Max led the way forward from the front hangars to the lobby area containing the elevators that the attack hade from.


    "They think we''re stupid, don''t they?" Nico stage whispered while Max tried to count the number of Klem hybrids hiding in the small offices around the space.


    "Or they think that they can take us if they can surround us." Max agreed, loud enough that a human waiting in the offices could hear him.


    That was enough to draw them out, and twenty more of the humanoid hybrids came out with rifles, while two of therge six-armed Klem Warriors climbed down from the ceiling.


    "Lay down your weapons and join us. The purity of the collective will wee you, despite your sins." The humanoids spoke in eerie unison.


    Klem didn''t usually have a collective mind. If they did, they would be even more dangerous. But either because of the hybridization or because they had a Klem Queen here, these ones did.


    They were thinking on a human level, with wants, desires and emotions. Even the six armed ones were expressing much more to Max than wasmon for a Klem Warrior, who usually wasn''t very smart or able to understandplex topics and tactics.


    "We need to get all the data from theputers in this ce. How far can your skill reach?" Max asked, wondering if Nico could get to more than the first-floorputers that he had reached.


    "They have every floor isted. I got into the power grid, and even that is separated. Each floor has its own breaker panel, and some of them are off, so we will hit darkened floors as we go. It''s very old school, with mechanical breakers instead of digital ones. They must have been worried about Innu or other hackers essing their facility.


    We should look for small parcel chutes as well. Since they can''t transfer data digitally, they must have been using hard copy to move things around." Nico exined as the hybrids moved to encircle them.


    Max and Nico shifted so that they were back to back, giving them a full 360-degree firing arc, and waited for the right moment tounch the attack.


    "What is this collective you mentioned? Is it unique to your species?" Max asked.


    What species these were before they mingled with the Klem wasn''t certain, but it was possible that, like the Illithid, their minds broadcast simr frequencies, and they couldmunicate as a single linked consciousness within a set range.


    "You do not know the collective? But it knows you. Our Great Mother says that you are a species she knows very well." The spokesman replied.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Max got a sense of the higher authority in the collective at that moment, and it remembered the old Redemption Pattern Crusader ss Mecha and had referred to them as the [Spicy Food] species. Ion Destroyers certainly could be considered spicy, but Max wondered if that was the right thing to tell these hybrids at the moment.


    "Well, if she remembers us, she should remember that we are not such easy targets to obtain. What makes you think that you know better than her and can take us with such a small group?" Nico asked, realizing the same thing that Max had, that there was an actual Klem leader here.


    "We are hybrid. Our species was already superior to yours, even before the Great Mother made us the most powerful beings in the universe." The group leader sneered.


    "There are a lot of bodies in the front room that say otherwise." Nico taunted, and the fight was on.


    The hybrids raised their weapons, and Max and Nico started firing the Laser Arrays on the shoulders of their Mobile Suits as fast as they would charge.


    Purple beams of light seared the retinas of the hybrids, and Max''s visor darkened to protect his own vision as the barrage continued and Ion fire from the hybrids'' rifles began to deplete the energy shielding on his suit.


    Saying that these rifles were twenty percent below modern standards might have been optimistic on Nico''s part. The shields of the Mobile Suit were barely dropping as Max targeted the exposed heads of the Klem, and when the survivors of the first barrage began to charge, they still hadn''t broken the outeryer of the threeyered shield.


    Most of them charged blindly, just like thest group, and a wide arc of his sword tore three of them apart at once, but one was smart enough to sway back and deflect the de with its ws.


    They must not have gained thebat knowledge that all Klem Warriors were born with. Or perhaps the Great Mother, as they called her, had deemed them to be a nobat lifeform.


    The one who had some fighting skills darted a jab at Max''s visor, mimicking the shots that he had been taking at them, but the shield in Max''s left hand knocked the w away, and Max returned the favour with a straight thrust of his de.


    He turned, ready to take on the pair of six armed Klem Warriors, but found the room empty. The cannon fodder was dead, and the real warriors had retreated after watching the fight and gathering data on their capabilities.


    It was smart. Sentient level smart, and Max had no intention of showing the Alliance that the Klem might be capable of that level of intelligence, even if it was by hybridization. They would likely go all "Sentient Rights" and insist that the Klem be negotiated with and not killed until they were physically invading a world, by which point, it was nearly toote for the residents, as the Alliance themselves had learned.


    "So, do we take the elevators or the stairs?" Max asked Nico as a joke. The doorways wererger than human standards, likely to amodaterger visitors, or perhaps the researchers before they were mutated, and the elevators would be a particrly bad idea, leaving them in a sealed tunnel where they could be attacked from top and bottom, or dropped to the basement if they didn''t have functional gravity ting.