The momentary pause as the enemy took in the presence of the giant Mecha in front of the Cutter class ship that they didn't recognize was enough for Nico to finish her work and get the unit of Super Heavy Mecha online and operational.
She kept them inside the Cutter for the moment, ready to charge out the instant that something happened, but hidden from sight so that the enemy's plans would be to deal with one Titan Class Mecha and a group of Corvette Class units, not two Titan Class units with a large number of artillery pattern Super Heavy Mecha and a Corvette Class vanguard.
The aliens didn't hesitate long, their orders had been given, and they were to take this position from Max and secure the alien vessel as their own so they could get off this planet.
They didn't know where they were either, and they had much less information about the world than Max had been able to compile, so it was perfectly reasonable to expect that a ship parked on the surface would have the capability to leave the planet.
[Incoming in 5 seconds.] Max informed Nico and her unit.
[Waiting on your order.] She agreed, while dancing in her seat, anticipating a good fight.
Right on schedule, the enemy commander gave the order to charge, and the laser arrays mounted to the top of their transport vehicles flashed with blinding lights as the onslaught was absorbed by the Void Shields of the Cutter.
[Fire at will.] Max ordered the Corvettes, and an invisible wave of energy raced back toward the aliens as dozens of Disruptors fired at once.
The enemy vehicles rolled to a stop as their shielding held against the long-range assault, but the radiation boiled the occupants alive.
[Oh, that's messy. I forgot that happened when the Disruptor couldn't break down a vehicle that wasn't properly radiation shielded.] Nico laughed as the enemy advance faltered.
The blockage wasn't complete, and they were making their way around the disabled vehicles, unaware of the horrors that were awaiting them inside. They even sent out rescue teams to pop open the hatches, under the assumption that the Mecha had hit them with something like an EMP and disabled the vehicles, not the occupants.
That was when Max opened fire, picking targets with low powered beams and creating small nuclear fission reactions which blasted massive craters in the battlefield, and threw flaming hunks of metal for hundreds of metres.
[Turn the heavy weapons on them, we need that vessel intact.] The enemy Commander ordered, while Max picked targets in the enemy line for maximum shock effect and chaos.
Nico's voice came over the radio as the last of the vehicles was blasted into rubble.
[We have more incoming. Both the aliens and the Golden Legion. The Legion is sending their walking sarcophagus units to us.] She laughed.
The walking sarcophagus, as Nico called it, was a form of Line Mecha, with very little armour, and no shielding whatsoever. Even the first generation Line Mecha that Max had trained on were dozens of times safer than these thinly covered units. But they were heavily armed, and they would be in the back rows of the assault, providing cover fire for the frontal assault.
The problem was that they were assaulting Super Heavy Mecha, which were currently rushing out to surround the Cutter.
The Thunder Guns were rotating into position and firing as the units moved to block the Cutter from attack, firing directly into the attacking aliens, but bombarding a line fifty metres in front of the Golden Legion units, where it would do no damage, but send a clear warning not to advance.
Whether they would listen was another matter entirely, but the short-term effect was to turn the Golden Legion force toward the other alien force, instead of having them charge directly at the Cutter.
That caused the aliens to start firing on the Golden Legion.
As a result, Nico ordered her units to move their fire further back, which both avoided hitting the new force, and drove the aliens toward them in an effort to escape the bombardment. With the noise of the artillery, they weren't doing well at getting orders out, and the Mecha were causing massive casualties to their force.
It only took them a single minute to realize that this attack was never going to work, but by then, it was too late, and they couldn't escape the two-sided attack.
[Hold your fire and wait to see what the Golden Legion does once the aliens are gone.] Max ordered.
The Golden Legion in their past life hadn't been known for their forgiving nature, and Max had practically dropped a starship on their front lawn, so he didn't have high hopes for the situation. However, once they cleared out the last of the aliens, and Max's team didn't start to shoot at them, they turned away and began attacking groups of newly arrived lesser energy beings, and rescuing ones that had split from the first Greater Energy Being.
"What is this option, [Sit here while everyone else has fun]?" Nico asked.
"It's better than taking on a whole city at once with only one Battalion of Mecha. Not that we would likely lose, but I would rather not risk them breaking our ship before we even had a chance to find out what in the universe is going on around here.
I doubt that they were planning on an attack when they started opening the portals. Or perhaps the portals didn't originate from this layer, and they were just bystanders in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Nico was silent for a moment as she considered Max's opinion, and the facts that they had seen so far. The additional portals were the deciding factor for her. If they had been the ones initiating the attack, they should have been prepared to move out, and there should have been some sort of organized structure that was creating the portals.
But there wasn't. The Greater Energy Being here was gravely wounded, there was no technological device active that would have created more portals, and the timing was roughly correct for the pattern that they had been seeing in their home layer.
In conclusion, Nico was reasonably sure that they were not currently in the right spot. Their attacker was either still at large or recently disembodied by the resident Energy Being, and there was a good chance that the attempt to create a breach was still ongoing.
"What's your suggestion?" She asked once her analysis was finished.
"Option one is that we kill everything that doesn't belong here, and then we look for a way to get to the source of the invaders. Option..."
Nico cut in, stopping him there. "Option one is good. Let's just kill everything that isn't friendly."
Max laughed at her enthusiasm. "Alright then, option one it is. We need another defensive team for the Cutter if we're going to move out and start clearing away the hostiles though."
"I am already on it. Four Super Heavy Mecha, and twenty Corvette Class units to supplement the Cutter's defensive weapons should do the job, and all the staff are in Mobile Suits and fully armed, in case something does get past the defensive lines."
[All the staff] was only five people, but it was better than nothing.
"Alright, let's go."
