The assault on the Deten System had gone off on a rocky start. Nevertheless, the appearance of the 6th Flagrant Vandals in what the Vesia Kingdom considered its heartland ca as a huge shock to both sides of the war.
The ch Corps barely exerted any oversight on the Vandals. Whenever soone in high command got reminded of their existence, they brushed the motley ch regint off as a bunch of cowardly raiders too scared to man up and attack the ch Legion.
Everyone had made a serious mistake in underestimating the Flagrant Vandals.
Living up to the na of their ch regint, the Flagrant Vandals smashed everyone’s expectations and struck at one of the Imodris Duchy’s more significant industrial systems.
The damage already dealt to its infrastructure ca as a heavy blow, but the Vandals had only just begun. The local rebels did most of the damage so far, and now it was ti for the Vandals to deliver on their promises.
The attack on Deten II still needed ti to fornt. The first detachnt of the Vandal fleet approached the smaller planet and its valuable solar foundries with greedy anticipation. Count Reizen rallied every household troop of House Jier to form a line of defense around the most important asset of the planet, its renewable exotics mine.
This left much of the planet undefended, including its various complexes and the solar foundries spinning in orbit. Count Reizen made the determination that he couldn’t spread his limited household troops to defend everything, so he concentrated them all to form a deterrent.
Basically, the count told the incoming Vandals to wreck everything else but the possession he prized the most.
Naturally, many industrialists did not agree to beco House Reizen’s sacrificial lambs. Due to panic and indecision, they rebelled or sowed chaos on Deten II, which ironically paved the way for the incoming Vandals.
Count Reizen and the people of the Deten System couldn’t be blad for their confusing responses. Complacency lay at the heart of their incompetence. Even as the Bright Republic and the Vesia Kingdom battled at the frontlines, the ch Corps never raided as far as Imodris.
While the border systems endured so many raids that they responded like a well-oiled machine when faced with another incursion, the complacent people of Deten II and IV had never dealt with such a massive attack.
"Rise up, comrades!" A ferocious woman stood atop a wrecked laser turret as she bared her rifle in the air. "The ti has co to pull down the nobles from their lofty perches!"
In the hot and sweltering environnt of Deten II, half of her crowd wore thin climate suits that allowed them to stay cool. Both suited and unsuited people cheered and raised their arms, though their numbers and enthusiasm fell a little short.
The rally hadn’t lasted more than a couple of minutes before a series of thuds started transmitting from the ground.
"Footsteps... chs! Incoming chs!"
"It’s a company ch! Run!"
No one kid themselves into thinking they could fight against a machine of war. The fear of chs had set in deep among the population. Before the rebel woman could persuade her crowd otherwise, her audience had completely scurried away before the Jier chs even arrived.
Seeing that the situation went to hell pretty fast, the rebel woman abandoned her elevated perch and ran away for safety as well. "Bunch of spineless cowards!"
Unlike the haphazard unrest wracking Deten II, the situation on Detent IV deteriorated into full-blown anarchy.
"Hahahaha! We’re rich!" A man shouted as he looted a luxury store inside a mall. Though he had no idea how he could sell his ill-gotten loot of luxury clothes, just the thought of obtaining decades-worth his salary in booty made him delirious.
Just as the handful of n ran towards their aircar, a volley of laser and projectile fire spat in their direction. The aim of the assailants was atrocious, but the sheer volu of fire eventually struck down all of the looters.
A swarm of teenagers erged from the corners and dashed towards the fallen n. They quickly deprived them of their loot and made their way out, giggling and laughing all the while.
Elsewhere, two company forces guarding two adjacent manufacturing complexes clashed against each other in a full-blown battle.
"Stop this madness!" The commander of the defense force at Westcott Machinery Supply broadcasted in the open. The man piloted his knight to withstand another barrage of incoming fire for his ranged chs. "The rebels are burning everything down and the Brighters are about to make landfall! This is no ti to settle our grudges!"
A maddened laughter escaped the speakers of a gaudily-decorated cannoneer ch from United Alloy Supplies. It blasted its ballistic cannon indiscriminately towards the Westcott forces.
"I always hated seeing you parade your chs in front of our faces! Now, I finally get the opportunity to do you Westcott goons in!"
"You won’t get away with this!" The Westcott commander shouted back as his knight ch bashed its way to the front and slamd its shield ch against a spearman ch that hadn’t moved away in ti. "Westcott forever!"
"Westcott forever!" The ch pilots of the defending chs echoed.
None of them questioned whether it made sense to defend a facility while the rest of the planet went crazy. Their loyalty to their company compelled them to fight, if not to the bitter end, then at least they should give a good accounting.
Yet the attackers were no slouches either. "Victory to UAS!"
"Victory to UAS!"
Civilians ran towards old and neglected shelters. Troublemakers sought their chance to even the scores against their rivals. The rebels fanned the flas by destroying key infrastructure and inciting mass panic.
All the while, the auxiliary regints that turned traitor took control over enough anti-air turrets to make every ascent into space a risky prospect. They also deployed hidden missile launchers throughout Deten IV to augnt their air defense and bring down any vessel that tried to escape the planet.
