The instant the first mech landed, the impact sent a ring of lunar dust flying.
The pilot locked onto the nearest group of Gold-Eater Clan... seven low-tier specimens, each two meters long, charging toward the gun emplacements on the crater's outer wall.
The Ship-Splitting Blade swept across.
An arc of azure blade light extended from its edge, fifteen meters long, slicing through the seven Gold-Eater Clan. Their carapaces shattered.
Their bodies split apart. Residual Psionic Energy burned the black Gold-Eater Clan fluids along the cuts, preventing them from reassembling.
One slash. Seven kills.
But an eighth had already lunged from the side.
The mech blocked with its left arm. The Gold-Eater Clan's claws scraped across its forearm armor, throwing off a string of silent sparks.
The pilot reversed the blade and drove it through the creature's core.
"Mech position three is in danger! A medium specimen has broken through!"
Calls came faster and faster over the comms channel. Medium Gold-Eater Clan—specimens over fifty meters long—were beginning to land.
The Ship-Splitting Blade of ordinary mechs could leave only a white scratch on those things.
Heavy mechs advanced from the tunnel exits in the rear. Their thick armor plates slowed them down, but their shoulder-mounted heavy Psionic Cannons were enough to deal with medium specimens.
They braced their cannons in place, locked on, and fired. a Psionic Energy projectile struck a medium Gold-Eater Clan's shell, and the explosion threw up lunar dust in a hemispherical gray cloud.
The cloud cleared. Half the medium Gold-Eater Clan's body was gone. It was still moving. But the second shell was already on its way.
It shattered completely.
Farther away, swarms of self-destructing unmanned mechs poured out of the tunnels. They carried no weapons. Each entire machine was a bomb.
Their core psionic reactors had been