Chapter 411 411 The Math Doesn't Math
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
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While the newly arrived Innu Nomads got changed to test out the Gravity Slides, Max headed back to his office to get everyone ready to work.
[Prepare to open a portal to the Galactic Core area. All hands to ready stations. We will be transferring again immediately after our arrival.] Max ordered, and the crew of Terminus began to double-check their equipment in case of attack.
The portal slowly opened in front of Terminus as Max watched the power draw on their systems increase to eighty percent. It seemed that the technicians were correct, and they had modified the portal enough that they could make jumps within the Galaxy with a large enough portal to move Terminus through without any issues.
The enormous Colony Ship glided through the open portal to the vast void of the Galactic Core, where the presence of an incredibly powerful black hole at the center had prevented any stars from forming. This was the perfect place to be if you wanted to avoid being tracked back to your source planet. Even the signature of the previous portal was being dispersed by the faint draw of the Black Hole, rendering the signature incomprehensible.
Max made a note of this for the future, as eventually, someone else would learn to follow their portals to their source, and this would make an excellent staging point to avoid detection or pursuit.
He was under no illusions that the unity of humanity would be easy to achieve, and there were certain to be some factions that wanted to control everything by force, which would lead to violence on a rather large scale before everything was settled.
[Open the next portal. Let's see what we are going to be facing.] Max ordered, setting up all of the scans that he intended to run the moment that they arrived.
The nose of Terminus passed through the new portal, and Max began the scans. There were no Klem pods or other foreign objects in orbit, nor were there any space stations or human vessels.
That was concerning, as even the least inhabited of independent planets should have at least a small station or a transfer ship in orbit to meet trading vessels. But this planet had nothing at all.
Scanning the surface returned similarly strange results. The scanners detected intense concentrations of Klem biomass, as well as humans, but the planet itself didn't appear to have been razed for biomass the way that the Klem did to every other planet that they landed on.
The oceans showed heavy signs of non-Klem life forms, the forests were lush and green, and the humans were still wandering outside the cities. It didn't make any sense at all. Then the scans reached the far side of the planet, and things only got more confusing.
What was formerly a highly populated continent was now stripped bare, the cities ruined, and the scans showed Super Heavy Mecha-sized Klem every few dozen kilometers, but there were still signs of human life. There didn't appear to be any resistance effort remaining, and the signs were too much for a few survivors inside the cities, so Max changed the scans to see if the human population had moved underground.
The signs all seemed to be near the surface when viewed using triangulated coordinates, so Max just made a note and moved on to scan the rest of the planet.
It was the same thing, a lot of open violence but no large Klem presence and no stripped planet. It was as if the Klem had only invaded one continent and then decided not to move on.
Max began to scan for something that might be stopping the Klem from moving, but he wasn't finding anything at all. They had stopped of their own volition.
That meant he had to search for a Queen. Normally they wouldn't be spawned until a planet was completely in control of the Klem and linked to its neighbors, but he suspected that there was one here somewhere. He just needed to find it.
Repeated scans came up with nothing, but the levels of Klem biomass on the other continents were concerning due to the lack of actual Klem that he was seeing.
Terminus moved into orbit around the planet, expecting some reaction. If the message was bait to draw them here, there should be some hostile response. If it wasn't, then the human cities that were still mostly functional should send them some message, either to trade, ask for help, or tell them to go away.
But there was nothing at all. It was as if they no longer had the capacity to detect the Colony Ship in the sky, despite it being on the dark side of the planet and large enough that it would be visible to the naked eye, thanks to the light it reflected.
[What in the world is going on, Commander? I think we're all seeing the same scans, but it makes no sense at all.] Colonel Klinger asked over the intercom.
[Your guess is as good as mine. I am going to send a message to the surface and see what we get in response.] Max replied, wondering what they should send.
[Planetary Defense, this is the Colony Ship Terminus, home to the Terminus Trading Company of the Reaver Alliance. We have arrived in response to the request you sent. Please respond.] Max tried.
The radio was quiet for a few minutes until a faint signal reached their antenna.
[Terminus, flee. It is a trap. The Klem are hiding in the humans, stealing their minds and mutating their bodies. Save yourselves. It is too late for us.]
Max switched back to internal communications. [Did you hear that, ladies and gentlemen? Not only do we have humans to save, but we have also found the Klem doing something new and strange. Prepare to launch. We will start with the ruined continent, as I suspect that it is where this all started and the most likely location to find answers to the question we all have about possessed humans.]
Chapter 412 412 Wild Ride
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[Nico, I have good news and bad news.] Max informed his best friend and second in Command.
[If you say we're going for a peaceful resolution, I am going to hijack Cleansing Light and Orbital Strike something.] Nico replied.
[That's the good news. There is going to be a battle. And even more good news, the Innu Nomads need jobs to pay for their stay, so they will be joining you in a few days.
But the bad news is that you will be remaining on the ship again. We need the drones and their data too much for you to join the battle on the surface.] Max informed her.
[See, I was afraid you would say that, so I have already prepared for such an eventuality. I have upgraded my drone control pod to a full virtual reality simulation. That way, it at least feels like I am in combat.] Nico replied with a sigh.
[I am glad you understand. At least you get new friends to play with while we are all down here risking our lives to find out what the Klem is up to.] Max quipped back to lighten her spirits.
[There is always total destruction. If we drop a firestorm barrage on the planet, we can sort through the ashes to find answers.] Nico suggested, referencing a chemical weapon of mass destruction that bonded with Nitrogen to make the planet's entire atmosphere flammable, burning a whole world to ash in a single day.
[Tempting, but save that idea for after we fail to find answers on our own. It destroys too much evidence.] Max replied, knowing that she wasn't as upset as she sounded.
Max input his battle plan into the computer, letting everyone know what they were doing and setting the drop paths for the Cutters.
First up would be the wave of Drone Fighters to assess the anti-orbital resistance that the planet would offer, as that was never clear with a Klem infestation until they started firing for the first time. Every infestation developed differently as they adapted to the resistance that they faced.
That meant it was possible that this isolated planet might not have much at all for defense against them, but it might also be possible that they were relying on Klem-infested planets near them to send assistance if this was, in fact, a developmental planet that humans had never seen before.
