Chapter 123: You Call Those Pilots?

The appearance of the additional light mecha sent the Narsian infantry into a full charge, turning their back on the infantry to deal with the greatest threat first. Even with their losses, they still outnumbered the Mecha force by almost four to one.

The Light Mecha, as well as Bulwark and Morning Glory, moved forward to meet the charge. Bulwark's shield seemed to annoy the giants' sensibilities every time they saw it, but the Rending Claw on Morning Glory was their primary target.

The blades on the three crushing pincers were deadly, but the flamer in the middle was a much bigger concern. If it was allowed to bathe the battlefield in plasma fire they would be at a huge disadvantage.

The fastest two runners went straight for Morning Glory, losing their lives to a masterful scoop with the claw before being roasted by the torch in the middle of the melee weapon. But they weren't alone. Three more were right behind them, too close to all be deflected.

One was knocked down by a backhand with the Battle Cannon, but two more landed solid hits on the legs of the mecha before being shot apart by the Corvettes.

By then, the main line had reached the Special Tactics Unit, and furious close combat battles were underway beneath a flashing mantle of Pulse Laser fire as Max did his best to eliminate the units still at a longer range so that the infantry could begin to maneuver and assist Alpha Squad.

The Corvette Class Mecha successfully repelled the first wave of the Narsian charge, not letting any of them through to attack the relatively helpless long-ranged mecha, but the numbers still heavily favored the giants.

Max didn't particularly need protection though, and neither did Paul. Both were now equipped with Plasma Shotguns that could easily defend the mecha against groups of close-range attackers, so both Pilots moved forward to join the scrum, taking some of the pressure off the Light Mecha.

The Plasma Shotguns weren't a standard Kepler weapon, and Cygnus was an unknown entity to the Narsians, so the first few blasts took them entirely by surprise, tearing apart armor and crippling Narsians by the handful.

It was enough to pull the battle to a stalemate, with the first few Corvettes being damaged to the point of collapse, forcing them to retreat and putting pressure on the others. The overall ratio was holding steady though, at four to one in favor of the Narsians.

Alpha Squad had been forced to a standstill, joining the infantry in their defensive positions and returning fire towards the Narsian forces, so Max brought the last of his reserves into the battle, calling the infantry company to set up on top of the Transports and thin out the Narsian forces.

It was a risky move for them, as it left them mostly in the open and could lead to mass casualties, but for a few seconds, it turned the tide of the battle back in favor of the Special Tactics Unit.

Then, the most glorious of sounds reached Max's external microphones. Light Mecha in a large group were running through the forest in their direction.

The mecha began shooting the moment they saw Narsians, wounding many and letting Alpha Squad get up out of the holes they had hidden in to again put the full weight of their ranged fire into the enemy lines.

There was something wrong with these Mecha though. They were clumsy, inaccurate, and visibly inept. To Max, they looked like second-year Cadets having their first outing on the training grounds. They knew the controls, but they lacked coordination, and many of them were clearly very slow to enter the commands, so the Mecha's movements were jerky and had visible pauses between them.

They had the markings of the training base that Max had been sent to scout for though, so he would have to deal with it one way or the other. He just hoped that it was the first battle nerves getting to them and that they weren't always this bad.

If they were this was going to be a very long deployment.

Two hundred Line Mecha, no matter how inaccurate, was enough to put the Narsians in a bad position. They could only take so many away from close combat without being overrun, and they didn't have enough units left at range to effectively suppress both targets at once.

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So, they did what any sensible Commander would do. They retreated, breaking free of Max's unit and firing as they ran backward, preventing him from following them without taking heavy damage.

[All units fall in on me. I need damage reports for everyone and then we will get triage started in the landers. They might have come full of infantry, but we have enough raw materials with us to do the repairs.] Max ordered, marking the end of the battle.

As Max's men start getting set up to do the repairs, the Commander of the patrol that came from the Academy, who was the only one in a Corvette Class mecha, came up to greet him.

[Major Max, of the Stalwart Special Tactics Unit I assume? I am Colonel Sanders. It's a pleasure to meet you. I don't believe the planet has ever turned out a Special Tactics Unit of our own, so meeting an elite of the Kepler Fleet is an honor.]

They've never had a Special Tactics unit from the planet? Max knew some planets had lousy System Compatibility but isn't that taking it too far? The fact that the Base Commander was the only one in a Corvette Class mecha, and that the one he was in was an older pattern training Mecha, and not an up-armored unit that was more commonly used for combat should have been his first clue that things weren't well on Sigmund long before the attack.

[It's a pleasure to meet you as well Colonel. Did you notice the commotion from the base, or were you just taking the Cadets out for a training patrol?] Max asked politely.

[That's well, you see. You know what, there's no good way to put this. Those aren't the Cadets. Those are the finest of our freshly graduated Pilots. The academy is for failures and screw-ups, more like a Juvenile Detention facility than a military installation, but Sigmund has never turned out a Pilot over Beta Rank System Compatibility. During our last recruitment, we only had two Beta Ranked Pilots to offer, so they didn't even form a Heavy Mecha Regiment. They just attached wings of Light Mecha to the infantry as support.]

[I understand, you work with what you have. I can give them a crash course in not dying on the battlefield if we have a bit of time. What is the average System Compatibility?] Max asked, trying to hide the dismay in his voice.

[The average should be on the high side of Delta. But I will warn you, I read your file and the standards from Kepler Terminus are much higher than those here. If they can awaken the System at all, they are pilots. Our infantry is all F Ranked and systemless. The infantry from those Landers is likely stronger, better equipped, and better trained than any unit of locals left on the planet.] Colonel Sanders explained.

[That's fine. Let's get back to the base. How far is it?]

Colonel Sanders pointed to a ridgeline under five kilometers away, where Max could faintly make out a hidden door. They were in sight of the Landers and it took them that long to get a unit mustered and make it to the battle? Someone is messing with him, Max is sure of it.

High above the planet, in a Central Command meeting aboard Abraham Kepler, General Tennant felt a sudden chill run up his spine.

"Have the units in the swamp made it to the mine site yet?" The General asked, looking to the officer in charge of the region.

"Yes sir. Recovery is underway, and all units are expected to become functional again within 48 hours. Assuming that the Narsian patrols that have entered the swamp are just passing through and not launching another mass attack on the mine location that is." The Captain responded, after double-checking his latest sensor data.

"Once they have everything cleaned up, report back to me so we can reassign them. The swamp is an excellent central staging point for attacks, but it doesn't have any strategic value other than location anymore." General Tennant ordered before moving on to the next group of orders on his desk.

The casualties from the first wave have been staggering. Forget ten years of service, this recruitment from Kepler 111 was likely going to need to be reinforced after its first battle.

On the ground, communications were too limited for the forces to know that though. They could only see how things were going in their region and assume that everyone else got the same amount of reinforcements that they did, not knowing that entire regions had been lost to the Narsians during the first wave and the increased numbers in the best-defended regions were there to take the others back.

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