Chapter 2654: Ever Forward! Lieutenant Edmund Corsica of the Destiny Hammers piloted his heavy artillery mech with great proficiency. Armed with as much as ten energy and physical cannons, the mech expended both energy and ammunition at a judicious rate as it pummeled one of the Hexer-built combat carriers of the Larkinson Clan. The only downside to carrying so much armament was that the mech was rapidly heating up while expending much of its ammunition and energy! As the limited ammo reserves of his mech started to bottom out, the hatch into the bunker slid open. A porter mech along with some cargo bots arrived just in time to deliver fresh supplies. The thick and heavyset mech ceased fire and opened up a rear port that exposed its spent ammunition and energy cell canisters. Jets of cooling fluids sprayed from the sides of the bunker, causing it to fill up with steam. The artillery mech was already cooling down once it silenced its guns, but the extra cooling measures accelerated its recovery! The porter mech proficiently removed the depleted canisters and put fresh ones in their place. The mech slapped its heavy palm against the rear port that had just closed. "You're set! Good luck, Edmund!" "Keep up the good work, Benny." As a proud soldier and mech officer of the Vanguard Group, he knew the importance of this battle. The creator of glows and one of the most influential supporters of the Hexadric Hegemony was aboard the factory ship of the enemy fleet. Ending the life of the former Brighter known as Ves Larkinson was their primary objective! The increasingly more intensive engagement took a greater toll on both sides. Starships began to receive crippling damage while various mechs were starting to collapse after being subjected to focused fire. The duel between the Transcendent Punishers and the Destiny Hammers had become the focal point of the struggle between the Larkinsons and the Fridaymen in the battle. The latter numbered less, but their heavy artillery mechs were superior on almost every front! Compared to a Transcendent Punisher, the machine piloted by Lieutenant Corsica possessed greater mass, possessed more guns, carried greater armor and incorporated some of the best targeting systems developed by the Coalition! The Destiny Hammer mech pilots themselves exhibited much greater proficiency than any of their Ylvainan counterparts. The latter only took up piloting heavy mechs only recently. What was even worse was that the Ylvainan mech pilots were barely accustomed to piloting second-class mechs. Lieutenant Corsica and his comrades were different. They attended the best mech academies of the Vanguard Group and committed to an artillery track early on. They spent many years learning the ins and outs of the various skills needed to utilize the most advanced functions of artillery mechs. The Destiny Hammers was made up of the best graduates that came out of these mech academies. Once they entered the elite mech regiment, they weren't allowed to pilot one of the powerful machines right away. They had to spend years polishing their marksmanship and control abilities before they were even ready to pilot the advanced heavy artillery mechs! All of the effort put into their training paid off. Edmund and his comrades exhibited as much as 50 percent greater accuracy! Their superior marksmanship compared with all of the technical assistance provided by their mech inflicted methodical, controlled destruction onto their targets! And this was despite the fact the Forward Momentum was slowly spinning along her length! It was much harder for the Destiny Hammers to keep their aim consistent while their firing platforms constantly moved, yet mech pilots such as Edmund Corsica considered it routine. In fact, it was not necessarily bad for the individual mechs to lose line of sight for a time. Not only did it spoil every attempt made by the enemy to breach their bunkers, the maneuvers also granted the Destiny Hammer mechs precious time to cool down their rapidly-heating mechs. If there was one notable flaw to their mechs, it was that there was no way to avoid excessive heat generation! This was a rule that every artillery mech designer had to grapple with. More firepower always generated more waste heat due to lots of energy being converted to one form or another. The Destiny Hammers happened to love their guns a lot, so it was a given that all of their artillery mechs boasted a multitude of guns, allowing them to output a huge burst of damage in a very short time! While that made them very great at penetrating armor and fortified positions, their mech pilots constantly had to keep track of the condition of every single cannon as well as the rest of their mechs. A flood of data continued to flow back and forth between Lieutenant Corsica and his familiar machine. Normally, he wouldn't fire his guns so rapidly, but the critical nature of this battle left him and his fellow Destiny Hammers with little choice. If they failed their crucial mission, then dying was the least of his concerns. The Vanguard Group was already one of the underdogs of the Komodo War. If he couldn't stop the menace of glows right now, then the Coalition partner that Edmund regarded as home might not be able to last! "Ever Forward!" Edmund cried out the motto of the Vanguard Army! "EVER FORWARD!" His comrades echoed! As several more combat carriers and bunkers succumbed to their weight of fire, he and his Vanguarders already knew in advance that they were destined to win this artillery duel. Their enemies were too bad. Whoever the Larkinsons put into the cockpits of their admittedly-decent artillery mechs were still too green! The large number of misses, the lack of focus, the inability to adjust to spinning starships and so on all pointed out that the Larkinson artillery mechs were amateurs who were way out of their depth! "Well, it's not as if I expected more from these third-raters." Edmund contemptuously muttered. Now that he gained a measure of his opponents and their equipment, his mech began to inflict greater destruction. He already knew how to dismantle the standard hexagon-shaped bunkers that the Hexers favored in as little time as