The Imperial armies had been stuck on standby throughout the entire battle and had been growing progressively more restless as the hours had dragged by. That feeling of impatience was spread evenly amongst all ranks, from the commanding generals to the lowest soldiers. Three full armies, each consisting out of four hundred thousand combatants and three hundred thousand support personnel. Thousands of war machines stood at the ready and were rigorously checked for even the most minor defect as their crew hovered over them, trying to combat the idleness that slowly ate away at their nerves.

Now, at long last, their wait was at an end. As Verloff moved his Paris battlecruisers closer and lend their massive fire to the bombardment the stolen Kra'lagh cruisers were laying down, more space stations began taking critical damage. Already four of the enormous stations had been trashed and while the Novican line showed no gaps as of yet, their defences was becoming transparent in some places. The higher officers followed the battle and wondered why they weren't receiving the command to jump in yet, eager to break through, but Verloff knew that Kolpovka still had some ships left. The Novican Grand Admiral was keeping back and they would not appear until the three armies began their invasion. A few warships could easily lay waste to enough landers to jeopardise the ground offensive and so Verloff chose to wait, rather than greenlighting the operation just yet. Sadly enough his Novican counterpart did not take the bait and send what few warships he had left after the seemingly exposed Kra'lagh cruisers. The fifteen small escorts that hung around it were seemingly fragile, but like their bigger brethren they weren't built by Imperial shipyards and could punch well above their weight.

The battle remained briefly at an impasse and that was when the planet's course made it collide with the carefully positioned wrecks. The planetary cannons and missile launchers lit up like an enormous firework, visible even from space, sending their lethal cargo through the atmosphere and into space. Enormous missiles collided with even larger wrecks, lasers tore through metal and cored what little structural integrity that remained. Slowly the massive makeshift mass round were pulled into the planet's gravity well and began their long descent, flaring up as they exchanged the void of space for the atmosphere. The Kaperna stations lent their firepower wherever possible, limited by their range and their urgent need to seek cover from the long range bombardment. Hundreds of defence satellites rotated around, tracking their targets with automated ease and opened fire with everything they had. Dozens of the wrecks were destroyed, vaporised by the missiles or atomised by the heavy weapons of the space stations. Hundreds more broke up in atmosphere, a mixture of weapon impacts and the harsh atmospheric conditions and turned into fragile shrapnel that failed to penetrate the overlapping shields that protected the bases on the ground. A few dozen got through, however, and their enormous mass carried them through even the thickest defensive barriers, at the cost of a great deal of velocity, but ultimately they still reached the ground with all the apocalyptic consequences that went with it.

All in all it caused little damage in the grand scheme of things, even if the wrecks annihilated dozens of smaller units and satellites, but it did cause a great deal of distraction. Combined with the dozen downed Kaperna stations, this meant that several holes had been created in the Novican defences and finally the green light was given.

Tens of thousands of transports, landers, vehicle carriers and other craft launched and jettisoned from their dedicated carriers, throwing themselves into the fray as more than two million soldiers gave their battle cry. The invasion of Lufer had officially begun.

General Shivran, supreme commander of the Fourteenth Army, watched the carnage unfold as his forces went to war. The men and women under his command were of a vastly different breed than their Naval counterparts. It wasn't a matter of training, discipline or bravery, but rather one of mindset. The Navy fought in floating castles, throwing insane amounts of firepower around while never really witnessing the sheer destructive power they unleashed from up close. Between radiation spikes, asphyxiation, being flash-boiled, turned to paste by a sudden change in inertia, crushed by a sudden collapse of the structural integrity or ending up sucked out into the vacuum, there was little chance for someone from the Navy to actually see death lunge at them. This was a major contrast with the ground pounders, who saw, smelled and heard death charge at its victims. You saw your mates being torn asunder by bullets, heard artillery barrages whistle threateningly before pounding the section beside you into dust and taking your ear drums with it. You witnessed the clash of armoured titans as they vied for battlefield supremacy with your very own eyes. Airborne units that thundered across the skies before unleashing hellish payloads were seen, heard and the ground shook noticeably when the bombs were dropped. Smells, sounds, sight. A ground pounder had the full package. They had to deal with bullets sizzling past their ears, grenades raining shrapnel down on them, chains of command suddenly and violently being ruptured.

