The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1935

Chapter 1935 One against Five

The dwarves had gone mad. To the guards and workers in the employ of House Kantis, the actions of their slaves completely made no sense.

Where did they get their gear? How could they have armed themselves with serviceable armor and deadly weaponry?

Where could they have possibly hidden their battle wagons? Why had the guards failed to sniff out something so enormous?

Half an hour after the start of hostilities, most of the fighting at Outpost 35 died down.

Most of the unarmed dwarves and tall folk already managed to flee to the nearest shelters and hunker down. Most of the deaths occurred in the first ten minutes as plenty of dwarves and tall folk got caught up in the firefights that erupted all over the outposts.

The battles between the dwarven battle wagons and the guard mechs resulted in a lot of destruction. The prefab structures may have been tough enough to endure the heavy gravity, but they were wholly insufficient in withstanding enemy fire!

Plenty of civilians huddling inside those structures died when their buildings got crushed by collisions or raked with lasers as the mechs used them as cover!

On the street level, the vigorous battles between the foot soldiers produced much less collateral damage, but a lot more deaths!

Master Gion Greybeard observed silently from the top of a tall prefab as the bodies on the streets of the underground outpost increased.

What pained him the most was that most of the bodies were fairly short. Ever since the rebels launched their offensive, the tall folk showed no restraint in killing as many dwarves as possible!

The old dwarf held the Banner of Vulcan with an iron grip. Though few of the rebels were able to see the banner or feel its strong and distinctive glow, the rebels still fought as if their god was watching over each of their actions!

"For Vulcan!"

"Kill the tall folk!"

"Freedom is within our reach!"

Some of the street fighting turned exceptionally cruel as the dwarves fought far beyond what was asked of them! Combatants from both sides became so engulfed by violence that they took as much advantage of the situation as possible to unleash their darker urges!

Dwarves formed roaming hunting parties and began to seek out the hiding holes of the overseers who tormented them for all their lives. Once the armed dwarves broke into their homes or offices, the defenseless overseers finally paid for all of the punishments they doled out when they were drunk on power!

The tall folk did not restrain themselves either. Several guards or armed tall folk snapped and started to proactively seek out dwarves to massacre!

Neither side considered the other to be human anymore. Hardly any dwarf showed any respect or restraint towards their opposition.

In their eyes, every fellow of the wrong height needed to die, no exceptions! Throughout the outer districts and parts of the central districts, the streets and interiors of the prefab structures were dyed in red as the stink of blood and weapons discharge suffused the entire surroundings!

Though Master Gion Greybeard felt increasingly more squeamish at the sights and sounds of battle, he knew that this was a necessary consequence of battle.

He had already made peace with all of the dwarves that would perish as a result of an insurrection that he had plotted for more than a decade!

The old dwarf gazed up towards the red-and-blue banner with an X surrounded by a cog in the center.

"Do you see our determination, Vulcan? We are more than slaves. We are more than miners. Each of us are ready to sacrifice our lives in order to regain our freedom! We shall never put down our arms until we have finally escaped this planet! This we swear!"

Eventually, an armed dwarf approached the leader.

"Master Greybeard, our ace pilot has achieved a magnificent victory! With the white mech of the tall folk, Rion has managed to demolish seven of our enemy's blood-soaked mechs!"

The old dwarf gruffly grunted. "How many enemy mechs remain?"

"That.. is what I am here to report. The white mech is confronting five of the armless mechs at the southern plaza. Once the tall folk restored their communications, they have become much more difficult to deal with. Their surviving guards have stopped attempting to counterattack. They are all huddling in their fortifications."

"What of their mechs?"

"Their mech pilots haven't taken our bait. They're stubbornly staying in place."

"As expected. Vulcan is right. Once the tall folk suffer too many losses, they will no longer go on the offensive." Gion slowly smiled and turned around. "Let us proceed to the next step of the plan. Now that the tall folk are all locked in place, their 'spaceport' is exposed!"

The dwarves around him roared in jubilation! The ultimate objective of this attack was never about taking over Outpost 35!

They didn't even have to defeat the enemy mechs! As long as the fighting forces of the tall folk were eliminated or occupied, the rebels possessed a straight shot at the spaceport situated on the far side of the outpost!

"Let's go capture their ship! Don't let it escape!"

As the dwarves proceeded to complete their most essential objective, back at the southern plaza, the Genie Pearl slightly pressed its frame against a prefab structure.

The mech was quickly forced to move elsewhere as a volley of laser beams systematically melted holes in the structure!

"There are too many lasers!" Rion panicked as he clumsily piloted his mech backwards! "I can't beat five of them at the same time! It's impossible!"

Any light skirmisher specialist who heard those words would probably feel ashamed for Rion!

Sure, it was not very realistic for a single mech to overcome a formation of five alert mechs.

Yet the odds weren't as lopsided as Rion thought.

First, there was a significant difference in quality. The Genie Pearl was the personal mech of a scion of House Kantis, while the surviving hardware of the guard force consisted entirely of cheap and worn frontline mechs!

In fact, Ves estimated that the Genie Pearl might even be more expensive than all five frontline mechs put together! Even though the latter consisted of a lot more metal and components, their market positioning was completely different!

That said, even if the difference in market value between the two sides was negligible, the side with more mechs usually possessed an advantage.

In normal situations, the side with more mechs would be able to surround and flank the outnumbered side.

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