[401-600] THE MECH'S TOUCH

Chapter 475: Without Direction

The awful thing about the long-ranged artillery bombardment was that the Vandals lacked the means to stop it. The two mechs that guarded the base might as well be decoration for their complete inability to stop the artillery bombardment or chase down the artillery mech responsible for targeting their base.

While the first shell pulverized the office building in an instant, at least not a lot of Vandals should have been working there at this time. After Ves brought the last mechs online, Captain Orfan and some other mech pilots entered their cockpits and marched into the streets of Neron City.

The mech stables also turned into an empty shell. Ves dismissed most of the mech technicians, so besides some stragglers, not a lot of people got hurt.

That didn't reassure Ves very much though, because he stupidly took a break on the roof. Now, with the second shell detonating on the roof, his body fell in the air and dropped several stories down until his armored form crashed against the ground.

"AH!"

His light combat armor only offered a limited amount of protection to the fall. The suit played a very minimal in mitigating the impact, thereby causing Ves to take the brunt of damage.

"It hurts!"

Even as Ves cried out in pain, the damage wasn't as bad as he expected. His extremely sturdy body hadn't broken any bones as far as he was aware of. He just felt enormously bruised from the hard fall.

A third shell landed in the base, this time targeting the barracks. A couple of sleepy Vandals had woken up from the first two detonations and evacuated from the structure, but not everyone got away in time.

"Abandon everything and escape through the tunnels!" Lieutenant Burke broadcasted over everyone's comm. "If we get seperated, rendez-vous at Point Theta if you can!"

Some of the Vandals ran around like headless chickens, but once everyone became reminded of the evacuation tunnels, they poured towards the underground entrance.

Nobody thought about defending their position. It held no more value now that they managed to bring all of the intact mechs stationed back online. The Vandals wouldn't stick around long enough to use the base as a supply point anyway so no mech needed to return.

Simply put, the base had served its use and turned into deadweight. If Ves looked at it in a more cynical fashion, then he might even argue that Captain Orfan only cared about the mechs. Once she got her toys, she heartlessly cast off the support personnel with a token defense force.

"If Captain Orfan arranged more defenses, we wouldn't have ended up in such a sorry state!" Ves muttered as he scrambled to his feet and hurried in the direction of the tunnels. His scuffed and bent combat armor creaked as he moved. "Who's bombarding us anyway?!"

In general, only the larger private outfits or government forces employed artillery mechs, and only under a limited amount of circumstances. Resorting to explosive shells in a city came with lots of repercussions.

He also couldn't figure out who would target the base. Was it the government, or a private sector outfit? Why did they target a base with very limited utility to the Vandals?

Ves found no answers to his question. In the end, too many things happened outside of his purview. He had no idea what Captain Orfan was up to and why she had been so insistent in putting as much mechs on the streets as possible.

He didn't think about it anymore as he entered the protective embrace of the underground tunnels.

As far as tunnels went, the ones dug up by the Dastardly Handsome Bastards didn't go that far underground. Instead, it connected to a network of tunnels shared by a number of neighboring facilities. This spread around the cost and allowed multiple organizations to make use of the same tunnels.