damage sustained by his ch as well as the extre heat affecting the performance of many components.
"Too slow!"
Barely seven seconds passed after Edmund had begun the laborious withdrawal process before the enemy artillery chs struck yet again.
This ti, over two-dozen gauss rounds and positron beams precisely struck the damaged and partially-damaged roof of the bunker.
The previous attacks that failed to enter the gap had weakened the structure just enough for the third and final salvo to collapse the roof entirely!
Even if heavy chs were notoriously fad for their ability to keep going despite sustaining a lot of hits, the enemy attacks weren't light at all! The positron beams softened up the surface layers of the exposed ch while the gauss rounds slamd through and transferred an imnse amount of destructive kinetic energy onto their target!
Lieutenant Corsica was unable to think any longer. He didn't even have ti to cry out the battle cry of the Vanguard Army, nor think about his two young sons that he was leaving behind.
His life passed in an instant as the attacks collapsed his cockpit, crushing his body into bloody mush!
In just three salvos, the Larkinson artillery chs managed to fell 20 percent of the Destiny Hamrs taking part in this battle!
The Forward Montum bore dozens of scars as various bunkers and surface components were blasted apart. More critically, a lot of maneuvering thrusters had been struck as well, thereby impairing the fleet carrier's ability to adjust her course and make it difficult for enemies to target specific sections!
Despite these sudden setbacks, the Destiny Hamrs did not back down. The surviving chs fired their weapons just as intensively as before. They were determined to pay back their losses tenfold!
"Ever Forward, n!"
"EVER FORWARD!" The surviving Destiny Hamr ch pilots echoed!
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