Similar scenes played out all through the mountains. Compared to the nightmare of a battle they just finished, these pockets of Klem resistance seemed positively harmless. Their enthusiastic killing also helped assure the infantry that these strangers truly had their backs.
Max had given orders to limit contact though, so only the Company Commanders actually talked to the allied forces, and they set up a comfortable distance away to discourage mingling.
The infantry understood that they were on their own for the next part, with only sporadic support from Line Mecha where they could fit in the tunnels. They didn’t have to wait until they were underground to find another fight though.
The Klem needed food to reproduce, and they hadn’t had time to stock up on plant life from the mountain valleys. The infantry above them drew a large number of Klem swarming to the surface, eager to gather food and bring it back to the tunnels where they were attempting to incubate more Warriors and Shredders.
They would start breeding the behemoths that could eliminate the hateful Mecha soon, but their instinctive drive compelled them to create the smaller warriors that were needed to protect their leaders first.
A thousand generations of genetic memories told them that without guards the behemoth was vulnerable, so the thought of doing anything differently never entered their minds.
[More of the gribblies and a pair of warriors in the south.] One of the infantry Sergeants reported as his shift came to an end and he prayed his men would be able to finish the fight and retreat without any more casualties.
The small Klem came in many shapes, so the infantry had coined the word Gribbly as a catch-all for any Klem smaller than a human.
Suddenly the two Warriors exploded in a cascade of gore and a plume of fire spread out over the heads of the infantry toward the remaining Klem. One of the Mercenary Crusaders had come to their assistance, using the strange energy weapon on its shoulder to eliminate the warriors before burning off most of the smaller Klem.
[Finish the group and change shifts, it’s time.] The Sergeant informed his troops, giving the Mercenary Pilot a salute.
Far above their heads, Inquisitor General Ming finally received a response from Imperial Intelligence to his inquiries about the Terminus Trading Company and their unusual Mecha.
[Everything I could find about that force and their unique Mecha is Vermilion level classified, with maximum access security. For the sake of your health, I recommend you stop looking. A loyalty assurance team has been dispatched to Sector Governance as of this morning.
Be safe.
Your Friend, John]
That created more questions than it answered, but Inquisitor General Ming was no fool, he would stop asking questions before he also got a nighttime visit to correct his attitude.
His best course of action right now was to do what General Tennant was doing and just go with the flow, not drawing any suspicion on himself while others investigated the situation.
In Ming’s mind, it was very possible that Tennant was here to observe the Mecha in action and make a deal with the creator when the unexpected arrivals interrupted his Top Secret mission.
Ming’s most reliable friend at Imperial Command didn’t say anything about General Tennant, only that Sector Governance was being investigated, which meant that his presence here was sanctioned and that even a Sector Governor, a Duke of the Empire, and normally a trusted advisor of the Emperor himself was being censured for sending ships to his location, a bit of knowledge that meant General Tennant was trusted above all others in this matter.
That line of thought led Inquisitor Ming to recall that General Tennant, aboard Abraham Kepler, was until very recently awaiting refit at Comor Station. Then suddenly he was here with an ultra-secret research squad and a whole lot of Mecha that nobody had ever seen before.
But he wasn’t the only notable figure on the planet Comor, was he? A Cygnus delegation had left just a week ago, celebrating a marriage between Comor’s ruling Chen family and their Imperial family.
There were also a number of famous Pilots vacationing on the planet recently. That Keres Max fellow, and the one with crazy close combat skills.
Tarith Nico, that was her name, General Ming realized, and all the pieces fell in place in his mind. The Tarith Reavers Cypher being instantly decrypted, the reports that the unit was called the Terminus Trading company when the two most famous absentee Pilots in the Empire were from Kepler Terminus. The presence of the new Mecha, and those Corvettes that looked so much like the rumored new Comor Pattern units.
He, an Imperial Inquisitor, had been fooled by a pair of pilots that hadn’t even seen their twentieth birthday, and General Tennant had ever so humbly asked for the assistance of his own Research and Development team.
Then he had them trick the reinforcements into sending them munitions materials out of their own supply when there was no doubt that Abraham Kepler was loaded to the gills with everything imaginable to keep the Test Units functioning.
General Ming’s friend John had a point though. He would be best off not saying a single word of this to anyone. They would clear out the Klem, leave the system after accepting whatever nonsense excuse General Tennant found to stay behind and forget that this ever happened.
It was the only sane and safe way to ensure that the Regiments he had accompanied here weren’t purged as a threat to National Security.
There might be no saving the Sector Governance department, or whoever tipped them off though.
But those were the risks that a subversive agent took. They might think their cause was just and noble, or even essential for survival, but if they weren’t on the winning end of the game, their lives were forfeit by default.
Whatever idiot had set this all in motion had better suffer a very slow and painful death, or General Ming would not be a happy man when he returned to his station.