It was no less bloody than combat in space, but it had a much more direct facet to it, which in turn made the men and women of the ground armies slightly fatalistic, incredibly direct and seemingly reckless in nature, coated with a royal serving of gallow's humour. As Shivran's late superior had once told him, that type of character wasn't a thing people were born with. Duty and training made you that way. As he watched his first wave rapidly near their deployment area, he had to agree.

Accompanied by a torrent of supporting fire the lead elements of the twelfth Atmospheric Wing streaked through the void, tucked away in their eggs, which was less of a mouthful than thickly armoured atmospheric delivery containers, and were waiting for the moment they were hatched in the exosphere. Nestled a dozen kilometres behind his squad leader, Flight Lieutenant 'Fire' Philip, listened to the sounds around him. He knew that he was as safe as Imperial technology could make him, but as he gazed through his displays, out of the cockpit and at the thick slabs of armour that surrounded him, that did not reassure him overmuch. This was the part he hated, although he had, ironically enough, the least chance to die here. Strong shields surrounded the egg that protected his heavily armed fighter and given how many dummies the Empire was sending out with them, the chance of a proper laser blast or missile actually destroying him was rather slim. Yet, he had to admit as he helplessly sailed through the void, this was the part he liked the least of an insertion. One missile locking on to him, ignoring his countermeasures and slamming into him would kill him in the blink of an eye. It wasn't the concept of dying that unnerved him, it was the inability to see it coming. Encased as thoroughly as he was, he had no means of looking outside, had no clue what was going on. Only the projections made before the egg was fully sealed gave him a measure of information, provided the situation hadn't changed in the brief time between departure and arrival.

The egg began to rattle and shake and he let out a sigh of relief. It was the sign of constant turbulence, not the short lived teeth-shattering shockwave of a near-miss. They were nearing the exosphere. Deployment was about to begin. Thrusters fired brusquely and he felt G-forces pull on him as his descent was slowed. He counted down the seconds. He never knew how long it would take exactly, but it had to be between five and twenty. He got to twelve when the egg reoriented itself before bursting open, the heavy armour plates resuming their rapid descent, now serving as an impromptu mass round. His own wings folded open and his engine roared to life and just like that his nerves were gone. His point defences jumped to life even before his displays managed to sort out the sudden influx of information and short-range pulsar fire sailed through the air to knock down a missile that was coming straight at him. The resulting shockwave jostled him, but he subconsciously compensated for the sudden disturbance, never taking his eyes off the targets his HUD was highlighting. Allies, friends and foes came online. The latter were the satellites. The former were every other Imperial in orbit that wasn't his unit. And his friends? Well, he was two short. He filed that information away in a corner of his mind. Missing them and regretting their deaths would come later. For now he had a battle to win.

He rolled around and pulled himself out of the path of a missile. Just narrowly dodging them didn't do much, the bloody things detonated when you got too close. His own targeting systems acquired a lock onto the offending satellite and with a soft press of a button he unleashed a five metre missile of his own. Small thrusters saw it weave through he counterfire before the warhead's disruptor field flared up, opening up a small hole in the defensive shield. It was closed in the blink of an eye, but by then the missile had passed the barrier. Fire didn't pause to witness the beautiful resulting explosion and instead rolled away from the expanding fireball and flew on, already having received a new target from his commander. Missiles, lasers and pulsar fire filled the air and explosions rocked his fighter. His own launches sometimes got through, sometimes they were intercepted. The closer he got to a satellite, the higher the chances of taking it out were. The higher the chances were of it taking out him as well.

A fellow fighter crossed his path, trailing countermeasures behind him. The missile chasing his brother refused to be thrown off and before he could even act, the damned thing went off and the blast consumed the fighter. Debris flew out of the explosion and began tumbling down. No mayday was sent. Fire grit his teeth, forced his anger in line and went after the next satellite. He threw a look to the small display in the corner of his HUD. Nine fighters down so far. Fuck! Spitting violent curses towards the bastards planetside, he threw his fighter in a sharp loop and ditched a few flares, throwing off an enemy launch, before his pulsars finished the job and detonated it. In the distance he spotted another mass of containers, carriers and eggs rain down the relatively secure tunnel they had created in the satellite network and knew that the second wave was going to join the fight. An angry red light began to ping urgently as his commander set out a new series of targets for him. He grit his teeth, forced his fighter onto a new course and went to work.