Not much was known about the core of the Klem infestation, so this sort of thing might be normal for them, and the humans hadn't seen it before. They had clearly evolved from something, and they had data to help them adapt to new foes, so there might very well be many more planets like this one, only they were too far from the human-held territory for their presence to have been detected.
The drone fighters were launched, and Max noticed that there were new designs among the fleet of remote-controlled ships, more heavily armed than the usual fleet of fighters and slightly larger than even the ones that they had modified for shuttle duty.
[Testing a new toy, are you Miss Nico?] Max asked sarcastically.
[If I said no, would you believe me? The Klem presence tends to be higher density than Mecha-based targets, so we prepared an experimental new anti-infantry Drone in the labs over the last few days.] Nico replied.
That would help make up for some of what they lacked since Max had no intentions of sending the remaining infantry to the surface. They were doing well in the drone control rooms and logistics roles that they had taken up while waiting to return home.
Though, now that everything had gone insane in the Kepler Empire, he would have to talk to them again and reassess their intentions. He could certainly drop them off at home if they wanted, but that might not be what they intended anymore.
By the time they finished here, they should have had enough time to make a decision one way or another.
The drones had entered the lower atmosphere and were attracting attention from the seemingly human areas that they passed over. Still, there was no resistance at all, not even from the orbital defense weapons that appeared to be intact in the cities.
The drones reached the ruined continent and found the Klem and their first line of resistance, a scattered wall of needle-firing giants stationed around the shores of the continent and attacking the moment that the drones came into range.
[We have our data, gentlemen. Launch the Cutters and prepare for increased resistance when the Klem force notices the size of your vessels. Short approach, come in over the ocean and straight to the destination city. I don't want the Cutters to pass over the other Continents this time.] Max ordered.
The Cutters launched, and Max walked Cleansing Light out of the secure hangar to join the battle. The Titan Class Mecha was capable of dropping straight in like a Supply Pod and using its thrusters to avoid crashing into the planet at Mach 200, and that was exactly what Max was planning.
It would give him three minutes to deal with the heaviest of the resistance around what he had identified as a possible Klem development lab before the Cutters arrived. There were numerous Behemoth Class Klem in the area, larger by far than a Super Heavy Mecha but similarly dangerous.
That wasn't the sort of risk that he wanted his Regiment walking straight into, and it would make a good test of Cleansing Light's combat prowess in a setting where simply annihilating the entire area wasn't an option.
On the surface, the placid mass of Klem going about daily business changed attitudes in a second once it spotted the flaming ball racing toward their location. Hundreds of long-range adapted Klem that used chemical projectiles or energy bursts to attack bombarded the incoming fireball, while the ones adapted to fire rapidly growing spikes off of their bodies waited, recognizing that the fires of rapid entry from orbit would disintegrate their attacks and waste energy.
None of that made a difference to Cleansing Light. The force of the atmosphere, compressed to the point of ignition that was being forced along in front of the Titan Class Mecha, was enough to stop most of the attacks before they even reached the Mecha's shielding.
Max was under three thousand meters from the ground when he fired the retro thrusters, decreasing his speed as rapidly as his system-augmented body could withstand. The force was enough to turn his vision momentarily red as the capillaries in his eyes burst and then were healed by the nanobots in his body, but his control of Cleansing Light never faltered.
The forty-meter-tall samurai-themed Mecha touched down with an explosion of dust and viscera on top of a Klem Behemoth with enough force to create a crater around his location.
"That's one down. Three minutes remaining to clear the area for the others," Max muttered with a smile, enjoying the chaos that his arrival had caused among the Klem.
Chapter 413 413 Titans And Behemoths
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The immense force of Cleansing Light's arrival caused Chaos among the weaker Klem, but it immediately drew the strongest defenders' attention. The Klem shared a mental bond, and the death of the Behemoth that Max had landed on would not go unnoticed for even a second.
Max could see that dozens of Klem Shredders and a handful more Behemoths were headed his way already. However, they were being careful to remain as much behind cover as they could, so he couldn't get a clear shot at them without blasting through the hills and buildings, which risked destroying valuable evidence.
Max wasn't sure if that was deliberate or simply a coincidence based on the locations that they were coming from. Still, it was annoying, so he decided to draw them out by setting the Disruptors to a wide dispersed beam and eliminating every Klem Warrior and Swarm insect within half a kilometer of his location, giving himself lots of room to work.
That was the key. The Shredders rushed him the moment that he began the mass clearing of the smallest of the Klem, screeching and racing across the sand with incredible speed.
They weren't alone either. Swarms of Klem Gargoyles had taken to the sky, darkening the air around Max with their wings and beginning to fire spikes at him from their elevated positions. They didn't do anything against the mighty shields of the Titan Class Mecha, and Max turned his defensive lasers against them, downing dozens of them a second while he targeted the Shredders with his Disruptors.
The Klem might not be considered conventionally intelligent, but they did understand some basic tactics, and after the first wave of Shredders went down, they began to adapt their tactics. The thick top chitin of their comrades survived the beams, mostly dispersing the energy, so the second wave picked them up to use as shields, forcing Max to return to a concentrated beam to blast the incoming insects.
These ones had adapted perfectly to the desert, nearly white on the leathery portions, with a dull and slightly orange chitin armor on their fifteen-meter tall bodies sporting six cruelly spiked forelimbs, and running on their hind two legs, or on all eight legs, depending on the surface.
If it weren't for their immense size and the heat signatures that Cleansing Light was using to pick out the best targets, the Klem would be nearly invisible from even a low-altitude flight. That was the Klem's strongest evolutionary advantage, their adaptive camouflage coupled with their ability to spawn exactly the type of creatures that they needed for an invasion.
Max continued shooting, tearing through the Shredders as fast as they could approach for most of a minute before the weight of the swarm got them into melee range. Max took a moment to annihilate a Behemoth with a concentrated blast of all three Disruptors on his right arm, then brought his sword down, splitting apart a pair of Shredders and then another three on the backswing.
Max switched to a flowing combat style that would keep his blade in constant motion, piling Klem bodies as fast as he could while the defensive Lasers fired at their maximum rate, working to keep the Titan Class Mecha from being overrun.
They had underestimated the Klem presence in this area. The scans hadn't detected all of the ones that were hiding underground, and the flow never seemed to slow, despite the hundreds of Heavy Mecha sized Klem Shredders that Cleansing Light had downed.
