Chapter 102: Giant Pain In The...

Max doesn't have to wait long for more targets, with the first of them coming running out of the woods just after he asked for a radar update. It is his first time seeing these enemies up close, and they are truly fearsome. While their size isn't intimidating to a Crusader Class Mecha, the speed and agility with which they move through the shallow water are far beyond anything mechanical Max has ever seen.

[Incoming from 220 Degrees] Max calls as a group tries to circle them while staying out of their direct line of sight.

Beside him, Vincente in the Morning Glory lets loose a Battle Cannon round of his own, having refrained from the earlier bombardment for lack of a suitable targeting skill. The enemy is under a hundred meters away and is closing fast until the massed firepower of Charlie Squad's infantry forces them to take cover. They weren't expecting the Kepler forces to have stationed infantry here, in a place so unsuitable to vehicle transport, and it took them off guard.

A half-second after they move out of the majority of the infantry fire, the Corvette Class Mecha begin their assault, using the advantage of their height above the water to hit targets that the infantry couldn't.

Now that they have realized that they can't hide, the Narsians charge. Their Plasma shots are mostly going wide of the targets, but they were intended as covering fire, keeping Charlie Squad under cover until the Giants can get close enough to tear them apart at close range.

The Pulse Laser Array on Stalwart flashes as Max makes the best use of his [Split Fire] System skill, taking out one target after another before they can even react.

[System Update Triggered] Generating Appropriate Skill

Max doesn't have time to even notice the message from the System flash in his vision as he shoots, but suddenly the world seems to be moving in slow motion. The Laser is firing so slowly that he has all the time he needs to pick and choose the best targets and adjust to weak points, taking out throats and helmet visors instead of simply hitting the giants with his shots.

Even his next Battle Cannon round is visible as a fast-moving blur of metal racing from Stalwart's barrel into a newly detected group of Narsian invaders. At first, Max is baffled, and then the second System Message clarifies his situation.

[New Skill Added: Perception 1] Increases cognitive speed by 50 percent at will.

That explains the sudden change. His skill for reaching 200 points of total bonus has finally come in. This one is also a combat skill, but it will also be very useful for strategy and Command. Having more time to think gives him time to contemplate his orders even while under pressure, turning every two seconds into three.

The number next to it indicates that this is a skill that can be increased during future advancements, so with time, his thoughts will get even faster. The only unfortunate part is that the System very rarely makes anyone smarter after the developmental acceleration. Instead, this skill only lets you make bad decisions faster.

A group of Narsians in Stealth Suits have almost made it to the small island that they have picked as their defensive position when Max's sensors pick them up, and he pings the spot on the radar map to let the Corvettes know that there are incoming enemies. They are too far off target to get Stalwart turned around, so he leaves them to the others, while he takes aim at a large group that is charging through the tangled mess of downed trees that the battle has created.

He sprays them with the Pulse Lasers, eliminating nearly half of them in a second as they charge into the range of the Plasma Shotguns.

The sizzling crack of the dual weapons spitting their cluster of light blue energy balls echoes through the area even as static electricity from the continued energy attacks ripples over Stalwart's surface. But the Shotguns live up to their name, and the wide spread of the pattern leaves the remaining Giants nowhere to escape their wrath.

With the area temporarily clear, Max checks on Alpha Squad, where Nico in Tarith's Rage has joined the identically equipped Bulwark Piloted by Captain Ari. They are also under heavy attack, but with Ari carrying a shield in her Gauntlet and Nico enjoying close combat as much as she does, they still haven't taken any casualties.

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Max can only imagine how upset the Narsians are on that flank. They view shields as cowardice, and Bulwark is using one to defend the human infantry, which they also detest, even though the infantry weapons often prove lethal to the giants.

Bravo Squad back at camp still hasn't faced any enemies, with the two advanced flanks pulling everyone towards themselves, but they are preparing for much larger enemy numbers now that the incoming Landers are getting closer, already visible over the horizon on final approach.

They will be down in only a few more minutes, and will be fully deployed in the area Max is currently defending within the hour, according to the orders that Max has received.

Once they are, his unit is to fall back and let the third wave handle defense, while they will be reassigned to a more urgent target than the mine defense. Not that there is much that qualifies as more important in the area, but Max counts over twenty landers incoming, and fifteen of them are Heavy Mecha Wings. With somewhere around a hundred Crusaders plus Light Mecha support in the area, his Special Tactics Unit is a drop in the bucket of the total firepower during a siege situation.

Max takes advantage of his newfound cognitive speed to start sending targeting data to Vincente so that the Battle Cannon on Morning Glory can join with the artillery being fired from the base camp to thin the ranks of the Narsians before they get close enough to be a real threat. It doesn't take much with modern targeting to turn the swamp into a death trap for them, with the artillery rounds falling from the sky as the Narsian forces are slowed by the hostile terrain.

The scene awakens another of Max's repressed memories, showing him historical footage of battles from his past life. They were centuries before the Mecha were invented, and even longer before he was born, but the concepts of trench warfare were born from those ancient battles, and Max recalls seeing holographic footage of soldiers rushing through no man's land between trench lines, attempting to assault the enemy.

If they could make it, the death toll on the entrenched soldiers would be horrific, left with nowhere to flee. But the number who had to die on the open ground of no man's land in order to accomplish such a feat was equally staggering. Both sides tried to take advantage of each other's perceived weaknesses to gain the upper hand and minimize their own losses, and that made Max realize what the Narsian's next move is going to be.

[All forward units, relocate. Enemy return fire predicted.] Max calls, leading the squad further away from the central camp, extending their coverage and abandoning the island they were stationed on.

For a moment, Max thinks he might have overreacted, but just as the radar shows the enemy starting to advance again the sound of Narsian artillery hitting the area where they were stationed shatters the air and sends dirt and steam rising high into the sky.

Now they are spread too far apart to prevent units from moving between them and attacking the central force, but they are also able to intercept the attackers that have gone wide around the bombardment zone in an attempt to flank them and get to the Landers before they can deploy.

The plan is unintentionally genius on Max's part, and they encounter a battalion-sized unit of Narsian heavy infantry slowly slogging through the muck, the weight of their gear and thicker armor dragging them down with every step. Even though they are new to war, everyone knows what to do, they need to kill the heavy weapons battalion before they can get prepared to defend themselves.

Max circles further right, getting a good firing angle on the giants that have hidden out of sight of the main unit, while Vincente goes left, being charged by melee troops wielding giant axes with electromagnetic fields around them that can cut through even the prodigious armor of the Morning Glory. He has the rending claw to defend himself though, and with their recent training, he has gotten very proficient in using it to both attack and defend himself.

The flamer in the center of the claw boils the swamp water, creating a thick mist that the vision of the Narsians struggles to penetrate, while the anti-aircraft battery fitted to the top provides suppressive fire to reduce the numbers charging at him. Their armor is easily torn apart by the might of the claw, chopping the soft bodies underneath into pieces, and the battle cannon at close range is causing chaos in their ranks.

All the while, Max is on the other side, unleashing a fantastic barrage of energy weapon fire, and the Light Mecha are leading the infantry in shooting at anything that isn't obviously a Crusader Class Mecha. A lot of the targets are trees, but who told them to look so much like Narsian infantry anyhow?

The first few landers are down and deployed now, and the radar is showing more and more giants have made it around or through the defense lines outside the swamp. That's still nearly three hundred kilometers away, but at the rate they run, they should be here within the next six hours, even with the swamp slowing their progress.

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