Chapter 39: Battle for Survival

" Every Initiate Protocol Shield, Everyone use kinetic weapons and high explosive rounds. Always keep your distance, don't let them get close. If they do eject from your vessels after setting it to self destruct. We need to hold on for 5 mins."

All troops rushed towards their mechs, fighter crafts and to the cockpits of their turrets. While the combatants were rushing to their positions, the logistics team was doing everything to find a weakness against what they quickly termed as living metals.

" Sir, as of now we can only slow them down with our missiles and torpedoes. Sending out close combat mech is suicidal. We have a large number of kinetic weapon as reserve but most mechs are equipped with energy based weaponry. About 70% of the mechs are usually equipped with Energy weapons. But the rest of the mechs should be enough."

" Don't be stingy with thermal warheads, Though the heat may energies them the explosion will definitely slow them down." Alexander then went through the detailed analysis of the earlier scanning signal and said," Tell the troops that they can remotely control their mechs. The signal analysis shows that the method they have used very crude. I doubt that they will be able to take over the control from our mechs. So they shouldn't needlessly risk their lives.

This sent a wave of relief through the troops. They knew the what they were going to do was as stupid as trying to destroy a mech with primitive guns and explosives. They believed that there was high chance of them not returning, But now their chances of survival has increased a thousand fold.

" Troops don't hesitate in setting your vessels and mechs to self destruct if the living metal gets on your mechs. We don't want them multiplying to much."

Alexander's voice was transmitted to all the ships in the fleet.

" I know what we are about to face is a herculean task, But we must not fail. This time its not just our lives that are at stake here. The very existence of humanity could be threatened if cannot return with this information. We as of now hold no weapon that can harm them. No weakness that we can exploit. All the sophisticated machinery that we have now only serves to slow them down. Our situation is so dire that we need to mobilize all of our fleets power just to retreat."

" I am not going to lie to you guys, we need five minutes. five minutes for us to runaway. Five minutes to prepare humanity to survive this new threat. If we fall here, our families will die, If we fall here our homes will be destroyed. We can't fall here, For our Species, For our Homes, For our Families, FIGHT!"

The troops now knew what was at stake. The troops pulled their morale's up again as the battle they were about to fight is for more than just there lives. As grim as it may sound, the fleet only had two choices. Die without resistance or to fight for even the smallest chance of survival.

And they chose to fight. Well it was not much of a choice.

All the ships in the fleet took positions in line on both sides of Alexanders capital ship, with their turrets already aiming at living metals waiting for them to enter their range. The mechs and other combat vessels formed their ranks Infront of the ships with adequate space between the to let the cannons from the ships fire without hindrance. They too had their weapons charged and ready.

The logistics group was working the hardest they had ever worked. They were split into two groups, One were working the hyperdrives while the other was working to change the energy based with kinetic ones.

Although the ships were facing the living metals they were retreating away from them at the same time. They were trying buy as much time as possible before engaging the living metals. Every second counted.

Seeing that their prey was going running away, the living metals tried to catch up to them. It was as if they knew that giving their prey some time they will run away. Or they were just very efficient in hunting. Anyway it was not good news for Alexander's fleet.

The living metal globule started to form groups of 4 with one in the middle and the rest taking a triangular formation around it. The one in the middle stood absolutely still while the ones around it started to emit sparks from their bodies as the began to circle around the one in the middle. The speed of their rotation increased and with sparks that were emitted by them made it seem like there was a halo of light around the living metal in the center. The speed increased drastically and when it reached a particular speed the sparks from the circling ones was suddenly transferred to the one in the middle, the energy that the living metal in the middle caused to accelerate towards the defense line of Alexander's fleet.

It was not just one but thousands of them were being sent towards the fleet at speeds that human spacecrafts can never hope to achieve without hyperdrives. It was as if they were being shot at with mech sized bullets. Facing a tactic the defensive line was caught of guard only being able to react when the speeding metals were already near them.

{ leave a comment if you loved the chapter, this is my first novel so the story telling can be a bit weird, so your comments can help me improve. If you have free power stones do vote for me please}

{ The next few chapters are going to be action packed. So look out for new chapters. My uploading schedule is irregular as I am still a noob when it comes to writing, so i have a discord where I notify when I upload new chapters, you can do that or you can add my novel to your library. }

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