"I am sorry to cut you short, but please deal with my assistant while I head to my Mecha. I will be needed for the defense fight." Max informed the older woman, who just waved him away and turned to her communicator to make sure that she had heard their instructions correctly.
As the Illithid had predicted, there were no messages before the fleet left warp, and the second they did, the fleet at the closest planet started dislodging Landers from five Destroyer Class vessels, as well as fifteen Mecha Carriers roughly equivalent to Kepler's President Class vessels.
That should give them a force of thirty Mecha Regiments headed to the planet in the next five minutes.
[All forces deploy. Nico, get the drones active and shoot down those Landers while we deal with the fleet.] Max ordered.
She was way ahead of him. Max had only just stepped out of the hangar, and Shattered Pride was already ahead of him, surrounded by dozens of drones, which were headed for the atmosphere while she was headed up into open space to confront the fleet.
Max focused all six Disruptors on the closest Destroyer and launched the equivalent of an Orbital Lance at their shielding, making it flicker and flash, then fail entirely as the blasts from the Cutters reached a second later.
The massive vessel, only a half kilometer shorter than Terminus herself in size, violently exploded, filling the space around the Omwat fleet with debris before they could even react to the incoming Reaver vessels.
They didn't hesitate at all, and the Cutters were forced to evade as a barrage of incoming fire came for them. The shields on the Cutters were tough, but the Destroyers weren't lightly armed vessels, and a single hit could well drop the shields of even their new pattern Cutters.
The Border Fleet was only a breath behind them, launching missiles and Ion Beams toward the Carriers, hoping to reduce the number of Landers that could be successfully launched.
Ahead of Max, traveling as fast as her Mecha would carry her, Nico plowed into a Carrier blade first, with both of her Disruptors firing a continuous beam.
Shattered Pride punched through the shielding, then the bay door of the Carrier, and the Super Heavy Mecha disappeared from sight.
Max dodged a few volleys of fire from the Omwat Fleet, moving upward so the angle wouldn't put any of the ships in orbit behind him, which would risk collateral damage from the shots he dodged.
Before he could get in place to fire again, a Carrier exploded, and Shattered Pride flew from the ruins with a foreign-designed Super Heavy Mecha speared on her blade. Nico threw it at a Destroyer and moved to attack the bridge of a damaged Carrier, tearing apart the command center, then firing directly inside the vessel, setting off a chain reaction from the ship's engines that completely destroyed it.
Shields flared as Landers, which were almost ready to launch, were thrown clear, only to be targeted by the Border Fleet ships and the Drones.
Max coordinated with the Cutters and a second Destroyer went up in a fireball as the ruptured engines burned off the ship's atmosphere.
The cloud of Landers was thinning already as the emergency deployment came to an end only a few minutes after their arrival, and Max detected signals indicating that the fleet was preparing to run away from the unanticipated level of damage they had taken.
That would leave the force on the planet vulnerable, but they could still threaten for control of the surface with the numbers that they had managed to get to the surface, even with the defensive fire and the Drones attacking them.
Max knew that they had it easy. They had destroyed nearly half of the forces on their way down and crippled the fleet in orbit. The other planets which were under attack were unlikely to have fared nearly as well. They had defense fleets and orbital defenses, but they didn't have the Orbital Lances that the Cutters launched by Terminus had deployed to deal with the Destroyers, so the larger vessels would have been capable of covering for the Carriers while they finished their deployment.
A red streak raced through space, and Max watched as the engines of a Destroyer, formerly glowing with intense blue light, went dark. Nico had taken advantage of the vulnerability in the shields as the vessel prepared to go to warp to enter the enclosure and attack their warp drive, leaving the ship dead in space.
The last two Destroyers managed to transition to faster-than-light travel and fled the system, leaving behind the Carriers, who needed more time to activate their engines, and who were taking much heavier fire since they were the ones most likely to be destroyed by the Border Nations' firepower.
[First and Second Battalion, join Shattered Pride and board the disabled Destroyer. We will take it intact as reparations.] Max ordered.
He would hold off on the infantry for now until the ship could be secured with Mecha. After that, they would be ordered in to take the ship and clear out the defenders.
They couldn't space the attackers today, as so many aliens were watching and wondering how close to civilized humans were, which did limit their options, but it could be done subtly later, in the form of a funeral rite.
The only hidden blessing in this situation was that the Omwat were not human. They were similar to humans in the way that the Vampires looked vaguely human, but they were shorter, with four arms and four eyes set into thick, leathery skin.
That would let Max play this off as humanity being attacked by hostile aliens, a situation that the Alliance was very familiar with. The fact that humans and the Omwat had been doing business with each other for over a thousand years, and living side by side, could be glossed over for the sake of posterity.
Max and the other three Cutters continued to bombard the Omwat fleet until the last few Carriers chose to stand down instead of fighting to the last. The Border Nations chose to be the ones to board and secure the vessels, as this was their home system that was attacked, so Max ordered the Cutters to standby in orbit until they had agreed on a plan of action to retake the planet, which was currently under attack by more than a dozen Mecha Regiments, and an unknown number of infantry.
The sourc𝗲 of this content is free(w)ebnov(𝒆)l