Late that night, the attack alarms blared, chasing everyone out of bed and sending Nico and Max running for the Mecha for the first time in weeks.
[Arisen attack fleet incoming. All hands to battle stations, all War Machines are being scrambled for the defence.] The voice repeated constantly.
It must be bad, the Koleska hated repeating themselves, but the announcement was still playing when Max launched Cleansing Light out into the vacuum of space.
That was when his sensors activated, and he saw what they were up against.
Seventeen Arisen Cubes and two Colony Ship type vessels were in an intense firefight with a Knife Ears World Ship, and it had just happened to drift this way as the Arisen vessels blinked in and out of existence, trying to avoid the heavies firepower of their enemy.
[Commander Keres, have you ever seen anything like that before?] Commander Yuri asked as soon as he was deployed into formation with his troops.
[Indeed I have. We have a similar vessel of our own, and they are no joke in a battle. Focus on any Arisen units that come near the station or the Anomaly, and try to stay out of the way of the Knife Ears. I get the feeling that they are not your allies, only the enemy of your enemy.] Max informed him.
[I will ask about it later. As long as someone knows what we're facing.]
The Commander cut communications and began to deploy his forces while Max grabbed Nico and moved forward to deal with the Cubes and their croissant-shaped fighters from the group furthest away from the Knife Ears ship.
The small, blade-winged attack craft paid them no mind as the two Mecha advanced, but the Arisen immediately sent squadrons to intercept them. It seemed that they had faced members of this group before, and they knew not to let the Mecha get a clear shot at their ships. Especially not when they were already fully engaged in a battle.
The War Walkers were all dealing with the World Ship, trying to swarm it and break in, so there were only attack fighters coming their way, and Max could sense Nico's mental sigh, even from this distance.
[You like fighter jets, I don't know why you're upset.] He reminded her.
[These things had better be faster than they look, or I'm not going to be happy about an easy fight.] She thought back, then began firing her Disruptors at the incoming craft.
The blue light of the defensive Lasers combined with the green light of the Arisen Particle Cannons to light up the Nebula in a terrifying show of violence, but the shots were all failing to reach their targets.
The shields of the attack craft had no problems with the Lasers, as they had faced the weapons many times in the past, over many species, and the Disruptors from the two Mecha were annihilating the Particle Beams before they could reach their targets.
For a moment, the battle looked like it was at a stalemate, as the two sides paused their advance and unleashed heavy firepower against each other, but that was not destined to last.
Once the capacitors for the Orbital Lance mode were charged, Max stopped using his Disruptor as a defensive weapon and unleashed a thick beam through the Arisen fleet, sending the fighters scattering to avoid the invisible beam.
[Oh, they're getting good. They have learned to detect the high output mode of the Orbital Lance.] Nico laughed as she picked off the fleeing fighters.
With their formation broken, they could no longer combine shields to block her shots, and her Mass Driver joined the Disruptors in targeting the enemy.
It was still strange to Max, seeing the weapon fire with nearly no accompanying noise. The thin gas of the Nebula did carry some sound, but even the sensors of Cleansing Light could barely detect it, and a solid projectile of that sort simply needed an audio effect to feel natural in his mind.
Inside Shattered Pride, it was a very different story. The hum and snap of the energy flows rang through the Mecha with every shot, giving Nico a satisfied feeling as she filled the air with metal and radiation waves.
Then, the explosions started.
Because the attack fighters would likely dodge, Nico had chosen nuclear explosions as her round of choice, a form of interstellar flak gun for fighting enemies that could move at a large fraction of the speed of light.
The closest Cube managed to disengage from the fight and come to join the attack craft, trying to push the Mecha away from their battle with the Knife Ears, but the nimble attack craft of the mysterious enemy was not going to make that easy for them.
The Cube had managed to move into firing range of the two Mecha, but it was being harassed by hundreds of small craft, which were hindering its attempts to send out more fighters to reinforce the ones that Max and Nico were cutting down like grass.
If the Arisen could feel frustration, they would definitely be feeling it now, but things were far from safe on any side.
Many of the small craft had been destroyed by the Cube's defensive weapons, and the Knife Ears had no concept of friendly fire. They didn't even try to avoid shooting at their own vessels and instead relied on their technology and reflexes to get out of the way.
It was an incredible tactic, and when they were in close proximity to an Arisen Fighter, it was utterly lethal. The presence of the nearby craft's engines masked the signal of the incoming round, and then at the last second, the ship would break away, and the shot would impact right before the first vessel would return to make a rush at the Arisen Fighters.
There was a rhythm to it, a subtle but deadly dance that Max found hauntingly familiar, and subconsciously found himself joining the flow of as the battle wore on.
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