From the Log of Major Ro Johnson January Seventeenth 081 SDE,

Operation Reach has been going smoothly so far. Well aside from the usual bumps and hiccups. The Cylovans have not put up much of a fight, but they seem to be figuring out the field. Recently small recon units have been spotted and intercepted moving in the field. A study of captured logic cores has allowed us to determine that the collective has found a way to achieve limited communications inside the field. All of their recon units have also been outfitted with special sensors. Thankfully the Collective has not yet figured out everything about the field. Most importantly it has not yet figured out that it interferes with energy weapons. This gives us an edge that we have so far not really needed. Their special sensors don’t really work well at penetrating the camouflage provided by our stealth armor and we often spot their drones at range anyway. Our recon elements have been doing a great job of locating and eliminating these scouts before they locate our main troop movements.

Speaking of troop movements we have been slowed in our advance towards one of our targets by a rock slide. The rock slide has blocked the road and because of the local terrain getting the equipment to clear it has been challenging. However, the combat engineers informed me that they expect to have it cleared by this afternoon. It is a small delay, but one I don’t like. Every delay gives the enemy more time to figure out the field and will make our jobs harder. While the general has taken the primary objective for himself. He has entrusted me with a vital objective. I am to capture the Cylovan ground batteries at my target if possible. Doing so would allow us to keep Cylovan air and space assets from interfering with our operation. I have seen the specs on those batteries. They use a special type of Metaphased Disruptor that can bypass all known shield configurations including Cylovan Ion Shields. These beam cannons require so much power that the collective can't mount them on their ships yet. Not to mention that they are rather bulky. R&D wants one for study as well. As for output, we believe a single cannon is sufficient for destroying a dreadnought and the local defense shields are strong enough to repel bombardment. However, we have no idea how effective they are against armor. We have no experience with metaphased weapons technology. Everything we know about them comes from information mined from Collective databases. The weapon was designed by the collective for use against the Sylnari, but its size and power requirements prevented the collective from testing it against Sylnari shields. Their data on it against powered armor is nonexistent and against traditional armor, nothing short of Neutronium plate can stop it. Not that it mattered, they planned on knocking out the grid anyway.

Johnson stared at the rocks from her walker. The road was not big enough for Scorpions so the engineers were using more conventional methods to clear the rock slide. Her walker was one of several Disruption walkers in her column waiting for the slide to clear so that they and the tanks escorting them could move forward. The infantry would not be inconvenienced by the slide. Technically the tanks could just float over it but the walkers were not equipped to traverse the slide. Scorpions were too big and heavy-duty to care, but the same could not be said for other walker models. Thankfully the engineers were just about finished clearing the slide. One more controlled detonation and the obstacle would be gone.

Suddenly the engineers fled the debris field in a hurry and she saw a flash as soon as they were clear. When the dust settled, the road was clear. With the obstacle gone she waited for her combat engineers to tell her that it was safe.

It did not take long for them to confirm it was open and that the walls were stable enough. As soon as they did she gave the order to move forward. They were already behind schedule and she wanted to make up for lost time. A sentiment she knew many of her troops agreed with.

With the order issued, the column started to advance. Quickly setting a faster pace then it had used before to make up for lost time. In a few more hours they would reach their objective.

A few hours later the column came to a halt near a Cylovan settlement. Johnson immediately ordered the Disruption walkers to deploy. Selecting several defensible sites that would allow them to project the field over the settlement. As the walkers were moving into position, she gave orders to move the armor into positions around the settlement. They would be needed to keep units from fleeing the field of battle. They did not want any units reporting to the Collective. There were three main roads out of the settlement, and she gave orders for the armor to concentrate on those roads. With smaller force divisions guarding the other routes out of the town. They had a nice ridgeline behind her troops, and she ordered the field artillery they had brought set up on those ridges to support the troops. Along with some snipers to provide support.

Naturally, she kept some tanks in reserve, but she was not going to deploy them unless needed. Best not to send armor into an urban area if you don’t need it. With her orders to deploy given, she waited until the units reported they were in position. Then she gave the order. Almost instantly they swept into the city, where they were quickly noticed. Only for the drones to discover that their weapons did not function.

