And so, before the morning sun had risen, the three Raider warships finally managed to land on the northern foothills' plains under a dense barrage of fire.
It had to be said: although these armed merchant ships had all been heavily modified by the Raiders, the quality of their vector engines was genuinely impressive. They had somehow managed to support their colossal, million-ton mass and set it down safely. Immediately afterward, the landing bay doors at the rear of each ship opened, and the first things to charge out were twenty menacing war machines, each supported by five pairs of road wheels.
There were only five pairs, but each road wheel was nearly as tall as a person. This made the turret mounted on the chassis into a massive, all-around weapons platform, armed with a railgun, two ion cannons, two quadruple-mounted Vulcan cannons, a dual-purpose low-altitude missile rack, and even a small deflector shield.
And yet, despite packing in all that firepower, the tank stood no more than four meters tall, road wheels and all. It was a masterful use of space, a design that could only be called genius.
In fact, these multipurpose tanks, known as Children of the Silver Heart, were the final labor of love of a genius Ero military engineer in the waning days of the Ero Empire. Even hundreds of years later, their overall design philosophy had not become outdated.
On the ground, they could move on their five pairs of road wheels. They could also use their vector engines to glide short distances, and when they encountered difficult terrain, they could extend eight hydraulically powered legs and climb mountains or crawl through caves like spiders.
More importantly, their relatively low profile meant their frontal projection was not especially large, unlike the humanoid mechs that