Max raced between the stone pillars of the badlands, coming into sight of the Omwat forces just as they turned their attention upward to deal with the incoming drone bombers.
They had a single Super Heavy cha with them, a developnt that Max hadn't expected since the designs were so hard to obtain outside of the Reaver factories where Uncle Lu was doling out the good stuff like candy on Halloween.
It was turned to face the West side, where a number of Ion Blasts had just co in, so Max unleashed two of his Disruptors into its back a quarter second apart. The first disabled its shielding, and the second punched through its torso, vaporizing its cockpit and power plant at the sa ti, sending it crumbling to the ground as Max picked off the leaders of the Heavy cha Battalions.
Rule one of causing Chaos, target the leadership first. Then, once the enemy has no leaders, you can rampage.
The tactic was one from Nico's mories, but it was especially applicable here. For almost a half second, the enemy hesitated, letting Max's shots cripple their command structure before they got their act together.
Max set the defensive lasers to maximum attack rate, targeting everything not tagged as friendly, and Cleansing Light began to glow in blue light, discharging lasers all over the encampnt while he charged and prepared for his Disruptors to be ready again.
The Omwat cha moved to encircle Max, causing him to take damage from multiple sides, but that also moved more cha into the targeting range of his Lasers.
Max raised the mighty sword straight out on his right side, sweeping it through a dozen Light cha at the sa ti and ending with a blow that chopped a Crusader Class chassis in half. Then he turned and targeted the next batch of leaders with his Disruptors, this ti on wide dispersion, wiping out the entire wing of cha around them and killing the pilots inside dozens of other units who happened to be too close to the blast's core.
Max could hear the panicked thoughts as seemingly undamaged cha stopped responding, and the command structure vanished again, but he didn't hesitate, tearing his way through the Reaver Pattern Crusaders with a combination of blade and his handheld shield.
He probably shouldn't use that as a bludgeoning weapon, as it contained a number of defensive lasers, but it was just so convenient to crush cha with it that Max didn't hesitate to use it if a cha got close enough to his left side.
The fact that there was a Titan Class cha in their midst had dawned on the survivors through the fog of combat, and the Omwat Regint began to scatter, running through the hills and valleys to get away from Max's wrath.
Max cleared out the last few stragglers who were in the area, then pinned the location on the map so that the defense forces, or his own teams, could co and recover the cha that his Disruptors had disabled. With a quick rebuild of their Electrical systems, most of them could be put back into action. Cleaning the sll out of the cockpit would take sowhat longer.
Not all of the Omwat forces had run away from the city in their rush to get away, so Max turned back in the direction he ca from and moved to intercept the ones who were heading toward the trenches.
A dispersed Disruptor blast to the back took out an entire wing of Crusaders while a swipe of his sword dealt with their Line cha escorts.
That was one down, and his sensors picked up six more that were heading the sa way.
The drones were also moving to intercept, doing their best to keep the casualties inside the city to the bare minimum. Both Max and Nico had learned during the Rebellion in Kepler how deadly a desperate enemy could be, and these Omwat cha were beyond desperate after seeing Cleansing Light in action. It wouldn't be surprising if they detonated their power cores when they saw him, just hoping to deal so sort of damage to his cha.
If they got close enough to the trenches to encompass them in the blast, it was almost guaranteed that they would use an explosive last stand. With the shielding and failsafe in place, it wasn't even guaranteed that a Disruptor blast would stop the power cores from going critical and blasting the imdiate area into ashes.
Nico must have been thinking the sa thing because when he approached, she sent him a ssage.
[Turn back and take care of the fleeing forces before they can hide again and switch to guerrilla warfare. I will help the defenders take care of these groups.]
That might lead to a few casualties from the Border Nations, but it was for the best.
rcury Seven was a resort planet, and every bit of it was precious to the Border Nations, so letting the Omwat run free and destroy what they would actually be a worse outco than letting them attack the city defenses.
Max doubled back, racing between hills as he searched the satellite and drone data for more targets. There weren't many of them left, and they were running at full speed, but that wasn't going to save them today. Cleansing Light could attain orbit on its own. No ground-based cha would outrun it.
The first group fell before they knew that they had been detected, but the next heard him coming and began firing wildly in his direction, hitting him with a half dozen Plasma shots before he could eliminate them.
One more group had fallen to the drones, and Nico was sending him a report of a strange signature. There was cha, according to the visual scans, but no life or power signatures. It was possible that the Omwat had ditched the cha and made a run for it, thinking that they would have an easier ti hiding in the rocky terrain without the armor.
It was the last group that had fled from the scene of his battle, so Max approached with ease, walking up to a few hundred ters away.
When he did, a single life sign appeared on his scanners, but Max chose to pretend not to have noticed yet and kept walking toward the abandoned cha.
When he got to fifty ters, the energy readings spiked, and the power cores imdiately began to overload. The thrusters on Cleansing Light threw Max hundreds of ters back in an instant, so fast that the gravity made blood vessels burst in his eyes, healing seconds later, thanks to the nanobots, but turning his vision red for a bit longer.
The explosion was truly impressive, ripping through an entire kiloter of grassland and vaporizing the one who had stayed behind to trigger it, but it wasn't enough to take down Max's shields from that distance.
[City Defense, the Second Omwat Regint has been dealt with. An unknown number of infantry survivors have fled into the badlands, with possible Light cha reinforcents.] Max reported, just in case they had missed sothing on the scans.
[Understood, Cleansing Light. Good work out there.]
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