Chapter 1128: Oh No You Don't
Max updated his targeting scans and plotted a path forward. Nico had swung wide left, and was coming back across the line toward his artillery.
The enemy seemed to be coming from a single point and spreading out, not from the multiple cities and portals, as Max had suspected at first. That meant that these aliens and warriors must have come through together, and that the other portal sites were going to have mixed targets as well.
It would explain the sudden change in alien species, as well as the uniformity of targets once they got started.
However, letting Nico get in front of him would stop his artillery bombardment, and mess up his advancement plan. He was going to have to push forward more quickly instead of sweeping them up in a wide net and then closing it on them, as he had been intending.
He could just expand the net and sweep Nico's force forward with it. She would remain in combat, but he knew that he would have days of complaints about kill stealing afterwards.
[Mecha, clear the aliens and push forwards. The warriors are coming from a single location, and I want to get there asap.] Max ordered.
[Understood Commander.]
The line of Super Heavy Mecha began to stomp forward, while the Corvettes darted about among the trees, looking for targets that had been hiding from their sensors.
Max's System Skill [Unified Force] allowed them all to link sensors smoothly and without the usual processing lag, so the 3D map of the battlefield was quite detailed, but the warriors were getting much better at hiding from detection than anything that they had shown before.
That wasn't going to save them from the attacks of a very dedicated Nico and the rest of the Mecha force, though. They were methodically digging out the hiding spots of the warriors, who were already beginning to retreat and find a better spot to fight the Mecha.
The trees let them hide to fight, but it also stopped them from detecting the Mecha in time to take them out before they were detected.
The durability of the Corvette Class Mecha was throwing a wrench into the carefully practised training that they had all undergone. They hadn't practised for what to do when they ran into an enemy that wouldn't die if you ambushed them. It defied military logic, as taught by their superiors, and they were working on a solution as they fought.
Listening to their thoughts as they adapted helped Max to both understand how they were trained and adjust his own force's technique to counter them.
It was driving their leadership insane, and they couldn't decide if they had a traitor, a communications leak, or if they were fighting an enemy that knew their training better than even their unit Commanders did.
The last would be the hardest to deal with, as nothing they did would be able to defeat such an enemy easily.
The problem was that not only did Max and Nico know their combat styles better than they did, they also knew many more combat styles, and Max was reading their minds, while Nico read their communications.
They had started using runners to send out some of the orders as an attempt to solve the issues of traitors and intercepted communications, but that was only partially effective, as the Mecha were still picking up almost all of their movements.
Once they confirmed where the main force was gathered, there wouldn't be much that the warriors could do to escape the two Mecha forces, but for the moment, that location was still hidden, and the infantry was in full retreat to multiple locations where they thought that they might be able to stage a defence against the Mecha.
This sort of offensive battle without time for the defenders to prepare was where the Mecha really excelled though, as they could overrun a makeshift perimeter with relative ease, especially with thrusters on the Corvettes, and the warriors didn't have any bunkers to protect them from the artillery.
Many forces throughout human history had tried to abandon the Mecha for various fighting forces, but the versatility of the humanoid design had proven to be as versatile as the average infantry soldier, but so much more deadly that they never fully faded from most forces. With gravity plating, wheeled and tracked vehicles had lost their edge, and while hover vehicles had become popular among some planets, and were widely used among the alien species, they just didn't seem to really catch on with human militaries.
For some reason, these warriors had chosen neither route, and had gone with an animalistic version of the robotic vehicles. If the technology wasn't lacking, they should actually be a match for the humanoid Mecha, and Max knew that Nico was already thinking of making some arachnid pattern drones for shock and awe efforts.
So many species found giant spiders terrifying that it would be a waste not to. Their crab drones would terrify a lot, but a nice fuzzy 2 metre tall spider would send quite a few forces running in terror.
The drones were a good idea, Max decided. The Cutter could make a few hundred of them in minutes, and he could deploy them all through the area around the ship so that nothing got too close, plus they were small enough to chase humanoids into many more hiding spots than a Mecha could.
[Commander, your order is ready. Where should we deploy them to?] The researcher in charge of the Cutter requested.
[Spread them out around the Cutter and search for everything but the Golden Legion. They haven't been hostile so far, and I would like to keep it that way. If we can work with them, their cities will make natural obstacles to divert enemy forces.] Max explained.
[Should we send some small ones to help them out then? Their city is still having an alien infestation problem.] The researcher asked.
Max smiled, and his thoughts went to the arachnid walkers. [Yes, but little ones. No more than a metre across with a single primary weapon and basic shielding is fine. That way they can enter ruins to rescue survivors as well as using the flexible dendrites to dig out hiding enemies. Saving lives is as important to goodwill as killing the enemy.]
[This will be so much fun. Cute baby crabs everywhere.]