Missiles launched from dozens of satellites around the planet. They were small unmanned weapons platforms designed to defend against pirate raids. Against a proper military force, they were like toys. The missiles were erased by the nigh impenetrable point defense of the frigates and destroyers who led the fleet into the orbit of the green and blue jewel that hung in the void.
Deep underground in a bunker that didn't exist on paper, a woman spat in anger. She was powerless to do anything to those ships. But she would make them pay for this world in blood. She had already sent out her orders. All she could do was wait and watch the bloodbath.
Joseph had spent the last several days traveling through the wilderness. He'd only had to avoid a few military patrols as he approached the city. The bulk of the forces had still been involved in fighting throughout the city. Guerilla forces had popped up all over, and a handful of units had broken off from the main detachment that had been posted here.
Joseph thought about this information as he contemplated the man in front of him. His face had been beaten to a pulp, and he was now missing two of his fingers and several teeth. He had to give the man credit. He was made of tougher stuff than Joseph would have thought. But he'd finally given in, and now Joseph had a clue.
There was a bunker located beneath the capital that was only known to a handful of individuals, including the General sitting directly in front of him. Even fewer had access to it. This information had irked Joseph, and it had taken some restraint on his part to not inflict that frustration upon the General. It wasn't his fault after all. No sense in punishing him for giving out information.
"So that's everything you know, right?" Joseph asked calmly as he examined his knife. He had just finished cleaning it and was inspecting it for blemishes. After all, he'd just cut off two fingers. It wouldn't be surprising if it had chipped.
"Yesh, thash all I know.", the General said. He coughed up some blood and spat out another tooth with it. "Pleash, jush le' me go. I promish no' to shay anyshing." The General seemed to be having a hard time speaking with the rapidly swelling bruises. His tongue looked a little cut up, too, probably from accidentally biting it.
Joseph considered the man in front of him. He was one Her's. He had been complicit in her revolution all those years ago. He deserved far worse than death, but Joseph didn't have the time. He flicked his wrist, and his knife left his hands, slicing through the man's throat and embedding itself in the wooden chair he was sitting in. The man gurgled as blood filled his mouth. Joseph opened the door to the room, leaving the man behind. He had no time to spare him another thought. After all, he had someone special to visit. And now he knew where she was. He just had to find a way to get there.
***
Admiral Fletcher looked down upon the world his fleet was orbiting with mild disdain. Rather than accept the guiding hand of Avalon, they had chosen to fire upon his fleet. He'd swatted away what little they had in the way of orbital defenses. He would have preserved them, but they had developed an alternative baseline coding system to C0. This rendered the hacking side of Electronic Warfare useless, at least for a time. There were many minds aboard the fleet attempting to solve that problem.
In the meantime, it would fall to the ground troops. He had allowed for several of his lower-ranking officers to file potential battle plans for taking the planet. While he could have easily put something together without too much effort, he found it worthwhile to allow those who were ascending the ranks to prove themselves.
And this was a perfect opportunity for such a thing. There was little chance of true failure, but the circumstances allowed for interesting and unique challenges. Due to standing orders from the Grand Admiral himself, they could not utilize orbital bombardment unless there was a ground emplacement that could threaten the fleet. Additionally, they were unable to utilize atomic weaponry. This battle would be waged purely with boots and treads on the ground, watched over by wings in the air.
Several of his Captains had submitted fine battleplans, but a plan submitted by a Commander aboard one of the older frigates in his fleet caught his eye. Commander David Abraham had submitted a detailed plan that had accurately predicted what ground scans were now confirming. Massive troop buildups at industrial centers while cities were in the process of being abandoned by military assets due to civil unrest.
They had already begun to come into contact with rebel forces on the ground, and Fletcher had already disseminated orders in accordance with Commander Abraham's plan. The first round of drop pods would be almost entirely a supply drop with one squad per three drop pods. These squads would make contact with rebel forces and augment them. They would then engage in guerilla warfare as fighters would begin engaging in air superiority battles. The ensuing chaos would allow the majority of the ground forces to come in via shuttlecraft and begin setting up bases at strategic locations.