He did not know how long he had been fighting for, how long ago it was that he had run out of missiles and had begun to rely on his main guns, nor at what point in time the ground defences had begun opening up in earnest. All he knew was that one moment he was flying and the next a massive ground-to-space missile clipped him. He stared numbly at the left half of his craft and its missing wing as the world began to spin around him, unable to proces what just happened. Then gravity took hold of what was left of his fighter as he began to plummet to the ground with all the grace of a brick. His computer started bleeping at him, too loud to ignore and he sent out a mayday, not that it would do much at this stage, but at least his commander would know that he was out of the fight. As he streaked down the atmosphere he found himself strangely calm, despite the whole falling to your imminent death thing and being unable to differ up from down. He recalled the instructions drilled into him about what to do when confronted with such a situation and ran a quick test on his ejection seat. To his relief, everything worked. Now he just had to wait until he hit the troposphere. He checked the timer and he let out a deep sigh, feeling his tense muscles relax somewhat. No doubt the ground units had landed in sufficient force to throw the enemy back at this point. Or so he hoped.

Then he blanched when another realisation hit. The enemy shields were still up. He was about to demonstrate the bug on windshield tactic.

The Army followed their traditional assault pattern, which meant that the second wave of airborne units and their containers did not hit the brakes until they hit the stratosphere, just above the upper layer of defensive shields. They ignored the losses the satellites and planet based defences had inflicted on them, reformed themselves into functioning units and they began their joint assault. Heavy bombers flew to their targets and deployed massive stealth bombs that exploded into billions of tiny fragments that reflected so many signals that radar became utterly useless. Intelligence platforms locked themselves in place and began establishing tight beam connections, hoping their thick armour and strong shields would protect them from any stray fire. Gunships freed themselves from their packaging and hovered in place for a brief moment as they regained their bearing, before they regrouped and commenced strafing runs towards their designated targets, launching streams of missiles that poured through the shields and struck the projectors underneath. Even with the overlapping field, specifically designated to burn out the disintegrators and render the missiles useless, the Imperial weapons proved superior in design as their batteries stubbornly held out until the warhead collided with the projectors. Down below, buried underneath the surface, several generators went up in flames from the sudden feedback, further weakening the system.

Aboard one such gunship was Assault Commander Filedi, proud bearer of the nickname 'Maddy', which was the short, feminised form of madman. The moment she was out of her egg, she let out a loud cheer on the battle wide net, earning a prompt reprimand that she equally swiftly ignored. A gunship was a different beast to a fighter or a bomber. Those buggers couldn't fly backwards. Or carried even a fraction of the payload that she did. She chose to ignore the annoying fact that bombers technically carried more explosives on account that they could only drop it straight down while she could surgically shove her bombs, missiles and other broad assortment of things-that-go-boom up the enemy's ass. So that's what she did.

She dropped down further, until she could lean out and kick the shield underneath her, should so be so inclined. Colliding with a shield at a fast pace solidified the damned thing though, how that worked she didn't know, but at the pace she was going she could make it through. Not that she was planning to, oh no, trying that little stint would fry most of her onboard electronics as well as set off most of her explosives. So instead she settled for pointing most of her weaponry down towards the shield projectors and let loose the dogs of war. Or missiles with angry, barking dogs painted on them. Same difference. Her experienced eyes ran over the visual display her external cameras showed her and she manually selected her targets. There was a glint to the air that informed her where the overlapping shield layers were and she ran the calculations in her mind, selecting the right missiles for the right targets. She casually threw her throttle to the side, engines roaring and blasting her two dozen metres aside, narrowly dodging an incoming laser burst. She felt the brief flash of heat, ignored it and fired. A dozen missiles were launched in quick succession and sailed down the atmosphere towards their targets. Disruptor fields flared to life and smashed open the shield for a brief moment, allowing the missiles to pass through. Unlike their spaceborne counterparts, atmospheric missiles had multiple charges for disruptors to burn through the overlapping layers, which was exactly what they did now. They flew straight and true, withstood a withering barrage of point defence fire before hitting home and blowing several projectors to kingdom come. She grinned as the outer shield began to wink out, unable to sustain the field entirely. There now was a massive hole in it and she immediately steered her craft towards it.