[45 Seconds to Cutter approach] Max's timer reminded him.
No more time to take half-measures, even if they were doing their best to save the human ruins. He had to eliminate the Behemoths in the area so that the new arrivals had time to get settled in before they were facing a living wall of chitin and rage.
Max took Cleansing Light up into the air, using a dispersed burst of the Disruptors to clear the skies of Gargoyles and then targeting the last two Behemoths that he could see at the moment.
The enormous Klem were both barrel-shaped, six-legged types with pressurized chemical storage in the majority of their torso, corrosive enough to eat through Mecha armor in seconds and forceful enough that they could fire over impassive distances. Max's blasts tore holes in their torsos, splattering the area in corrosive liquid that ate through their surroundings and their allies alike.
Those were always the highest priority target since they could cause wide area damage to a Mecha Company, but they were so heavily armored that a single hit from a Heavy Mecha wasn't always enough to take them out.
For the moment, the Klem had been reduced to Shredders and some Warriors, and the mass had swarmed close to Max's location, leaving the landing zones of the Cutters reasonably clear of hazards.
The Battalions were already exiting their Cutters, which would return to high altitude flight and offer air support for their charges, anything that they could to clear the area of Klem so that they could search for the suspected labs in the ruins.
[I think they like you, Commander. I don't think I have ever seen so many Klem on a single planet, much less all in one location.] Colonel Klinger laughed as his Super Heavy Mecha, Claret River, began raining Artillery shells down on the Klem forces while his arm-mounted Ion Destroyers flashed constantly, wiping out the Shredders that were headed for his landing zone.
[I am a likable person. Why wouldn't they like me?] Max returned, pulsing his Disruptors at a half dozen targets at once, vaporizing the Shredders in an instant.
[Drone support incoming. Thanks for clearing the airspace so we can work.] Nico's voice informed everyone as black specks appeared on the horizon as the Drone Fighters approached the battlefield at supersonic speeds.
Max would have loved to have many more of the Drone Fighters, but they lacked the pilots to send as many as he would hope to use into battle. A few hundred was a good start, and could control the airspace over a grid sector without much trouble, but with ten thousand of them, he could enforce a no-fly zone over an entire continent, making it much easier for his Mecha to deal with enemies, and eliminating all possibility of the enemy openly maintaining supply lines.
Chapter 414 414 Siege Tactics
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The five Battalions encircled the ruined city, setting up within direct line of sight to two other Battalions so that the overlapping fields of fire could prevent mass Klem movement out of the region, at least above ground.
If the Klem wanted to move below ground, it would alert the seismic sensors, and the Regiment would have to decide what to do about them, but for the moment, the voracious insects were trapped within the ruins, pinned down by artillery fire from the Super Heavy Mecha, and hunted by Cleansing Light maintaining a flying vigil overhead.
Max couldn't keep that up forever, though. He was alone in the cockpit, so he would have to land and sleep eventually, the one great disadvantage of a single Pilot setup.
The Battalions had already set up a three-shift rotation on the front lines, with one group on duty, one on standby, and one resting at all times, so they could instantly mobilize two-thirds of their forces if a large attack began.
The shifts had just changed when Max decided to land Cleansing Light behind the First Battalion and see what the Klem would do when the Titan Class Mecha was no longer clearly visible overhead. He had considered setting an autopilot, with a damage warning to let him know if something attacked him while he hovered overhead, but drawing the defenders out directly seemed like a more efficient use of their resources.
He could still stay awake for hours, and he was hoping that they would take the bait and attack soon after he landed, attempting to overrun the Regiment when they were apparently at their weakest.
The Klem were reliant on their leadership castes, so the disappearance of the Command Mecha should signal to them that it was an opportune moment to attack.
Max flew out of sight of the city, then returned low along the horizon and crouched behind a hill, fifteen kilometers behind the First Battalion, to wait.
Twenty minutes passed, then thirty, before the first reports of the Klem gathering in large numbers, despite the continued artillery shelling, started to come in from every Battalion at once.
[Prepare for a mass charge. Target the Behemoths first. At the first sign of trouble, hit the emergency signal, and Cleansing Light will take to the air to reinforce you. I don't want any casualties during this early part of the investigation if we can avoid them.] Max ordered.
The danger was that he would reveal himself too early and the Klem wouldn't send out their strongest forces, dragging out the siege for longer than it had to be. They weren't here to cleanse the region. At least that wasn't their primary goal. They just wanted to know what the Klem host was up to so that they could begin the plans for the next phase.
Without any detectable signal, the entire mass of the Klem force rose up and charged the five Mecha Battalions at the same time, preventing them from reinforcing each other. As far as tactics, it was simple but brutally effective. Send the first line of warriors with shields to block some of the attacks as the lines rushed forward, and then get the Shredders into close combat.
If any of the five-meter-tall warriors survived, they could deal with the Light Mecha, but the Klem didn't count on it, preferring to let the much more lethal Shredders do the dirty work of clearing large groups of enemies with their rapid attacks and multiple limbs.
That wasn't all that the Klem had prepared today, though. The Shredders also included similarly sized Tyrants, which were grown with ranged energy burst weapons instead of the extra central limbs, firing balls of flaming or corrosive liquids at the Mecha lines, exponentially increasing the threat that the swarm presented to the Mecha of the Terminus Regiment.
The Heavy Mecha responded the moment that the Klem ranged troops revealed themselves, trading Ion fire for Chemical bursts and rapidly thinning the ranks of the giant beings among the Klem.
The true horrors for the Klem attackers began when they got close to the makeshift bulwarks, and the Fusion Flamers lit up their front ranks, turning them to ash and setting off any of the Klem that were equipped with ranged weapons and too close to the Mecha lines.
[Status Report] Max ordered.
It only took a few seconds for the Mecha Company Commanders to update their status on the computer, showing the lines holding strong and no Klem making it to their Mecha now that they were facing the full fury of a Heavy Mecha Regiment.
Then the Drone Fighters began their work, hitting the Klem with strafing runs and dropping bombs into their ranks, creating far larger explosions than the artillery of the Thunder Guns.
The Klem tried to send up a wave of Gargoyles to counter the Drone Fighters, but the agile planes were ready for them, meeting the small winged Klem with a scorching wave of Laser blasts, clearing their airspace again, and letting the strafing runs continue.
