The Mech Touch novel Chapter 491

When the artificial meteorites fell, House Eneqqin unleashed all of its hidden anti-air batteries in Neron City. This enabled the rebels to locate them and neutralize them. The same couldn’t be said for the batteries erected by the rebels in secret.

Due to the need for utmost secrecy, the Detemen League only installed a limited amount of turrets in the city. Only a handful of batteries were in range of Lord Javier’s flying cockpit at this time.

Laser beams hit the cockpit in an instant, but surprisingly left no mark! The orange energy field enveloping the cockpit prevented any damage from going through!

Missiles soared into the sky after the laser beams puttered out. The rebels launched them out of the few mobile missile platforms in their possession. A larger number of shoulder-launched missiles fired by infantrymen followed suit.

Each of those missiles unerringly hit the cockpit that made no attempt to hide its presence. Even if it wished to deploy any stealth or ECM, the enormous amount of heat released by its boosters and energy field overpowered any attempts at covering it up.

"What does it take to down this cockpit?!" Addy screamed in frustration over the command channel.

"Don’t stop hitting it!" Ves urged the rebels. "The cockpit shouldn’t possess much of a reserve. It’s not as invincible as the Raphael when it was still intact!" _{fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com}

Regardless of his words, the rebels hated the man inside the cockpit so much that they never let up. More and more laser beams struck the energy field while missiles of varying payloads constantly tried to disturb its integrity.

It took some time, but the energy field eventually began to flicker. It had obviously reached the end of its reserves. Only a few more hits would tear apart the cockpit’s protective coverage.

"Hold your fire! Don’t put anymore missiles in the air!"

Missiles already in the air still slammed into the energy field, but no one launched another salvo. A handful of laser turrets continued to strike the cockpit unerringly. They chipped away at the remnants of the energy field until it finally winked out.

"The cockpit lost its protection! Take down its boosters! Be careful with it, we want him alive!"

The cockpit’s exterior was made out of lightweight but highly resilient compressed alloys. This eased the burden on the laser turrets as they accurately took out the vulnerable boosters and anti-grav modules.

With less and less components keeping the cockpit aloft, it slowly plunged towards the ground in a barely-controlled crash.

"Surround the crash site! Don’t leave any gaps exposed!"

Ves watched from his terminal as the rebel forces moved in position to surround the projected crash site. Some of their vehicles hurried to keep up with the plunging cockpit.

As the cockpit slammed into an abandoned street and slid forth for a short distance, Ves wondered whether this ordeal would finally be over. As much as he enjoyed being useful, he could have offered the same level of assistance in orbit.

"I’m not cut out for the battlefield."

Though he long shed his innocence, he still disliked being jerked around in places where he shouldn’t even be present. "I hope after this, the Flagrant Vandals will take a lengthy vacation."

Once the rebels brought Lord Javier under custody, the Vandals should have nothing left to tie them to this star system.

"There’s also their operation in Detemen II."

Though Ves thought that Detemen IV played a vastly more important role, Colonel Lowenfield opted to take charge of the detachment responsible for fulfilling their objectives on Detemen II. He found that to be a very odd decision. Why would the colonel pay so much attention to that smaller, more impoverished planet?

"The only thing of strategic value on that planet is their renewable exotics mine. Even then, it’s nothing remarkable. An endless stream of junk exotics isn’t anything to get crazy about."

The sad truth about third-rate states was that anything valuable got snatched away by the local hegemons. In the case of the Bright Republic and the Vesia Kingdom, the Friday Coalition often appropriated their treasures under a variety of excuses. Though compared to the Hexadric Hegemony, the Coalition partners at least had the decency to compensate for some of their losses.

The fact that neither the Coalition or the Hegemony snatched the renewable exotics mine from Detemen II should have hammered in the point that it didn’t hold too much value.

"Is it the solar foundries that they’re after?"

Ves tentatively rejected that possibility. The solar foundries carried the same worth as a large-scale manufacturing complex. They stored a lot of raw and processed materials, but their value was purely economic.

From the start, he always got the sense that the Vandals omitted many details in their operation. From their planning to their objectives, all of it seemed plausible enough to fool the rank and file.

To Ves, the more he witnessed the Vandals and rebels in action, the more he questioned their motives. Assaulting an industrial star system in the middle of an enemy state was almost never done, because most people had the sense to call it crazy.

Even now, at the cusp of success, they still had a long road ahead of them. "We’ve certainly riled up the entire Kingdom. Let alone Imodris, every other Vesian will be out for our blood."

No matter how he looked at the picture, the risks far outweighed the possible benefits. If the Flagrant Vandals wanted to earn some cash to alleviate their massive debts, they could have invaded an industrial system closer to the border. Imodris sat well past the border regions, and neighbored several other formidable Duchies within the Kingdom.

Getting out of this cordon would test the limits of their trust in the Vesian Revolutionary Front. The Kingdom-wide movement promised to extract the Vandals after they finished their operation, but Ves found it dubious to rely on the rebels to keep their word, especially since they came from opposing states.