649 649 Encirclement
With the Behemoths taken care of for a moment, Max set his Disruptors to a wide dispersion pattern and began to move north, working to clear the front lines so that his forces could advance and complete the perimeter around the Colony so that their defenders could be released and evacuated.
His troops were making good progress, but Nico’s seemed to have stalled for a moment, not gaining any ground, but he could still hear heavy fire from that direction, as well as from the Thunder Guns of his own forces.
[How is it going over there? Have any issues with the Behemoths?] He asked to make sure that there hadn’t been any developments that he hadn’t picked up on the sensors.
[Tactical pause. We are gathering the Klem into one big cluster for a push.] Nico replied, and Max sighed.
He knew that was half true. She had ordered her people to pause their advance and let the Klem pile up so that she could have a competition with the hunter and then gain a large amount of ground in one push.
Tactically it was annoying to Max since it was hard to track her overall situation, but knowing her, it would be effective, and her forces would catch up to the progress of his own in only a short time.
[Got it. I am pushing North to meet your forces, so you can clear south and meet mine at the other end. I will be monitoring so that we can prepare for the evacuation.] Max replied.
With the Disruptors on wide dispersion, Max was clearing a wide swathe of Klem Warriors as he flew across the battlefield, letting his Mecha chase behind him to consolidate more ground.
They had to stop every few seconds to deal with a Ripper or Spitter who had snuck past Max, but they were still making good progress, but to completely encircle the Colony would spread them out quite a bit and force the Heavy Mecha to fight alone much of the time, with assistance from the more abundant Light Mecha.
He picked up another Behemoth back to his South and stopped the advance to go deal with it before it could cause a wave of losses among his unit. He could sense the desperation from the defenders of the Colony, who were rapidly running out of functional weapons and equipment since they had limited fuel supplies, and the relic Line Mecha that they were using were diesel-burning sorts intended to run off of more easily produced fuel oils that the Colony hadn’t had time to produce in large quantities.
Nico had started to move already, though, and her push to the South was taking a lot of the load off of them, as it was drawing the Klem up to meet her and the team of Hunters.
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Unlike Cleansing Light, which fought in melee with a sword and shield, the Hunter’s Suit used dual blades, and Shattered Pride had a blade in all four of its hands. That made it much more efficient for them to clear densely packed enemies than to chase after them, and the tactic was working exactly as well as Nico had hoped.
The Behemoth that Max was facing was different from the last group, a centipede type that Max was more familiar with from past battles. They were a pain to kill, but they weren’t particularly deadly to a Mecha his size. They were better at breaching walls with their immense size than attacking Mecha, so he assumed that the Klem attack plan had been made in advance and didn’t include him killing all of the others before they could breach the lines.
The beast wasn’t slowing down, though. It had caught the scent of the Colonists, and it was on a single-minded mission to eat them.
It was only when Cleansing Light came within ten metres of the Behemoth that it finally decided to acknowledge his presence and defend itself against his imminent attacks. You could never tell where the brain of this sort of Klem was going to be, so Max had taken the most efficient approach and was lining up his Disruptor to shoot into the Behemoth’s mouth and straight down its length, destroying everything it passed.
Unlike the others, it had no way to deal with that attack, and the beam of energy tore its enormous body apart, spraying the battlefield with gore.
The other Klem didn’t even seem bothered by it. It seemed that they knew the timing of that creature’s arrival was off, so they had factored it out of their decisions and were focusing on trying to breach the lines near the northern edge of the front, where the unit hadn’t had time to spread out properly yet.
But, as soon as Max started to move in that direction, another Behemoth appeared from underground just under a kilometre from the southern edge of the front.
“Oh, very sneaky. Trying to bounce me back and forth like a yo-yo.” Max chuckled as he turned his back on the Behemoth and began to push northward.
The Locust had appeared too far south this time, and instead of drawing Max down to fight it and away from his unit, it had placed itself in the sights of Nico and the Hunters, who were coming that way at a full-out charge.
Given thirty seconds, they would be on it, and they hadn’t had a chance to fight that particular type yet, as far as Max knew. The Hunters, for sure, would appreciate the new target to test themselves against, so he would assist his troops and get the Colonists to safety as fast as possible.
The android units were only a few hundred metres from each other now, and the defenders from the Colony were beginning to fall back into the compound in their battered Line Mecha, letting the Reavers take over. It was close enough to a full encirclement for Max, so he sent the signal to the Cutters to move in and prepare to load.
[Colonists, pack everything that you wish to take into the Cutters, and they will fly you to safety. They will make multiple trips if needed, but it’s your call if you want more supplies from the Colony or to get everyone to safety in one flight.] Max informed the civilians as he finished securing the last gap in their lines.
[We appreciate your consideration, Commander. Lives are more important, and supplies can be replaced eventually. We will do our best to get everyone into whatever vessel you send for us.]
There weren’t that many colonists left, so the two Cutters that had brought the Mecha Battalions to the surface would be more than sufficient for the task. He just had to hold the position for an hour or two while they packed up and left.
The Klem weren’t going to make that easy for him though. They were already regrouping in the distance, according to the aerial scans, and they would push again within the next twenty minutes, with a strength at least as high as what was here when he landed.