[Defense Line Command, this is Commander Keres Max, inbound for damage control. With me are Cleansing Light and Shattered Pride] Max announced when they passed through the Portal to reach the group of Cygnus vessels gathered around the anomaly.

[Good to hear from you, Commander. Please pass through directly at no more than one-quarter of standard sublight speed. The Koleska hold the other side of the breach.] The defence force informed him abruptly, and Max noticed that they had a lot of Mecha on duty in space in case of attack.

“Are all the modifications finished?” Max double-checked with Nico as he piloted the ship through to meet a new alien species.

“All done. Most of the changes had already been made as we made the advancements, and the final standalone shield for the cockpit is ready now in case of an atmospheric breach. The storage space is filled with suitable materials to rebuild your stock of Antimatter Munitions if you need them, and the Disruptors have been upgraded as much as I can, so you just need to optimize them once you have the system booted up.”

Max nodded, then sent his first message to the other side.

[Koleska Defence. This is Commander Keres Max. Requesting a status update and a nearby storage location for our vessel.]

[Commander of the Humans, This is Yuri of the Koleska. We have a station here in orbit. You may park here and join the battle. Tell us, how many are you?]

[Two Mecha of the Titan Class. The additional units are finishing their training now to bring the Pilots up to our standards for our most elite Mecha.]

[Understood. We will take what help we can get.]

Their ship emerged into the Koleska’s territory, and Nico shifted the design to the more organic design that resembled Absolution instead of the Cruise Ship design, which limited their range of weapon fire.

The appearance of the ship seemed to cause some alerts, but they didn’t make much sense to Max, as their database of Koleska language was imperfect.

[Commander, my superiors ask if you obtained that ship from the Reapers.] The Koleska named Yuri asked.

[Humanity is unfamiliar with a species by that name. This ship is our most modern design of attack craft. The faction we represent is known as Reavers, so perhaps it is fitting.]

[Understood. I will relay the ship design to Command to avoid any incidents in the future.]

As soon as he was clear of the moon that they appeared behind, the battle came into sensor range in the distance, with hundreds of Arisen Army warships attacking the Koleska mecha. The Arisen War Walkers were being deployed to meet the challenge, so Max rushed the docking procedure and got Santa Maria locked in place so that they could join the battle.

“What is Shattered Pride capable of for mobility?” Max asked since the battle was at the edge of the solar system.

“I have a Micro Portal generator, while Cleansing Light has the same, plus it is Warp Capable.” Nico clarified.

“Alright, stay close and let’s see how these Arisen War Walkers shape up against our Disruptors. I heard that they are autonomous, with no computers, but we might still be able to disable them with the side effects.” Max suggested.

They could go nuclear and then antimatter fusion later. If this worked well enough, they would only have to break out the biggest guns for the worst of battles, and this one looked pretty evenly matched.

He opened a Portal to the right flank of the battle, and Nico grabbed him from behind to piggyback through without wasting any time.

The Portal was still closing when Max unleashed his main weapons in a linked pattern, as an Orbital Lance, at a cluster of fifty-meter tall War Walkers, the largest units on the battlefield.

The intense beam of energy collapsed their shields in an instant and tore away a large amount of their outer shell before the capacitors were drained, and Max’s blast ended. Two of the ten had been torn apart, but the other eight were charging weapons as Nico moved out from behind him and shifted to engage the closest group of War Walkers, who were already flying over.

Max powered up his thrusters and Warp Drive for maximum mobility and began to evade as particle beams raced his way. He managed to only take two glancing blows before his main weapons were ready again, but this time he split it into two beams and targeted two of the War Walkers, blasting them to dust in the cosmos.

The outcome seemed to shock the Arisen Army, and a huge portion of the army began to shift their deployment to deal with this new threat.

Nico was into the smaller War Walkers in the ten to twenty-meter size class. They were stick thin and looked spindly, but they were fast, and their weapons definitely packed a punch, so the stick figure proportions didn’t allow them to underestimate them at all.

It did make it easier for Nico’s blades to cut through them, though. At least once, the shields were down.

Her thrusters flashed and flared as she darted between targets, blasting away and then finishing them with her blades, leaving scattered debris everywhere while Max tried his best not to get shot to pieces.

A double blast came in that Max couldn’t dodge, so he shifted behind his physical shield as the blast took most of his energy shield down. The tactic seemed to enrage the Arisen Army, who had not realized that he had packed a defensive method to bolster his survivability.

It also bought him time, and Max spread the six main weapon beams to six different Crusader-sized targets and punched holes clear through them, leaving the War Walkers inactive in space.

“The chest seems to be the energy core of the units. If you punch a hole through it, they just deactivate.” Max informed Nico.

“Got it. Cutting off an arm only reduces combat capability by thirty percent outside of melee. They are all ambidextrous.”