"Those are some impressive Mecha. General Lu has really outdone himself on those designs. But doesn't that demonic one look a bit too lightly armed? You can't have a completely Melee Super Heavy can you?" General Ming asked as he watched the two Mecha move to face each other as the pilots inspected their counterpart's equipment.
"It's not as lightly armed as it looks. There are Disruptors in each arm, and the mouth of the head is an oversized Fusion Flamer. It might have less than half of the ranged firepower that Cleansing Light has, and it can't link them for a near orbital strike level attack the way that the Titan Class unit can, but it is still very nearly on par with the Thunder Pattern Super Heavy Mecha in ranged output, just without the ability to serve as artillery." Max explained to the Inquisitor.
"So, reduced ranged output from the original Super Heavy Mecha design, with a more intimidating and agile design, and higher melee output? That's not bad, it would make a good leader for the Inferno Pattern Fast Attack units." Inquisitor Ming decided.
It would also make a very good bodyguard for Cleansing Light, which had incredible ranged firepower, and more limited, but still devastating melee capabilities. Keeping the enemy off of their Titan Class unit would let Max keep firing at the optimum output for longer before engaging in close combat, and that seemed to be what Uncle Lu had designed Shattered Pride to do, as well as accepting challenges from the mecha of nations like Cygnus, who put great value on pride.
"Alright, let's pack everything up now that we know what we have. There is a rather suspicious call to the border with Cygnus to respond to, and we will be doing it at Warp 5 so that we can show the tourists the highlights of the route across the Kepler Empire." Max instructed as he moved Cleansing Light into a stable transit position.
"Got it. I will go prepare a tour guide spiel for every inhabited system that we pass by as soon as you have the course ready." Nico informed him, then made her Mecha kneel with the lower two fists on the ground for stability and hopped out of her new Mecha.
"The bay won't open for anyone but us three, nobody else has the clearance, so we can be sure that there are no leaks about the new units outside this room. We will have to use them sooner or later, but I want them to be an absolute surprise to our enemies, so no informing the Inquisition." Max instructed, making the General chuckle.
"There won't be any need for that. They have their hands full lately. The fighting might have died down, but now it has turned to politics, and that is just as deadly. That might be what the rebels and the Cygnus representatives want us for. If they're planning some sort of political stunt, they will want the Reavers to at least know what they're planning, so that they don't end up with a load of mercenaries on every side of the battle making a huge mess of everything." General Ming suggested.
"It's going to be a mess either way. The Rebels have lost too much ground in the battle, and they're being forced to make a full surrender. I can guarantee they're about to do something so monumentally stupid that it will make the history books.
We might just offer the most incredible tour in human history, watching a quarter of a Galaxy implode under the weight of its own politics." Nico laughed.
"Aren't you just a ray of sunshine? What do you know that the rest of us have missed?" General Ming asked.
Nico walked to the wall of the bay and brought up a three-dimensional map of the galactic region marked with hundreds of various colored dots.
"I noticed it while preparing for the tourists. These are the battles between Kepler and the Rebels. These are the battles where the Rebels brought in outside forces.
Now if I overlay the reported losses to show the percentage of regional strength that has been destroyed in the past two years, what do you see?" Nico asked.
The map only had a few streaks of green in it, plus Cygnus. Most of the map was yellow for having lost over half of their military strength, including almost all of the smaller surrounding nations. Even if they rebuilt as much as they could in the meantime, they would be in a very tight place for manpower, short on resources, or in very deep debt.
Then when you added that to the hostile nations further out who weren't involved in Kepler's mess, along with the Klem threat, looking at a Tapani Empire whose territory was colored as orange as having lost two-thirds of their strength, it was clear that nowhere in the region was up to the task of defending itself from outside threats.
The moment that the stalemate broke they would be in for a gigantic mess, and there simply weren't enough resources to rebuild everything in time to salvage the situation in any meaningful fashion.
It didn't matter if it was the Klem, the Nemians, other humans, or something that Max hadn't considered, it would be a bloody and brutal war of attrition, due to a lack of defenders.
"So, you think that we might be going to a meeting to discuss how to divvy up our own Empire?" Inquisitor Ming asked.
Nico shook her head. "I don't think anyone else has pieced it together yet because nobody else should have all of the data that I have collected from the Reavers and the Mercenaries databases. I think they're planning the particular bit of idiocy that will tip the scales and get the ball rolling on the destabilization of the region."
There were other options, and she didn't have the data on how many new recruits had been gathered, but in the sector closest to Rae 5, Max knew that recruitment was minimal, and they were still working to stabilize a large portion of the planets, while the rest had been mostly stripped of their military might, moving it all to fleet based deployments.
With that in mind, Max prepared to send a message back to Mary Tarith, to be ready to supply a load of Mecha to Kepler when they asked. The Reavers were unlikely to get directly involved, they only had enough forces to hold their own single system in the worst-case scenario, but they could make a killing off of the trade of weapons if the worst did happen.
