"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!"