As the news trickled in, Max began to notice a pattern to the madness. The entire inner rim of the Kepler Empire, closest to the Galactic Core, had proven impregnable to the foreign troops, and the border closest to Rae 5, where the most recent Rebel activity had been, was proving decidedly deadly for the Rebels as well.
Those sectors linked to create a crescent-shaped territory that held the majority of the Empire's rare resources and heavy manufacturing facilities but very few of its citizens. Two nations' entire fleets had been lost with only garbled cries for assistance, and nobody really knew what was happening until the fateful moment that a force finally got a warning out to the Galaxy.
The Titan Class, [Glory of Sol], and the God Class Mecha, [Wrath Incarnate], which was thought lost during the unification wars that formed the Kepler Empire, were working together to eliminate invading fleets in seconds before they could even respond and get out a message to their home nations.
Both Mecha were supposed to be on the Imperial homeworld, locked securely in vaults, without a pilot for the previous few centuries. It was said that they would be given pilots and taken out in times of crisis. Still, everyone had assumed that with the Imperial Princes controlling the homeworld and the Emperor dead, the two legendary Mecha would remain locked in their vaults for the duration of the battle.
That put a serious dent in the allies' plans, and accusations began to fly that the Crown Prince, whose territory was supposed to border the region where the two Mecha were sighted, had betrayed their allies in an effort to bolster the strength of his alliance with Cygnus.
On the surface, it seemed to be a reasonable accusation, as he stood to gain a huge amount of territory if he eliminated the nearest Foreign forces, but both the Rebels and Lord General Kirkland were too shocked by the news that the Kepler Empire's lone God Class Mecha had been sighted in action for them to have been in on the betrayal.
"Drive the traitors out. Cygnus has betrayed us. Wipe them out and take their territories." One of the foreigners shouted.
"With what? Your fleet has been annihilated by Wrath Incarnate, and the Reavers have a mutual defense pact with Cygnus. Unlike the cruisers you all sent here with your negotiation teams, we came prepared with a colony ship and an entire Super Heavy Mecha Regiment. Not just one unit, but twenty-one Super Heavy Mecha." Max yelled back, silencing the argument.
"You couldn't have. The Reavers don't have Super Heavy Mecha. No nation would sell that sort of firepower to the Reavers, and they don't have the capability to make them themselves." A Rebel leader scoffed.
"Please watch your screens for verification," Nico replied.
[Third Battalion, please exit Terminus. The Rebels require a show of force not to do something stupid.] Nico informed the battalion on guard duty at the moment.
"We have an entire reinforced Regiment composed in the same manner as the Battalion on display now. If you want to try your luck, you are free to start a fight, but rest assured, we will be the ones to finish it." Nico informed the room as they watched the Mecha Battalion move from the hangar bay to stand on the hull, facing the Station.
"Those are the rumored Comor pattern Corvettes. I saw the video of them in action some time ago. Does that mean that Comor equipped the Reavers as well? Or did they get these from somewhere else? Does anyone recognize the pattern?" One of the Rebel envoys asked.
"Wait, I have seen those before. Sector Command in the Terminus Sector sent a fleet after Abraham Kepler in an attempt to capture General Tennant. They were rumored to have met with Reaver Mecha of an unknown pattern, larger than the Crusader Class Mecha. We took it to mean they had obtained Cygnus Heavy Mecha due to the described height, but the Reavers scrambled all of the footage before the fleet could transmit it home." A Rebel assistant commented, pulling up the data for everyone to look at.
"Terminus Trading Company. Both there and here. The Reavers have had Super Heavy Mecha for months, and nobody noticed. No wonder they got so cocky with the Tapani fleet." Someone commented.
"We only lost because they allied with the Loyalist border guards and baited us into a trap." A Tapani Commander whined, and Max sensed that a grand fight was about to break out in the room.
Max leaned over to whisper to Lord General Kirkland as the shouts got louder and the pushing started.
"Stand behind us when it gets nasty. Our whole escort team has forcefields, so you'll be safe from stray gunfire."
The warning was just in time, as the gunfire started seconds later, with the Tapani turning on the force that insulted them, calling them a waste of space now that their fleet had been annihilated.
The Archangel Exoskeleton that Max was wearing under his outfit was fully weaponized, with lasers in the wings, but Max kept them folded tight to his back and inactive. He would let the idiots here fight it out without involving them for as long as necessary.
If they gave up on the secrecy and broke off the meeting, all the better for him. The organized attack would fall to chaos, and the Loyalist fleet would have an easier time getting things under control.
This wasn't the first gunfight of the meeting, though, and after a half dozen were killed, the other representatives got the situation calmed down. Only a single ship left orbit with the remains of its representative team.
A half dozen followed soon after, as their fleets were lost to the Loyalists, and they no longer had a chance to claim much of anything. All they could do was return home and face the repercussions of their failures.
General Kirkland retook his seat while Nico stood hers and Max's back on their feet with a mechanical dendrite from the Tech Adept Harness.
[Request for you to either return or turn off the live feed. The Innu videographers are annoying the staff to no end with their requests to get better footage of what happens when human negotiations go wrong.] One of the staffers from the Cruise Ship section asked, making both Max and Nico laugh.
[Denied. They will pout more with no footage, and we can't leave just yet.
Tell the Third Battalion they can go back inside. It looks like nobody will be attacking Cygnus or us for the moment.] Max responded as the meeting was brought back to order.
The two Mecha that tore up the invading fleets didn't seem to be expanding their area of operations, though, and instead focused on stabilizing what they already held in conjunction with the main force of the Kepler Fleet in the region.
It led to an odd stalemate. The Loyalist Fleet held half of the border. Only a small section had fallen to invaders. If you didn't count the section that the Cygnus Fleet had taken without a battle, and the three Princes held the center of the Empire.
Looking at it on the map, it looked like the Loyalists and Cygnus were about to crush the three Princes while a number of the outlying systems had splintered off to independence. The layout of the current situation definitely didn't appear to be to their advantage the way it would if they held a border and could freely move goods in and out.
Comor had officially removed itself from the Empire and returned to Neutral Nation status, awaiting the outcome, and no ship had dared to attack them, as the Comor fleet remained intact and at home.
The strangest part of it all was that the Crown Prince held the Kepler homeworld, essentially succeeding as Emperor while being despised by the locals as a traitor, where only days before, he had been hailed as a war hero and the next Emperor, destined to lead Kepler to glory.
