Moving to save their allies immediately was a mistake, from Max’s point of view, though he could see that they didn’t have any sort of space suits or protective pod as humans ejected from a destroyed ship usually did.

Max ignored the disabled survivors and unleashed the Disruptors in a wide pattern, vaporizing countless interceptors in an instant, then activated his thrusters to gain an advantageous position to attack the Cruisers.

Max could sense the urgency from the Klem, but there was no emotion, only a biological imperative to destroy him before he could damage the mothership.

More spikes and a burst of plasma from one of the ships came his way, and Max chose to move to a lower-density area but not worry about completely escaping, allowing him to fire at the same weak point as he used to destroy the last ship.

The huge Klem vessel phased out of reality at the last moment and turned slightly, but the Disruptor still tore the outer chitin off the rear section, leaving the interior exposed.

It was a Plasma emitting pod at the back of the ships, and Max realized that they were actually flying in reverse, protecting the main weapons that would attack the target planet from impacts and attacks with a hardened shell on the other side.

It was a genius bit of evolution, and Max set the Disruptors back to individual beams, targeting all of the likely evasive positions that the Plasma Pod could end up in. He fired again, and the pod exploded, sending much less of a deadly wave through the ship this time but still leaving it venting vital fluids and atmosphere into space as it floated off course on an uncontrolled trajectory.

With two cruisers disabled, the last one was in a bad spot, and not even the full force of the remaining interceptor bugs, firing their plasma and spikes at Cleansing Light, was likely to keep it safe for long.

The rest of the fleet wasn’t returning to help, though, choosing to cut their losses and increase speed toward the planet. They had extensive experience fighting all sizes of human Mecha on planets, and most of their force was vulnerable in space, so they had rushed their approach as much as they could once Max started to attack.

[Nico, change of schedule. The Klem fleet is a real fleet. The largest objects are heavy Plasma Cruisers, and they are on a maximum speed run for the planet, ETA of two hours. It is unclear if I will be able to completely destroy them before planetfall.] Max informed his second in command.

[Understood, Commander. We will finish the Narsian-held city before the Klem arrives and prepare for the arrival of pods.] Nico replied.

[Prepare for the arrival of a fully formed infestation. There are more than pods aboard the vessels, there are fully grown Klem in there, and I have no data on how they intend to deploy them.] Max added.

He was too far away to sense her joy at his announcement, but he knew Nico. Killing off a full city’s worth of enemies and then getting to fight even more enemies was better than a second birthday for her.

Max went for a different approach for the final ship and only condensed half his Disruptors, targeting the ship’s control areas, while the other three beams fired a dispersed pattern to knock out the incoming spikes and fluid attacks.

The Disruptors also disrupted the Plasma shots, making them unstable and causing them to explode in space. If it were a crowded battlefield, that would be a mess, but with only one Mecha in the area, the destruction caused by unstable plasma could be ignored, as it was all hitting the enemy.

Thirty seconds of fire was enough to stop the final cruiser, and it deployed every Klem it could to try to stop Max long enough for it to heal, but he had gotten position to hit its main weapon again, sending the internals of the ship to a fiery death and leaving the interceptors helpless to defend themselves and with nowhere to return to.

His weapons tore through the remaining Klem while Max planned a way to deal with a dozen more of the Cruisers.

Three of them at once hadn’t been bad since he could keep outside of the group and continually attack, but with higher density, the Interceptors could actually do their job and prevent his attacks from reaching the motherships, while the larger vessels would be able to surround Max and leave him nowhere to go if he wasn’t careful.

There was the option of doing like Nico and charging a Cruiser to gut it from the inside, but these ones were Klem vessels and unlikely to go down as easily as a Cruiser full of human sailors, who likely weren’t even fully armed when she arrived, since nobody expects a Mecha to actually charge and breach a Cruiser.

The Cutters had orbital lances and could be repurposed to attack the Klem fleet, but they weren’t nearly as maneuverable as Cleansing Light was, and they were sure to take heavy return fire after the first shot, so they would have to do the equivalent of a drive-by, firing and fleeing before retaliation could come for them.

That might actually be his best course of action. With the speed that the Klem had accelerated to, there wasn’t a whole lot of time to prevent them from launching their attacks, and killing the ships would only be of minimal benefit if they still managed to launch a full wave of pods at the planet.

Max went through the battle logs as the last of the Klem in his region fell and analyzed the data they had gathered. The Cutters still seemed vital to the offensive, as the Narsians had erected powerful shields over their main units, preventing the Thunder Guns from reaching peak effectiveness, but with the shields up, the drones were of limited effectiveness.

If he borrowed them for a while, he could knock out a large portion of the light Klem vessels without risking any lives. That seemed to be the best option since Terminus had been on such a long winning streak that he didn’t want to take extra risks now.

[Terminus Drone Command, send the Orbital Fighters on an intercept path with the Klem force. Eliminate their escort vessels for Cleansing Light to engage the Cruisers.]