Venerable Irene Mox gently raised her body into the air and smoothly entered the cockpit of the Iron Hedgehog.
As a fairly young but talented expert pilot who distinguished herself in many past engagents, the Quillim ch Army recently replaced her old low-tier expert ch for a mid-tier expert ch.
That machine was the Iron Hedgehog, an expert heavy artillery ch that had been designed with her proclivities in mind.
To Ves, it was a well-designed expert ch that was a product of its ti.
"The current date is 197 AOM." Ves reminded himself. He learned the exact date during the mission briefing earlier. "At this stage, the Age of chs has entered full-swing. All of the ssy stuff that ch designers invented in the first century has long been settled by the MTA. ch archetypes are well-defined and a lot of expert pilots have already erged."
Ace pilots were much rarer and god pilots were so few that they were revered to an even greater extent because of their scarcity!
As Ves examined the Iron Hedgehog through Venerable Irene Mox's senses as well as her strong and bountiful ntal activity, he quickly developed a basic understanding of its design and configuration.
The Iron Hedgehog was designed as a pure landbound ch. Although it could technically perform the role of a bunker ch, it was clearly not optimized for this role.
Irene's expert ch was much more suited when deployed on land.
Ves had learned from Master Decimus Horst that if he wanted to figure out any heavy artillery ch, he first had to study its armant.
The quantity of weapons as well as their properties imdiately told Ves what they were all about.
The Iron Hedgehog's weapons were split into two different categories.
The armants placed on the outside edge of its oval top consisted of 8 heavy gauss cannons.
Their calibers were not considerably large, but perhaps they did not need to be. Ves could tell that the gauss cannons were designed to maximize their muzzle velocity and precision.
What Ves found interesting about the placent of gauss cannons was that they could cover any angle when aiming straight ahead.
However, this was only ant for ergencies. The Iron Hedgehog did not have any other way to repel enemies that managed to get past friendly guardians and co close enough to threaten it at close range.
Normally, the 8 gauss cannons should be pointed at an angle. This allowed for Iron Hedgehog to fire solid rounds that followed a parabolic trajectory and land on distant targets with good speed and precision.
They were not the main sources of damage, though. The 8 howitzers that were clustered at the center portion of the Iron Hedgehog's top were remarkably simple in nature!
They were ballistic cannons that were designed to propel high-explosive shells at high angles.
What mattered the most for these howitzers was their ability to inflict lots of damage onto distant locations surrounded by complex terrain.
Many tis, resilient structures and thick mountains blocked the firing angles of ranged chs.
By employing howitzers whose rounds could be fired with steep angles of descent, a heavy artillery ch could provide valuable support from the rear whereas a typical rifleman ch remained helpless!
While there were missiles that could circumvent all kinds of obstacles before they struck their targets, it was possible to blind their sensors, interfere with their guidance or simply shoot them down before they reached their targets.
Simple but solid explosive shells were cheaper, faster, less prone to faults and could easily be replenished.
These were vitally important traits for a heavy artillery ch that was expected to launch hundreds if not thousands of explosive shells over the course of a long day!
From what Ves could surmise of the Iron Hedgehog's design, its ammunition capacity was remarkably disappointing.
"Why does it have so many guns, yet so little space for rounds and shells?"
The answer eventually beca clear once Venerable Irene Mox interfaced with her expert ch and directed it to exit the underground hangar bay.
The Iron Hedgehog slowly utilized its four thick legs to step into a ruined city.
It was clear that the Bontues and the Quillims had fought hard over this city. Heavy shelling and collateral damage made it so that there were vastly more damaged structures than untouched ones in this urban environnt!
More and more chs bearing the emblem of the Quillim ch Army strode out of the tunnel exits. Ves had the illusion that he was watching a period drama due to all of the outdated tech on display.
The Treading Drum Star Sector was located close to the galactic center where all of the best tech erged first. The chs that showed up were all fairly advanced during this ti period.
It was a pity that to a modern ch designer like Ves, the chs in view were awfully primitive in many aspects!
"It's 200 years, after all. The overall ch paradigms may have been set, but the tech that empowers these machines is constantly progressing. If I rember my history correctly, the current ch generation introduced a lot of mobility-oriented advancents that have made many chs faster than before."
In the year 185 AOM, the ch Trade Association announced the comncent of the Speed Generation. Landbound chs primarily benefited from the introduction of many innovations, but aerial and spaceborn chs also received sufficient attention.
Before this ch generation, a lot of chs moved rather ponderously on the battlefield. There were still plenty of ways to increase their traversal speeds, but that ca with heavy tradeoffs such as massively restricting their runti and forcing them to burn through an excessive amount of fuel or energy.
The Speed Generation solved many of those problems and made it much easier for ch designs to hit more favorable sweet spots.
This period of ti also happened to be the point in ch history where light chs truly beca unleashed!
It had been more than a decade after the introduction of this ch generation at the current ti. The average speed of chs had already been elevated and light chs had beco a terrible scourge that needed to be guarded against.
