Max’s estimation of their strength wasn’t far off, the largest of their vessels was on the borderline between Cruiser and Destroyer, and fortunately, they seemed to be a holding vessel for other Klem and not a living attack creature of their own.

He would start by removing the strange new Klem that he took for the interceptors of their force first and then get to work on the big ones once the volume of lighter weapons fire had died down.

With no planet or atmosphere to worry about, Max could go all out, and he began to unleash every laser he could while the first six beams from his Disruptors tore streaks through the Klem attack force.

A strange mental pattern appeared in Max’s senses of confusion and excitement. It had recognized Cleansing Light as a human construct that didn’t belong here and was very eager to kill both it and the Narsians.

There was no sense of why, only bloodlust and that vague recognition of his species, but that was enough to tell Max that these were different than the normal Klem he had been fighting and that they had no intentions of leaving without a fight.

The smaller vessels swarmed toward Max while he fired, unable to shield themselves from his attack on the vast three-dimensional battlefield.

Max continued to fire, wiping out most of the interceptors closest to him, but he noticed a few misses that certainly should have hit their target and began to analyze the data. The creatures, as well as the largest vessels, were emitting some sort of energy field that seemed to move them slightly out of reality, allowing them to move at speeds that defied conventional physics and escape from his Laser fire.

The Disruptors still hit them just fine, so the radiation but not light was capable of passing through that boundary, or perhaps of disrupting the boundary instead of passing through, he didn’t have enough data to clarify, but he made sure to log every sensor feed that he could to give to the Development team later.

Only a portion of the force seemed intent on attacking him, while most continued on their path and had increased their speed, intending to make landfall before Max could destroy their vanguard forces.

Three Cruiser-sized vessels were headed for Max, firing a dispersed wave of spikes, expecting him to dodge. The pattern was geometrically perfect, but with a very simple flaw. Max could simply shoot a few of the spikes and maintain a position.

The disruptors had the power to vaporize Klem chitin on contact, and that’s exactly what they did, landing a volley of hits on the closest Cruiser that caused minimal visible damage.

If the ship could take that volley, it was tougher than the behemoths by a wide margin, so Max focused his next volley into an orbital strike pattern and burned a hole through the side of the vessel while lasers did their best to deflect and destroy the incoming spikes.

Max wished he had more Ion weapons at that moment, as they packed a larger kinetic impact and could knock the spikes off course, but they were hard to keep supplied in a vacuum, as they needed something to ionize, and even Cleansing Light had limited resources on board.

After the Orbital Lance punched the hole through the chitin, Max watched for the response from the vessel to see how much damage he had actually done.

Like a wound scabbing over, Klem from inside the vessel hurled their bodies into the wound, bound together by some sort of viscous fluid until the venting finished and the chitin began to regrow from the edges of the wound.

Max decided that meant he could treat it as an enormous living creature whose biology he was completely unfamiliar with. He just needed to learn its weak point, and then he should be able to take out the other four ships coming his way much more easily.

Max flashed to the side with as much speed as Cleansing Light could muster and launched another Orbital Lance at the vessel, aiming for one of the wrinkles in the side that had a higher energy concentration than other areas.

Again the orbital lance punched a fifty-meter-wide hole in the ship, but this time, its trajectory faltered, and it began to slow down. That was valuable information. The high-energy wrinkles were part of its maneuvering system.

Again Max targeted the high energy areas, this time toward the rear of the vessel, going by its direction of travel, and this time it began to vent plasma into space before the hole could be plugged. The damage again visibly slowed the ship, and Max could see the hull shudder in what its rudimentary thoughts identified as agony.

Perfect, he had found a vital spot. Now he just had to finish the job.

But the Klem wouldn’t make it that easy for him, and a dense wave of Spikes, accompanied by some sort of liquid wave, was coming his way from the other ships, and more interceptors were launching to replace the wave that Max had eliminated.

The best option was to reposition, getting beyond the range of that liquid wave, whatever it was, and to try to completely destroy one vessel before moving on to the others. Multiple wounded enemies were much more dangerous than a few full-health ones when dealing with Klem, as they didn’t lose their combat viability until the very last breath.

Max targeted an energy spot on the very rear of the wounded vessel and hit something vital inside, causing a huge secondary explosion that rippled through the hull, sending fleeing Klem in every direction while the ship burned from the inside.

Now he truly had his kill shot, and Max turned his attention to the wave of smaller Klem that were heading his way, plotting a battle plan that would let him get behind another Klem vessel for the kill.

The most pressing danger was the interceptors, but there were other types capable of surviving and maneuvering in space as well, on top of the ones that the other ships were moving toward, attempting to rescue them from the void before that large chunk of their force was lost without ever being able to fight.