?


    The sight of the charging Myceloids forming themselves new hairstyles from the fire suppressant foam was enough to startle the defensive lines back into action, and the flurry of firepower that followed lit up the battlefield in a dazzling array of blue lights from the Hunters'' Laser Cannons.


    Like Max, they had decided that having a primary weapon that wouldn''t run out of ammunition was of utmost importance in a defensive battle, but the Disruptors that Nico had picked for the Mecha didn''t have a visibleponent to them that would alert the enemy.


    Not that it mattered. The Myceloids weren''t going to dodge aser beam, and they already knew where the Hunters were. But on the positive side, thesers gave the battlefield a sense of life and action instead of the deadly but invisible middle ground between the two forces that were more customary with Disruptors and projectile weapons.


    The ferocity shown by the Huntresses this time was much more than Max had seen from them before. It seemed that the presence of the Android Piloted Mecha in their midst was spurring them on, giving them a challenge and a standard to beat, like theputer-controlled opponent in a simtion.


    It would be shameful for them to be outdone by the automated pilots created by the humans since they were all skilled and decorated Huntresses on their own merits. So, they methodically crushed the advance to the point that the horde was actually being pushed back from the trenches and toward the ridgeline that marked the end of the defensive formation''s direct line of sight.


    Once they were out of the line of sight, the Myceloid horde began to spread out, heading off to presumably find food and resources to continue the assault or possibly to find more ces to nt spores.


    That was going to be a nightmare for the Hunterster if they couldn''t track the dispersion, but ording to the data that they had collected, Nico hade up with a startling conclusion.


    There was no set gestation for these spores. They developed when the horde needed them and remained inert when there were enough developed life forms on the, keeping the poption in check naturally, even though the scans from the bombers showed that the majority of the was heavily infested with them already thanks to the early battles to clear the area.


    She had realized it today while trying to analyze where the next waves would being from. The spawn times didn''t seem to corrte to the battles or even to thest known presence in the area, so she ran additional calctions and realized that they were reacting to the numbers that the Myceloids'' strategy needed in the area over the next few days.


    Those who survived multiple battles grewrger and stronger, which allowed them to take overmand of the newly spawned ones and provide their insights and leadership. Then, when they fell, the next strongest in line took over.


    It was an amazinglyplex bnce to keep but a very simple system to maintain. Max should have expected something simr to happen, as it was somon among nts for seeds not to germinate during unfavourable conditions, but he had never thought to extend the concept to an intelligent species.


    Even now, with the data in his mind and Nico''s detailed analysis in her mind, he had a hard time processing the fact that the species was specifically gestating warriors at a variable rate to keep up with their attacks.


    But once he epted it, the question became what to do about it. They could purge the spores in the area, but that would only make the battles stage a bit further out on the.


    The best solution would actually be to send out Hunter Squads to cull the poption all over the. The various battlefields would give the species more to focus on, but that might backfire and cause them to spawn a huge number of warriors to create battles of this massive scale all over the world.


    As far as he could tell, there was no true solution but a scorched earth policy, where they burned the spores out of everything and hoped that the ships in orbit didn''t retaliate in a way that destabilized the Anomaly or repopte the with entirely their own life forms and vegetation.


    With such a fast-growing, fungal nature, there didn''t seem to be an easy solution to the Myceloid invasion, and they had to just hope that one of their tactics would cause them to retreat or at least not focus so hard on attacking the base.


    As the Myceloids scattered, Max organized his thoughts into a presentation for the Hunters.


    The n was simple. Create five hundred more Android Pilots, so they had enough to cover all four sides of the base and the original unit to go out hunting. They would do hit-and-run attacks on the Myceloids wherever they found them congregated and hope that distracted them from constantly pushing at the camp.


    The creatures loved a good fight, so if they attacked a force that wasrger than their own, they were almost guaranteed that the Myceloid force would go all out to fight them and satisfy their pride.


    The Hunters had treated their arrival here as a cleansing mission, and Max suspected that the violent green fungus horde didn''t think that was very fun. So, they went looking for a fight in the only spot where they could find one.


    The Hunters Camp.


    But if he brought fights to them, that might change. If he was lucky, he might even be able to draw smaller groups to him one after another to fight. That was a best-case scenario, but with Nico''s strategizingbined with his own and the help of a Huntress as experienced as Khan, they just might pull it off.


    So, he opened a secure channel to the Huntress and sent her his proposal. There was no need to ask Nico. He already knew her answer to the question, ''Do you want to hunt aliens?''