780 780 Pushback
The boom of a supersonic round overloaded the audio sensors of Cleansing Light an instant before the ground shook, and the nearby trees began to sway and topple.
[Oops.] Nico muttered, forgetting that she had the inter Mecha mic set to voice activation.
[What the Feth was that?] Max asked since it was clearly her fault.
[I deactivated the Warp Field to use the big guns on the surface, but I forgot that they were still impulse drive equipped, and I might have hit a Command Walker with fifty kilos of steel at Mach 70.]
No wonder she caused an earthquake.
It looked like she had stopped the enemy’s advance, though. They were just as clueless as anyone else as to what Nico had done, and the round had passed through multiple War Walkers before hitting the ground and throwing their entire Battalion to the ground.
[Let’s try not to terrify the locals too badly. Stick to energy weapons until they adjust their shielding.] Max ordered as soon as he saw that Nico was going to try again, but at Mach 50, to reduce the overpenetration.
A message came in from the Koleska Command unit, intended for Commander Yuri but including Max, as he was also marked as a Command asset.
[After the battle, determine what sort of shielding the humans have that can withstand such a blast. No species develops weapons that work against their own forces, so they should have some sort of backup defence that would be of great use to our fleet.]
Max laughed at that message. Common sense didn’t apply to Nico. There was no defending against that except to dodge. Even if Cleansing Light took a direct hit, Max was far from certain that it would survive that attack.
Oh well, they could suffer with the anticipation for a while. Maybe Nico would come up with something to counter it now that she had the idea to use it in close combat.
Max took aim at another dropship that had come into his targeting range, and a combined blast from three of his six heavy Disintegrators turned it into flaming shrapnel, which brought a keening wail from the approaching War Walkers, a form of mourning for their lost comrades, but it didn’t slow their attack at all.
Max continued to target the units in the sky while Nico fired away at the approaching War Walkers until her lighter weapons weren’t enough to keep them at a distance, then she charged into close combat, and Max turned his weapons on the horde of War Walkers coming their way.
The sky turned green with energy blasts as the horde of Arisen War Walkers turned their particle beams on the two Mecha, and the ground shook with the footsteps of giant war machines before turning to a high-pitched buzz as the Disruptors and Particle beams met in a clash of unstable energies that darkened the skies and formed thick black clouds in the sky, crackling with lightning as the heat and energy dispersed into the atmosphere.
Again the beams collided, and purple lightning filled the sky, accompanied by thunder so loud that it nearly drowned out the sonic boom of Nico’s artillery.
The speed had been marginally slowed, and she had chosen a high explosive round that threw dirt and pieces of alloy high into the sky, creating a fiery hellscape in the pouring rain.
The colliding beams nearly cancelled each other out, and Max was forced to fire as fast as possible, with the Disruptors individually firing dispersed beams to prevent the War Walkers from landing a solid strike on them, but Nico’s artillery seemed not to fear the Particle Beams, and again thunder shook the ground as she fired, clearing a hundred-metre circle of enemy War Walkers and forcing the rest down into the trenches and craters that marked the remains of the last battles.
Neither side could move now, as it would bring the full force of the enemy’s firepower to bear on them, and the battle fell into a stalemate of sporadic fire once Nico hunched down into the ruins of a building and kicked out the floor to open a path to the basement for her to hide in.
Instead of finding a basement, Max had chosen a prone position that would allow him to continue to fire, though it did limit the number of defensive lasers that he could bring to bear against the enemy.
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[Commander Yuri, how is the space battle going?] Max asked, now that he had a moment to breathe, while only taking shots at the few War Walkers foolish enough to let themselves be seen.
[The Fleet is taking advantage now. We have secured over a third of the battlefield already with the advice from your message, and we are making steady progress on removing the fleet from orbit. I estimate that we will have orbital superiority within the next twenty hours.]
That wasn’t a bad time for an orbital battle, so Max took a moment to grab a snack and a drink while using Nico’s skill to pilot the Mecha without using his hands.
He wasn’t as good at it as she was, but for this part of the fight, it was enough. He just fired wherever the System told him there was a target and ate his sandwich. It was actually rather relaxing.
[Should we push, or are we going to take an evening break here? You can catch a few hours of sleep if you want, and I can pilot Cleansing Light remotely if I move a little closer to you.] Nico suggested.
[No, we should clean this mess up before we take a break for the evening. I don’t want one of us to be asleep and unaware when a force this size decides that it’s time to launch a full offensive.]
That meant it was time for them to take action and get out of their hiding places. His least favourite part of any battle.