Back at the Koleska's Anomaly defence station, the discussions on who should be sending what to which distress call were ongoing, and every new call was causing even more confusion among the group-minded politicians.
Their instinct was to prevent any and all danger from coming their way, so they weren't willing to do anything at all unless they had someone who could be thrown under the bus when things went wrong.
But they weren't the only minds making decisions here, and a lot of the military leaders had chosen to ignore their ramblings and send out troops of their own before the politicians got their heads out of their asses far enough to see the danger that they were in.
One such group was the Morphos. Similar to the Koleska, they were an exoskeletal species with hard black chitin. The difference was that they preferred to alternate between bipedal and quadrupedal movement and had a highly acidic thick green slime as blood. Their long tails helped them balance on any terrain, and the claws of their combat suits were reinforced with Adamantite, a nearly indestructible metal that could be honed to a monomolecular edge, allowing them to cut through nearly anything that the species had encountered in the past.
They preferred close combat due to their physical advantages, but in recent centuries, under the threat of the Arisen, they had developed a wide range of hard-mounted Ion weapons, which could be fired by a neural link to keep their hands free.
They had sent fifty destroyers full of shock troops to the second emergency call that had come in. It was an invasion of Cathedral Ships, a nickname that they had borrowed for the Blooded Warriors from the humans, who had ambushed a frontier system.
When they left, the system had only just received a few nearby allies as assistance, but once they got to a stable portion of space, they opened a portal to get closer and found that the humans had beaten them there.
They didn't notice that the human fleet had finished with their first fight, but they were happy to see the dozen insane vessels launching a constant barrage of firepower at the enemy.
The Morphos Admiral addressed his crew as they approached the system at high warp.
[It looks like this might not be a suicide mission, my friends. The human fleet is here, and they are holding their ground. So far, they haven't deployed their Mecha, so they must not be too hard-pressed, and we will have a chance to turn the tides right from the moment that we arrive.
Prepare the attack craft and the boarding pods. We will launch a full assault the moment we enter the ambush range.]
Inside the Command Cutter, Nico had already noticed the incoming reinforcements, and Max was making plans to support them as much as he could.
It was the first fight of the war, other than the loss at the Rift, for this species, and Max didn't want them to lose their determination to help save who they could. So, if they looked like they were having any trouble at all, he would launch the entire Android Army and go on a full assault to distract the enemy away from the new arrivals.
[Commander, the aliens in the other layer are charging their drives to make a transition to this layer. Ten seconds to arrival.] The ship announced.
[Send another wave of drones ASAP.] Max ordered.
The drones vanished into the other layer in an instant, and the damage to the alien ships was astounding. One thing that Max had forgotten to factor in was that when the Drones moved between layers, they were still in the same spot.
Two of the drones had appeared inside the vessels they were targeting and then unleashed their Mass Drivers against the unprotected internals of the ships, aiming for the ship's main drives, as per their programming.
The result was an instant detonation without any form of warning or even visible threat to the alien fleet. The effects were even worse with all of the ship's capacitors charged in preparation for a Portal Opening, and the detonation rocked the region, causing the others to panic and many to power down their drives, thinking that the humans had a defensive weapon that would prevent them from shifting layers.
"Nico, we need something to stop them from doing that to us. Spend any brain power you can spare on it, and I want it done before the end of the battle." Max ordered as he saw how effective the tactic was.
[Commander, would you like to continue using that tactic?] The AI in charge of the Drones' Colony Ship asked.
[Use it to take out the remainder of these aliens. I don't feel like getting ambushed today. But keep some drones in the other layer in case we need them on short notice.] Max replied.
[Understood Commander.]
The Drones that were flying about the battlefield continued as expected, only every few seconds; one would simply disappear as it passed over an alien ship in the other Layer, then detonate everything around it. It all happened so quickly that the unfortunate crews never even got a chance to realize what was happening before only the drones that had appeared outside the enemy ships were left in the other layer, with the main battlefield none the wiser about their actions.
"Max, it looks like our new friends are a fun-loving sort. They just dropped out of Warp and launched boarding pods. I have the drones in the area running interception duty to prevent them from being destroyed before they can reach their targets, and the main ships are working to bring down the enemy shields to facilitate the boarding actions." Nico announced.
"Have they sent out anything else?" Max asked.
"Some sleek black attack craft. On par with the old ones that the Koleska had. Sufficient for the job but nothing special. They're supporting the drones."
Max made a mental note and then decided it was time to back the enemy into a corner.
[Deploy all Mecha teams. Defensive Formations around your vessels for added firepower. Target by threat priority.] Max ordered.
"And now we wait to see what the so-called Great Evil will do." He told Nico with a smirk.
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