Being attacked from multiple directions at the same time was confusing the Klem, and they didn't seem to understand what they were supposed to be defending against, which brought the attack to a halt. It was a fatal mistake for their Commander, or whatever hive mind was in control of the Klem attacks of this nature.
Too much wasn't known about the way that the Klem communicated and interacted with each other to be certain which was correct, but Max was leaning toward a simple form of shared consciousness, with smarter and more developed Klem serving as Commanders.
It made the most sense from what he had seen of their tactics. Removing a few Commanders or separating a small group from the main force didn't affect their planning or ability to coordinate, but killing all of the largest Klem threw them into disarray.
With a little luck, the facility that they had built under these ruins would shed some light on how the species operated on a daily basis. It wasn't really essential knowledge. Knowing how they fought was enough for most commanders, but Max thought that if he knew more about them, he might be able to use the knowledge for other purposes.
Terminus always had some sort of experiment going on, and if he could find a way to link functions the way that the Klem appeared to link minds, he could make his [Unified Force] System Function even more deadly.
Chapter 415 415 Suburbs
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The combination of Drone Fighters and Mecha fire was driving back the Klem lines, with the insects fleeing back to the relative safety of the ruins to get away from the drones.
[All Units spread out and advance. Maintain your spacing and close in on the city. If the Klem force continues to fall back, we will take and hold the outer city area.] Max ordered, then changed all his screens to show a composite aerial view compiled by the Drones.
That would let everyone in the Regiment use his firing solutions, thanks to [Unified Force], while Max himself took a much-needed breather. Fighting in the air was much more taxing than fighting from a stationary position on the ground, after all.
He just needed to remain awake so that the Regiment could continue to gain the advantage of his Targeting Functions, which were making quick work of the Klem Shredders and Tyrants, which further demoralized the remaining warriors, who relied on the heavier carapace chitin of their large kin to get close to the Mecha.
[Third Battalion, watch your left flank, I have tagged a large group of Warriors trying to sneak up on you. Fourth Battalion, hold fast, you have a wave of Warriors coming straight for you, and your lines are getting spread out.]
The warriors were counterattacking in full force, tens of thousands of bodies rushing through the cities, so densely packed that they appeared to be charging over top of their own kin to try to be first to the enemy.
Max could see that the Fusion Flamers weren't going to be enough to fend off this wave, which wasn't just following the streets but charging over and through the ruins of the buildings that used to make up the city, so he took to the air again, intending to thin the charges with a wide Disruptor beam.
The Klem army was ready for that and began firing at him with Tyrants and a new group of Behemoths the moment that he came into sight above the horizon.
It did reduce the attacks on the Regiment a little, but their primary concern wasn't the heaviest of Klem attackers, but the fact that the warriors outnumbered them a hundred to one and had the advantage of cover.
Max dodged the incoming attacks and began sweeping the area with his Disruptors set on maximum dispersion while circling the city to relieve every Battalion in turn. The effect was good but not as complete as he had expected. The Klem warriors didn't just look like they were climbing over their comrades, they really were, and the bodies of the upper level shielded the lower level from his disruptors, letting the Klem Warriors surge toward the Mecha lines while Max was forced to move along and render aid to the rest of his forces evenly so that none of them was overwhelmed.
Fusion Fires lit up the suburbs, turning the weaker building materials of residential areas to ash and stopping the Klem attack in its tracks for a moment until it could build up enough of a pile of intact bodies to force its way into melee.
[Fifth Battalion, as we discussed. Ten Meters back and continue firing.] Colonel Klinger ordered a moment before the other Battalions did the same.
He was the last that Max had to relieve, so the swarm was heaviest at his position, piled up thickly and already defended by an impressive pile of corpses.
If it weren't for the fact that the Klem would Cannibalize their dead to provide biomass for the next wave, Max would be stunned at their ability even to maintain their force with this sort of tactic. Still, he had to admit that against the overwhelming firepower of the Mecha, it was incredibly effective.
His Disruptors made a double pass over the line in front of the Fifth Battalion, thinning the Klem ranks and vaporizing a large portion of the corpses that they had piled up for their attack.
[Shields to the front. They are getting ready to push.] The Battalion Commanders ordered, and the Line Mecha made a wall of interlocking shields nearly as tall as their Mecha while the Fast Attack Mecha backed them up to make a wall of fire that should vaporize the wall that the Klem tide was going to shove along in front of them before it could reach the lines.
Max spun on the spot, using more concentrated Disruptor beams and his defensive Lasers to tear gaps in the Klem barriers all through the city, unfortunately destroying even more buildings. There likely wasn't much evidence to be found here, but they had advanced past a large portion of the suburbs with minimal resistance, so he would have scouts search those buildings that hadn't taken much damage for evidence of what happened when the Klem first arrived here.
That left him stationary in the air, and he took a furious wave of attacks from the Klem heavy attackers, but his shields were holding up well enough for the moment.
It was beginning to look like a wholesale victory for the Regiment when a thunderous noise filled the air. A ten-meter-wide swathe of the city collapsed, making a ring of lowered ground a hundred meters in front of the Mecha lines, from which a furious wave of attackers poured forth.
These were undeniable Klem, with four arms and chitinous spikes on the lower arms, but they also had hands on the upper arms and a bipedal stance, which let them utilize the remnants of what appeared to be the human defenders' equipment.
They were all wearing pants, and some had either a shirt or body armor on, while others had a chitinous shell on their torso, but the most important part was that they were all carrying infantry weapons.
Nico's voice filled the airwaves a half second later.
[I have good news and bad news, Commander. The good news is that those things are full-blooded Klem and not made from humans, just in their image.]
[And the bad news]
[They know how to use the Plasma Rifles]
Chapter 416 416 Data Gathering
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[Forget saving the city. Eliminate all threats with extreme prejudice.] Max ordered, bringing cheering from the Mecha lines.
No longer did they wait until they had a target in sight. They annihilated the buildings where the enemy might hide or take shelter. They began a carpet bombing pattern with the Thunder Guns that would quickly level everything from them to the trenches, which the Klem had collapsed out of the city's former ring road.
The new Klem infantry, as the Pilots had dubbed them, were undeterred, hiding in the smallest piles of rubble to avoid taking direct fire and spreading out so that they weren't losing too many forces to any single strike.
