While Max supervised the work of the Androids to remake the enemy bodies into usable blocks of dense metals, Nico got to work collecting them to process into Drone Bombers. Fighters were better suited to aerial battles, but there was no sign that the enemy had advanced aircraft in the atmosphere.
So, Nico started by repurposing a Hunter-built warehouse for a Terraforming Array and got to work on the production of drones.
The programming for them could be quite simple, and they could also have the male Hunters remotely pilot them, clearing the worst of the enemy forces before they made it to the Hunter positions.
Programming Drones for fights between the same species was significantly more difficult, but like the Klem, they were facing a world mostly full of a very different life form, which could be attacked at will.
The Hunters did have a sense of sportsmanship, though, and simply attacking them while they were sleeping wasn't going to be on their approved list of tactics until they got even more desperate than they were right now.
Nico could only control a few on her own with precision or roughly guide a hundred of them on a common mission. That was enough to get them started on the effort to protect the base, but it was a far cry from enough to deal with the whole threat.
She did consider making more androids to control the Drone Bombers. But for now, she would refrain from adding to their mechanized force. There was too much that could go wrong with the limited skills of the Androids when they were doing something new without supervision.
They preferred to learn through mimicry, as they had done aboard Absolution, but there wasn't anyone here but Nico to mimic, and she was going to be needed for the next base defence.
[Commander, bring back your troops; there is a huge enemy force incoming.] Huntress Khan informed Max with a text message.
Max called all the Androids back to the line and told them to fill their storage with condensed metals in preparation for a drawn-out battle.
Nico also received the message and frantically started to move the newly made Drone Bombers out of the warehouse. There wasn't time to do anything but set them to area defence outside the walls and command them to fly.
They would do their best to destroy anything that fit the Myceloid pattern, with a primary goal of keeping the number of enemies near the base to a minimum.
Once they were in the air, Nico rejoined the line, and the Mecha prepared to defend their section of the camp, with the Hunters intermingled among their ranks.
The Androids had taken the front lines of the defence at Max's direction, so they would take the brunt of the first rush and most likely the majority of the casualties, but they also had the Fusion Flamers, which had proven incredibly effective against the Myceloids.
"Hey, Max. Do you think these things are edible? I analyzed them earlier, and I didn't see anything toxic about them once they were cooked. I wonder what these things taste like? Green could mean that it's something leafy tasting or even harshly toxic and acidic." Nico asked as the first explosions from the drone attacks burst among the hills in the distance.
She had equipped them with plasma bombs, set for large-area explosions instead of bunker-busting. It would maim a lot of the enemy, which they had already learned the Myceloid force could regenerate with relative ease, but it would burn most of them to death and leave a lot of them missing limbs, which took longer for them to regrow.
"I'm not sure I want to find out what they taste like. What if we like it and then we turn it into an endangered species? It would be a tragedy." Max joked.
The Hunters who were listening to the same open channel chuckled at the humans' antics, and the banter helped relax some of the new recruits who were in Hunter Suits on the line for the first time.
If the two Commanders could be so relaxed when they were on the front lines, then everyone else was probably overreacting. At leat, that was the truth in the minds of the new recruits.
The more experienced hunters viewed it as a form of Gallows Humor, dark jokes made by those who understood that death was a possibility no matter their attitude.
The bombs slowly got closer and closer as the Drones were taken out by gunfire from below, and the Green Tide of Myceloid fighters rushed toward the camp.
The Androids knew what to do this time. As soon as the attack wave was in range and in sight, they opened fire with the Mass Drivers, set to explode on the first impact. The barrage of lethal explosions slowed the approach to a crawl, even with the shields in the hands of the front ranks of the Myceloid force.
A metal barricade was nothing to a hypersonic Mass Driver round. They simply punched holes in them and then detonated a split second later, decimating the enemy force. That didn't dissuade the attackers, though. They simply added more bodies with more shields so that the explosions didn't kill as many of them every time and kept pushing forward.
It was when the Bombers arrived that Max saw the first signs that this was a technologically advanced species. The first wave of bombs decimated the rear ranks, but the second exploded early, stopped by an energy shield with an impressive output.
"Oh, that's sneaky. If they had put it in front, we could have worn it down with the Mass Drivers, but they used the front ranks as a meat shield so that their barrier could get as close as possible before it started taking damage." Nico mused.
"Barbaric by most standards, but impressive as a military tactic. All units switch the penetration depth on the Mass Drivers to target the energy shield. Even if the front ranks survive the holes we punch in them, the overall damage will be higher if we can get that shield down and the bombers can get back to work." Max agreed.
Foll𝑜w current novels on fre(e)w𝒆bnovel