Although Venerable Irene Mox made it seem as if her bombardnt attacks were nothing more than routine operations, Ves understood how difficult it was to perform them ti and ti again.
Heavy artillery chs were never that precise, especially when it ca to indirect fire.
Unguided or semi-guided munitions fired dozens or even hundreds of kiloters away not only had to cross incredible distances, but could also beco affected by many different variables during flight.
Depending on velocity, distance and other variables, the delay between firing artillery cannons and striking distant targets could stretch on for many seconds or minutes!
It was not unusual for heavy artillery chs to fire their powerful armants at an enemy ch unit in the distance, only for the latter to move around and completely avoid the shelling!
Heavy artillery chs would only waste a lot of ammunition if they tried to bombard any enemy ch detected by the scouts.
This was an important consideration in any campaign as the amount of supplies that an invading ch army could ship from the rear was limited.
It was much easier and less wasteful for the heavy artillery chs to bombard enemy ch units when they were pinned down!
However, it was anything but simple to bombard enemy chs, even if they were engaged with other machines.
So much could change while the chs moved that a bombardnt could easily damage friendly chs instead.
This was why most heavy artillery chs refrained from firing their guns in these situations.
Only a highly skilled expert pilot such as Venerable Irene Mox dared to open fire with her howitzers under these circumstances!
Ves could see that this was a brilliant feat of cooperation that not many ch units could replicate.
The Quillim ch pilots that fight in this warzone were all aware of what Venerable Mox was capable of. They developed a common set of tactics and routines that essentially centered around providing opportunities for the Iron Hedgehog to open fire.
The friendly Quillim chs did not deviate from their positions too much and tried to pin down the opposing forces as much as possible.
The Quillims even gave up obvious opportunities to land their crippling blows in favor of maintaining their safe positions!
The trust they put into the only expert heavy artillery ch on their side was rewarded.
Venerable Irene Mox put all of her effort into providing the best possible support from a distance. She constantly reminded herself that her expert ch was able to leisurely remain in the rear because her comrades kept the enemy chs busy.
The expert pilot perford many different operations with her powerful mind and will.
She predicted the movents of the enemy chs up to a minute in advance.
She calculated the firing angles, trajectories, ti of flight of her next attack salvo.
She took the obstacles between her expert ch and her targets into account and calculated whether she needed to destroy or drill a hole through them first.
She selected a specific high-tech shell type to be loaded into the howitzers before setting their individual paraters to fine-tune their trajectories, their ti of flight and their explosion radii.
Venerable Irene Mox had very little ti to perform all of these calculations, but she was able to do all of this with the help of her expert ch in less than a second!
The shorter the delay, the higher her hit rate. She had trained long and hard to minimize these necessary steps as much as possible.
Once she developed her firing solution, she only took a brief mont of ti to listen to her intuition.
This was the final test she applied to herself. If her instincts told her that pulling the trigger would lead to adverse outcos, she would resolutely hold her fire and find a different way to support her comrades!
Ves had only seen her abort her attacks once over the last few days. It is incredibly astonishing to see her process so much data and get everything right on such a consistent basis.
He learned through his perusal of the textbooks recomnded by Master Decimus Horst that most ch pilots simply couldn't reach this level!
Although Venerable Irene Mox may be able to pull it off consistently by virtue of being an expert pilot, Ves knew by studying her precisely controlled actions inside her head that she had trained several advanced skills in order to perfect this routine!
The results of all of her practice was evident. The Iron Hedgehog turned into the greatest long-ranged supporter for the Quillim ch battalion advancing into the city.
Bontue chs that could normally get away with hindering or even defeating the invading chs up close all beca engulfed in one resonance-empowered explosion after another!
It didn't matter if the Iron Hedgehog's shelling rarely felled the enemy chs. Venerable Irene Mox had beco extrely proficient at estimating how much damage it took to cripple them just enough to turn them into easy prey for other machines!
Although Irene certainly did not mind if she could fell enemy chs by herself, the Bontues weren't stupid enough to expose their machines to the fury of an expert heavy artillery ch!
In fact, the Bontue defenders had lost so many chs through the sa bombardnt tactics that they eventually had to change their strategy.
The Iron Hedgehog was too unbearable!
No Bontue ch pilot wanted to enter the fray, only for an explosive shell to erupt in the rear and easily crumple the relatively fragile rear side of his machine!
The Quillim ch units that advanced into the city picked up their pace as the defenders gave up a lot of ground without putting as much of a fight as before.
It was only when the attacking chs reached the downtown area that their progress began to stall.
This was because the more central and valuable city districts were much more heavily defended!
The tall office buildings were partially built like fortresses. It took a lot of damage in order to stop them from acting as giant walls.
The downtown city districts were also covered by titan shields.
"These shields are not bad." Ves concluded.
