The Mech Touch novel Chapter 4910

Although Venerable Irene Mox made it seem as if her bombardment attacks were nothing more than routine operations, Ves understood how difficult it was to perform them time and time again.

Heavy artillery mechs were never that precise, especially when it came to indirect fire.

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.

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