Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System

[Where did you learn that?] Max asked the Android, amused at the new slang they had picked up.

[We analyzed the battlefield transmissions used since the start of this engagement. Happy Hunting was, with over ninety percent certainty, the correct response for a unit going to fight in a smaller team on a specific mission.] The Android Pilot replied.

[Excellent analysis. Store it in your approved responses for future use.]

The Klem vessels were slowing down now, as the firing had stopped, and Max was at close range between them and the planet. If anything, they seemed confused by his actions and unsure how to respond to this unexpected blockade. But when the Hunter shuttle approached, they all turned to engage and began firing at their maximum rate.

An approaching enemy ship was a situation they were well prepared for, and they wouldn't let it reach their command vessel easily.

Unfortunately, the only one that could possibly pose a threat to the incoming shuttle was the very vessel that it was looking to board, and Max was ready with the Antimatter Shells to take out the last few vessels that still had the capability to fire on the Mecha Regiments.

Max could hear from the communications between ships that the Alliance vessels, which had come to observe the new human World Ship in action, were freaking out right now, trying to decide if this was just the reserves of their fleet or if they were a specialized space combat unit.

They had analyzed the Mecha and couldn't find any differences between them, but they also didn't find any life signs, so they assumed that more information was being withheld from their sensors. Of course, it was because there were no life forms in the Mecha, and the Pilots were all Androids, but the misconception was feeding into the confusion, and nobody was sure how to report back to their employers other than to send them the video of the engagement without comment and let them decide for themselves.

Nobody would assume that the humans had hired outside mercenaries for the fight, as would be assumed of many other species that suddenly experienced a huge increase in firepower.

Nobody in the Alliance used that sort of munitions, at least not at the moment. They were horrifying to most species and could easily set off a chain reaction if they hit a warp drive of many common designs. The general consensus was that the humans had managed to weaponize something that was never meant to be weaponized.

The biggest question that most species had was how they managed to do it. A crystal-based Warp Drive didn't produce excess Antimatter to create weapons with, and the technology to create it outside of a laboratory environment was basically nonexistent.

There were patents for devices that produced industrial Antimatter, but no operational examples of those units could be found by any of the companies that were looking for them, so it didn't seem possible that the humans had gotten their hands on one.

What they didn't know was that it was nothing new to humans. Until only a few years before, they had used a wildly inefficient version of warp travel, which basically dumped Antimatter into a containment vessel and shaped the resulting explosion into a warp field. So, they had the technology to mass produce it available to every fleet as a necessity at every resupply station.

Nico had simply built one onboard Absolution and then mass-produced enough Antimatter to eliminate half a star system, just in case they needed it all.

The Hunters had made contact with their target and had breached an airlock door to send the team inside, but the shuttle wasn't retreating. Instead, it had chosen to remain locked against the hull of the larger vessel, either to preserve the atmosphere inside or for the rapid extraction of their team, should it prove necessary.

They weren't giving any updates, so Max focused on the responses of the Alliance Observers and, more specifically, the Illithid aboard their ships.

Having one on almost all Government ships made Max's life much easier. If he needed to know anything, he could just ask them, and they would most likely answer so that he didn't go digging through other peoples' minds.

[Have they figured out where we're getting all the Antimatter yet?] Max asked the Illithid on the Envoy's ship with amusement after they moved the ship back too far from the battle for him to hear the thoughts inside.

[I believe so. They have detected huge amounts of it in a containment vessel inside Absolution, and they are freaking out right now. It's pretty funny. They want to tell you to get rid of that storage tank, but they are too afraid that you'll give it to them for disposal to actually say anything.]

That was a wonderful idea. Give the Envoys all their unstable failed experiments for disposal, and then watch what they did to neutralize them. It would save so much time during the development process.

All of the Illithid began laughing as Max had that thought, and then their minds wandered off-topic as their crews began to question their behaviour. It wasn't often that they got so distracted, and the Hunters were capable of shielding their minds from the Illithid, so they couldn't possibly be watching the action inside the last remaining ship.

The amount of Antimatter that they had in storage was large, but by human standards, not completely unreasonable. It was enough to refuel ten Transport ships or Cruisers during their once-a-decade major overhaul. For a human space station, that wasn't a lot, and Absolution was much larger than any space station.

It was just that the Alliance had moved past such crude methods so many centuries ago that nobody recalled a technology that required it, and nobody on the human side had thought to mention it since they viewed it as so common.

[Commander, we have the suspected hybrid. It appears to be a modified human, as it was attached to an alcove grown in front of a control panel. We are bringing it back to the shuttle now and will have data for you within the week.] The Huntress announced without preamble.

A week was a long time to study a simple organism, but as specialists in bioengineering, maybe they had found something else that they wanted to study and had moved it down the to-do list. Since he couldn't read their minds, all Max could do was agree.

[Understood Huntress. Are we clear to eliminate the vessel once your team is clear?]

[Please allow an extra three minutes to get the team all the way back to the mothership. They obtained some sensitive samples that might be damaged by an antimatter blast in close proximity, even if the shields held.]

As he had suspected, they did find something else on that ship that he hadn't thought of or hadn't managed to detect.