Dozens of ships and shuttles fell before everyone learned their lesson. Unless they boarded a heavily armored combat carrier, they wouldn’t dream about making another attempt.
The rebels still kept up their guard. They knew that Lord Javier was on the surface when the rebellion broke out. He might still be biding his ti to get away aboard an armored or stealthed escape vessel, so they pulled out all the stops and constantly scanned the surroundings of the capital city.
High above the skies and beyond Deten IV’s atmosphere, the second detachnt of the Vandal fleet approached the moons. Two of them posed a considerable concern to Major Verle. Without securing those two locations, he wouldn’t feel reassured when he deployed his landbound chs to the planet.
"Mr. Brandstad! Give sothing!"
"We’re working on it!" Alloc frazzedly replied. Both Ves and Alloc scoured through tons of data in order to find a way to ease the next actions.
Neither Ves nor Alloc found any obvious weaknesses in the laser rifleman chs that ford the main line of defense at the lunar fortress.
The focus lay on the Avon Mark VII Type D, which served as House Eneqqin’s standard rearguard ch model. The House’s in-house designers ford the Type D as a simpler and more affordable variant of their much more renowned Type A design.
The Type A was an impressive laser rifleman ch design that ford the mainstay of House Eneqqin’s household troops. Therefore, a cheaper variant derived from it wouldn’t be so easy to crack. The Type D inherited most of the Type A’s strengths while hardly exposing any weaknesses.
Obviously, a lot of effort had been put into optimizing its design. Hundreds of ch designers spent many thousands of man-hours into working away its flaws. Try as he might, Ves peered at the Type D’s design from every direction but couldn’t put a dent in its seemingly perfect exterior.
"I don’t believe this design is perfect! No design is perfect!"
The only weaknesses of the Type D they ca up with so far were the generic ones that all laser rifleman chs suffered from, such as their low burst damage and their vulnerability up close.
Even a toddler could figure that out. Ves had to dig deeper and find sothing more pertinent in order to make the upcoming battle a little easier for the Vandals.
Fortunately, he wasn’t working alone. Alloc possessed a lot of experience in this area, and he quickly honed in on a potential weakness. "Ves! Study its heat dispersal chanisms! I rember that the Mark VI version of the Type A relies on disposable coolants to get rid of most of its heat in an instant. If the coolant tank got burst, the ch’s internals almost always glitched out. See if this still applies for the Mark VII!"
The Avon series had progressed by a major milestone since those weaknesses beca known. Its designers must have certainly patched up the vulnerabilities, but they wouldn’t have been able to mitigate the problem completely. The Type D possessed too little structure to do so.
Now that Alloc shone a light in a potentially promising direction, Ves rapidly called up past data on the Mark VI and Mark VII versions of the Type A and Type D. Most of the intelligence had been derived through a combination of analyzing past battle footage and stealing sensitive design docunts by the intelligence services of the Republic.
This caused the data to be largely incomplete. Ves had to struggle through gaping holes and unreliable guesswork, but eventually he found a chink in the armor.
"I think they changed the placent of the coolant tank to the center and inwards! However, the discharge chanisms are largely the sa! It’s harder to breach the coolant tank, but if our boys can manage it, the Type D’s will certainly be taken out of commission!"
"Good work Ves, but it’s not enough!"
They passed on the information to Major Verle anyway. This kept the ch commander off their backs for a tiny bit. The two ch designers continued to study the active cooling systems of the Type, knowing that there must be more they could find out.
"Deploying spaceborn chs!"
A large number of spaceborn chs launched from the hangar bays of the combat carriers and took up guard positions. For the assault of the lunar fortress, Major Verle wanted to drop close but not quite on top of the Vesian defenders.
With most of the turrets taken out by the rebels, the Vesian anti-air capabilities had beco severely curtailed. While the Vandals still had to be wary of their rifleman chs, Major Verle gambled on the possibility would be able to drop onto the surface without suffering any losses.
Ves thought that Verle had made a very bold bet.
Minutes away from starting the descent of half of their combat carriers, Ves finally achieved a breakthrough in his analysis!
"Reporting! The Amavon Mark VII Type D’s are vulnerable to explosive and kinetic damage to their lower left sides! The armor doesn’t need to be breached in order to cripple it. The Type D skimped on their structural integrity, so it won’t be able to shield its internals against the concussive shocks from explosive and kinetic attacks."
Ves sent along his analysis of the weakness. Attacking the lower left side of the Type D’s would potentially allow their assailants to take them out with up to fifty percent less effort than taking it out conventionally!
"That’s more like it!" Major Verle complinted him for once. "Switch up the first wave! I want the missileers up front and advance to dium range before unleashing their payloads! Bring the Akkara’s up front as well!"
"Sir, that would leave our carriers undefended!"
"Then hold the Hellcats and a couple of Inheritors back! They won’t be of much use in the coming attack!"
The last-minute adjustnts made it clear that Major Verle was prepared to stake the lives of his n and won over the vulnerability revealed by the ch designers.
This caused Ves to gulp. It was all well and good to state his observations, but if he spoke incorrectly, a lot of lives would be lost due to his words. Sweat poured down his brow as he watched the coming action with a lot of apprehension.
User Comments
0 comments from readers