The next morning, Max picked up Nico and placed her on his hip so that he didn't have to go back to find her after he had his morning coffee and prepared to bring up the morning news briefings.
Their apartment was completely full of people this morning, with Uncle Lu in one spare room, Wushu and Mai Chen in another, while Dave and Molly split the remaining two with their adopted children, Max's younger siblings.
Everyone had been so worn out by the time the dinner had ended that they didn't make it any further than the transit pod, and the security officers had helped carry all the kids to the spare bedrooms.
The security officers in question were across the hall, Max could sense, and they were already awake and ordering breakfast from the in-room replicator, so Max chose not to wake everyone up. If he did, they would have to get back to work, and they deserved a late morning after chasing hyper children around all day the day before.
The very first alert in Max's morning briefing was enough to make him extra thankful that only he and Nico were awake.
[Attention, Commanders Max and Nico. Huntresses Khan and Imran have requested aid with an incursion in their region of the nebula beyond the anomaly. A massive fleet of hostile aliens has entered the area from an unknown location, and they are bringing war to every planet and ship that they encounter.
Their numbers are in the billions, and they are infesting entire planets with fast-growing spores that evolve rapidly into sentient beings.]
Max set Nico in his lap while he read the projection and tried to ignore the growing excitement in her mind. There was an addendum to the message, and Max was afraid to open it and see what it had to say. Anything that could be important enough that billions of ships full of warlike Myceloids wasn't enough details had to be bad news.
[Please note that this region of space is unlike the Koleska Region. It is a Hunter's paradise. No conventional power systems work properly, and Warp Fields cannot be stabilized, so the only way to travel is by portal between planetary surfaces.
They had included various nonconventional power systems that would work in the region, but going by the details of the tropical jungles that the Hunters were operating on, the larger Mecha would only be a hindrance. Their best bet was to use the newly designed Mobile Suits or Line Mecha as their basic combat unit and arm them with the fastest-firing heavy weapons that they could muster.
The Mass Drivers couldn't use their Warp Fields, even if it were not an insane idea on a planetary surface, but that wasn't going to be an issue anyhow. The units could fly, and with a small change to their power systems, they would be nearly perfect for the job.
"This is the best birthday gift ever." Nico sighed.
Their birthday had a habit of being a marker for new developments in interplanetary conflicts lately, but this one was a big one. If the Hunters didn't have the manpower and wanted the humans to intervene and fight alongside them, then this was going to be a real gong show of a battle.
"Well, we should tweak the Mecha after we explain to your mother that we're headed out to a new battlefield. She probably already got the notification, but it's best if she hears it from you personally instead of secondhand." Max reminded her.
"Can't you tell her? I'm not good at dealing with my mom when it comes to things like going to war. The only thing harder than that is telling her no when she demands grandchildren." Nico teased him with a smirk.
That was a complete lie. Nobody was better at dealing with Mary Tarith than she was. She just didn't want to do it because her mom would guilt-trip her for leaving again. So Max shook his head and denied her request.
"I did it last time. It is definitely your turn this time." He reminded her.
Nico excused herself to have a long chat with her mother while Max went through the day's messages and prepared for a morning in the lab, getting Mecha ready to go to battle alongside the Hunters.
On the bright side, there were no Arisen there, so they could bring some drone forces with them and perhaps an Android Mecha team. He would still need more details to make sure that was feasible, but it shouldn't be an issue if they weren't fighting the Arisen.
Nico returned just as everyone else was waking up, which put an end to Max's early morning message reading.
"So, where are you off to next? I don't suppose that the universe has calmed down enough that you can just relax around the ship again." Dave asked as he led all six of the kids out to the dining room table for breakfast.
"You would be right. We're off to the sector where the Hunters are working. They're in need of numbers since the Hunters are a highly skilled but smaller group. We're not sure what sort of force we can bring yet, but likely enough to make a Light Mecha Company. The larger Mecha would be a problem there due to the thick jungle and the energy fluctuations that are restricting the use of Warp Field based technologies." Max agreed.
"Sounds like a mess for the infantry. Well, as close as we get to it without sending actual infantry." Dave sighed.
Uncle Lu sighed as he set plates of food in front of the kids.
"That's about where we're at. They've already got Infantry guarding the Anomaly since it's on a planetary surface and much smaller than the one in Koleska space. There are all sorts of Mecha there as well, but we had to modify a lot of them due to the technologies that wouldn't work.
There is something there that is messing with the basics of physics, like either the flow of time or the Higgs Field are out of whack and making it impossible to calculate Mass and force properly."
Nico nodded in agreement. "We know a thing or two about that already, and I think that we can find a solution that works well enough that we can field a small army without risking an infantry force in the jungle."
Instead, they would risk a Light Mecha Company in the jungle. One step up the food chain.
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