Human Empire

Aster didn't waste a second. Upon seeing the swarm begin its attack, she placed herself right in its path, firing as fast as she could at the oncoming legion and scattering several of its members like dust on solar winds. Using her bladed shield to batter the enemies that got past her blazing rifle, she did her best to pick off the drones headed for the Cortex. Even though she was firing nigh blindly, the fact that the drones were in compact formation made it easy to score hits almost every time she fired. Still, without support from the fleet's guns and from her fellow Neurosuits, she wouldn't be able to hold them off.

Letum, meanwhile - intercepting the Humans' transmission through a stolen communications system he had left functional where it lay embedded in his back, a tactic he was quite fond of - traced the signal to its desired destination, thereby locating the Humans main base on Zuin. He didn't need to attack there just yet, especially since they were preparing for him. Instead, he navigated away from the civilized sections of the planet, putting him out of range of the Humans' guns. Most colony defense destroyers and gunboats wouldn't have the firepower needed to eliminate him when he had reached this size and density, so he wasn't particularly worried about those. Still, he kept a close eye out for them as they might launch and attack him. There was no telling what aces they might have up their sleeves.

Aerios dashed unnoticed across the darkness, carefully running passive, the neurosuit tensing as the fierce battle rages, intending on getting a unguarded flank on Magister Letum, Rudger pressed incognito when the large spherical Exomachina started moving to attack, exchanging Letum's pressure for it's own, Aerios started maneuvering toward Malice instead.

From a figurative "up", Aerios's reactor at full burn, Rudger started unleashed a thrashing of gauss mixed with molten storms of arcing positrons preceding a fusillade of missiles raining down upon the shimmering gem on it's frontal lobe in attempt to dislodge the piece from the arm or sever it entirely, all the while peppering an opening streaming with drones with His Autocannon in attempt to stem the tide, giving Cortex a fighting chance. Rudger only started after it's attention had been turned to the hellward fleet hoping they could hold their own giving him an opening to close the distance, as he approached Rudger traded the particle rifle for his arcblade readying it for a direct lancing across his target with haste's precision.

Within seconds, the first wave of drones were either obliterated by Hellward's firepower or were damaged beyond repair from indirect attacks. But yet, the drones were still moving towards the fleet. Suddenly, the tightly packed swarm began to spread out, effectively removing the chance to indirectly damage the drones like when they were piled tightly together. A fifth of them broke off from the rest of the swarm, veering off towards the Neurosuits.

Almost instantaneously, Malice was bombarded by gauss fire, mainly from the one named Aerios. Noticing the barrage of missiles coming in, she knew that her Avatar couldn't negate the barrage. Her Arbiter gem was becoming slightly chipped from the gauss weapons, and thus she began to rotate. Sure, it was a bit slow, but by the time the missile barrage would hit, the gem would be safely out of the blast radius.

The peppering of the barrage began, however the damage it had cause against her dense plating was insignificant. It had only scratched the surface, but it had made Malice fire off a mental roar, strong enough for the pilots to hear, loud enough to hopefully make them wince at the mental sounds.

Petty humans. Did you think that your peppering would hurt me? Do you think that those were my only drones? I devour planets! I devour their resources and use them to build my drones! Don't you see that I am just simply toying with you? But seeing that you are now getting annoying, I'm going to send out some more friends for you to play with, you pathetic little ingrates.

During the end of that last sentence, Malice had fired off another swarm of drones, nowhere as compact as the prior wave, with a good 1500 meters between the two waves. But something different was happening with these. This swarm were splitting down the middle, one half going towards the fleet, the other half bee-lining straight towards Aerios.

The drones had one objective in mind: Shutdown the long-range weaponry, at all costs.

The Big Bang veered away from the battle to safety,staying away due to it's low energy levels.Now unable to assist in battle,Garen surveyed the battle and resorted to giving out warnings to his teammates.The neurosuits were doing their best to prevent the silver tendril of drones from reaching the fleet.He continued to take notice as the drones began to spread out to decrease the chances of getting hit.Aerios was going all out upon the giant Exomachina,Malice,while Stomp and Venganza were defending the fleet.

Petty humans. Did you think that your peppering would hurt me? Do you think that those were my only drones? I devour planets! I devour their resources and use them to build my drones! Don't you see that I am just simply toying with you? But seeing that you are now getting annoying, I'm going to send out some more friends for you to play with, you pathetic little ingrates.

Galen winced at the force of the mental roar.His heart seemed to drop down into oblivion.This thing devoured PLANETS?And enemy like this was beyond defeat,what more when a foe like Letum was already a large threat?He took a look and saw that Malice had released another wave of drones,half were going straight for the fleet,the other half for the neurosuits.

"DAMMIT!Why do I have to run out of energy at a time like this?!" Galen yelled angrily,slamming the bottom of his fists onto the cockpit seat's armrests.He looked at his energy readings,they had only increased a mere 12%,not even enough for him to fire multiple rounds of his chain-fire beams.