After that, it was a matter of whittling away at enemy forces while they located whoever was in charge. They at least had information on who that was now. One Elizabeth Yamato Cirillo, whose name reflected the bizarre cultural blend of the planet below. But that was common for garden worlds since they tended to get multiple waves of colony vessels due to their desirability.
Regardless of the planet's culture, 'Grand Arbiter Cirillo', as she was known, was quite the little dictator. Admiral Fletcher almost admired how well she had done. After the old trade networks had fallen apart, there had been quite a lot of tension between the appointed systems alliance government and the people. Representing the people's will, she had toppled that government and used her popularity to place herself at the top of the new government. Cleverly rigged elections and solid propaganda campaigns had kept her in power and relatively good standing with the populace ever since.
The more he read about how this world had handled the collapse, the more he regretted that the government had taken such a xenophobic stance. Not that he could blame them, but leaders like Grand Arbiter Cirillo were valuable in maintaining order and stability. It was such a shame that the best plan on the table called for killing her. He finished the minor alterations to Commander Abraham's battle plan and submitted it to the tactical network.
The orders began to disseminate throughout the fleet, and two troop carriers began to reposition themselves into a near geocentric orbit over the north and south hemispheres of the planet's supercontinent. Drop pods began raining down at precise intervals as they slowly drifted across the north and south hemispheres of the continent.
Ceramic shells pierced through the atmosphere and threw off 'debris' as they fell. Chaff exploded as jamming devices embedded both in the pods and the fragments they had discarded activated. At least all this happened in the pods dropping in the southern hemisphere. The pods dropping in the north stayed silent, and in doing so, announced their entrance in deafening fashion.
Ground to air missile systems locked onto targets and began knocking drop pods out of the sky with precision. While they hadn't been designed to handle the sheer quantity of pods being dropped, they were more than able to destroy anything they did hit. Rendering more than half of the equipment and soldiers being dropped across the northern hemisphere into debris. The problem wasn't detected until halfway through the drop phase, and upon realizing what was happening, the Captain of The Valkyrie's Steed halted the operation.
A full system check was ordered, but the damage had been done. Less than fifteen percent of the promised munitions and troops had been delivered to the northern hemisphere of the continent. The operations in the southern hemisphere began to proceed apace, however, as inquiries were made far above as to what went wrong aboard the Valkyrie's Steed.
Admiral Fletcher acted quickly once the troopship began reporting problems. He began updating the tactical network with new orders. The Valkyrie's Steed rotated out and took up a higher orbital position, standing down all weapons as two frigates escorted it away from the rest of the fleet. Another troopship rotated into its place and began its drop pattern as he shifted in a Carrier-Cruiser, The Saratoga specifically. It would begin air superiority and early tactical landings. Repeating the exact same tactic two times in a row would end in more lives and equipment being lost after all.
***
Gus was at a terminal trying to help decipher the new programming language of the world below when the call to report to battle stations commenced. He immediately dropped what he was doing, his work saved, and he exited the terminal with a handful of keystrokes. The terminal shut down in a strangely reluctant fashion, not that Gus noticed. He had already left and had joined the stream of troops exiting into the corridors. He quickly made his way to his assigned armory and began loading up. He'd only done ground fighting in virtual simulations and small-scale practice battles in the gyms.
That being said, equipping his gear had become like second nature to him. His squad Sergeant was already there in full gear, barking orders and checking loadouts. He quickly switched over from his onboard casual battledress to his tactical loadout. According to what the Sergeant was now barking out, they would be landing on the planet via shuttlecraft ahead of schedule. Their mission would be to insert themselves near enough to production facilities to be tactically viable, but not so close as to get shot out of the sky.
Their mission would then be to create chaos and, if the opportunity presented itself, seize control of enemy assets. The mission profile was a familiar one that they had trained on fairly extensively, and Gus was confident not only in his own abilities but those of his squadmates to get the job done. They'd done a lot of training to get this far and had worked their asses off to be ready for this assault. Less than thirty percent of the recruits from his planet had already met the requirements to advance to Private, but both he and his squad had managed it with days to spare.