possible. Just as his guns along with the guns of the rest of his squad transformed an enemy artillery mech into a piece of scrap, the enemy fire abruptly abated for some reason. Lieutenant Corsica looked puzzled. "Have the enemy artillery mechs overheated?" It shouldn't be. The enemy mechs fired their cannons at a slower rate and more sustainable rate. As someone who knew artillery mechs well, Edmund instinctively felt as if the enemy was preparing something big. Of course, that did not mean the Destiny Hammers were willing to abide by the rhythm of their opponents. Their cannons kept launching powerful beams and solid rounds at their targets without interruption. Just like their battle cry, once they attacked, they never stopped until they completed their mission! Just as Lieutenant Corsica succeeded in felling yet another combat carrier together with his comrades, the enemy artillery mechs that possessed clear firing lines all fired their primary armaments at the same time! "What?!" Over 800 positron beams and gauss rounds hit over a dozen different points along the hull of the Forward Momentum with practically no deviation in aim! The attacks shouldn't have been able to shake a capital ship, yet the deep strike fleet carrier somehow vibrated just enough to affect Edmund's artillery mech's aim! Shortly afterwards, the cooling fluid being sprayed onto the mech ceased to flow! "What happened?!" He demanded. "The enemy salvo managed to pierce through the hull of the Forward Momentum! Several sensitive compartments and power lines are damaged. We are doing our best to restore the knocked-out systems, but it will take time!" Just as the mech lieutenant pondered over the coordinated strike, the enemy artillery mechs unleashed yet another devastating salvo with their kinetic weapons! This time, Lieutenant Corsica flinched as numerous kinetic rounds slammed into the bunker above his artillery mech! What was remarkable was that the rounds all hit the port where his third primary gauss cannon was poking out. While half of the powerful gauss rounds cratered into the solid surface of the bunker, they nonetheless created an opening that just happened to allow another gauss round to rip right into the barrel of his third gun! "Ahh!" The Destiny Hammer artillery mech jerked as both its third and fourth gauss cannons were instantly knocked offline due to the direct attack! "Impossible! How can they be so precise all of sudden?!" Lieutenant Corsica wasn't able to ponder this question too much. The earlier attack had just blasted apart an entire weapon mount, causing his mech to incur significant damage to a side! While his mech was too big, tough and heavy to let the damage affect the functioning of the rest of the mech, Edmund still felt concerned! "Why didn't they fire their positron beams?" Just a second later, the enemy responded! Over a dozen beams struck the gap in the bunker! Just like before, a number of hits went slightly wide as there were too many variables at play. Yet despite all of these conditions, at least five full-powered positron beams managed to thread the needle, causing them to hit straight onto the already-damaged portion of Edmund's mech! "Ahhh!" More portions of the stricken mech incurred heavy damage! What was even worse was that the heat levels of the machine rose rapidly, causing the mech to lose its ability to fire its cannons and slowing down its responses. Lieutenant Corsica's heart beat faster and faster. Once might be a coincidence. Twice was deliberate. What if the enemy artillery mechs fired a third time? "Damn! I need to withdraw back into the ship while waiting for my mech to cool down!" He quickly asked permission to withdraw from his captain, which was granted right away. "Pull back and stabilize the condition of your mech." His superior told him. "Emergency repair bots are already on their way, lieutenant!" "Roger that!" While Edmund tried his best to withdraw his mech as quickly as possible, this was not exactly a quick process. Due to the extensive anchoring between his artillery mech and the bunker, it normally took at least 20 seconds to lift the legs of the mechs out of slots built into the deck. In fact, the mech lieutenant estimated it would take twice as much time due to the damage sustained by his mech as well as the extreme heat affecting the performance of many components. "Too slow!" Barely seven seconds passed after Edmund had begun the laborious withdrawal process before the enemy artillery mechs struck yet again. This time, over two-dozen gauss rounds and positron beams precisely struck the damaged and partially-damaged roof of the bunker. The previous attacks that failed to enter the gap had weakened the structure just enough for the third and final salvo to collapse the roof entirely! Even if heavy mechs were notoriously famed for their ability to keep going despite sustaining a lot of hits, the enemy attacks weren't light at all! The positron beams softened up the surface layers of the exposed mech while the gauss rounds slammed through and transferred an immense amount of destructive kinetic energy onto their target! Lieutenant Corsica was unable to think any longer. He didn't even have time to cry out the battle cry of the Vanguard Army, nor think about his two young sons that he was leaving behind. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚 His life passed in an instant as the attacks collapsed his cockpit, crushing his body into bloody mush! In just three salvos, the Larkinson artillery mechs managed to fell 20 percent of the Destiny Hammers taking part in this battle! The Forward Momentum bore dozens of scars as various bunkers and surface components were blasted apart. More critically, a lot of maneuvering thrusters had been struck as well, thereby impairing the fleet carrier's ability to adjust her course and make it difficult for enemies to target specific sections! Despite these sudden setbacks, the Destiny Hammers did not back down. The surviving mechs fired their weapons just as intensively as before. They were determined to pay back their losses tenfold! "Ever Forward, men!" "EVER FORWARD!" The surviving Destiny Hammer mech pilots echoed!