Max was abruptly pulled from a deep sleep when the Thunder Guns started firing, showing the entire chassis. He quickly checked Nico’s memory and found that a large Klem Contingent, including the first Behemoths they had seen, had emerged from the mountains and were facing the fury of the Command group.
Though Nico wasn’t at the controls, Max could tell that the Mecha was firing at seventy-five percent of the maximum rate. She was deliberately holding back, either for the sake of their orbital audience or for heat management.
According to the sensor feeds, the others were doing the same, so it looked like the firing rate was coordinated at the very least.
Unlike everyone else, who would strap themselves in to keep a steady hand on the controls, Nico was on her feet, singing and dancing in time with the gunfire.
“It’s raining Klem, hallelujah it’s raining Klem…” She sang and giggled while she danced.
Max didn’t know the song, but he had to admit that it was a pretty catchy tune.
“Care to come dance with me?” Nico asked as the Mecha shook, and the pulses from the Ion Bombard Arrays that were now firing forced her to change her rhythm.
The dance took all her weight off the floor in time with every shot, letting the Mecha move under her while she remained stationary.
Max shook his head and got dressed. Since he was awake he might as well work. It wasn’t until he took over the controls that Nico stopped her dance and flopped down into the seat beside him.
The behemoths had just fallen, and the area was clear again when Nico opened a communication channel to Central Command aboard Abraham Kepler.
[That’s one case of Carib Rum for me, General. Feel free to send it down with the ores you promised.] Nico gloated, as Max scowled at her.
“You know that you could have warned me, right?” Max asked.
“But then you would wake up and I wouldn’t get to play with the Klem. I hadn’t killed anything in like two days, it was getting boring in here.” Nico answered and shrugged in response.
“You could have taken up the offer to lead the maintenance team. I am sure you would have killed someone the first day.” Max pointed out, and Nico smirked.
“It is a good thing I didn’t. General Yaakov is the one in charge of hunting down whoever sent the transmission to Sector Governance. If he was gone we might have to do an actual investigation on our own.”
Max wondered how she could be so sure that he wasn’t the source of the problem, to begin with. He might be a trusted General, but even Planetary Governors and senior military officers had chosen to side with the rebels they had already fought.
Her thoughts said she was certain though, so she had been watching him. A minor detail, which also meant that she hacked Abraham Kepler’s security cameras or got General Tennant to grant her access.
Of the two, only one option was realistic. She definitely hacked the ship.
[Line Mecha report at least one more Behemoth headed toward the East. It looks like they are trying to abandon the mountain tunnels for lack of food now that we have arrived to attack them and they know that hiding underground isn’t going to save them.] Colonel Klinger reported.
[Let’s wait and see if they try to take the same tunnels out of the mountains. If they do, the Light Mecha might be able to push the entire Klem force out into the open where we can deal with them.] Max instructed.
There was a lot of combat data to catch up with after his nap, so Max started sorting through the battle reports, making notes of where the clusters were found, and what sort of combat power the Klem were hiding underground.
With eight Super Heavy Mecha out here to intercept them, Max wasn’t worried about being overrun if they exited the mountains, but there was a chance that some of the forces in the mountain valleys might be, especially infantry that had been separated from their support.
The reports all followed the same pattern. Heavy resistance at the start, with a rush for the surface, followed by steadily decreasing enemy numbers through the side tunnels, and occasional spotting of Shredders and possible Behemoths off the Main caverns.
Two of them had fallen to the Command group on the ground, while one more possible sighting remained unresolved and at large in the mountains.
For Max, it was a case of hurry up and wait since his job was to defend the camps, but even for the support units waiting above ground for the Infantry and Light Mecha to return it was the same. After the initial battle, the Klem hadn’t dared show themselves aboveground again.
[Sorry about your luck Commander, we have spotted the last Behemoth.] The Colonel in charge of the Fifth Battalion laughed, and Max’s sensors picked up the flash of an Ion Bombard Array the same second that they finally reported the Behemoth coming into range in a mountain valley just past the second ridge.
Klinger’s Company Commander wasn’t the only one with a clear shot though. Second Company of the Third Battalion was only a mountain away and had a clear shot into the valley where the behemoth had been sighted. They couldn’t use Ion weapons, due to the mountain between them, but they certainly could fire artillery at it, so that’s exactly what they did.
[Just a friendly reminder that you can’t hog all the glory.] The pilot laughed over the radio, and Max’s sensors showed a large number of high explosive shells landing in the valley near the heat signature that was the Behemoth.
It had picked a terrible spot to come to the surface. Not only was it the first one out of the tunnel, but it was also in the range of two Super Heavy Mecha, and in direct line of sight of an entire Heavy Mecha Company in the new pattern units. Everyone was competing to see who would get the killing blow on the enormous target, but in the end, it was impossible to tell. Too many rounds hit it at nearly the same time, tearing the beast apart before the Fusion Flamers set it on fire and sent acrid smoke billowing down into the tunnels.
[Infantry, be aware of smoke in the tunnels. Equip smoke prevention and low oxygen gear.] Max reported before he even bothered to check the results. The question wasn’t if the tunnels would be full of smoke, but how many of them would be.