Max raced between the stone pillars of the badlands, coming into sight of the Omwat forces just as they turned their attention upward to deal with the incoming drone bombers.
They had a single Super Heavy Mecha with them, a development that Max hadn't expected since the designs were so hard to obtain outside of the Reaver factories where Uncle Lu was doling out the good stuff like candy on Halloween.
It was turned to face the West side, where a number of Ion Blasts had just come in, so Max unleashed two of his Disruptors into its back a quarter second apart. The first disabled its shielding, and the second punched through its torso, vaporizing its cockpit and power plant at the same time, sending it crumbling to the ground as Max picked off the leaders of the Heavy Mecha Battalions.
Rule one of causing Chaos, target the leadership first. Then, once the enemy has no leaders, you can rampage.
The tactic was one from Nico's memories, but it was especially applicable here. For almost a half second, the enemy hesitated, letting Max's shots cripple their command structure before they got their act together.
Max set the defensive lasers to maximum attack rate, targeting everything not tagged as friendly, and Cleansing Light began to glow in blue light, discharging lasers all over the encampment while he charged and prepared for his Disruptors to be ready again.
The Omwat Mecha moved to encircle Max, causing him to take damage from multiple sides, but that also moved more Mecha into the targeting range of his Lasers.
Max raised the mighty sword straight out on his right side, sweeping it through a dozen Light Mecha at the same time and ending with a blow that chopped a Crusader Class chassis in half. Then he turned and targeted the next batch of leaders with his Disruptors, this time on wide dispersion, wiping out the entire wing of Mecha around them and killing the pilots inside dozens of other units who happened to be too close to the blast's core.
Max could hear the panicked thoughts as seemingly undamaged Mecha stopped responding, and the command structure vanished again, but he didn't hesitate, tearing his way through the Reaver Pattern Crusaders with a combination of blade and his handheld shield.
He probably shouldn't use that as a bludgeoning weapon, as it contained a number of defensive lasers, but it was just so convenient to crush Mecha with it that Max didn't hesitate to use it if a Mecha got close enough to his left side.
The fact that there was a Titan Class Mecha in their midst had dawned on the survivors through the fog of combat, and the Omwat Regiment began to scatter, running through the hills and valleys to get away from Max's wrath.
Max cleared out the last few stragglers who were in the area, then pinned the location on the map so that the defense forces, or his own teams, could come and recover the Mecha that his Disruptors had disabled. With a quick rebuild of their Electrical systems, most of them could be put back into action. Cleaning the smell out of the cockpit would take somewhat longer.
Not all of the Omwat forces had run away from the city in their rush to get away, so Max turned back in the direction he came from and moved to intercept the ones who were heading toward the trenches.
A dispersed Disruptor blast to the back took out an entire wing of Crusaders while a swipe of his sword dealt with their Line Mecha escorts.
That was one down, and his sensors picked up six more that were heading the same way.
The drones were also moving to intercept, doing their best to keep the casualties inside the city to the bare minimum. Both Max and Nico had learned during the Rebellion in Kepler how deadly a desperate enemy could be, and these Omwat Mecha were beyond desperate after seeing Cleansing Light in action. It wouldn't be surprising if they detonated their power cores when they saw him, just hoping to deal some sort of damage to his Mecha.
If they got close enough to the trenches to encompass them in the blast, it was almost guaranteed that they would use an explosive last stand. With the shielding and failsafe in place, it wasn't even guaranteed that a Disruptor blast would stop the power cores from going critical and blasting the immediate area into ashes.
Nico must have been thinking the same thing because when he approached, she sent him a message.
[Turn back and take care of the fleeing forces before they can hide again and switch to guerrilla warfare. I will help the defenders take care of these groups.]
That might lead to a few casualties from the Border Nations, but it was for the best.
Mercury Seven was a resort planet, and every bit of it was precious to the Border Nations, so letting the Omwat run free and destroy what they would actually be a worse outcome than letting them attack the city defenses.
Max doubled back, racing between hills as he searched the satellite and drone data for more targets. There weren't many of them left, and they were running at full speed, but that wasn't going to save them today. Cleansing Light could attain orbit on its own. No ground-based mecha would outrun it.
The first group fell before they knew that they had been detected, but the next heard him coming and began firing wildly in his direction, hitting him with a half dozen Plasma shots before he could eliminate them.
One more group had fallen to the drones, and Nico was sending him a report of a strange signature. There was Mecha, according to the visual scans, but no life or power signatures. It was possible that the Omwat had ditched the Mecha and made a run for it, thinking that they would have an easier time hiding in the rocky terrain without the armor.
It was the last group that had fled from the scene of his battle, so Max approached with ease, walking up to a few hundred meters away.
When he did, a single life sign appeared on his scanners, but Max chose to pretend not to have noticed yet and kept walking toward the abandoned Mecha.
When he got to fifty meters, the energy readings spiked, and the power cores immediately began to overload. The thrusters on Cleansing Light threw Max hundreds of meters back in an instant, so fast that the gravity made blood vessels burst in his eyes, healing seconds later, thanks to the nanobots, but turning his vision red for a bit longer.
The explosion was truly impressive, ripping through an entire kilometer of grassland and vaporizing the one who had stayed behind to trigger it, but it wasn't enough to take down Max's shields from that distance.
[City Defense, the Second Omwat Regiment has been dealt with. An unknown number of infantry survivors have fled into the badlands, with possible Light Mecha reinforcements.] Max reported, just in case they had missed something on the scans.
[Understood, Cleansing Light. Good work out there.]
