4810 Enemy Troop Qualities
When Ketis finally got loose inside the ranks of the pescan defenders, she completely came into her element!
She had waited long and hard to get this far. She remained patient and held herself back when she knew that the furious pescans killed a lot of good men and women with each passing minute.
Ketis knew her limits, and just because she was a swordmaster did not mean she could literally fight an entire army by herself.
She was also older and more responsible than her younger self. She had a husband and a pair of lovely children to get back to. She also had a lot of mech design-related ambitions that she wanted to fulfill.
"I am not going to die in this awful place!"
It was only now when all of the alien commanders and most of the pescan soldiers became fully preoccupied with resisting the main group of human attackers that she could finally let loose!
With Sharpie inhabiting the high-quality one-handed sword that she forged herself, the weapon began to shine and resonate with her powerful will.
A connection had formed between Ketis and the weapon she had forged in the past!
No matter whether the sword had been made for the hand of another soldier, Ketis could wield many different blades, and the ones she made herself were especially compatible due to the inherent bond between a maker and her work!
Even though a part of her deeply wished she could have brought her oversized but insanely sharp and strong Bloodsinger, the performance of this sword was not that bad.
She did not worry about the blade snapping or breaking at the worst possible time. The true resonance she generated with her sword reinforced its hardness in an unexplainable way, much like how expert mechs readily performed several times better than their technical capabilities suggested.
The biggest boost she was able to apply to her sword was a massive increase to its sharpness.
Ketis had already tried to imbue the blade with as much sharpness as possible. Resonating with it and allowing Sharpie to bless its properties amplified the strength it already possessed and multiplied it to a point where cutting through ordinary alloys felt like cutting through butter!
As she sprinted and weaved across the alien houses and other constructions, her sword arm frequently slashed and stabbed at the weak points in the armored battle suits of her opponents.
"I could certainly use a cutting edge." She muttered as she tested how easily she was able to penetrate through the armor of her adversaries.
The pescans were larger, taller and more sluggish than humans. Speed was not their forte, so they developed a fighting approach that relied on strong armor, strong energy shields and powerful penetrating weapons that were designed to brutalize other tough opponents.
These battle suit-wearing pescans excelled at fighting their own kind, but experienced great difficulties trying to fend off fast-moving attackers like herself!
One of the reasons why Ketis declined to borrow a quasi-first-class suit of combat armor from the honor guards was because each of them had been designed with defense as the main priority.
As the guards to the most important individual of the clan, it was their duty to absorb attacks in place of Ves!
Their bulkiness and lack of fluidity not only affected her swordsmanship, but also her movement speed.
She did not have that problem with her current suit which she borrowed from a Davutan guard soldier.
Not only did it fit her dimensions better, but it had partially been designed with rapid relocation in mind.
Even if it was not as fast as she wished, the speed produced by the powerful servos built into the limbs of the combat armor were more than powerful and responsive enough to enhance her advancement speed.
These aliens didn't know how to cope against fast-moving soldiers!
Their vision and experiences were too limited. Even if they were sharp enough to anticipate her movements and predict her positioning, Ketis was always able to read their intentions in advance and turn her orientation on the spot to avoid getting caught in a trap.
The intuition of a swordmaster towards imminent danger was just as good as that of an expert pilot!
In fact, it was even better because any attack was liable to damage her precious body, whereas expert pilots could still rely on the strong resonance shield and thick armor of their mechs to tank any incoming blows.
"My blade hungers for your alien blood!" She roared as she dashed towards a pescan officer equipped with a more decorated battle suit.
The additional frills and integrated equipment did not avail the alien officer. Although a turret mounted on the shoulder of the battle suit rapidly tracked Ketis' incoming form, the swordmaster dove to the side and hid behind a thick supply crate an instant before the weapon discharged a moderately powerful laser beam!
The cover wouldn't have been of much use if it had been a transphasic weapon, but fortunately the small turret was just a regular energy weapon.
Once the turret had unloaded its firepower, Ketis dashed out again and circled around so that she could swing her sword onto the thick neck of the enemy officer.
Swish!
Another helmeted alien head soared into the air!
Ketis sneered as the powerful servos of her borrowed medium combat armor helped her dash behind a half-ruined alien food storehouse.
She briefly glanced at the blood that was rapidly sliding off her glowing sword.
The blood that flowed from pescan bodies was red, just like that of human bodies. This was because both of them relied on iron in their blood to supply oxygen to their bodies.
Although there were many physiological differences between humans and pescans, it didn't matter to a Swordmaiden.
She was not an exobiologist. She was a swordmaster. She killed for a living and these aliens happened to be in her way!
"Die!"
Ketis exhibited no mercy as she utilized the antigrav module of her combat armor to boost her way up the roof of a two-story alien housing unit. She dashed across the roof and jumped off the edge, causing her to dive in the middle of a squad of armored pescan civilians that had been trying to huddle together for safety.
