Hell was raining down on both the expeditionary fleet and dwarven attack fleet.
Though the two were slowly coming closer, at this time the artillery mechs of both sides were putting their all in this fight.
In their perception, their only opponents were their counterparts on the opposing side. The mech pilots of the artillery mechs in the expeditionary fleet gradually became familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the Steel Rain.
At the same time, the elite dwarven mech pilots of the Steel Rain also gained the measure of their opponents. Due to their specialization, they quickly found out that their opponents were inferior in every possible way.
The Steel Rain benefited from better mechs, stronger cannons, tougher armor, more thorough training and most importantly a heart for artillery combat!
"Amateurs." A Steel Rain dwarf contemptuously snickered.
The man in question was one of the Slug Rangers who had proven his skills and valor many times back when he served on a different mech regiment. His efforts to stand out from his colleagues paid off when his superiors approved of his transfer to the most prestigious brotherhood in the Slug Rangers.
Now, the prospect of unleashing holy punishment against the arrogant humans who had the temerity to treat the sovereign Vulcan Empire as their backyard had raised his combat state to a whole new peak!
"Hahahaha! Break for me, tall folk!" Furga Holbarn exulted. "I will not stop until my cannons have shattered each and every one of your mutated bodies!"
The hatred of the Vulcanites against normal humans had reached such an extreme that many of them had even begun to develop warped theories to justify their own supremacy.
According to one fringe theory that had gained popularity among the Dwarven God cultists as of late, heavy gravity variant humans weren't genetically modified people at all. They were the original and most perfect version of humans!
The reason why humanity gained the upper hand and managed to oppress and enslave the once-dominant race of dwarves was because their gods had betrayed the original race of mankind!
Dwarves were too powerful for the gods to control. Aside from the great and compassionate Vulcan that remained true to dwarvenkind, the other evil human gods had conspired against dwarves like Furga.
Ever greedy for power and control, the treacherous gods betrayed the proper order and create a new slave race made out of mutated dwarves!
By distorting the perfect dwarven form and turning them into spindly, tall shapes, the evil gods created a new race that was physically weaker, less intelligent and at least three times uglier. The humans that resulted from this unholy transformation became the best helpers, as they not only obeyed the traitor gods without a fault, but were also too weak and incompetent to ever rebel against their own creators!
Furga Holbarn momentarily felt pity for his distant human opponents. How could they not realize their own captivity? Wasn't it obvious that the gods were controlling their potential through the deceptive organizations known as the Mech Trade Association and the Common Fleet Alliance?
The Big Two were evil. They were ostensibly trying to protect humanity, but the reality was that they were exploiting the ignorant humans instead. From taking away the right to wield the strongest weapons and warships to preventing people from founding proper star nations, it couldn't be more clear to the dwarves that the evil human gods had done everything they could to keep their chattel in their cages!
"It is the duty of every dwarf to break this falsehood!"
The MTA and CFA were all fronts for the gods that had caused the fall of the dwarven race. If the descendants of the original race of mankind wanted to reverse this injustice, then they had to defeat the slave race and break apart the hypocritical Big Two in order to expose the evil gods that had been conspiring to limit the potential of both dwarves and humans.
What was worse was that many dwarves had been deceived as well!
Too many race traitors in the Vulcan Empire had chosen to take shelter under the MTA, preferring to rely on the very gods that had inflicted a great injustice on the dwarves to preserve their meager existences.
The first step to tear down the evil gods was to free the dwarves from the Big Two's oppression was to tear the mask of the MTA! The anointed soldiers of the Ferril Provincial Army had to show that this evil Association was not their protector but their jailor!
"Kill! Kill! Kill!"
The tall folk from the opposing fleet were assuredly the accomplices of the evil gods. The organization set up by the betrayers of Vulcan and dwarvenkind wouldn't have given these 'Larkinsons' and other rabble permission to travel freely in the Smiling Samuel Star Sector otherwise.
It was clear that these tall folk had nothing but bad intentions in mind when they sought to travel straight into the heart of the Vulcan Empire! Who knew whether these brainwashed slaves sought to gather crucial intelligence or plant some kind of secret superweapon in the dwarven empire.
The enemy had to be stopped before it could do any damage to one of the few states in the galaxy that still preserved the truth about dwarvenkind!
Furga's lips curled into a savage grin. "I couldn't have asked for a better mech!"
He was one of the few members of the Steel Rain who piloted the coveted Land Cracker heavy artillery mech.
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