Her proximity alert started beeping alarmingly loud and she checked her scanner, only to find a pair of enemy fighters racing towards her. She checked her link with the floating intelligence platform and saw that it was transmitting and receiving. It displayed the number thirty-six and she knew she only had to survive for that long before backup would arrive. She hit the engines and started flying away from the incoming threats. Then cursed loudly when targeting locks highlighted her craft. From this close, even with the radar disturbance, their missiles wouldn't miss. Time to try something new and desperate. She selected her heaviest missiles and blind fired them, along with most of her countermeasures. Then she killed the engine and prayed her gambit would work as gravity immediately went to work and pulled her down. Most of the missiles were lured away, but a single one stubbornly refused to get off her trail and chased her with lethal determination. She gave a final curse as the distance shrunk rapidly and switched on her emergency thrusters. They activated and did so violently, throwing her gunship to the side as the missile finally reached her. It detonated and the shockwave rolled over her. She felt her teeth shatter and saw the glass in her cockpit break. Several alarms started beeping urgently, reporting all sorts of major malfunctions but none of that mattered much to her at the time, because her engine refused to start up again.

From the corner of her eye she saw the enemy fighters blow apart another pair of gunships that weren't as lucky as her, before allied fighters swooped in and dealt with the threat. The Empire held the advantage, their tight beam technology allowing them to communicate with the intelligence platforms even in the midst of the radar blackout. It was a miraculous technology that kept the automated defences from picking them out one by one, not that it had done her any good. No, that was pushing it, without that warning she'd have died as well, which she was still going to if this fucking piece of junk wasn't going to start and oh fuck it! She pulled the emergency handle and the cockpit exploded outwards. She leapt forward and felt the air tug at her wingsuit before it got hold of her and snatched her out of the cockpit like a giant hand of God. Then she was fully airborne, her heavier gunship falling far faster than her. She watched the caricature that the engineers had painted on the side grow smaller, before becoming indistinguishable. Then it fell through a shield and what ammunition that remained exploded, consuming the gunship in a short lived conflagration. She sighed. It had been a good ship.

She forced herself to focus on the small altometer in the corner of her HUD as she pulled herself together into a ball, before rolling in mid air and spreading her limbs as wide as possible, slowing her descent a fair bit. She'd have to pull the chute sooner rather than later if she wanted to live. She saw the glimmer of the first shield and tried to grit her teeth, before a sharp pain reminded her that she no longer possessed any. She tried to look at her medical status in the HUD, but then she passed through the shield and for a brief moment she felt as if she was making sweet, passionate love to a bolt of pure lightning. She screamed in pain as the energy lightly seared her and more volts than she cared for ran through her body and her limbs seized up, before she was through. She gasped for air, hungrily drinking it in even if it carried the smell of burnt hair and skin with it. She tried to remember what she was doing but failed. She shook her head, felt herself falling faster than she ought and fought to regain a semblance of control, but failed. With trembling hands she grabbed the handle that controlled her chute. She prayed that there would only be one more shield below her. She doubted she'd retain enough control of her body to still pull the chute if there were more after that.

General Shirvan grimaced as the few survivors of the first wave pulled back under his orders. The hole in the satellite defences was wide enough now. They had performed admirably and died in the process. From high above the battle, aboard the Colliseum, the massive troop carrier that doubled as his flagship, he had seen the countless little fireballs that had appeared as his fighters died in droves. Less than one in ten had survived the bloody business, but then again they had expected this. The second wave was faring better, slowly acquiring airborne superiority as the blinded Novican fighters could only rely on their lines of sight and were consequently slaughtered. They weren't stupid though, they had immediately pulled back all the airborne units that they could reach rather than launch more. On the other side, the Empire had kept sending down reinforcements. More fighters, gunships and bombers kept arriving as the Fourteenth deployed the full extent of their wings and forcibly widened the gaps in the shields and created a suitable drop zone, but the defenders were beginning to mount a proper response. Missile silos switched to rapid fire and choked the sky with explosions, powerful ground based cannons fired straight into the air and evaporated everything in their path while AA-batteries , previously whirring around uselessly waiting for a clear feed that would never come, now had Novican soldiers manning the guns as they switched to manual targeting and began claiming victims as well. In well protected underground hangars, the Novican aircraft waited for the storm to lessen before joining the fray. As it was, with their radar out of the picture, their inability to coordinate their efforts with meant that they would only get in the way of their own defensive fire.

