It took nearly a month and two more probing strikes from the Galen before the chassis of the reborn Shattered Pride was ready.
The attacks were nothing serious, and both ended within minutes once they saw the humans send out their Mecha. It seemed bold for them to be testing the response time of a fleet that they had never won a battle against, but in war, there was always a reason for everything that the enemy did, even if you couldn't fathom it.
The research team had tested various chassis components to ensure that the new energy field saturation was effective on a variety of different object shapes, with excellent results, as Max knew they would get, and they were working hard to get the Mecha assembled and ready for weapons testing before the next Galen attack.
But the plan had changed. They were no longer making one personal unit for Nico. The tests that they had done so far outclassed Cleansing Light by such a wide margin that they had decided to make a matched pair, one for each Commander.
Max's new unit would be equipped with his signature sword and shield, while Nico preferred twin blades, but they would be otherwise identical in everything but colour.
They had considered making another proper Titan Class unit, but the smaller target with more durability and firepower seemed like the better idea instead of trying to intimidate with pure size.
Nico had decided to go with the bone and red scheme that they had created for their unit back when they were still Kepler soldiers, and Max had gone with the red and gold that was more common with the Terminus Trading Company's equipment.
The units were coming together quickly, and Max had high hopes that they would be able to get them functional before the next attack.
Nergal was whistling happily as she and a few of the other Researchers attached one of the Mass Drivers to Nico's unit, while Max was resistance checking the wiring to the Mass Drivers on his new Mecha, making sure that there were no quality control issues with the production process.
The machines were very reliable, and Max didn't have many concerns about the construction, but there was always that chance that something got miswired or a connection wasn't correctly bonded or tightened. So, he went over everything while the Innu fitted the weapons and then ran the preliminary [Optimization] once all the systems were assembled.
"It looks like everything is working here. How is it going on your side?" He called over to Nico using the implanted communicator and then got that same strange feeling of being watched again.
This time there was no way that it was a corporeal person. He was in the cockpit of his Mecha, with no interior sensor-equipped, and the door closed. So, whatever it was, they must have been able to monitor their conversations and transmissions.
Max had called out to Nico using technology and had seemingly triggered the response. He had also felt it in combat, where they were similarly communicating using technology and mostly reliant on their encryption and foreign language as security.
Maybe it didn't notice if they were just speaking? It was worth a shot now that he had felt it too often to pass it off as an anomaly.
Max climbed out of the Mecha and hopped out of his cockpit over to the arm of Nico's unit, then climbed up so he could talk to her without raising his voice.
"There is something watching us. I can feel it from time to time as we send messages. I don't know what it wants, but it seemed amused when we were fighting. I don't know if that means it's on our side, or perhaps it views our struggle as futile and amusing." He whispered.
Nico was silent for a moment, tightening a fitting on her Mass Driver, then she nodded. "I haven't felt it, but I know that feeling. Do you remember those energy beings? They gave me that feeling in our last life."
The beings that she was referring to call themselves the "New Gods," and managing to actually detect them, much less do anything about their plans, was a tricky proposition.
They were made exclusively of energy, and they could manipulate it to do a myriad of things, including intercepting or faking transmissions, controlling many species' minds by replacing the energy in their minds, operating equipment, or even resurrecting the dead. Presuming that the body was in a suitable state to stay resurrected, that was. If not, they just made a puppet for as long as their attention lingered.
Come to think of it, that sounded way too much like the Arisen.
The Arisen wasn't nearly as powerful as the beings Max and Nico were thinking of, but the basic elements were there. If they were a devolved or hybrid species, then it would make sense that they had the nature they did.
Perhaps they vanished the way they did because, like the beings he was thinking of, they didn't belong in the material world but in a different portion of space.
Like the layered space theory that the Innu was working on, Max knew that material space wasn't the entirety of existence. He simply didn't ever study the topic to learn how it worked.
Only a few people on any planet in his past life would have even known the basics of how the theory worked. It was a deeply intellectual and esoteric topic with no relation to daily life, as so few species could even interact with the other layers of space, even using technology. It simply didn't matter enough for anyone to care unless it was their field of study.
Even the Flat Space was part of the theory, though only the most basic form of spatial anomaly. Max didn't know how to make those in his last life either. Nico did, and that was enough to help them in this life, along with the prompting from the Hunters.
"I think the Arisen might be descended from those things. They've got a lot in common. Maybe a hybrid species?" Max suggested to Nico.
She shuddered and frowned. "If they are, then it's likely a good thing that they don't remember us."
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