Their presence confirmed to Max that something unusual had happened beneath the city, but he couldn't say what it was yet, only that it was an entirely new behavior for the species, who seemed to disdain all things human in the past. It was possible that it was only because they couldn't understand or use them, but if that was the limitation, then a force of humanoid Klem who could use rifles marked a dramatic change in their strategy towards increased intelligence and strategy over mass consumption and overwhelming force.
Every nation in the Galaxy would be concerned if the Klem began to strategize on a higher level to go with their invasion forces, which were already an existential crisis to many planets near their borders.
There wasn't any word of strange happenings elsewhere yet, so Max suspected that this world was the testbed for the new strategy. If he could put it down at the source, the Klem could possibly be convinced that the technique was a failure and return to their traditional methods of assimilating planets into their borders.
The Klem infantry began to shoot up at the Drone Fighters, the only threat that they could see from their hiding spots, and Max began to wonder if he had overestimated their intelligence.
They could clearly understand basic targeting, as they were hitting the Drone Fighters' shields with acceptable accuracy for a drafted planetary defense force. Still, they seemed completely unaware that the Mecha could see their weapons sticking up out of the rubble and the flash of the muzzles and energy blasts, which let the Mecha track their hiding spots.
Of course, that happened with planetary defense forces who were given nothing more than a uniform and a firearm when their homeworld came under attack, so it was possible that the Klem lacked battle tactics at the moment, as the humans here hadn't known them.
Given time, they would learn it from battles on other planets, and even against the Terminus Regiment, and then spread the knowledge to the next planet that they invaded, building it further with every successful invasion.
Unlike humans, whose internal organs would take catastrophic damage from being near the explosions of the Thunder Guns shells, the Klem infantry had no such issues, only slowing their rate of fire if they were directly hit.
Their numbers were dropping fast, thanks to Max's enhancements and the combination of Line Mecha and Corvette Class units using their light weapons at a high rate of fire and clearing them from their hiding spots.
They seemed to have done their job, though, and by the time all of the structures that could provide cover between the trench and the Mecha lines were obliterated, the main Klem force had regrouped in the trench that encircled the city.
[Do you think that they might have assimilated a Kepler General? I haven't seen such a marvelous waste of infantry lives to let the heavy units regroup since we boarded Terminus.] Colonel Klinger joked as the guns fell silent, saving ammunition while the Klem army was hidden from easy targeting.
[That's not funny. It's accurate but not funny.] Major Miller complained.
[Can I start bombing things properly now?] Nico asked as the swarm of drones circled the outskirts of the city.
The trench was ten meters across and deep enough to hide a Klem Shredder in it, but it seemed to lack any variance or offsets to stop a blast within the trench from spreading all down its length. A series of attacks from Cleansing Light would be devastating to the assembled forces if they were all still in the open.
[If the Drones currently have a payload of bombs, drop them in the trench and clear it out, let's see what the Klem do when they realize that the trench isn't invulnerable. Their new behaviors could be very important to us during the rest of this mission.] Max ordered.
The Drone team didn't bother to answer. Instead, they sent a wave of Drones toward the center of the city, dropping cluster bombs toward the trench. They were about to detonate when the most curious thing happened. A line of chitin plates raised up from the trench, blocking the majority of the blasts and keeping the occupants of the fortification mostly intact.
[Bombing run failed. Effectiveness under fifteen percent. We are analyzing the data now, but it appears that they have created a new form of winged creature. Not one that can fly, but one that can spread armored wings to defend those below it.] Nico reported from her position aboard Terminus.
[They really are learning. Trench warfare is a big advancement for the Klem, and it looks like they understand both the essential purpose and the largest vulnerabilities of the tactic.
Thunder Guns, once you are resupplied from the Cutters, begin a low rate of fire bombardment of the trenches. Keep the Klem pinned down for now while the main force rests. The Klem have always preferred to attack at night, so I want as many units as possible prepared for a twilight charge.]
That was the best that he could do for now. They had advanced their lines halfway through the city, taking up most of the suburbs, while the Klem now held the central city with a trench line.
The fact that they hadn't tried to escape was intriguing. Normally they would at least attempt to send a large force out of the city to encircle the Mecha, but it looked like they were defending something here. They certainly had at least some underground tunnels dug since the infantry was waiting underground, and they collapsed a whole ring of the city, which wasn't a tactic that a Human city would have prepared.
They were the same species that he had fought before, but this was a totally different battle, and Max was eager to find out just how much the Klem had advanced and how they managed it.
Chapter 417 417 Revelations
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
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With the artillery holding the enemy in the trenches, Max implemented a new plan.
[Nico, send some data probe drones into the ruins to find the underground level entrance. I need to know what is down there and if it has any relation to the Klem integrating human technology.] Max ordered.
[On it, boss. No signs of a functional power grid are detected at the surface level, but the reading from the Klem won't let us detect one that is still active underground.]
Knowing if the Klem had human technology still active would tell him a lot, from their capability to produce new Infantry, to their ability to recharge the energy weapons that they were using. If they were working with a limited ammunition storage ability, that was the best outcome for the Regiment.
They wouldn't be able to fight for long with only what a city garrison kept charged. However, if they still had power available somewhere, or they had improvised a way to recharge plasma weapons, the threat that the defenders posed would increase by an incredible amount, given the Klem's ability to rapidly reproduce smaller creatures.
He hadn't seen any of the Swarm-type Klem, who usually blanketed the ground during an invasion, recovering resources for the main force, but that could just be because this whole area had been cleared of all living things already, and they were no longer needed here.
The smaller scouting drones were carried within the Drone Fighters, and Nico deployed a half dozen of them in an instant, sending them to scout the central city while Max waited well back of his forces and out of sight.
There hadn't been any sign of reinforcements yet, but with the majority of this continent under their control, it was only a matter of time before the Klem determined that the local force couldn't deal with the Regiment and started to surround them with overwhelming numbers.
That was why Max had kept the Cutters on the ground, on standby in case they needed to evacuate to a new location to continue scouting for answers about this strange planet.
They still hadn't sent any more messages to Terminus, as far as he could tell, and that didn't bode well for the human resistance.
The drones only scouted for a few minutes before Max's display showed that all six had found a way into the underground levels of the ruins. All of them were carved by Klem, from what he could tell by the camera feed, but before long, they were into a human-built underground complex with its hallmark concrete walls and drab green paint.
