1198 1198 Form The Line
[Commander, the First, Second, Third and Fifth Regiments are on the line. The Fourth Regiment has encountered hostile resistance within the perimeter of our planned encirclement.] Felicity reported as the first wave of Android Mecha were being deployed.
With their thrusters and orbital combat capability, the Mecha could move overland at mach ten while flying at low altitudes, and fight at hundreds of kilometres an hour with ease and targeting accuracy.
They had slowed down to subsonic speeds to reduce buffeting when they had detected enemy movement, and the Bloody Warriors had immediately attacked when they realized that they had been discovered. Max hadn't expected to seem them so close already, but it was possible that the Myceloid God had dropped more groups outside the main clusters, both from the Alliance and the Great Enemy.
"Sylvie, attempt to locate any Alliance units that are not within the perimeter. If there are enemy forces here, there might be friendly units elsewhere."
In fact, with so much surface area and only a few thousand square kilometres covered by their group, it was almost guaranteed that there were others here somewhere, unless the Great Enemy had been given the advantage of the rest of the planet.
That was completely possible, and Max wouldn't have put it past the Myceloid God to have done it, but there was also a good chance that his people were on this planet and not honouring any sort of agreement that they had with the Cathedral Ships not to attack each other.
The Myceloids loved a good fight, and with a million Mecha on a planet the size of a star, created by their God to their own preference, there was no way that they would be missing out on this.
Nico walked in and hopped in Max's lap with a smirk for Sylvie, who was standing beside him with his hand on her head.
"What should we do about the limitations on weapon outputs? I've cut the Mass Driver velocities down enough that they are no longer restricted, and most of the standard weapons are working, but everything Titan Class is basically out of commission, none of the primary weapons work." She asked.
"We can get by with just the Super Heavy Mecha. The heaviest equipment can stay here in the ships. We've got deployment plans and battle strategies for the Super Heavy led Battalions on the books. It hasn't been that long since we started to integrate the Titan Class into the formations." Max laughed.
Nico was just pouting because the new toys she had been working on suddenly ceased to function when they arrived here, bringing her research to a screeching halt, and forcing them to reconsider how they were sending out their troops.
It looked like the fight was designed to be somewhat fair. He hadn't seen anything more dangerous than a Super Heavy Mecha on the other side of the battle. They had some massive pieces of artillery, but nothing that was going to be worse than a massed barrage of Thunder Guns.
Sylvie was not happy that her coolest toys were locked away in storage, but none of the others had a chance to see how the relic Mecha worked yet, and that would be enough to keep her satisfied and praised.
Assuming that they worked as well as she remembered, anyhow.
[Commander, the first drop-ships full of Shin and Valkia mixed forces are landing now.] Felicity reported.
"Why are the Shin and the Valkia being deployed together? I don't recall the Shin being all that warlike." Max asked.
Sylvie brought up a holographic display.
Max recalled those videos. It was an interesting watch as a kid, since the Kepler Military was usually the defender, and the Reavers were working to get the shielding down, loot the building and then destroy the evidence with artillery.
09:19
"The Shin have their own line of hover vehicles with great mobility and heavy firepower on a light chassis. It is a good compliment to the Valkia's use of the Archangel Exoskeletons to scout and attack in the woods." She explained.
That made sense once Max saw them. The treelike forms of the Shin were securely mounted in the attack craft, and sensors directly encased their roots, giving them a perfect neural link to the vehicle and omnidirectional sensors for the turret weapons. They didn't have to move at all, so they could fight as well as any of the more mobile species.
It also didn't involve any forms of movement that they didn't really understand, like the arms and legs of a Mecha, or the Wings of a plane, it was purely held aloft by the gravity plating, the same as their usual movement devices.
The other combined force was made up of the Greys and the Giants. The Giants had adopted the Mecha that Sylvie had offered, but a large portion of their force was artillery, while the fragile Greys were speed junkies and loved fast attack hover bikes.
The bikes had a great evasion system in them, not quite as good as the ones that the Darklings used, but good enough to usually avoid artillery, even while flying through a barrage. It was quite the sight to see as they deployed ahead of the lines and started to dart into the Great Enemy's force, picking off targets and marking priorities for the Giants.
"It looks like the Alliance is starting to remember what war looks like." Max noted.
The Innu team members who had followed Nico in when the research work was halted all nodded in agreement. "It appears that they've been listening to the podcasts that we've been producing. There are a lot of them now, devoted to human combined arms techniques from the past and present. The combination of jet bikes and artillery was a favourite among Reaver forces in the past for point assault missions where they needed to take out a specific target that was defended in a large area."
Max recalled those videos. It was an interesting watch as a kid, since the Kepler Military was usually the defender, and the Reavers were working to get the shielding down, loot the building and then destroy the evidence with artillery.
He knew now that most of those would have been corrupt officials' loot storage warehouses and corrupt government officials' homes, but at the time, the Reavers had been portrayed as dangerous mercenaries, and he hadn't had all of his memories back to know that things were never that black and white.
"Once the perimeter is set up, I want a trench line dug. Standard Cog pattern, set for the Mecha with a staggered depth. It will be a lot of line, but it should make the line easier to defend." He ordered.
[On it. I will have the Terraforming Array dig the Trenches.] Felicity agreed.
