The Mech Touch

Unguided or semi-guided munitions fired dozens or even hundreds of kilometers away not only had to cross incredible distances, but could also become 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 mechs to fire their powerful armaments at an enemy mech unit in the distance, only for the latter to move around and completely avoid the shelling!

Heavy artillery mechs would only waste a lot of ammunition if they tried to bombard any enemy mech detected by the scouts.

This was an important consideration in any campaign as the amount of supplies that an invading mech army could ship from the rear was limited.

It was much easier and less wasteful for the heavy artillery mechs to bombard enemy mech units when they were pinned down!

However, it was anything but simple to bombard enemy mechs, even if they were engaged with other machines.

So much could change while the mechs moved that a bombardment could easily damage friendly mechs instead.

This was why most heavy artillery mechs 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 mech units could replicate.

The Quillim mech 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 mechs 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 mech 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 mech was able to leisurely remain in the rear because her comrades kept the enemy mechs busy.

The expert pilot performed many different operations with her powerful mind and will.

She predicted the movements of the enemy mechs up to a minute in advance.

She calculated the firing angles, trajectories, time of flight of her next attack salvo.

She took the obstacles between her expert mech 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 parameters to fine-tune their trajectories, their time of flight and their explosion radii.

Venerable Irene Mox had very little time to perform all of these calculations, but she was able to do all of this with the help of her expert mech 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 moment of time 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 outcomes, 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 recommended by Master Decimus Horst that most mech 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 mech battalion advancing into the city.

Bontue mechs that could normally get away with hindering or even defeating the invading mechs up close all became engulfed in one resonance-empowered explosion after another!

It didn\'t matter if the Iron Hedgehog\'s shelling rarely felled the enemy mechs. Venerable Irene Mox had become extremely 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 mechs by herself, the Bontues weren\'t stupid enough to expose their machines to the fury of an expert heavy artillery mech!

In fact, the Bontue defenders had lost so many mechs through the same bombardment tactics that they eventually had to change their strategy.

The Iron Hedgehog was too unbearable!

No Bontue mech 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 mech 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 mechs 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 time period was already fairly mature. They were originally derived from shield technology developed for battleships and could withstand a huge amount of punishment.

There was no way for mechs 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 troublesome obstacle by overloading it with an abundance of ranged attacks.

The other heavy artillery mechs finally made themselves useful and constantly bombarded the titan shields in the distance.

In the meantime, the Iron Hedgehog provided fire support in other areas, but otherwise remained silent in order to conserve its resources.

Venerable Irene Mox used this time to pull herself back from the moment and evaluate her past actions. She meticulously 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 performed 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 mech 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 mech 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 mech 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 overcome the barriers that blocked her way towards god pilot.

"There are still a couple of missing ingredients."

The time 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 mechs to launch sudden attacks at the Quillim mechs that were waiting for the titan shields to fall, Venerable Irene Mox patiently waited for the most crucial stage of this urban assault to commence.

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 mechs.

The more time that heavy artillery mech pilots were able to familiarize themselves with the circumstances, the more effective they became when the actual fighting started.

Venerable Irene Mox was incredibly obsessive in this regard. She had already spent much of her downtime 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 time to attack came 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 time.

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 movements, her force of will surged with anger and purpose, helping her perform all of the complex calculations and judgment calls in record time.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

All sixteen cannons of her expert mechs fired in sequence as they were all aimed at different targets many kilometers away.

Bontue mechs that fought desperately to hold back the advancing Quillim machines either got knocked off their feet or suffered heavy damage.

Enemy ranged mechs that had just moved out became 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 mech was just too much!

As their comrades screamed and suffered defeat at an alarming pace, the surviving Bontue mech pilots became so affected by all of the chaos and destruction that their willingness to fight quickly evaporated!

Even though the Bontues still had enough mechs 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 mentally gobsmacked by how much the Iron Hedgehog had accomplished during this engagement.

"This… is the true power of heavy artillery…"