Max fired on everything that came out of the wandering portal, keeping the area mostly clear while letting the bombardment do the rest.
Then, suddenly, the portal was just gone, as if it had never been there.
"Nico, the portal at my end is gone, what about yours? You might have a lot of incoming enemies in the next few seconds." He warned.
"I'm on it. No, wait. My portal is closing as well. All signals from the beacons that we have identified are gone, and it appears that the influx of enemy soldiers is ending.
If I had to guess, I would say that they have relocated their assault away from us." Nico replied.
"Did we get enough data to be able to open our own portals to their hiding spot? I want to know that we have a way out of here once we get this attack under control." Max asked.
"I've got it. The information is already programmed into the Cutter's portal generator, so if we would like to go directly to their staging area, we can leave anytime." Nico joked.
That was the big issue. The portals would lead directly to where this massive influx of enemies was coming from, so if they left this planet, they would be transferring directly into the enemy's camp.
All over the region, it was falling eerily quiet, there were no more portals, and the enemies that could retreat had exited through them before they closed.
It was possible that, if they were actually transferring directly between layers, that the retaliation by the Mecha force had caused massive damage to the other layer's camp. The artillery was indiscriminate, and they had detonated an entire Cruiser in the atmosphere on that side of the portal.
It might not have led to any major fallout, but if it was over their camp, the enemy organization might be in shambles right now.
That would be a perfect time to attack, they just needed to verify before they made any drastic decisions.
"Retreat back to the Cutter and let's get some solid data. Once we know more about what is going on here, we can start thinking about pushing the battlefield either off this world or further out across the surface. We already know that they are not short on forces to attack us with, but it would be for the best if we could control the flow of reinforcements to the battle." Max ordered.
It was going to be a long flight back to the Cutter, keeping low in the trees to look for signs that the enemy hadn't actually left, or that they had cycled the locations of the portals and were staging for another attack.
But as he passed over forests and ruined grasslands, heavily cratered by artillery bombardment, there were no signs of massed enemy forces, only a few stragglers and survivors who had been left behind when the rest of the force evacuated.
Even the sound of the Android Mecha companies had turned to sporadic fire for lack of targets, and the reports that he could see from the cities showed that they weren't getting reinforced, though they hadn't been able to retreat while engaged in combat with the drones.
Max landed inside the hangar where Nico and the majority of the team were working, and marched over to see what they could tell him.
"What good news do you have for me?" He called as the team turned to greet him.
"Well, we can't guarantee that it's good news, but it looks like it is. The local Greater Energy Being has managed to assimilate most of the energy from the others who fell here. The lesser energy beings are almost all gone from the surface, and her power is over twice what the last one you fought was before it was injured.
From the little sensor data we can obtain, it appears that she is the one who shut all the portals, and is doing something to isolate her domain again.
We suspect that since it's in the boundary between layers, she might be moving it to a location where the others won't be able to detect it again." The team leader suggested.
"And why might that not be good news?" Max asked.
"If she's kicking everyone out, then when exactly will it be our turn? We might have a decent relationship with the locals, but we're still invaders, and the Greater Energy Beings appear to be quite territorial.
We don't know where or in what layer we will be deposited, and that means it might not be good news for us."
Nico's thoughts said that all the possible outcomes she had considered were good outcomes in her mind, but then Nico was never lacking in confidence that she could find a way to kill anything that she came across if she put her mind to it.
That confidence hadn't always worked out for the best, but it had never faltered, and unless they ran into one of the so-called gods, there was a good chance that they could at least fight their way out of most situations well enough to flee.
Max checked the thoughts of the Energy Being, and while she wasn't focused on the disposal of the enemies now that she was recovered, it was still a thought in her mind as she checked on the survival rate of the Golden Legion and the cats.
Mostly the cats.
Then she got to the sector where Max and his forces were and paused. The felines had taken a great liking to the crab drones, but they didn't belong on her planet. They were a bit like killer robotic toys, far too dangerous to allow the children to keep playing with them, but not so immediately dangerous that she wanted to cause a fuss.
So, she passed them over and continued searching for more things that didn't belong, which led her to the Android Mecha.
Those were also helpful to the survival of her favourite species, so she wasn't going to get rid of all of them, at least not right away.
