?
Max wondered if Nico's feelings of familiarity with the alien ship were ones of Déjà vu since it was so similar to Absolution, but he didn't get that feeling from her thoughts. She couldn't remember where, but she was certain that she had seen that particular ship before.
As soon as they launched, Max grabbed her to make a quick jump to warp speed and back, bringing them close to the battle but not so close that they were in danger of getting in the middle of the fight.
The new arrivals completely ignored their presence, not turning a single unit their way and not disengaging from battle with the units that the Arisen sent to intercept the two incoming Mecha.
From a distance, the amount of energy weapon fire made it hard to discern what sort of battle was taking place here, but it was far more intense than what Max had expected. Instead of sending out their War Walkers in space, as they did against the Koleska, they were fighting mostly with rapid attack craft which could use an advanced version of Portal Technology that didn't seem to have any instability effects, and the unknown ship was using them to do hit and run attacks against the Arisen vessels.
That allowed them to engage more than just the front lines, but a second and third Arisen ship had joined the battle, both in the shape of large Cubes, and they were sending out crescent-shaped fighters to engage the unknown vessel.
[They look like breakfast croissants with guns.] Nico joked as she saw the attack fighters for the first time.
They really did, but they were deadly, taking out dozens of the bladed attack craft in the first few seconds.
[Let's go lend a hand then.] Max informed her, seeing the battle becoming lopsided in favour of the Arisen.
The new ship might not be friends, but they weren't allies of the Arisen either, and that was what was important right now.
Max charged the Orbital Lance while Nico primed the Mass Driver, waiting for his order.
"I will fire first and deplete their energy shielding. You fire one-quarter of a second later and see if you can't land a hit on one of those cube ships. If they're not hollow inside, a solid projectile should be able to cause massive damage to them." Max ordered, then fired everything he had at the closest ship.
From this distance, the beam from his weapons would take nearly a second to reach the target, and Nico's solid projectiles nearly two seconds, but that shouldn't be enough time for their shields to recover, Max was certain.
What he hadn't counted on was the defensive capabilities of the Crescent fighters. They were flowing out of every port on the ship, and as soon as Max fired, a barrier of green light began to shine, linking them together as the Orbital Lance headed their way.
The barrier would serve as a secondary barrier to his attack, and as the Disruptor Beam of the Orbital Lance hit the shield, green light caused the gas surrounding them to glow as bright as a star, then with a flash of energy, the barrier erected by the fighters failed and overloaded, sending them gliding backwards with their power sources knocked out.
They had stopped the attack, though, and Nico's simple shot likely wouldn't do much against the massive ship without the antimatter warhead armed.
They couldn't risk that level of firepower here, and Max watched in anticipation as the round raced toward the ship at Warp speeds, only to have a Crescent fighter suddenly shift and move into its path.
The round's Warp Field collapsed as it hit the fighter, but the flimsy shell of the ship was no match for the solid round, which tore right through it and impacted the shielding of the main ship with an immense flash of green light.
Now the Crescent Fighters that were still active were flooding toward Max and Nico, temporarily ignoring the bladed fighters, but Max nearly had another Orbital Lance ready.
The instant that the light on his display went green, Max fired again, taking aim at the main ship, and Nico put another round right behind his, then turned her lighter weapons against the incoming Crescent Fighters.
They didn't form the barrier this time, and Max's Orbital Lance disintegrated one single fighter on its way to the main ship, where the ripples in the shield could be clearly seen before the round from Nico's Mass Driver reached the barrier, and like shattered glass, cracks formed through the shielding.
There was no sign of damage to the ship behind the shielding, and the shield was slowly healing as Max watched. They couldn't fire fast enough to completely drop that shield with just the two of them and no Antimatter weapons. It would have its shields back up before it could fire again.
But they wouldn't have to. The small, bladed fighters took full advantage of the momentary weakness to portal inside the shielding of the cube and tore long gashes out of the hull with the sharpened edges of their wings.
The damage was devastating, with hundreds of tears appearing on the surface of the ship in a second before the fighters took portals back out again to rejoin the main fight.
Atmosphere and fire were bleeding from the gashes, and Max wondered if there was some weapon attached to them that he hadn't detected, which could cut more deeply into the hull of the huge cube.
The main ship, which looked so much like Absolution and the similar but more sinister-looking new arrival, faced off with massive energy beams that put anything that Nico had built to shame, tearing apart everything that was caught in the middle of the battle before suddenly all three Arisen ships and their support craft disappeared without a trace.
That left Max in a bit of a predicament. If this new arrival was hostile, he could be in real trouble since he was within engagement range, but they called back their fighters and vanished a few seconds later.
"I have good news. I know how the second ship disappeared. The new group opened a portal around their ship to leave. There's still no clue how the Arisen is doing it, but if the two share similar technology, it might be a clue." Nico informed Max once they were alone in space.
"I don't think that they do. Look at how similar the two ships are, then look at the two cubes. Even comparing the attack fighters that they were using and the War Walkers, it looks like the Arisen has sourced their equipment from a half dozen different cultures. None of it matches anything else in the design.
If we hadn't seen anything but the first ship, I wouldn't have questioned it and would have just thought that the Arisen had eclectic taste, but I'm pretty sure that they are assimilating the technology of the species that they have destroyed.
Nico considered that for a moment, then sent Max a data file. "I have an analysis of their weapons. The green beams aren't the same as the ones on the War Walkers. These are closer to our Disintegrator beams, whereas the others are simple Ion beams. You might be right. They're in the middle of upgrading themselves.
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