Max and Nico made their way across the administration floor much faster than expected, but the rate that they were moving gave Max an uneasy feeling. He was almost certain that the Klem had sacrificed this floor so that they could get the one beneath them prepared for the arrival of the two humans in mobile suits.


    Nico was thinking the same thing, but she was more excited than anything else. The suits hadn''t been fully tested, and if the Klem had time to prepare for them, she might actually get to give the unit a workout.


    She wasn''t actually concerned about its destruction, she had a Tech Adept Harness in her t Space, and she was just as lethal, or possibly more lethal, with that than she was with the Mobile Suit, though she would be less armoured.


    "We need another party member. We have a tank and DPS, but we should have brought a debuff or a healing ss." Nico muttered as she finished off thest of the Klem Hybrids on that side of the room.


    "What would a debuffing ss even look like in real life?" Maxughed.


    "Maybe a sonic weapon, an auto grenadeuncher with shbangs and some toxic gas? You know, crowd control and DOT effects." Nico shrugged.


    She had a point. Stun and Daze were the basics of debuffs, and a shbang or some toxic gas could do both of those things quite well.


    "Why don''t you just switch your Laser settings to create a shbang?" Max asked.


    "I''m the DPS ss, remember? How about I change yours instead?"


    Max shook his head. Then I wouldn''t have any ranged abilities. But let''s get back on track. What do you think that they have prepared for us down below?"


    "If they''re going by Klem standard increases in aggression, they will try to preserve biomass, so they will likely go with twenty of the six armed Warriors plus whatever was already on that floor."


    That was about right. Ten-to-one odds plus whatever life forms they weren''t counting on to seed.


    "Then let''s get this show on the road. We still don''t have a full floor n, and I don''t see one anywhere in the data that we got from this floor." Max agreed.


    Nico activated her thrusters and gravity ting to fly down the stairwell, which again only went down one floor, and bashed the door aside without pausing her momentum.


    Max chased close behind her and cut down the Klem warrior that was attempting to ambush her from behind while she squared off against two Warriors at once.


    Max''s targeting updated as he entered the room and determined that Nico''s guess was a little off. There were indeed twenty of the six armed warriors, but there were also two very aggressive Rippers in therge open space.


    It looked like some sort of auditorium or gymnasium, and the Rippers had caused a fair bit of damage while forcing their way into the room, so they must have been the hasty reinforcements that were summoned to stop them from reaching the lower levels. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    At roughly the size of a Crusader ss Mecha, the ten-meter-tall insects towered over the two Mobile Suits in aical fashion, but the mass of bodies between them and the threat kept them in reserve against the back wall for the moment while Max bashed his way through the Warriors.


    "Something isn''t right with these warriors," Nico noted as she wove her way between them, slicing off limbs and carving deep into the chitin of their bodies.


    "They don''t seem to be pack creatures. Perhaps they''re intended to be forward scouts or have evolved from the local poption? They fight as individuals and don''t seem to bemunicating with each other directly." Max observed.


    A shield m threw one of the Warriors back into a Ripper, which tore it apart in apparent disgust, confirming Max''s theory that they didn''t belong to the traditional Klem model. They were something different and were treated as expendable by the Rippers, who seemed content to let them all die before they moved in to deal with Max and Nico.


    With theck of coordination, the Warriors wereughably bad, and after only a half dozen had died, the Rippers gave a savage hiss that sent them scurrying from the room and out the venttion system.


    The passages were too small for the Mobile Suits and looked too small for the warriors as well, but when they were horizontal and had their limbs extended to either end, they were remarkably long and narrow, easily able to navigate the meter-tall tunnels.


    Max and Nico split up so that the Rippers couldn''t team up on them without leaving one or the other unattended, and the real battle began.


    The Ripper swept an arm low to the ground, throwing a wave of cubicle walls and office furniture at Max.


    With a thought, he activated the thrusters and lifted himself toward the ceiling, over the flying furniture, and ced a pair of well-aimed shots at the creature''s eyes.


    A gigantic w cracked as the Lasers hit, and Max whistled in pleasure to see the damage output. It was hard to tell before since everything died when it was shot, but the Lasers on this Mobile Suit were superior to the Main Weapon on a Line Mecha in terms of damage done.


    That moved the fight from nearly suicidal to highly tactical, a ying field that Max was much more confident in his ability to prevail on.


    Lightning fast, a w mmed into his side after ncing off of his shield, sending Max flying to the far wall before his gravity control systems could stabilize the Mobile suit and leaving two of the threeyers of his main energy barrier depleted.


    "Dammit, these things are faster than I remember," Max muttered as he stalled the creature''s advance with his Lasers.


    "They''re also hybridized, but I don''t recognize the species. It doesn''t appear to be in the sentient species database." Nico agreed.


    Great, just what they needed. Faster and stronger Rippers hybridized with an unknown local predator.