The appearance of Cleansing Light had put new urgency into the actions of the Omwat attackers in the region. Not only the ones closest to them but even the next city south, where Mary Tarith had landed her forces, was reporting a full-scale offensive.
[Nico, send Drones south to reinforce the Reaver force. We are down to one Regiment here, and we have the superior force.] Max ordered.
The Regiment hadn't reported any Super Heavy Mecha among the force on the East side of the city, and so far, their damages only amounted to a few disabled Light Mecha, with no Pilot casualties.
The shields that the new Mecha all had were making all the difference. If they took a hit, they could hide for a few seconds until the shield came back up, avoiding any actual damage. It was only when they took multiple hits in close succession that they were in real trouble.
The additional forces were a huge benefit to the Regiment, and the Cutters had brought all of the damaged Mecha into their repair bays and would have them active again within the next few hours, bringing the Mecha forces back to full strength while the Infantry had taken no casualties at all, and had only worked to herd Omwat patrols toward the Terminus Mecha Battalions.
For soldiers who had been viewed as expendable for their entire careers, this was the best battle of their life. They all had heavy weapons, with plenty of ammunition, and they had top-of-the-line augmentic armor, as good or better than the Mobile Suits that the Elite Kepler Special Forces had.
It even had a shield, the same unit that was on the Archangel Exoskeleton. The Innu had talked about merging the two, making flying augmentic suits with weaponized wings, but that plan hadn't come to fruition yet, assuming that it ever would.
The Tech Adept Harnesses were everywhere, though, and the entire repair team was wearing them, which allowed them to work together to drag disabled Light Mecha to the repair bays on their own without outside assistance and bring repair parts to any Heavy Mecha which were damaged.
The front lines were a much more dangerous place to work than back at their repair racks, but the advantage was that they could do the repair while surrounded by Heavy Mecha instead of relying on the fact that they weren't close to the known enemy locations to keep them safe.
Max returned to his position on the Eastern Perimeter of the city, waiting for more news of enemy positions, and ducked down in behind an armored military high-rise building, keeping himself mostly out of sight so that Cleansing Light wouldn't scare the enemy away.
While he was waiting, he received a request from the Tarith Reavers to link Cleansing Light and the drones to their combat data feed. It would let them directly use the Drone camera feeds to target enemies the same way that his Regiment did, but it would also let him link his [Unified Force] Talent to all of their Mecha, improving the firing accuracy and targeting speed of the Reavers, who were mostly not professional Mecha Pilots, though the Tarith Family Pilots almost all had a System Interface.
He wasn't sure if it was intentional or not, but he linked them in anyhow, expanding the force that his Talent recognized as allies to twice its original size and opening a huge portion of the region to his targeting skills.
With the Drone Patrols, they now had almost perfect visibility of the entire area between the two cities, except for areas hidden by the rock pillars. That was much better than relying on the ship's sensors and the Satellite systems of the Vacation Planet, which were lacking to start with and only partially accessible to the Reavers.
[You know, this is practically cheating. Is this your System Function adding all of the targeting data?] Mary Tarith asked Max from her position on the defense lines of the city to his south.
[It is. I share it with the entire Regiment as a matter of course, and it's why we send out so many Drones.] Max agreed, knowing that Nico was weak against her mom and would cave the moment she asked about it.
[Cleansing Light will have quite the legend with you at the helm. Nobody will forget the Titan Class Mecha that can calculate targeting data for entire Mecha regiments at the same time. If we didn't have Pilots with Systems, the difference would be enough to sway an entire planetary battle.]
She had a point. Without a System Function for targeting, many Pilots could only fire half as fast. With his Function improving them, it would double the firepower of a Non-Kepler force without adding a single new Mecha to the lines.
He hadn't thought about it that way before, but right now, he wasn't willing to link all of the Border Nation defenders into his entire data feed just on the off chance that the city got attacked. They would do what they could do, and he would send his Regiment to reinforce them.
The locals already held the Terminus Trading Company in awe thanks to the show of power, so they would accept being overruled on matters of defense, at least as long as the enemy didn't breach their lines. When it came to fighting inside the city, they would be much more territorial, Max was certain.
Short of manually searching through the entire wasteland himself, there wasn't much for Max to do at the moment except watch the screens and keep the targeting data up for everyone else, so he plugged a meal order into the Mecha's replicator and made himself dinner.
The novelty of a fresh, hot meal in the middle of a battle might never get old, even if it did come in a magnetic bowl that wouldn't fall if he had to move in a hurry, and the drink had a sippy cup lid.
