Just as Nico had hoped, and the Giants had feared, the first reports of attacks came in during the early morning hours, Absolution Ship Time, the next morning.
[Two planets in the Death Wind Territories have reported attacks by an unknown force that matches the description of the Cathedral Ships, and the Alliance is reporting contact lost with two colonies near our Galaxy.
We are waiting on reports from the independent species in the area, to see if any of them have been attacked, but that could take some time, as many of them would not want to let it be public knowledge that they were in a crisis or a weakened state.] The message from Rae 5 informed Max the moment that his eyes opened for the day.
He turned to Nico with a smile. "Well, it looks like you got your wish, or at least half of it. The first attacks are in the Death Wind Territories. They're still fighting, of course, so we can send some additional troops on top of what was already sent to relieve them."
Nico shook her head. "It's better if we don't overreact. If we treat probing attacks like a full-scale invasion, we will look panicked, and they will see too much of our strength. The Death Wind Territories don't have much to lose, and they don't have a high population.
The Great Enemy miscalculated when they attacked there. Each planet rarely has more than one mercenary company on it, and they all have defences and a way to defend themselves from a siege. They have the advantage, and if they can stall long enough, the battle could end with very minimal casualties.
What I'm more interested in learning is what tactics the enemy is using, and what species they belong to. If they're the genetically altered ones who love fighting, it will be a different matter than if they're one of the groups that's favoured by one of the particular Gods.
That sort of attack could mean that Greater Energy beings are making a move in the near future, and that will take more preparations than just repelling an attacking force."
Max nodded in understanding. "Well, we can offer them replacement ships at the very least. If the Death Wind Territories continue to take the brunt of the first wave, they're going to have to rebuild, and they don't have much to begin with."
Nico nodded and began to work on a plan for them. The mercenaries were good allies, and most of them were actually minor Reaver Companies now, entitled to all the benefits that went along with it. A few extra considerations for being the punching bag while the rest of the Reavers learned about the enemy would help put many minds at ease.
[We have additional information on the attacks. Each attacking fleet was five Cruiser Class vessels, all of which were accompanied by light attack craft and a large army of infantry. The infantry is supported by armoured vehicles, and appears to be mutated in nature. Identification of their original species has proven to be impossible, but there is a possibility that the appearance is not a form of mutation, but a lineage that we are unfamiliar with.
Scans from the early conflict are attached.] The next message from Rae 5 added.
Max and Nico shared an incredulous look as they looked at the soldiers in the image.
They wore filthy golden armour, with scarred and tattooed faces on the bodies whose helmets had been removed for examination. The armour styles didn't match, either due to a change in manufacturer, or differing origins, but the appearance was shocking to them both.
"Aren't those the Golden Legionaries? I swear they are, but filthy and corrupted. Allow me a minute to check the rest of the data, but I swear I remember killing those guys." Nico muttered.
Max remembered as well. Nico and her army had wiped that planet from existence, along with all of their troops.
But that was in their past lives, and if the information that Ranarth and the Arisen had provided about the ancient humans resetting the timeline during the last Great War, that had never happened in this timeline.
So, the species should have survived, unless they were wiped out again by something other than Nico. But more importantly than that, Max knew where they came from. He knew the exact location of their home world, and if his guess was correct, that spot really didn't exist anymore.
They had never found any of the worlds that had existed in their past lives, and the reason for that appeared to be that the whole region had been annihilated, and now existed as the newly formed stars and planets of the Anomaly Region.
Which meant that these Cathedral Fleets might be the corrupted survivors of the last phase of the Great War, or more likely their descendants many hundreds of generations removed.
The other possibility was that the Gods had pulled them into another layer when the final battles against the Gods, and these were warriors born and bred to fight against their own kind by the malevolent Gods before their defeat.
That was a much more disturbing thought. The amount of knowledge that such an enemy would have about the Darklings and Arisen would be immense, as their technology hadn't changed much over the eons. But humanity was adaptable, and their technology was on a rapid climb toward a whole new level of destructiveness.
For an instant, something in Max's memory tried to warn him about a great danger, but before he could isolate that thought, it was gone as if it never existed, leaving him confused and wondering what he had been trying to focus on.
"Let's start mapping the attacks and the strategies of the enemy, so we can compare them against the last time we saw this species. If my theory is right, our last lives were before the reset of time, and the death of the God of Time, so the development of the Golden Legionaries should be similar but more advanced than the last time we faced them.
But if they've been guided by an outside force, they might be fighting using the same bastardized version of our tactics that the other Cathedral Ship Fleets have been using." Max suggested.
"And what do we hope to prove by that?" Nico asked.
"I want to know if they're independently evolved, or if whatever force gathered them all and stuck them in these ships to attack has wiped out their natural combat styles. The better we know them..." Max paused there to let Nico finish the thought.
"The better we can kill them." She agreed with a smile.
Max realized that he had just created all sorts of new work for himself, but it was work that someone should be doing, as it would help the defenders adapt to and predict enemy movements and combat techniques in the future.
If it were possible, he would have delegated the task to someone else when he realized what he had done, but he was the only one who had his memories of their styles, unless you counted Nico, whose thoughts said she had only engaged them once, and that was on the day that she eliminated their species from existence.
That was a solid memory batch, as it gave plenty of information about what worked against them the last time she faced them, but her armies had hit them so hard that the combat tactics weren't going to be all that reliable.
They had simply fallen too fast.
