All the cruisers except Jason's joined the fray; even the mecha of most crews actively participated; no ship left that system, and all those that had survived the explosion faced the rail guns and the nanobot charges. .
The plague was a slow death for the ships, but that was the game; to reach the monoliths of the space tunnels, it took six days of space travel, and there was no ship that survived that long after being infected. The nanobots ate the metal of the ships, but their excretions were new nanobots; in a matter of hours, a legion would devour everything they touched.
It was true that they were a risk for the human ships themselves; although they had the antidote to the plague, it was not immediate, and at the time of application, many systems could be damaged.
Shooting, moving and shooting again at another target with cloaking technology was just a matter of patience.