Gus finished getting his body armor on and grabbed his equipment. His pack was light due to passive anti-grav systems that were fed from the energy of the micro-entropy reactor contained within. This allowed him to carry tens of kilos more than what would normally be considered combat effective. He grabbed his EW Deck and slapped it to the side of the pack. The final pieces of equipment were his rifle and sidearm. Both of them were the standard for soldiers of the Avalon Fleet. Miniaturized railguns that magnetically accelerated tungsten jacketed rounds of various munition types.
Gus's primary role was Electronic Warfare, so he carried a more limited range and quantity of ammunition in favor of more 'toys.' But he still packed the standard High Energy Armor Piercing rounds as well as his personal favorite. Delayed Explosive Armor Piercing rounds. There was something about shooting a target and having it explode from its insides moments later that was just so satisfying.
Sergeant Dunnings walked by Gus, his hands moving in a blur as he tightened a single strap that Gus had missed and moved on without a word. Gus felt proud of himself as he moved along with the rest of the squad. It wasn't so long ago that he could barely put his kit together. Let alone have the Sergeant not say a word after inspecting him. They all loaded into the Assault Shuttle, the hangar bays being the pinnacle of organized chaos. Mechanics were doing last-minute safety checks on the shuttles as fighters that had just gone through that process were loaded into launch tubes.
The pilots of those dagger-like craft would clear the air of enemy aircraft and perform near-suicidal attack runs on enemy anti-air to make sure they had a clear run to the surface. Gus couldn't imagine being in the shoes of those pilots. From his limited interactions with them, they all seemed to be borderline insane adrenaline junkies who got off on the idea of constantly being on the edge of death.
Though according to them, it was much safer than it had once been. After all, for every human piloted fighter craft, there were four drones piloted by limited AI's escorting it. The AI themselves were tailored to each pilot using learning algorithms that had been fed information from the simulations the pilots were constantly engaged in.
Even with all of that, it still seemed crazy to Gus. Which he supposed was why he'd be riding in the relative safety of an Assault Shuttle rather than piloting a fighter craft, he thought as he strapped himself in. The rear ramp retracted, sealing the shuttle shortly after the Sergeant stepped aboard and began strapping himself in at the rearmost seat of the shuttle.
The shuttle intercom flicked on, and the pilot's voice filtered through the internal speakers. "Welcome aboard gentlemen. I am your pilot, Private First Class Petrov, and I will be keeping you alive for as long as you're in the air today. After your boots touch the dirt it's on you, but until then, just sit back and enjoy the ride. We will be exiting The Saratoga at a gentle mach three, so make sure you're strapped in and ready to feel nothing due to our wonderful gravitational damping technology.", the pilot's droll tone and dry wit pulled a few chuckles from Gus's squad, including himself.
The pilot continued his monologue after his joke had time to settle. "After our launch, we will begin a slow atmospheric insert to give our fighter jocks time to clear the air and to minimize our entry profile. After that, it might get a bit rough and tumble, depending on how well the jocks have cleared the path. With any luck, I'll be able to drop you dirtside with only minor bumps and bruises. We will be launching in exactly sixty seconds." A timer popped up in the Heads Up Display of Gus's helmet as Petrov finished his spiel. He used his tongue to manipulate a few buttons, adjusting the setting of his display to temporarily enlarge the countdown. He wanted to see if he could feel the launch when it happened.
All too soon, the countdown finished, and Gus felt the lightest whisper of motion as the shuttle was launched at three times the speed of sound away from The Saratoga. Soon they would be upon the planet, and that was when his fight would begin.
Gus used his HUD to pull up information on the primary coding language of the planet below. He wouldn't be working on cracking its secrets anymore, but others were, and he wanted to know what they had found. Luckily some of the rebels had experience and had uploaded large amounts of documentation to the fleet. It was mostly just a matter of assimilating and applying that knowledge now. If all went well, new attack programs would be autoloaded into his deck an hour after he reached the surface, according to the current estimate.
He breathed a sigh of relief. He had plenty of other things to do on the Electronic Warfare side of things, but not having all of his tools available to him made him nervous. He gave thanks to those in orbit who would be supporting him from above as the Sergeant began reviewing their immediate ground objectives. He switched his focus to the Sergeant as they cruised through space towards the planet as fire began to erupt across its surface.