Titan shield technology in this ti period was already fairly mature. They were originally derived from shield technology developed for battleships and could withstand a huge amount of punishnt.
There was no way for chs to penetrate the powerful shield barriers quickly. Not even the most penetrating attacks launched by the Iron Hedgehog could punch through these energy shields.
The Quillim attackers could only get past this troubleso obstacle by overloading it with an abundance of ranged attacks.
The other heavy artillery chs finally made themselves useful and constantly bombarded the titan shields in the distance.
In the anti, the Iron Hedgehog provided fire support in other areas, but otherwise remained silent in order to conserve its resources.
Venerable Irene Mox used this ti to pull herself back from the mont and evaluate her past actions. She ticulously went through every decision she made and ruthlessly criticized her perceived faults even though they weren't that big of a deal to Ves!
She never spent any thoughts on admiring her own skills or basking in the gratitude of the comrades she helped.
There was only inadequacy and dissatisfaction in her mind.
No matter how well she perford her duties, there were always better and more optimal ways for her to solve her problems.
"I should have increased the power of the explosive shells…"
"Howitzer 3 was angled 0.25 degrees too high…"
"The ch of Lieutenant Orie Vellum was struck by shrapnel. That should have never happened…"
Ves had never seen any expert pilot who loathed her strength as much as Venerable Mox.
Was this one of the key qualities that a ch pilot needed to have in order to push themselves all the way to god pilot?
He already developed a theory that the growth of a ch pilot was heavily related to how much they yearned for greater strength in order to attain their goals.
Though Irene did not provide him with definite proof to back up this theory, she still provided a lot of helpful clues!
Of course, Ves did not think this was enough to allow her to overco the barriers that blocked her way towards god pilot.
"There are still a couple of missing ingredients."
The ti it took to fell the titan shields was fairly long. It was not enough to destroy a single one. The Quillims wanted to knock out all of them so that the defenders did not have an impenetrable fortress to fall back upon.
While the Bontues occasionally sent out chs to launch sudden attacks at the Quillim chs that were waiting for the titan shields to fall, Venerable Irene Mox patiently waited for the most crucial stage of this urban assault to comnce.
As long as the Bontues were driven out of the most heavily defended downtown districts, the city would finally fall into Quillim hands!
The remaining defensive works in the city would no longer be able to block the subsequent assaults. It would be much better for the Bontues to evacuate all of the combat assets that they could transfer and resist the planetary invasion at another city!
"The shields are about to fall in 10 minutes! Get ready, Venerable Mox. You are authorized to destroy up to fifty percent of the infrastructure in the downtown districts. The command net has already marked the structures that should remain intact whenever possible."
"Received." Irene responded as she studied the new data made available on the command net.
Good data collection and planning was essential to optimizing the performance of heavy artillery chs.
The more ti that heavy artillery ch pilots were able to familiarize themselves with the circumstances, the more effective they beca when the actual fighting started.
Venerable Irene Mox was incredibly obsessive in this regard. She had already spent much of her downti on studying the blueprints of the central city district and even went as far as calling up the data on individual buildings!
Irene set a new goal for herself as the ti to attack ca closer.
"I must end the fight within 18 minutes."
That was a harsh goal! Ves did not think that it was possible for the Quillims to overrun several heavily-defended city districts in so little ti.
Ves figured that it would take several hours to dislodge all of the defenders and drive their surviving assets away.
Yet as the titan shields finally fell in succession, Irene turned into a beast again!
"FIRE!"
Though Venerable Irene Mox did not make any unnecessary sounds or movents, her force of will surged with anger and purpose, helping her perform all of the complex calculations and judgnt calls in record ti.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
All sixteen cannons of her expert chs fired in sequence as they were all aid at different targets many kiloters away.
Bontue chs that fought desperately to hold back the advancing Quillim machines either got knocked off their feet or suffered heavy damage.
Enemy ranged chs that had just moved out beca engulfed by explosions before they could fire more shots.
Strong fixed defenses were struck by multiple gauss rounds and received just enough damage to make them inoperable!
All of this happened in many different locations in the downtown areas.
No matter where the Bontues fought, the distant terror of the Iron Hedgehog suppressed all of them to such an extensive degree that their confidence had cooled.
The suppression exerted by a single expert ch was just too much!
As their comrades scread and suffered defeat at an alarming pace, the surviving Bontue ch pilots beca so affected by all of the chaos and destruction that their willingness to fight quickly evaporated!
Even though the Bontues still had enough chs and other assets that could bleed the invading machines, Venerable Irene Mox beat them up so much that their commanding officers decided to call for retreat well in advance!
Less than 14 minutes passed since the main offensive began.
Ves was ntally gobsmacked by how much the Iron Hedgehog had accomplished during this engagent.
"This… is the true power of heavy artillery…"
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