The ch unit that Venerable Irene Mox was attached to clearly took a lot of precautions.
Early striker chs guarded the periphery while a number of lee chs stuck close to important ranged chs such as the Iron Hedgehog.
Not a lot of aerial chs lifted off from the ground. It was dangerous to put them into exposed positions under the current conditions. The only ones that launched at this ti were dedicated scouting models that could evade many attacks.
The slow but steady march proceeded for an hour or so. Nothing much happened as the Quillim chs had yet to make contact with Bontue chs.
Though Ves was disappointed that he wouldn't be able to see the Iron Hedgehog in action right away, he bided his ti while he slowly and cautiously explored the mind of Venerable Irene Mox.
Whenever she thought of the Bontues, both anger and pain surged in her mind.
Irene hated the enemy!
This hatred went beyond the general anger that any Quillim soldier held towards the Bontues.
Her animosity was clearly personal.
"Her cousin got killed during this war."
She grew up with her cousin. They were close friends and even attended the sa ch academies.
Unfortunately, her cousin chose to specialize in piloting light chs that had just co into vogue. This exposed her relative to a lot more danger during the Terrace War.
Once Irene Mox received the awful news, she not only developed a personal hatred against the Bontue Republic, but also beca a lot more driven to kill the enemy!
As the large group of chs reached the periphery of the ruined city, the Quillim chs began to split up into smaller units.
Individual ch companies started to move at their own paces.
Light chs zipped forward and raced across the open terrain that was covered with grass and cultivated fields.
dium chs advanced at a slower pace as they thodically headed towards a specific destination.
The few heavy chs such as the Iron Hedgehog dug into their current positions and waited for the situation to develop.
Ves didn't realize clearly until now how much heavy artillery chs had to wait around. They weren't suitable for moving around a lot, and their impressive range gave them the luxury to stay in place.
He hadn't been paying too much attention to the previous briefing, but he quickly knew what was happening after skimming Venerable Irene Mox's thoughts.
Her current unit was assigned to attack a neighboring city that was held by the Bontue defenders.
Since this planet originally belonged to the Bontue Republic, it was clear that its troops held a substantial defensive advantage!
Multiple Quillim units had therefore been assigned to attack the neighboring city from several directions. The attacking troops outnumbered the defending ones, but that still made it difficult to dislodge the latter!
More ti passed by as the vanguard took its ti to cross the distance between cities.
It was only after the landbound light chs as well as the aerial chs reached the periphery of the target city that Venerable Irene Mox could finally make herself useful!
"Venerable Mox, please pay attention to the priority targets that we have lit up on the command net. We need your gauss cannons and howitzers to open the way."
Irene finally began to break her stoic deanor and radiated actual excitent at this ti.
"With pleasure."
Despite the vast distance between the cities, the chs in the vanguard maintained solid communications with the chs in the rearguard.
Multiple different scout chs fed a lot of valuable observation data to nurous different command chs and command vehicles.
Each of these vehicles processed the incoming data before they updated the command net with relevant information to each and every individual ch.
Venerable Irene Mox quickly processed the available data on her priority targets with incredible ease and already determined what she needed to do in the next minutes.
"Iron Hedgehog, opening fire!"
The surroundings bood as the 16 cannons all opened fire in quick succession!
The four solid legs of the heavy artillery ch had already been braced on the ground to ensure that the powerful machine swayed as little as possible.
Ves watched with amazent as sixteen resonance-empowered rounds and shells followed slightly different trajectories in the air.
Seconds later, the fast-moving gauss rounds struck their targets first!
Nurous highly reinforced bunkers, walls, turrets and other city defenses that were rated to withstand a considerable amount of bombardnt were instantly breached!
Only 5 targets had been struck in the first salvo as the tougher ones demanded multiple attacks in order to breach their defenses.
Just after the defenders were reeling from this opening blow, the howitzer shells were arcing down from above at this ti!
A lot of rapid-fire cannons had begun to open fire at the incoming shells in a desperate attempt to detonate their warheads in advance, but this did not work as the Iron Hedgehog's howitzer shells were faster and more resistant towards damage!
BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM!
A mass of impressive explosions engulfed entire streets as they unleashed their resonance-empowered fury on a destructive scale!
What impressed Ves a lot were the shells that happened to strike the larger structures that the Iron Hedgehog had previously breached.
Sohow, Venerable Irene Mox was able to aim her howitzer cannons in such a fashion that their shells accurately flew through the newly made holes before blowing up the interior of these damaged fortifications!
This was just the start.
Ves watched on with amazent as an entire exterior defensive line began to suffer utter ruination as the astounding firepower of a single expert heavy artillery ch thodically lay waste to all of the fixed structures!
Although the Iron Hedgehog rapidly depleted its ammunition due to the high frequency of attacks, Ves saw that this was not that big of a deal.
Two different supply chs approached from the rear. Each of them held several containers filled with additional ammunition that were just waiting to be loaded into the Iron Hedgehog!
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