He watched the fourth wave ready itself. These were the infantry units with a lot of support attached to them. Mobile bunkers, radars, shield generators and a plethora of other necessities prepared were waiting in the hangars, hungrily awaiting the go order. Their job was a straightforward one. All they had to do was crash into their designated locations at a non terminal velocity. That way the Empire could create an instant beach head and headquarters on the planet, a safe spot from where they could begin landing the rest of the troops without having to fight to get them planetside. That tactic, however, required the third wave to succeed in clearing the soon to be landing zone of enemies. It wasn't a landing zone to them. The third wave had a unique way of making landfall.

In the meantime aforementioned third wave had come down. They had done so howling and screaming. Large carriers dove straight down, rolled through defensive fire, slipped through the gaps in the shields that the second wave had created, pulled up at the last possible moment and crashed violently into the terrain. The carriers, for all their armour and shielding, were meant to be single use. Once they crashed into the planet at a near horizontal angle, the top blew open and the front plates crumbled and out came the massive Gungnirs, the heaviest battle tanks the Empire possessed.

Inside the heavily armoured vehicle, Commander Prance shouted orders at his driver and gunner as the tank ignored a minor bunker in front of them and simply ran it over. The Imperial Army rarely got a chance to deploy to an actual warzone and while they were losing men by the dozen with each passing second, Prance could not help but enjoy himself and felt slightly guilty about it. As his driver steered the powerful vehicle through a shield, the energy of it incapable of penetrating the thick, isolated armour, they rapidly neared the main projector array. The Commander let his moral questions fall by the wayside and contented himself with shouting FIRE at the top of his lungs. Moments later a HE shell embedded itself deep into the array and exploded. The shield fizzled out and quickly dissipated now that it was no longer supplied with energy and the Commander redirected his vehicle deeper into Novican lines, enjoying the delayed fireworks he was leaving behind as the feedback blew the generators to kingdom come. His assault was quickly met with counterattacks. It was just infantry at first, who were making the right choice of trying to get out of his way and take potshots at him with whatever anti-armour weapons they had at their disposal. His secondary and tertiary gunners were not having that, however, and as they eyed the radar carefully they quickly took care of the dozen odd men, the heavy calibre bullets quickly tearing through their light armour.

'That was a good warm up. Jeffers, keep your eye trained on that scanner. We're going to run into enemy armour any moment now and I don't want to deny Gunny the chance of blowing up a Novican tank,' he told his radioman. The gunner, whose name most definitely was not 'Gunny' groaned in mock annoyance. 'Mase, Liam, keep your eyes trained for infantry. Especially the big ones,' he continued on, instructing his secondary and tertiary gunner who had mercifully escaped the Commander's bad taste in nicknames. 'Crank,' he shouted, turning around to the tiny man sitting in the back of the tank. 'Did our stuff get through the landing alright?'

'Better than your wife did,' the old, experienced logistician shot back. While the Commander did outrank him, the veteran didn't let such a mere technicality keep him from telling the much younger man off whenever he saw fit. Commander Prance took the jab with good grace and instead focused on his surroundings again.

'Enemy armour spotted, forty-nine, six hundred out. Three of them! Medium profile!' Jeffers shouted. Prance didn't even get to shout his order before Gunny had already began turning his turret, displaying perfect teamwork with Ballerina, their driver. By the time the Novican tanks noticed their enemy, Gunny had already launched the first shell.

'Bull's eye!' Jeffers shouted. 'Second at fifty-three, five hundred, coming at us. Third at forty-six, five hundred fifty, circling to the west.'

The enemy returned fire, but Ballerina had the skills and the Gungnir had the armour. With a sharp twist he dodged the first shell while the second one harmlessly bounced off the front plates, while the turret spoke a second time and blew the enemy's turret clean off. The third tank tried to circle around but Ballerina refused to give the enemy a clear shot on their side, even if the armour could take it. Knowing their time was running out quickly, the last tank opened fire with surprisingly accurate aim, but once again the shell ricocheted off the frontal armour. Gunny pulled the trigger a final time and that was the end of the armoured patrol.

'Excellent job people. Ball, take us to checkpoint Sword. Jeffers, once we're there try to establish a tight beam link with above. Gunny, good shooting. Keep this up folks and we'll have a beachhead set up before the hour is out. Crank, what's our status?'

'Paint's scratched but that's it. Good job kiddo,' Crank gruffed at Ballerina.

