[401-600] THE MECH'S TOUCH

Chapter 461: Bestial

"Halt the planned attacks on the research base. We're moving on to the next phase."

Major Verle unwillingly retreated from the third moon. The ships under his command consolidated in orbit over the second moon and started to retrieve the mechs and loot from the fallen lunar fortress.

The battle there ended quickly once the Vandals overcame the inner walls. Not wishing to fight to the death, the defending Vesians surrendered without exception. For their part, the Vandals accepted their surrender and took the mech pilots into custody.

They restrained the norms that acted as support personnel in place because they held no value. Taking them along burdened the Vandals more than the Vesians, and they didn't feel like killing them after they magnanimously surrendered.

Ves got the sense that the Vandals weren't above killing their prisoners, but only if the Vesians pissed them off in some way. In that regard, the Vesians manning the lunar fortress did their duty but nothing more.

The Vandals took slightly more than two hours to strip down the lunar fortress. They retrieved most of what they could easily salvage, but hadn't managed to clean the fortress out entirely due to lack of time and lifting power.

They did leave a parting gift as the last mechs boarded the combat carriers and lifted off from the surface. Several portions of the fortress blew up, causing almost every section to collapse except for the areas which held the prisoners. It would take a significant amount of effort to bring the fortress back to strength after all of the destruction.

With the moons taken out of consideration, if only nominally, Major Verle turned his attention to the planet that held most of the star system's riches. Detemen IV, the fourth planet from the binary suns.

At the major's orders, the combat carriers formed up and moved into a lower orbit over the bountiful temperate planet. Much of its cities burned, but from high up the planet still resembled a jewel.

The attacks on the moons only served as their appetizers. Making landfall on Detemen IV and completing their subsequent objectives would be the main course. They gathered as much information as they could about Detemen IV and its local forces, but the rebels who provided most of their intelligence had been proven wrong several times before.

It was too easy to hide any number of assets on a planet. Even as the Vandal combat carriers turned their sensors towards the planet and attempted to scan the underground layers, they failed to turn up any results.

The Vesians either hid their assets well, or they really hadn't stationed any hidden forces on the planet.

"Don't get complacent, Ves." Alloc whispered to him. "What comes up next will be our real test. Urban combat is always messy. Depending on how much the locals can organize themselves, we can have a real fight on our hands. They still collectively outnumber us."

As much as that fact concerned Ves, the chances that they would unite in a common defense was low. That would mean submitting themselves to a single leader. Short of Lord Javier, no one possessed enough clout to unite the local forces.

"I've never been through a raid from the perspective of the raiders."

"This is more than a simple raid, Ves. We've established many objectives, but our main goals are to rob enough to make our losses worth it and to root out Lord Javier from whatever hole he's crawled into. That's going to be difficult to complete in a very short timespan."

Ves thought that they had made a lot of haste, but evidently Alloc thought otherwise. With time pressing on their backs, they couldn't afford to delay their steps. The Vandals readied themselves to be deployed. The combat carriers split in two. Those that carried spaceborn mechs would remain in orbit while those that carried landbound mechs descended to the surface.