Everyone was in position and ready to move as Max cleared the horizon, using his height advantage to add targeting Data for his Pilots on the ground. That let them accurately target the Heavy Mecha of the Grax military forces with artillery, breaking armor plates, and disabling weapons in preparation for their entry into the city.
[Advance] Max ordered, and the Fast Attack Crusaders activated their thrusters and leaped over the wall, bringing the fight to the enemy, while the others took down the gates and let the Line Mecha and Corvettes flood into the city, with the Heavy Mecha as their backup.
The Super Heavy stood back and continued to shell the Grax Heavy Mecha Regiment as the Terminus forces advanced, joined by the rebels, who fell in behind the Mecha, carrying mostly industrial tools, pitchforks, and shovels, the truest of all melee weapons.
The moment that the protesters inside the city saw that the reinforcements were the Terminus Mecha from outside the walls, the fight against the Military turned suddenly brutal and bloody. The civilians charged the soldiers, while the Light Mecha picked off as many as they could to reduce civilian casualties.
The Grax Mecha responded within seconds, running to the scene just in time to be met by the Fast Attack Crusaders and melted down to slag in the streets.
The antique design that the Grax was using was particularly vulnerable to high temperatures, as the alloy of the structure softened significantly and made the armor plates buckle, letting the Terminus Mecha disable them in seconds.
Before Max fired a single shot, it was clear that the civilians would win this engagement. But when he unleashed the Disruptors on the Military bunker where the last of their reserves were being deployed, all will to fight vanished and the Military vehicles and Mecha began powering down.
Their occupants mostly exited the vehicles to surrender to their civilian neighbors. However, some did flee into the city, hoping to hide and erase any memory that they had sided with the vanished Deities.
The fight raged on for a few more minutes, but there were no targets that needed his level of firepower to deal with, so Max resorted to simply corralling the remaining defenders with his light lasers, crippling their Mecha and guiding them to the main forces to either fight it out or surrender.
Most chose to surrender.
[Sir, we have a large movement at A3. Suspected Super Heavy Mecha and an underground military fortress.] the Third Company of First Battalion reported, drawing Max's attention away from the fight at hand.
[On my way.]
They had taken very few casualties so far, and the medics weren't reporting any dead yet, only injures and broken Mecha, a state that Max would gladly maintain if it were at all possible.
[Multiple uprisings reported. Deploying Drones to assist.] Nico informed Max as a string of reports came in all at once.
This must be the Grax Loyalists' last stand, their organized effort to push the Terminus forces away from the cities while their force is spread thin and they haven't yet received reinforcements.
The number of fighters that Terminus had wasn't high, but even a half dozen per city could do a lot of damage to forces that were unprepared for an aerial attack.
Max arrived at the mining facility designated A3 in under a minute and found something that he never thought he would see in actual combat.
The Grax had created a rolling fortress. Initially, it had been mostly buried, but now that it was moving, it was over a square kilometer in size, rolling on gigantic treads, with its own shielding and numerous defensive guns.
[Would you look at that? It's an actual mobile city. I've seen them in video games, but I never thought that someone would be insane enough to actually try to build one. I wonder if we can get the design schematics for this thing before we leave? The Gamers Museum would love it.] One of the pilots raved as he watched the city rise up from the ground.
The gamer's museum would love this fortress. It had everything a mobile city could need, and it was a shame that they would have to break it to stop the military from using it to wipe out their Mecha forces.
The guns on the fortress were specifically designed for this scenario, Cleansing Light notwithstanding, and they were more than capable of blasting a Heavy Mecha Company out of existence.
Max focused all of the Disruptor beams on one arm and launched an attack against the front gates, the blow causing the city's shield to warp and flicker.
[This shield is a different technology than the Capital shield. I will continue to fire, so prepare to breach the city once the gates are down.] Max ordered.
A second blast caused a breach in the shield, and damage to the gates, while the third blew the gates wide open and cleared the mass of defenders that were lined up behind it, leaving the mangled remains of a Mecha Battalion scattered through the streets.
[Moving in. Command requests that you keep the shield down in case we need to make an emergency evacuation.] The Mecha Company requested.
[I am on it. Nico, see what you can do to disable this city.] Max replied, knowing that she listened to all broadcasts simultaneously.
[Working on it. This is not a Grax-built piece of technology. I think it was left by the humans that were here before them.] Nico replied.
That made sense, the idea of a mobile city was archaic, outdated for millennia, even on the most hostile of worlds now that Terraforming Technologies had advanced so far.
The Terminus Mecha were fighting in the streets, but it seemed that the defensive guns could not be turned inward, and only Max was subject to their sporadic fire. After a few minutes, even that ended, and the city ground to an abrupt halt.
[Commander, we found the power distribution node. The main power to the city has been cut. The facility is nearly abandoned, with only a few surviving soldiers and four Grax clerics remaining.] The Mecha Company Commander reported.
[Excellent work. Capture the Grax for interrogation, and bring the prisoners out of the facility. We will have to sort them out later.] Max ordered.
