Chapter 998 998 Feth Was That?
Nico's next barrage took out one of the newly arrived ships before it even knew what was happening, but due to the reload time, Max's barrage impacted the shielding of the next and only caused minor damage, blowing out power relays and killing the shields.
The Light Mass Drivers were there to help, though, and with the Nuclear Warheads in them, though admittedly much smaller than those of the Thunder Gun, they caused massive damage all over the surface of the ship, which broke ranks to flee the front lines of the battle.
It sprayed seedling interceptors behind it like chaff to deflect missiles, but it couldn't go to warp. Its power system was too damaged.
Nico and Max fired in unison at the last undamaged tree ship, tearing through the shielding and turning the ship into floating slag that the front ranks of Android Drones were quick to collect for spare materials to replace their losses.
The enemy didn't seem to have realized that the drones could replenish their ranks by looting the battlefield, and they weren't trying to stop the retreating drones, leaving the Colony Ship at full resources, even after suffering a hundred thousand drone losses.
The updates on his monitor told Max that the Androids were learning quickly as well. They weren't in the Drones; they were piloting them from inside the ship, and each destruction added more data to their shared combat files.
[Commander, the drop is complete. Our Mecha have engaged the Enemy, which appears to be a mixture of the Demonic Beings and the Klem.] The Android piloting the lead Destroyer informed him.
[Repeat, please, Destroyer One. I believe I misheard your message.] Max demanded.
[Commander, the drop is complete. Our Mecha have engaged the Enemy, which appears to be a mixture of the Demonic Beings and the Klem.] The Android piloting the lead Destroyer informed him again.
Well, that was NOT in the calculations. But at least they knew what happened to the Klem. They had been taken to fight on this battlefield.
It added a whole new dimension of horror to the invasion. If this fleet got close enough, both the Klem and the Myceloids could colonize planets from a distance with spores, spreading destruction through entire star systems without losing any of their own numbers.
It was a genius attack strategy. The technological species cleared the enemies. Then, the horde species colonized reinforcements and shock troops.
But Max noticed that the Myceloids here weren't on the same level as the ones he faced before. They looked mostly the same, but they were using cybernetics, building spacecraft, and seemed to be much more cunning than they had been before.
They had even created a complex wing of attack craft so that he couldn't easily target multiple units with his Mass Drivers, as they were too far apart to be caught in the blast if another was hit.
That was no real impediment to the Titan Class Mecha, though, and Max rapidly moved between targets with the Light Mass Drivers, destroying one after another and then picking out new targets.
He was just about to target one of the Myceloid Destroyers when a new enemy appeared out of the strange portals between him and the Innu, headed straight for their back lines.
So far, they hadn't been too busy, but the Innu had been making spare Mecha and gathering the injured Pilots of the Anomaly Defence Force for treatment before sending them back out again.
That must have been enough to catch the attention of whoever was orchestrating this battle, so Max quickly turned to assist the Valkia in defending their supply lines.
They were using a modified version of the Archangel Exoskeletons mounted over a Mobile Suit that was clearly sourced from the Reavers by the design. The wings were weaponized with the default lasers that Nico had first designed them with, but the Valkia were wielding handheld Ion Rifles and were ready to face whatever the new vessels sent out.
What they got was a swarm of small attack fighters that had powerful Laser Arrays on them but extremely slow targeting systems.
After the first few shots, the Valkia scattered into attack positions and quickly realized that as long as the enemy didn't predict their attack patterns, it was nearly impossible for them to hit the small and fast-moving attackers.
It made sense. Most targets in space were a minimum of ten metres long, and even the Drone Fighters that they sent out were on the small side. But a two-metre-tall Valkia was both shorter and far more slender than their weapons had been designed for.
Max took advantage of their frustration and unleashed all three rounds from his Thunder Guns into the engines of the ship between him and the Valkia, causing the whole vessel to go dark.
It looked like that also killed communications between the vessels, or perhaps between them and their Command Squad, because they were suddenly disorderly, and the Valkia began to tear them apart.
Max was intent on saving as many lives as possible on their side as he turned his weapons on the other ships in the region, aiming to take out as many of the large threats as possible while their Mecha fought on the surface.
That seemed like it might have been a tactical blunder, given the amount of firepower that had suddenly appeared in space to oppose them, but the planet was still moving forward, away from the rift at incredible speed, and wouldn't take long to pass within a single light hour of an inhabited system.
If it made it that far before the Mecha could deal with the Demons and Klem on the surface, they would surely infest the planet, putting billions of civilians in danger.
The evacuation of the nearest systems had been halted, as all vessels in the area were needed for the combat effort, so there was nowhere for them to go, and another infested world would inevitably join the attacking force.
Then Commander Yuri's voice came over the communications net.
[Sorry we are late, Commander. The Koleska Seventy Second fleet is here to reinforce you from the Reserve Lines. Where do you need us?]
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