The food had just arrived when every light in the station turned red, and an alarm began to blare.
[Incoming major assault Fleet. All hands to battle stations. I repeat, incoming major assault Fleet. All hands to battle stations.]
"It looks like the meal will have to wait. See you on the battlefield, Commander." Max sighed as he rose to his feet.
Everyone began to jog to their combat positions, and Max went straight to Cleansing Light, then launched, with Nico right behind him. If the station was under alert, that meant that the enemy was right at the anomaly within minutes of breaching the entrance and reaching his home Galaxy.
There was a whole wave of Arisen War Walkers headed their way, intent on taking the station, while the defenders had only just begun to scramble. The amount of matter spread through this region of space made it impossible to trace Warp Trails and incoming vessels from as far as Max was used to, and it led to very short warnings when there was an attack.
It had to be an incredibly stressful way to live for the Koleska, but they were well practiced, and the first of the Mecha were only a few seconds behind him and Nico.
Max grabbed Nico and engaged the Warp Drive on Cleansing Light, dropping them at the front line in an instant, then using the abundant power to blast away an entire regiment of light War Walkers with a dispersed blast of his Orbital Lance.
Nico started to snipe what they took to be the Command units of the Arisen Army, the more elaborately decorated units, and the Arisen Army was predictably turning their attention away from the station to deal with these two biting ants on their flank.
Max was sure that the Koleska all thought that they were insane, but the early attack gave them a chance to thin the enemy ranks right as the battle started, which every Mecha Commander knew was the best way to reduce casualties. The light Mecha pilots might not be as good, but there were a lot of them, and they could still bring down a Heavy Mecha with the weight of fire, a factor that remained just as true with battles of this scale, where tens of thousands of Mecha were facing off in space.
[Human Commander, we have a backup for you.] The Koleska combat channel informed him, and Max shifted his position to allow them to take up a deployment around him and Nico, who was still in sniper mode, picking off random War Walkers, though the actual leaders appeared to be either dead or in hiding.
It was unknown whether the Arisen Army used Wing Leaders the way that the human armies did, but that was what Nico was going after now, trying to break apart all semblance of coordination on their portion of the flank before the Arisen could shift a larger unit over to deal with them.
Max dodged as an immense beam of particle energy streaked past him, only barely getting the warning in time. They had turned the main guns of a transport ship against him.
"Nico, what do I have that isn't an antimatter weapon to deal with that?" He asked since the shielding would absorb his Orbital Lance without flinching.
"I'm on it, boss. I've got non-explosive versions of the Antimatter Torpedos." Nico informed him, then unslung a rifle from her back and took aim at the transport ship.
The energy surge was enough to scramble sensors for the entire unit behind them, and then the massive transport ship's shields lit up in crackling green energy. The whole ship was visibly shoved backward, and Nico fired again. The rounds activated a Warp Field when they were fired and simply slammed into the target at Warp 7.
Not even the defensive lasers could deal with that attack, and the second round hit home as well, creating a massive explosion where it breached the shielding and punched through the ship.
[They weren't kidding. Humans really do hunt Battleships with Mecha.] Someone was calling over the radio channels, and Max shook his head.
They were giving people a very warped view of the sort of thing that was expected when dealing with humans, but it sure seemed to be effective.
Nico fired a third round, but this time it hit a secondary shield, and the Warp Field around the round collapsed, leaving it to hit the ship at sublight speeds, making the already weakened shielding collapse again and causing even more damage to the transport ship.
It began to shift back as fast as it could in its condition, and another ship moved to take its place, presumably with the modified shields already active.
[Well, it might not be a battleship kill, but it is out of commission. They won't be loading anything back on that one for a while.] Nico laughed.
It wasn't often that she got to try out her new toys in an all-out battle like this, and the War Walkers were charging them now, afraid to be caught in a cluster at a distance where Max could engulf them all in another Orbital Lance strike.
Max drew his blade and shield and moved into a position where he was back to back with Shattered Pride so that they couldn't be surrounded, then began unleashing Disruptor blasts on a widespread pattern, collapsing enemy shields and causing minor damage but leaving them vulnerable to the Koleska weapons.
A fifty-meter-tall Command Walker from the Arisen Fleet moved to the front of the group to challenge Max, who clanged his sword against his shield in a "come and get it" motion that he wasn't sure the Arisen could even recognize.
The sentiment seemed mutual, though, and everyone else in the area backed off, with Nico charging into the enemy ranks flanked by Koleska's close combat units while Max fought his duel.
Max traded blows with the War Walker in an eerily familiar pattern that seemed to awaken something in his memories from his previous life while the two giant Mecha fought each other to a standstill.
Monomolecular blades clashed against one another a dozen times in a second as the two Mecha sought to gain the upper hand before the Arisen unit backed off to regroup. Max could sense the confusion and rage from the War Walker at having been stymied by Max, but more so by the fact that he recognized their close combat techniques.
It wasn't quite the same as Max remembered, but there was no way that he could mistake that combat style.
After all, he created it.
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