The Klem had breached it, so Max didn't have high hopes for survivors. However, what the drones found was anything but normal. There was no blood on the walls and floors, no bits of bodies that hadn't been recycled into useful biomass by the insects, nothing.
Other than the fact that the power was out, it appeared to be just an ordinary abandoned government facility, no different than any average development lab or security holdout.
[I am sending one to the control room to see if I can recover anything. The drones can remotely read a solid-state drive even with the power off, so we might learn something. At the very least, their security logs should give us a timeline.] Nico informed Max over the Command Channel.
[You have a layout already?] Max asked, confused.
[The evacuation plans on the walls by the elevators are in perfect condition. This seems to have been a civilian research facility called the Wolf Mountain Development Facility. What they were developing is unclear.] Nico replied.
[If the answer is Klem-specific bioweapons, I am climbing out of this Mecha to kick someone's ass.] Colonel Klinger muttered over the radio.
It was a sentiment that Max and every other commander could understand. Many worlds tried to reverse engineer the Klem to make more effective weapons against them, but if those samples somehow ended up in the Klem's hands, it could help them develop a resistance to all of the new weapons being designed to fight against them.
Unless their research wasn't related to any other development streams, it could be a huge setback for every other border nation that was relying on previous generations of weapons that they had based their research upon.
Max watched as the drones raced through the facility at a breakneck speed, finding it completely abandoned and strangely clean, with no sign of damage from armored spikes and pincers, which he would have expected after the Klem breached the facility, just from walking through an empty building.
[I have a power signature. Subbasement 37 has an active generator. Control room computers show that the facility is intact but powered down. Working on the security logs now.] Nico reported.
So, the Klem didn't kill the power. It was off when they arrived. Perhaps they didn't even explore and only passed through as they were digging the tunnel. It wasn't unknown for them to have shown little or no interest in ruined buildings.
One drone went further down, while the others spread out, searching for signs on this level, where the tunnel passed through the facility and then working their way to the surface, where there were most likely to be signs of battle.
[I have logs. There is no report of the Klem arrival when the facility went offline six months ago. What I can say for sure is that they weren't expecting it. Everything seems normal in the logs, including the last half-finished hourly report, then suddenly nothing. Just logs of the main power supply going offline and a lot of door openings as the battery backups kept things running for the last few days.
It's strange. There is no panic, no sign of damage, or reason for the sudden shutdown. It just happened with no explanation. They even still have the next month's shift rotation running when the power goes offline. It's all marked absent. They didn't even try to cancel shifts or indicate that they didn't need to be here.
Not even the most abrupt bankruptcy should be like this. At the very least, the security guards should have left a message or kicked a wall or something.]
[Keep searching. It might have been a government raid, which would have grabbed the security forces right away and stopped them from doing anything on their way out.] Max suggested, wondering if they had uncovered nothing more than a bankrupt and corrupt tech company that the government had recently shut down.
A few minutes passed, and the sporadic artillery fire gave a thumping rhythm to the battlefield, a tense heartbeat as both sides prepared their next moves.
[I have found something, and you're not going to like it. This is a System Replication lab. They were trying to produce rapidly adaptable super soldiers to emulate the effects of the Kepler System has on our Pilots.] Nico reported, sending the data she found in a lab through to Max and the teams aboard Terminus.
[Genetically Engineered Soldiers are nothing new. Why is that such bad news?] Max asked.
[Because the researchers never left. There is a command post for them in subbasement 37, and I just intercepted a signal from them to somewhere else on the planet, detailing the battle with the infantry on the surface.
They might not have made them, but the survivors are definitely trying to adapt Klem biology to help them adapt and overcome the invasion.] Nico reported.
Chapter 418 418 Morons
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
+ - Turn on Reset
The drones had reached the surface and were returning to the lower levels, which were turning more and more gruesome as they progressed.
The hallways were immaculate as if nobody had ever set foot on them, but the labs were all full of failed human experiments. Some were inert, some had survived the power outage but couldn't escape their confinement and had starved to death, but all were heavily mutated humans.
[Commander, you don't think that they sent the test subjects to the surface to fight the Klem and ended up giving them material that helped build a new design of Klem, do you?] Major Miller asked.
[I don't know. It is possible that the super soldier project that the base was working on was among the defenders, but the lab shut down months before the distress signal marked the invasion of the planet.
For now, we need to rely on Nico and keep those drones scanning. We need more information.] Max replied.
[We have movement. It looks like the Klem forces are coming up and over.] The Second Battalion reported, and Max's sensors showed that the entire defensive force in the trenches had started moving all at once, using the adapted defensive Klem to block for the forces behind them.
Immediately, the Thunder Guns went to full output, lobbing the shells on a higher trajectory to make it over the front line of shields while the Ion Bombard Arrays of the Super Heavy Mecha began to blast holes in the shields that the lighter Mecha could fire through.
The infantry began to rush underneath the shields, moving forward at an impressive rate of speed that no ordinary human could maintain, much less through the loose rubble of the ruined city. They fired as they went, heedless of the fact that they weren't having any real impact on the Mecha that they were charging toward.
For the most part, they were ignored, and they chose to dig in at a new location, under a hundred meters from the Mecha lines, presumably to become advanced scouts for the next wave of attacks.
With the heavily armored wings of the defensive Klem in front, the attack wave was barely beginning to falter at the hundred-meter mark, while every Mecha was unleashing their firepower at the maximum output, except for the Fusion Flamers of the Fast Attack Mecha, which weren't quite in range yet.
This time, the Klem didn't try anything fancy. They just kept charging forward, getting shredded, and then lit on fire while their comrades charged over their bodies.
[Prepare for close combat.] Max ordered, launching Cleansing Light into the air to join the battle.
There was something strange about the humanoid Klem. It was like the others didn't even see them, running past and over their position heedless of the damage that they were doing to the scouts that had just picked their hiding holes.
Max had every intention of capturing one alive so that he could read its mind, but first, they had to deal with the main force before the Regiment started losing Pilots.
The Drone Fighters were doing their best to eliminate the attackers, but there weren't enough of them to do the job. It was enough that the front line of the Mecha was holding though, blocking the Klem advance while the ranged units behind them blasted away.
This time, the Klem didn't stop at the Mecha. They kept going, using the gaps between Battalions to spread outward in an attempt to surround the Battalions, the more standard strategy that the Regiment was used to.
