As expected, the Myceloid horde didn't let up their attack at all. From somewhere out of sight, they advanced a group of heavily armoured infantry of their own, nearly twice the size of the standard trooper, with bulging muscles and heavy artillery mounted to every possible surface.
They didn't even seem to be aiming, just firing in the general direction of the camp and hoping it hit something, but with the Hunters dug in like this, it was enough to keep everyone's heads down and even hit a few unfortunate souls who were behind the barricades when the Mortars flew over the top.
The front-line Hunter Suits were mostly unharmed, but the camp itself was taking heavy damage while Max's team worked hard to take out the new units.
Their armour was really taking a beating. Either that or their vital spots weren't where Max had expected, and the front row was still marching forward even after the lines behind them had been detonated by the exploding rounds.
"Set fire to detonate on contact. Use the Mass Drivers to push them back and keep the enemy at a distance. If you run out of ammunition, you can use the Replicators to reconfigure a Myceloid body into more rounds." Max ordered.
He heard Nico laugh and make the same recommendation to her own team. The thought of throwing the enemy back at their reinforcements instead of pulling something from the trenches or the ground cover to make more projectiles was exactly her style of humour.
It would be a while before they ran out of ammunition, even at the rate that the Androids were hurling it at the enemy, but it was always better to be prepared in advance with these less creative soldiers.
The explosions in the front line did the trick. They weren't taking out as many soldiers per round anymore without the penetration, but the tide was brought to a halt by the dispersed Mass Driver fire guided by Max's System Functions.
On this side of the base, the advance ground to a halt, which allowed the reinforcements from the Hunters to move to the other sides and work on pushing the enemy back from the camp.
The Myceloids were aggressive but not stupid, and after a half hour of fighting, they sounded the horns to retreat and regroup.
"Everyone, gather a corpse and refill your replicator storage. Then immediately process it all. I don't want anything growing inside the Mecha." Max ordered.
That order was a bit poorly worded, as most of them had nearly run their storage dry during the battle, so the amount that could be added was far more than a single refill of the weapons. What they ended up with were cases and cases of Mass Driver munitions sitting on the ground beside them, as that was the approved storage container for munitions outside the Mecha's loading chambers.
"What's with the extra ammunition?" Huntress Khan asked as she walked up between Max and Nico, showing him some respect as the Commander, despite his gender.
"A bit of a miscalculation on my part. I told them to load up and avoid keeping the Myceloid material in the Mecha, so we've got a lot of extra ammunition right now. If you want it or have a weapon that can use it, you're welcome to it. If not, we will put it back in the storage containers and rework it into blocks to be converted later.
I don't know if these things can regrow after being killed, but I don't intend to find out from the inside of the Mecha. Did you plan to burn off the battlefield?" Max asked.
"We've been reworking it into blocks as well. I don't think it regrows, but it often contains spores that will, and that's a threat to the base." The Huntress explained.
That's good enough for me. We will rework as many of the bodies into blocks as we have time for and keep them by the lines so that everyone's replicators can be kept full all the time. It's better that way and will let us burn the battlefield after every wave without running out of materials."
That was all the conversation that was needed, as the Hunters were already moving out, grabbing a set amount based on how much they had used and then burning the rest.
The Androids did the same and cleared the battlefield as efficiently as possible. They just dropped the blocks of material that they processed for others to pick up and continued their work to grab more bodies for the replicators.
"Those aren't humans are they? They're in human Mecha, but they don't act human." Khan observed.
Nico smiled at her. "That's right. They're android forces that we brought with us so that we didn't have to risk a lot of lives on the battlefield. Now that we know they work, we can expand from a Company to a Regiment if you would like more base defence, or I can make some Android-piloted Drone Fighters to take the battle to the enemy all over the region."
"Well, the Huntresses here might be insulted if you suggested that they be replaced by androids, but they won't mind if we become the staging point for your Drone Fighters. A few of them working in the area would give us better intelligence since we can't send satellites up here. If we try, they all get shot down.
Unlike us, I don't think that the Myceloids came by ground or by anomaly. I am pretty sure that they came by spaceship, and they still have defences in orbit." Khan sighed.
"Well, that makes things a bit more annoying. But if we can fly the fighters around without getting high enough to be attacked by the orbital fleet, I think that we can do a proper job of scouting the area for retribution and pest control." Nico told her with a suggestive tone that made the Huntress smile back at her from inside the confines of her Hunters Suit.
This content is taken from (f)reewe(b)novel.𝗰𝗼𝐦