With the order given, the drone fighters started to swarm up from the surface of the planet and toward the incoming Klem ships, preventing their smaller escort bugs from advancing on the planet while Max hurried to get Cleansing Light into Position.

If he did this right, he could destroy two vessels simultaneously, blasting apart their plasma storage before they could maneuver. The sudden destruction of two ships should be enough to introduce some hesitation and confusion in the Klem interceptors' orders. Increasing the speed that the Drones would be able to kill them and reduce the threat to the planet.

Any one of those Cruisers was as dangerous to the planet as an entire Klem tide, so they all had to be destroyed before they could deploy their deadly cargo, and Max was pretty sure he knew how to prevent that situation.

He simply needed to pose a greater threat than the planet did, and that meant that he had to kill Klem faster than an entire Narsian invasion force had been anticipated to have killed them.

No pressure.

Max dropped Cleansing Light out of warp after a brief burst of faster-than-light travel to catch up to the fleet and came to a stop directly behind the Cruisers, unleashing two split orbital lances at once and destroying the two vessels just as he had hoped.

The Drone Fighters were everywhere among the front ranks of the Klem fleet, crushing the interceptors a dozen times faster than their own vessels were dropping.

It wasn't going to be nearly enough to eliminate all of the Drones unless he brought reinforcements, but that would reveal the position of Terminus and put their guests in danger, which was simply unacceptable.

Max watched as the ships closest to him turned so that their most vulnerable points were hidden from his weapons, but they weren't his targets this time. Instead, Max hit the two cruisers closest to the planet, eliminating a large portion of the interceptors when the larger vessels exploded.

The action seemed to enrage the Klem, and for the first time, Max felt something akin to emotion from the fleet. Every ship turned to face him, ignoring the Drone Fighters, and every interceptor and other Klem outside the main ships began to charge at him.

They fired ranged weapons at him, but only sporadically, trying to keep him in place for the charge. The data from the first battle must have been assimilated already, and they knew that he could deal with the flying spikes, so they were intent on tearing him apart directly.

That worked for Max, as it saved a lot of Drone from destruction, and he could shoot through the intervening chaff when he got a targeting solution on one of the Cruisers again.

Max split off a portion of his attention to ensure things were going well on the planet while he fired dispersed beams at the incoming Klem and dodged the largest attacks, sending Cleansing Light flitting about in space like a deadly firefly.

The Mecha Regiment was well on its way to taking its first positions, and the local human forces were proving to be very competent, and had their own version of Mecha, an ancient one similar in styling to the modern versions the Cygnus Empire used to this day.

That solidified the assertion that they had been part of the Cygnus expansion but left the question of what they were doing on the far side of the Galaxy from where the rest of the fleet ended up. It was intended to expand humanity through the Cygnus region, not populate other sectors of space.

There was something off about the drones, though. They were missing something. They had his targeting data, so they could pick off targets as fast as they could shoot, but their formations were a bit off, and their coordination was lacking.

What they were missing was Nico's trademark viciousness. She wasn't in charge of their deployment this time, and the alternate Drone Commander wasn't as aggressive and didn't have a past lifetime of memories about how to organize an attack.

Max realized that it was just him being spoiled by her strategic talents, but it really would make his life easier if Nico were running the Drones.

He wouldn't countermand their leader's orders, though. They were on mission, and duplicate orders would only cause confusion among the pilots. Sometimes you just had to adapt to the strategies of those around you, and this was one of those times.

So, instead of pulling back and letting aggressive drones charge forward, Max circled and pulled the smaller Klem back into the easy weapons range of the Orbital Fighters. They didn't hesitate when they had the chance, and their firing rate was as good as ever, so Max circled again and brought another group to keep them fed with targets and moving to where he wanted them to be.

The ships were adjusting position and course to get a good shot at Max, and finally, one of them made a miscalculation, turning its back on him when it expected him to feed another group of interceptors to the drones.

Instead, Max raced down the length of its hull and put an Orbital Lance into the main weapons array, destroying another Cruiser and leaving seven in the battle.

They were no longer closing on the planet, focused fully on avoiding his attacks, and Max worked to buy the forces on the ground as much time as he could. All of the reports said that the Narsians were quickly being routed. He only had to hold them off that long, and the Fleet could join him up here and wipe out the Klem, assuming he couldn't do it faster than that.

The Klem ships weren't holding back, though, and they were launching hundreds of additional forces out of their side ports and, notably, one wave of pods toward the planet.

[Drones, don't let any of the pods reach the surface. Try not to disengage with the interceptors, but under no circumstances should those pods get past you.] Max ordered.

[Copy that, Commander.] A cheerful voice that Max identified as one of the Innu responded, and the Drones began to move into a completely different attack formation.