Max considered the potential downfalls of Nico being allowed to create a weapon that would throw Demons between layers, then decided that it couldn't be worse in the long run than nuking the planet into oblivion.
"Alright, get to work on it before the Drone Fighters are rebuilt. We can start recreating the interceptors, though, since they're mostly fighting technological enemies, and I really don't want to suffer a taste of our own medicine tonight when the enemy comes back." Max agreed.
They had been subject to repeated bombing runs in their first few deployments, and it was distinctly unpleasant. Unpleasant enough that it made the top ten experiences he would rather not try again, in fact.
While he relaxed and let his mind wander into a light sleep in preparation for the next battle, Nico was busy designing their new weapon. At first, her thought was to use the unique energy that had created the barrier around the planet as a flamethrower or wave-type weapon, but as she analyzed the likely results, she realized that would likely pull the surface of the planet in as well, and not just the Demons.
So, she had to actually find a way to recreate the energy signature of the Demons vanishing into that strange layer and isolate it. That took her most of the evening, but when she was finished, Nico was fairly certain that she had a weapon that could banish the energy beings without harming anything else.
Without that level of support, the mortal armies that were here on the planet would be decimated in minutes by the Drone Fighters without the Android Mecha having to go anywhere at all.
There were still spots around the planet where the locals were staging a valiant defence against the influx, but they were mostly on the defence, and this weapon would allow them to take a bit of vengeance for all that they had suffered.
[Wave One of the new Drone Fighters is ready for deployment.]
The announcement woke Max from his light sleep, and he brought up the sensor array to see what was going on around him. The situation still looked very much like when he had gone to sleep, with nothing daring to come in sight of their formation and only a few brave souls attempting to sneak close enough to get a sensor scan.
Most of those were detected and bombarded with Thunder Guns, but with the Drones heading out now, they would have to be very good at their jobs to survive.
[Any word on other forces headed this way?] Max asked Nico before she could fall asleep.
[Nothing yet. I have been monitoring their communications, and it sounds like they're still in negotiations on who is going to send how many troops here and who is going to go to the new call that just came in.
There is a planet in a solar system off the other flank of the battlefield that seems to be under attack by Klem, and they're in no way prepared for it.] Nico elaborated.
Just describing the Klem to other species tended to make some of them panic, so he could understand the reaction, but they weren't even the most deadly species on this battlefield, so surely the locals would get over it soon.
[Alright, sleep well, and I will watch over the drones as they work.] Max told her right before Nico drifted off to sleep.
Max dispatched the newly created Drone Fighters and watched as the cones of energy from their new main weapons caused the enemy to simply vanish, breaking apart as if they had been destroyed and disappearing from this layer of space.
It was glorious, and the mortal troops of the Cathedral Ships were in a panic as the main combat force of their assault vanished without warning.
The attack was invisible to the naked eye and most sensors, so they might not even notice that it was happening while the Drone Fighters were firing their Laser Arrays into the bunkers.
As far as terror tactics went, this one was way up there for the level of pure panic that it induced. Max was honestly impressed that it worked so well and precisely targeted the Demons.
There wasn't much to do but keep watch as the Drones went to work, so Max studied the notes that Nico had left in case there was an issue with the weapon.
She had come across a few interesting energy patterns while she was developing it, and though none of them had been tested yet, some of them looked truly terrifying. One was a direct inversion of the portal frequency that her System Function said would displace antimatter instead of regular matter.
While the mutual annihilation of free-moving antimatter would cause utter chaos, that was a level of destruction that they were already familiar with and had the technology to contain. It had been developed in the early days of Faster Than Light travel in case there was a Warp Core breach.
The most intriguing of the possible uses for this energy was to directly shut down portals to other layers, as long as the weapon was attuned to them.
You didn't even have to know where they were. Just fire the weapon everywhere, and you would destabilize them wherever the energy touched.
That would come in handy later, Max was certain. When the enemy tried to port in, they could shut the invasion down if they could collapse the portals, leaving the frontline troops isolated and alone.
Max spent the remainder of the morning working on a weapon that would do exactly that, from both the other layer they had stabilized portals to and the one that most of these Demons were coming from.
Not all of them seemed to be returning to that place, though. Some seemed to be pulled to other layers, and their energy changed as they dissipated. It was the strangest thing that Max had ever seen, and it raised a lot of vital questions.
Like, where did all these Demons even come from?