"Fall beneath my edge!"
The sword in her hand manifested an energy blade that was thrice as long and thick as the original!
As Ketis' feet landed onto the shoulders of an unfortunate alien, her empowered blade hacked onto the heads and torsos of five more aliens at a time!
Machinery failed and blood spurted from the cavities as the blade had done its job!
Some of the blood spilled over the combat armor of the woman responsible for creating the wounds, but Ketis had already shifted her attention to finishing off the remaining aliens!
"Reee!"
"Yayahhaaa!"
"Ijjjjaaannjaaa!"
The poor pescan civilians didn't even know how to respond to what had happened. Instead of training their arm cannons at the human that had landed in their midst, they instead got caught up in their panic and screamed useless alien sounds.
Ketis wasn't interested in learning about their distress, their life stories or how traumatic it had been for these innocent alien civilians to lose their homes and become the last survivors of their race.
"Either you die, or I die! There is no peace between the two of us! Not after you have threatened my son!"
Her motherly instincts caused her to feel more urgent about turning the tide of this battle!
Her resonance grew stronger and her sword became a little sharper. It became easier for her to cut and stab through the alien battle suits worn by the pescans.
Of course, she still took the path of least resistance and made sure to attack the weak points of her opponents.
Her background as a mech designer played a useful role throughout this battle. Even if she didn't perform literal calculations in her mind, her familiarity with technology easily allowed her to dissect an opponent's weakness within an instant.
This advantage became especially useful once she encountered a pair of elite pescan soldiers.
"Yaahhgaaaaa!"
"Reeeereeeee!"
Unlike the bumbling civilians or the sluggish rank-and-file soldiers, the elites of the pescan combatants were much more difficult to defeat.
For one, they were faster than their brethren!
Just as Ketis was about to approach the pair of elites, she discovered that they had placed their backs against each other.
This allowed at least one of them to always be able to target her. Ketis' instincts screamed in warning as she hastily stopped her stride and jumped in a different direction the instant one of the elites shot a pair of transphasic laser beams!
"Kiyayaaayaa!"
The beams cut through the metal structures in the way and retained sufficient power to strain Ketis' defenses if they struck their targets.
Though the alien eventually missed, the furious swordmaster tried to approach the pair from another angle, only for the aliens to detect her well in advance and shoot their transphasic energy weapons through several structures yet again!
"Troublesome!"
These pescan elites were much more difficult to take down. Ketis wished she brought a decent ranged weapon, but she knew that an ordinary gun wouldn't be able to take down their transphasic battle suits so easily.
The intelligence supplied by the Davutans suggested that Great Chief Jaharon enjoyed the protection of over a hundred elite infantry troopers. These were the equivalent of a royal guard. Not only did they receive the best of training, they also got to use the best equipment that the former city state of Davute were able to develop!
Ketis could feel the sophisticated sensors of their high-quality battle suits tracking her signature from a distance.
Automated targeting systems combined with considerable skill enabled these elite alien soldiers to target her form and consistently fire energy beams that threatened to spear her body if she did not evade a moment in advance.
Laser guns were lightspeed weapons, so there was no possibility of evading them once they discharged their energies!
Ketis could only bet on her intuition, experience and judgment to consistently predict the aim of her opponents.
Several more elite soldiers were converging on her position. The pressure on her shoulders increased as she noticed that they had started to lock onto her with their weapons as well!
It would be bad if she got caught in a crossfire. The difficulty of evading their transphasic laser beams rose dramatically if they all coordinated their actions and fired their weapons in a grid around her body.
From the training and tactics they had shown so far, these pescans showed that they were more than capable of demonstrating this much cooperation!
Yet before these elite alien soldiers could put their tactic to use, one of the soldiers suffered a surprise attack!
"MEOW!"
With all of the humans fighting on this floor, the aliens spared no thought for the movement of an odd bronze-like mechanical construct.
This turned out to be a mistake, because the gem cat in question phased right through the walls of an ordinary house and struck the neck of an elite pescan soldier with his energy claws!
Krsh! Krsh! Krsh!
Unlike the battle suits assigned to regular soldiers, the models utilized by the elite pescans featured thicker and more deliberate protection to the neck.
Lucky's energy claws barely managed to burn through the layers with a single swipe. Lucky was forced to swipe his glowing energy claws three times in total to gouge out the neck of the tall humanoid alien soldier!
As the cat had managed to kill one of the two original pescan elites, the other alien failed to react in time.
"Meow!"
Taking out this soldier was even simpler as Lucky dove onto the back of the other elite soldier and began to use his sharp teeth to bite through the activated transphasic rear armor!
"Meow meow meow!"
Though his teeth weren't making as much progress in biting through the resilient armor as he would have liked, Lucky managed to bite through the back and sever the spine of the alien soldier!
"Good assist, Lucky!"
"Meow!"
"You're right. We've got a tank to kill. Let's get rid of these flies before we complete our greater goal!"
