With the time set, Max prepared a team to go to the bunker with him for the meeting. Bringing four Corvette Class Mecha, plus ten larger crab drones and fifty of the smaller ones should be a sufficient honour guard for the meeting, and they could hold off an enemy attack for long enough that Max and Nico could call their Titan Class Mecha over from the Cutter.
The Golden Legion was already sending over troops, a combination of power armoured elite infantry and hover vehicles with multiple gunners.
The hover bikes, with their forward facing plasma cannons, looked like they would actually be a lot of fun to ride, and given the advantages that System Enhanced pilots had, they could be truly deadly in the hands of human soldiers.
Fortunately, Nico was having the same thoughts, and she was already working on getting the design plans for them from the Golden Legion computer systems, or at least as much as she could with the heavily damaged state of the city.
The rest she could get from the vehicles themselves when she got close enough to inspect and analyze them.
They had been focusing on drones for combat so much lately that they hadn't put out a fun new personal transport in a long time. Hover bikes with Plasma Cannons would be huge with the Reavers, the faster, the better, and these ones had great visual appeal with their gold on gold, trimmed with gold, pure bling colour scheme.
Both Max and Nico changed into new style mobile suits with the adaptive camouflage and upgraded shielding, then equipped them with two additional flat space storage units mounted on the upper arms of the suit like they were decorative badges.
That gave them more than enough room for emergency supplies, munitions, weapons, spare power cells, and other gear that could come in handy if they were ambushed on their way to or from the meeting.
The bunker was close enough to the Cutter that Max didn't have many problems reading the minds of those inside, and they were all eager to meet the benefactors that had shown up and decided that instead of attacking, they would help the local population save their homes.
The Golden Legion were firm believers in honour, and that was the most honourable response that they could have hoped for in the situation.
Max sensed their shock when he led the honour guard out of the Cutter at a jog. They had been expecting him to posture and bring at least a few of the Super Heavy Mecha with him as guards. But in practical terms, they wouldn't fit in the bunker, and it was still in artillery range.
If they were attacked, the first shells would arrive about three seconds later, after accounting for projectile travel time on an indirect firing trajectory, and they wouldn't even have to leave their posts around the Cutter.
The hover bikes were stationed around the entrance to the bunker, with a secondary ring of elite infantry in their gaudy power armour outside that. They spread for Max and his group to enter, and then closed ranks again.
"Mecha, move to join the inner ring, Crab Drones, spread out and secure the area." Max ordered out loud, so that the Golden Legion would know what he was planning.
They seemed to be greatly enamoured with the crab drones thanks to the efforts in the city, and Nico did her best to hide a giggle as the drones rubbed up against their legs like cats when the soldiers reached down to stroke their shells.
The drone programming learned situational awareness, and the core of the program was in the Cutter, which was currently flooded with stray cats. It had obviously decided that the issue was a matter of size and not species when it adopted the response for its own use.
When they entered the bunker, Max noticed that there was only a small guard force at the top of the elevator, four people in each of the two rooms, so they could lock down the top floor into zones as a delaying tactic. How long it would last was questionable, but it was better than he had expected.
Most of these bunkers were designed to park the vehicles of the VIP team that was going to be in the basement, so they were designed as a large open garage.
"Greetings Commanders. Will any of the rest of your team be coming inside?" The door guard asked.
"My team will remain topside and guard the perimeter along with your troops. Our sensors link to the Mecha back at our vessel, so we can increase the targeting effectiveness of our artillery if we have units on the ground." Max explained.
The soldier looked shocked. "Your Mecha, as I believe you called them, can fire this far?"
Max nodded. "They have variable velocity projectiles, so we can use indirect fire artillery to hit targets over the horizon. It solves the range limitation of high output energy weapons."
The soldier received a message while they were talking and gestured toward the elevator doors.
"They are ready for you now, Commanders. No need to remove your helmets, it is not our custom, and yours still allows us to see your face." He explained.
The elevator was a freight elevator, three metres by six metres in size, and with only Max and Nico inside it felt ridiculously oversized. But there was a welcoming team at the bottom waiting for them, arranged in a double row formal honour guard to form a hallway from the elevator to the isolated secondary room in the middle of the level.
There was a large amount of free space around it, presumably for emergency supplies that were never stocked, and a few side rooms that were marked as canteen, dorms, and maintenance.
The central room had a full bunker map on it, and this was just the entry to a much larger bunker complex, designed to house tens of thousands for decades at a time, but it had been decommissioned decades ago and only maintained to minimum standards with no supplies inside.
That was a mistake, but the Golden Legion already knew that, and there was no need to remind them that their worst-case scenarios had been wildly optimistic.
The central room was armoured glass and concrete, and Max could see that there were only about a dozen people inside, while the room was designed for a hundred. Most were gathered around a desk, but one man in a battered golden power armour suit, complete with fresh laser rifle damage and a shattered visor, was waiting to greet them at the door.
"Commanders, thank you for coming on such short notice. We intend to restock this as the City Seventeen Command Centre and Government Seat, but we do apologize for the spartan reception party. It was deemed inadvisable to move more than this many at one time."
"No need to apologize to us. We understand the necessity for precautions during a planetary seige. You may call me Commander Max, and this is Commander Nico, it is a pleasure to meet you, General Airwalker."
The General froze in shock.
"How did you know my name?"