The collective quickly noticed the attack on its two settlements. The field suddenly encompassing them had been a bit of a surprise, but not much. At first, it had no idea what was going on. Until a few units managed to report by using the limited comm band it had devised for communication inside the field. What it learned revealed much, but also left it with something of a concern. It had been invaded, and it had never seen the alien invasion force land.

The reports also revealed plenty of new data about the field, and while the bandwidth of the comm band limited the reports, it was enough. The field was interfering with firing its energy weapons, something it had never thought to test. How the field interfered eluded it, but that was a major concern. A concern it immediately tasked a dozen subprocesses on to solve. Even worse, one of the attacked settlements was a critical node in its planetary defense grid. Losing that would create a rather large hole in the shield grid protecting the southern hemisphere.

Assessing its options, the collective began to consider using orbital assets to bombard the attackers. No assets were in a position to fire on the area. However, an orbital fortress would be in a position to fire in thirty minutes. It calculated the pros and cons of the pending bombardment action during the wait. The cons were that it would lose a critical node and all the assets in the area, drones, buildings and everything else. As the reports piled in, it came to the conclusion that it was going to lose those anyway. Those assets could be rebuilt though, but it was a cost it did not want to pay.

Before those thirty minutes were up, it had already lost one of the settlements. Thankfully not the critical node, but there were a good number of ground batteries for the defense grid there. Based on the last report, most of those batteries were still intact. A fact it could exploit if it found a way to retake lost ground.

In the other settlement, the fighting was getting more intense. While its drones could not use their weapons, they had equipped makeshift ones that worked in the field. Just not as well as it would like. It was still losing far too many drones and inflicting too low a causality count. Those heavy walkers and tanks were also placed so well that a retreat was impossible. As such the collective had to work with the limited data they could send over the only comm band that functioned inside the field. It was already trying to figure out the field and how it interfered with weapons, sensors and communications. Checking in with its subprocessors, it found they were predicting it would take months to unravel this mystery. Thanks to the highly limited data they had.

Finally, its station was in position, but before it could even order it to fire, a green-orange energy stream erupted from the atmosphere and bypassed its shields. The battle station absorbed the impact, and its neutronium plating held. Then a second beam struck almost exactly where the previous one had hit. The collective recognized the weapon quickly. It was being shot at with its own Metaphased Planetary Defense Disruptors. Evidently the invaders knew enough about its control systems and encryption algorithms to get the weapons online. Now the collective was trying to address having its own defenses turned against it. It sent orders to the battle station to return fire. Green energy streams shot from the station and slammed into the local defense shields for little effect.

The collective considered trying to retake the local mainframe that controlled those systems, but doing so would require a better connection then it had. Already it was considering solutions to prevent this from happening again, and there was an easy one that quickly came to mind. It did not do it before because it saw no need, but now it was seriously considering installing hardlines between all mainframes on the planet. It would be costly, but it would prevent this from happening again. Most of its attention was on the fight between its battle station and the captured ground batteries.

Another green stream struck the ground-based Ion shield. It fluctuated minimally indicating it was holding quite well. They were meant to be the final line of defense, so it had spent a lot of resources taking advantage of planetary power capabilities to produce a network of fortresses. Now that fact was biting it in the rear. Another green-orange stream erupted from the ground site, and this time the weakening armor buckled. The rest of the stream punched through the hole and into the hull. A second stream followed soon after striking the breach with pinpoint accuracy. Then a third and a fourth as the station rotated trying to get the breach out of the firing angle of the base. Just seconds before that happened the base hit something vital, and a massive explosion resulted. When the dust cleared a massive chunk of the hull was now open to space and the station was taking heavy damage from additional fire.

That detonation proved to be fatal, as mere seconds after the first explosion the next beam hit something else vital. Another detonation occurred, this time ripping the station apart. It turned its attention back to the surface as a subprocess alerted it that something was happening and it was just in time to register a small explosion and subsequent failure of part of the grid.

Moments later, it picked up slight energy spikes near several other generators for the planetary grid just before they too went offline. All were part of the southern hemisphere’s defense. Its sensor data showed stealthed aircraft were responsible. It had not even detected them until after they fired, and they disappeared pretty quickly. Retaliatory fire failed to score any hits. While it was considering its response, a new event happened to throw a wrench into those half-formed plans. In fact, it now needed to rethink most of its plans for the sector. It had underestimated species 11247, greatly underestimated. The entire system was lost...