The team on board the Cutter got to work as soon as Max gave them the orders. They already had the plans for the new Crab Drones ready for use, just in case they had a chance to make a whole batch of them, but they weren't expecting to be making them for this purpose.
The larger crabs were deadly attack drones, and could operate in nearly any environment, against the deadliest of enemies, but today they were going to be deployed to fight against enemy infantry that was being decimated by a single unit of Corvette Class Mecha, even before the bombardment by the Super Heavy Mecha began.
It seemed like overkill to them, but the little drones that they had been asked to make seemed much more fair to the enemy.
Sure, they would be a nightmare to actually hit, and even more difficult to kill, but at least it would be possible for the infantry soldiers to take them out.
Sending out units of drones that were individually overkill felt too much like bullying the weak, and the Innu had often been the ones being bullied, so the small drones were perfect in their mind. Individually not very impressive, but in a group, they would be incredible.
They didn't need much, but there were three essential qualities that the designers insisted on.
First, they had to look like the big crab drones so that everyone understood that they were on the same team. Second, they needed to be able to clear rubble, so that meant they would need something that would work as a torch, as well as the ability to move rubble.
Third, they had to be cute. They wouldn't accept ugly crabs when they could make cute ones.
The first and third aspects were simple, they just designed a crab shell half a metre across, and gave it extendable legs so that it could move normally, and still have the ability to grab and drag larger objects and people.
Then they put variable pattern laser rifles in both eye lenses. Those would be the primary weapon, as well as the cutting torch if they needed to free someone from rubble. With a small gravity manipulation generator added, they were ready to go.
They didn't even add shield generators, to limit the power necessary. They just made it out of the high density monomolecular alloy, with the knowledge that very little could shoot through it to begin with.
That let them make fifty at a time, and complete the process in under two minutes after the testing was finished. It was a bit hasty, and done in the same ten-minute period that the larger Crab Drones were being produced, but it would have to do.
These might be the simplest drones that the Terminus Trading Company had ever made, but once they had two hundred of them all lined up outside the Cutter alongside the larger drones, there was no dissatisfaction with the final result.
They tasked four of the larger drones to lead the small ones fifty at a time into the city, while the rest of the large drones spread out around the Cutter to keep them from being attacked.
The small crabs were sent out just in time for Max to send the team back to their battle stations so they could check the sensors and tell him if there were any more signs that the enemy forces were coming from multiple locations.
The warriors that they were facing had fallen back to multiple defensive formations once they realized that they couldn't outrun the Mecha teams, and they were rapidly being eliminated, but more kept showing up, and Max couldn't seem to find the origin on his sensors.
[There are no signs of the origin, Commander. They're appearing all over the region, but there are no signs of how. Our working hypothesis is that they have some sort of short range teleportation device, and they're actually set up somewhere further away.] The team informed him as Max hunted down a small group of infantry.
There weren't any more large targets in the area left to find, and now it was down to the last few groups, to try to keep Nico's total kill count down when their contest ended.
She already had the win, as she had lucked out with the enemy movement as they were driven away from Max's artillery strategy, but he could still keep the margin as narrow as possible.
"We're running out of infantry, are you ready to accept defeat yet?" Nico called over the radio.
"There are still a few more pockets, I think that we might be able to swing the final result." Max laughed as he hunted down another group to obliterate while the light Mecha searched further out into the forest.
"We will see." Nico agreed, as she chased down a group of warriors who believed that they could escape from her wrath.
But soon, there were no more enemies to be found, and no sign of where they had been coming from, which left Max and Nico both annoyed with the outcome.
They couldn't have all been dropped right here, they had to have come from somewhere, but they were unable to find the source, only the location where they had been appearing.
[How are things going with the drones? We didn't find a source for the enemy forces, and I need some good news.] Max asked the crew on the Cutter.
[They're having a lot of fun. They're in the city, along with four of the larger crab drones as Commanders, and they're doing a wonderful job of digging out hidden alien forces. They're much faster than bipeds over rough terrain, and the enemy thought that they were local wildlife at first. Well, right until the laser beam eyes.] The team leader replied.
He would have to watch that video later, assuming that they had remembered to give the drones a proper video recording function. With this team, that wasn't a given. They might have only given it basic optical sensors without a built-in recording function when he didn't give them any details to work with.