'WALKER!' an allied commander screamed over the coms before a sudden wave of static informed them of the somber fate that had befallen their comrades. Jeffers cursed loudly as he spotted the towering abomination. Novican walkers were a thing of terror, as tall as a skyscraper, brimming with guns and a pesky shield generator, they were the only thing that could reliably counter and even overwhelm the Gungnirs.

'Prance!' came a new voice on the radio. 'That bastard's hot on our tails. I lost Victor and Myria already. Flank the bastard! I'll delay him!'

Prance swallowed. He didn't much fancy the thought of going up against a thing that could stomp his tank into the ground, but the controlled worry in his squadron lead's voice didn't leave him much choice. He motioned for his crew to get to work while he and Jeffers worked out the best route. The powerful treads crushed the loose earth underfoot as they made their way through the arid lands and towards the towering behemoth. It didn't take long for Gunny to acquire a targeting lock and after a brief nod of Prance, the gunner opened fire.

The response came almost immediately in the form of a loud shout of the squadron lead. 'Great shot Prance! That got his attention! Bastard's tagged Luke. He's alive, but his turret's shredded and he's out. I'm circling back around and I'll keep him busy. Red's moving in for backup from the north.'

'Roger sir,' Prance replied. 'Gunny! Hit them again! Keep 'em off the boss' back!'

'Got it!'

'Ball, keep us on course and get ready to dodge whatever that shithead launches our way.'

'Turrets levelled at us!' Jeffers shouted, not entirely suppressing his fear.

'Ball!' screamed Prance as the sky lit up in a brief flash that indicated that something big, mean and explosive was heading their way.

'On it!' the driver yelled, before somehow performing a ninety degree turn that smacked the occupants into the walls of the tank. A moment later a massive shell landed directly in front of them, tearing a crater into the environment and showering the tank with chunks of blackened earth. The shockwave ran over the vehicle with teeth rattling strength, but they weathered it and the Gungnir returned fire once again. Several kilometres away the heavy round impacted on the shield, the kinetic energy forcing the massive walker to rebalance itself slightly.

Prance gritted his teeth. He prayed that the squadron lead would survive long enough for him to close in, and for that matter that he would survive until they Red squadron could close in.

As fortune would have it, his prayers were answered when the shields covering their area temporarily fizzled out of existence as someone practised the art of perfect timing and demolished the projectors. The next moment a carefully aimed shot came down like a rod from god and evaporated the walker and glassed its immediate surroundings.

'Holy shit!' Jeffers shouted, staring at the unfolding dust cloud with wide eyes while a massive shockwave flashed by and threw their tank a solid metre into the air.

Prance was tempted to do the same, until he realised how close the squadron lead had been to that blast.

'Boss! Come in boss! Are you alive?'

Static came back and Jeffers started running the frequencies while Prance prayed that the scanners would pick up something.

'Boss! This is Commander Prance, come in! Come on, you can't up and die on me! You owe me a beer! Come on Vic! You can't be dead!'

'Quit ya yelling ya buffoon!'came the angry voice of Luke. 'Vic's alive, but his tanky's upside down and buried under't dust. Quit yappin' and get a shovel out instead, git!'

Prance fell back into his seat, laughing until the tears came out of his eyes. They were down two crews, but it could have been so much worse. And Vic still lived. The blonde bastard, the soul of Yellow squadron, had survived. God fucking dammit.

'Roger that Luke, we're on our way.'

'Cannie do. We're 'hind schedule as t'is. Get yer ass in gear and move on with Dinae fore she hogs the fun.' Prance could hear the relieved grin on Luke's face. Still, the second-in-command had a point. Vic was alive, likely in dire need of medical aid and presumably a bit flash boiled by the impact, but alive. Luke's tank was out of the picture as well, meaning Yellow was down to two functional vehicles and their job hadn't changed. He gestured to Ball, who shifted gears and trundled on, crushing the rocky underground beneath the Gungnir's heavy tracks. They had a mission to finish.

Prance hid a grin behind his helmet as the heavy assault vehicle rolled across the surface of Lufer. The third Heavy Assault Battalion had landed and between them, their orbital coverage and their aerial superiority they were rapidly clearing out the remaining ground forces. They had to move quickly and establish their perimeter, and more importantly their own shield projectors, or the enemy artillery would blow them to kingdom come. Thousands had died. Tens of thousands would die. It would be difficult. It would be bloody.

But, he thought as another enemy infantry unit popped up on the scanner, at least it wouldn't be fucking boring.