[Commander Max, we have incoming. There is a Cathedral Ship in the atmosphere. The sensors say it is fully loaded and on an intercept course with our location. Yes, confirmed, it has adjusted course to make a suborbital insertion run on our location.] The crew of the Cutter suddenly announced.
[I want a full Mecha Regiment up and running before we get back. Have every smaller vehicle start mass producing drones and get the shields reinforced. We will be back there in three minutes.] Max announced.
"I am sorry to cut the meeting short, General, but there is an incoming enemy vessel, roughly a kilometre long and loaded with troops, headed for my vessel. I believe that the Great Enemy might have realized that we are here, and they have prioritized our elimination before taking the planet." Max explained as Nico started issuing orders to the troops.
"How many troops would be in a ship that size?" The General asked in a panic as he found the incoming vessel on the sensors.
"Roughly a hundred thousand infantry, plus a full regiment of armoured vehicles or tanks." Nico replied with a shrug as she impatiently waited for the elevator.
"Alright, we understand. Good luck, Commanders. We will send you what we can when we can." The General agreed.
"We still have four shuttles dropping drone teams at your major seats. They will have to spread their efforts to all thirty cities until we're finished with this attack, so hold tight and don't lose hope." Max informed him as he stepped into the Elevator.
"Our Mecha are on their way here. I called them already, and they will be waiting outside. The teams that are guarding the bunker will stay in place, and the ship is turning out Mecha and drone hybrid forces as fast as the power supply will let us." Nico informed him on the way up.
"Tell them to make some extra Terraforming Arrays in the Golden Legion Seats and hide them. I want the ability to make more armies from random points around the zone for surprise attacks later." Max informed her with a sly wink.
"Oh, I like that idea. We can stage armies at random locations, and then send them in to attack once the Great Enemy has everything engaged. But do you think that they will really focus an entire Cruiser on our location? That seems like overkill, and they might spread them to the cities." Nico reminded him.
Max smiled back at her. "Not after we get to them, they won't. How much do you want to wager that we can take out that Cruiser before it makes it to the next city?"
Nico considered the answer for five whole seconds as the elevator rose.
"With our Antimatter and Warp Field technology out of commission, and the limited power output of just the Dyson Spheres, I would give us a seventy percent chance of breaching their shields with the new variable energy weapons before they make the city.
Then I would give our shielding on the Cutter a forty percent chance of surviving the blast of a nuclear chain reaction as the ship detonated."
Max frowned as they raced out to their Mecha. Forty percent was too low. He needed to come up with a strategy to lure the ship into higher altitudes, or to create a barrier over the Cutter to reduce the damage done.
"We could lure it to a city and make it look like our ship was mostly abandoned. That would increase the distance between the detonation and our base, which would increase the chances of the shield holding to nearly one hundred percent." Nico suggested.
"And you think the Generals will go for that?" Max laughed back at her.
That would mean tens of millions of civilian casualties on their part. No sane commander would agree to that tactic.
"Fine, what is your plan then?" Nico asked.
"We get them to chase us into something close to orbit. Then the blast will be more dispersed, and the shields will hold." Max suggested.
"And spread the fallout of the explosion over a million square kilometres? I know the Golden Legion definitely won't go for that plan."
Max sighed.
"Alright, what options do we have? We have two minutes flight until we're in engagement range." Max asked as he powered up the Mecha.
Max listened to Nico's thoughts as she processed the data that they had at hand and came up with the best conclusion.
"If we destroy it over the Cutter, and open a portal back to its home layer, we should be able to keep the portal open long enough for most of the detonation to pass through. We just need to lure it into place at the right time, and have the portal array charged in advance, since we don't have a Warp Drive online at the moment." She decided.
"That's not a bad idea. We can go with that. Now, we just need to make sure that we can actually get through the void shields over a Cruiser with only two Mecha and half our power output." Max laughed.
"We've got this. The Void shields can be mostly bypassed with the new programming, and once you run [Optimize] again, we should be able to shoot through them no problem." Nico stated with full confidence in his System Skill.
"Alright, that's our plan. It's in range to analyze now. I'm beginning the Optimize process, let's get this done and over with before they can drop too many of their troops." Max agreed.
"You know, we could force a partially opened portal home, and let the Android Army nuke it. It would clear out the enemy force in the region, and our shields are already optimized to survive that." Nico offered, hopefully.
"That's definitely not the plan. Open the portal to their layer and let the blast out. We've got enough issues already without making it even harder to get home." Max reminded her.
"Spoilsport."