Being surrounded actually made it easier for them, as it let more Mecha fire without the interference of large metal bodies in front of them, unleashing their fury in a full circle around their positions instead of just inward toward the city.
For over an hour, the Klem kept coming from the ground until the numbers started to dwindle, with a last few specialized Klem coming out last, throwing their lives away when they realized that all was lost.
Even the humanoid Klem had joined the attack near the end, along with the few swarm bugs and noncombat specialized insects, marking their position at the bottom of the hierarchy.
[No signs of live Klem on the surface. Minimal signatures underground, which might be eggs that haven't hatched.] The observation team aboard Terminus reported as the battle came to a conclusion.
[Drone team, what is the situation underground?] Max asked.
[Level 37 has been entered. No more life signs are found. Beginning the search now.] Nico reported.
The drone feeds showed that this level had signs of inhabitants, though, as the floors were dirty, there were empty food wrappers everywhere, and the air quality sensors showed that it would most likely smell foul but was still breathable down there.
As the drones passed the labs, they found most of the doors had been ripped off the hinges, and whatever was inside had long since escaped. There were dozens of bodies of humans in lab coats, mostly freshly deceased, within the last 24 hours at least, but no signs of life or movement.
[I have data from their computers. This lab was shut down for illegal human experimentation, and the team returned here after the invasion halted the investigation of the lab by the authorities.
Their plan was to weaponize the human genome to make the Klem capable of empathy, compassion, and human reasoning. According to the data, they had some success using the Klem Swarm, which they returned to the surface to infect the rest of the swarm two weeks ago.
It looks like this is, or was, a branch of the Human Resistance trying to degrade the Klem into something that they could reason and bargain with.] Nico informed the Command Channel.
[So, what you're saying is that instead of empathy and reason, the Klem latched onto the portions of the virus that represented humanoid forms and attempted to recreate the soldiers that they had faced instead?] Max asked.
[It's circumstantial right now, but yes, that appears to be what happened.] Nico replied while continuing to scan computers to send more and more data back up to Terminus to be analyzed later.
[Just what we needed. Idiotic peaceniks, giving the Klem a headstart on the evolutionary process.] One of the Battalion Commanders sighed while Max searched the battlefield for a surviving humanoid Klem whose mind he could scan.
It didn't look like he would find one, they weren't heavily armored, and they had joined the full frontal assault once the main force began to run out of bodies. Even a grazing hit didn't leave much of them for him to interrogate.
[Troops, spread out, search the area for survivors. If you find a surviving humanoid, bring it to me, kill everything else, then find and destroy the eggs that Terminus suspects are still underground. The data is in your maps.] Max ordered, getting the Battalions up from their defensive positions while the techs from the Cutters made their way forward to recover and repair any damaged or disabled units.
They now had an idea of where the strange humanoid Klem came from, but they didn't know how they had spread across the planet or why the main Klem force hadn't advanced.
Chapter 419 419 Rolling On
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
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[We have our data and the origin of the new Klem. I love it when a plan comes together. We didn't even have to search half the planet to get the information.] Max told the Command channel, eliciting a round of laughter from the Battalion Commanders.
[So, what is the plan, Commander? It looks like there is no remaining human resistance on this continent. Will we try to rescue who we can, or will we go search for more of the modified Klem to gather more data?] Colonel Klinger asked.
That was a tough decision for Max to make, but in the end, he decided that it was simply too dangerous to leave these modified Klem alone to spread through the system. If the insects started routinely using captured human technology, they could be in real trouble, especially if the Klem learned to pilot Mecha.
Armored Killer Insects inside giant war machines were a terrifying idea that he really didn't want to have to contemplate. The best option was to eliminate the population here as efficiently as possible, eliminating any chance of survival for the Klem that had taken over.
The tricky part was that their sensors couldn't tell what was going on with the other continents. They still seemed to be operating as usual, at least from orbit, so there might be quite a few humans left there for whatever reasons.
[We will send the Cutters to eliminate the major Klem populations on this continent and then clean up the stragglers we encounter as we move north toward the coast. The gap between continents at the point I have marked is less than forty kilometers, an easy transit for the Mecha. Once we reach the coast, we will send probes and drones to determine what is going on with the rest of this planet.] Max ordered.
[Already on it, Commander. There is no air traffic anywhere on the planet, so I have deployed a pair of drone fighters toward the nearest continent to see what the response is. The cities look intact, but the sensors aboard Terminus are detecting huge amounts of Klem biomass.] Nico reported, as efficient as usual and anticipating his orders.
Max made up an attack pattern for the Cutters to deploy to high altitudes and use a limited Orbital Strike to wipe out the more massive clusters that weren't along their route.
The Cutters took off on their mission, and the Regiment formed up into a wide arc to move out toward their next destination, a former mining settlement that might have survivors underground and which should have a limited population of Klem, according to their scans.
If they didn't find any human survivors underground, they would collapse the mines to prevent them from being used to incubate Klem, but mostly it was just a short stop on their route north. Walking would give the Cutters and the drones time to work so that by the time they arrived at the coast, they should have a good grasp of the situation.
They only had fifty kilometers to their next stop, barely an hour at a fast march for the Mecha, so Max made sure that they stopped for a quick break and a meal before they moved on. Their logistics staff was incredibly efficient, having already packed up the supply vehicles while the battle was still ongoing, but most of their supplies and repair facilities were on the Cutters, to begin with.
What was on the ground were mostly munitions and food supplies, with some repair materials and Technicians wearing the Tech Adept Harnesses to make field repairs without a full repair gantry.
[Ready to move, Commander.] Major Miller reported, taking up the role of adjutant to keep an eye on everything while Nico was up on Terminus.
[Good, let's go. If you see anything vaguely Klem, kill it. If it was actually human, we will apologize afterward.] Max ordered, leading the convoy across the sun-baked dirt of a continent stripped entirely bare by the Klem occupants.
Forty-Five minutes later, they were nearing the mine site, and the first ranks of Klem scouts came into sight, a handful of Warriors watching the horizon, who had surely spotted them already.
A Regiment of Heavy Mecha wasn't exactly subtle.
[Maintain your pace and position. We will sweep across the site at a walk and then analyze the mine to make a determination.] Max ordered.
[The mine is full of Klem eggs. Just finished scouting it. I recommend a Firestorm Bomb.] Nico reported.
A Firestorm Bomb only had one setting, planetary destruction.
[Nico, we are still on the planet, in case you forgot.] Max replied.
[But you don't have to be. Just saying.]
Max could see from the data feed that he was receiving that the mine was practically packed full of Klem eggs, most of them in the Shredder and Tyrant size, giving them a reserve of tens of thousands of Heavy Mecha equivalent Klem just waiting to be hatched and deployed.
Seeing that, the Firestorm suddenly didn't seem like such a bad idea anymore.
[Fast Attack Units, Fusion Flamers to maximum range. I want that mine full of eggs hard-boiled before we blow it up. Shredders are known to dig themselves out of the rubble when they hatch.] Max ordered.
The ruins of a building were one thing, but collapsing a hundred meters of rock on top of them should crush anything that survived the flames due to distance.
The Klem that were on the surface formed up a defensive line, preparing to meet the incoming Mecha when Max ordered the bombardment to begin from ten kilometers out. It was much too far for them to close the distance in any reasonable time, and the Thunder Guns were making short work of the sparse defense force.
[Fast Attack, Flame every entrance to those Mines, overlapping fire until the shafts fill with magma.] Max ordered, deciding that there was no kill like overkill.
Molten Rock did a wonderful job of killing Klem eggs, after all.
Chapter 420 420 Nice
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
+ - Turn on Reset
The Fast Attack Mecha activated their jump packs and flew over the defenders, landing with the First Battalion's force facing the former town while the other four Battalion's Mecha began to flood the mine entrances with Fusion Flames.
The effect was immediately effective and incredibly brutal. Even from his current distance of eight kilometers away, Max could hear the Klem shrieking from underground as they struggled to stay alive and find a way out of the tomb that they found themselves inside.
[Thermal Scans detect another exit point at two kilometers east. The shaft stops just short of the surface, most likely a Klem-created emergency exit. Fifth Battalion is heading there now.] Colonel Klinger reported, a hint of joy in his voice, that he was the first to find it and claim the new target for themselves.
The Thunder Guns blasted the cap off of the nearly finished tunnel as the Fast Attack units arrived, wiping out the Klem who tried to escape to the surface with their Disintegrators before filling the shaft with Fusion Flames.
This time their attack didn't go unanswered, and Max saw that they had pulled a number of wandering Klem to their position with the Thunder Guns, which could be heard for dozens of kilometers around them.
[We have incoming from every direction. Outer flanks, take defense. Core positions continue on target. We will keep moving through the target, and then I will use Cleansing Light to collapse the mine after the Flamers have finished with it. Just in case there were some safe zones.] Max ordered.
Realistically, he could take care of this minor target entirely on his own, but keeping the entire Regiment together was the best call in case of a counterattack. If that mine had been full of fully grown Shredders, they would have needed Cleansing Light to deal with the influx of Giant Klem, despite the low population of detected defenders.
[Time for the fun stuff, Commander. Terminus detects a group of ten Behemoths heading for your position from the next location along your route. It looks like they couldn't wait to play.] Nico reported, highlighting them on the map.
Melting a mine full of eggs was a pretty sure way to draw every Klem in the area to their position, so Max wasn't surprised to see the incoming Behemoths before they had even fully reached the target.
[I will move forward to deal with the Behemoths before they get the Regiment in range. Continue with the plan.] Max decided.
The Behemoths were very obviously freshly hatched, still showing the glistening shell remains on their bodies that they hadn't had the chance to absorb yet. The Klem had picked them, or modified them, specifically to deal with the Regiment, and each of them had both a tail that fired chitin spikes and two giant arms with crushing pincers.
If they got close to the Regiment, they could cause dozens of casualties in only a few seconds.
Max began to close with them, unafraid of the spikes and wanting to get a good shot with the Disruptors without going too far in the air and attracting even more attention to their location.
The spikes weren't their only defense, though, and the ten Behemoths all unleashed energy blasts on par with an Ion Bombard Cannon at the same time, forcing Max to dodge to avoid taking heavy damage.
That was another new attack for them. Energy attacks weren't unheard of for the Klem, but they usually took a form more like lightning and not this controlled burst. The Klem of this world were definitely learning new things that he really didn't want them to know.
Max retaliated with his Disruptors, taking out two of the Behemoths in an instant before being forced to dodge again as a wave of spikes and energy balls was sent his way in return.
If it wasn't for his increased cognitive speed, there was no way that he would be able to dodge that, and Cleansing Light would have just taken two direct hits from a group with the firepower of a half dozen Phalanx Class Mecha.
It didn't make any sense. They weren't near the border. This wasn't a strategic target or rich in biomass for them to reproduce. There was no reason for so many Behemoths to be staged in the middle of nowhere.
Not knowing was really getting on Max's nerves, and he could feel the frustration beginning to affect his movements, making his controls a bit more harsh and jerky than intended.
Realizing that he was making a mistake by overthinking with his increased mental capacity, Max instead focused on tactics to deal with just the Klem in front of him.
There was no terrain to hide behind. Both Cleansing Light and the Klem were far too large for the small hills in the area, so it was going to come down to a slugfest. He was more agile, so he should be able to dodge most of the incoming fire, while the Behemoths were heavily armored, forcing him to concentrate all three Disruptors from one arm to ensure their destruction.
Every shot left an enormous crater at their location, as the ground they stood on had no such resistance, but there was nothing else he could do. A single beam wasn't enough to guarantee a kill, and his sensors couldn't tell him if two would do the job, so Max was staying with what he knew worked.
Two more beams flashed out from his arms, disintegrating two more Behemoths, and another wave of fire came in.
This time it wasn't directed just at Cleansing Light but at his likely escape routes as well. Max dodged and moved into the air, avoiding the majority of the attacks, taking only a few spikes and one energy blast on his shields. The barrier held, but the blast was enough to visibly drop the effectiveness of the outer layer.
A full barrage of all twelve remaining energy blasts might actually be enough to drop his shield to critical levels, leaving him vulnerable to another spread shot, so Max knew he still had to keep dodging instead of standing and firing.
The next volley from Cleansing Light dropped two more Behemoths, and Max breathed a sigh of relief. The odds were back in his favor. Even if he made a gross miscalculation, he should be fine taking what they could put out for the few minutes they would survive.