Chapter 117: The Long March Begins

With no more Narsian targets in sight, Max's scouting group made their way back to the camp, ready to switch out for the next group of scouts who would patrol the area throughout the night, watching for enemy movements that the sensors might have missed.

The knowledge that the Narsians were hiding belowground was a game changer not only for Max and those around him but for the senior officers in Central Command who were planning missions. With large numbers of enemies potentially hidden from orbital scans, as well as most sensors, they would need to build a buffer into their future deployments in order to ensure success.

That alone had delayed the troop drops that had been scheduled for the evening, pushing them to a tentative time of 0600 ship time the next morning. To Max, that would be about three in the morning, locally, and he did his best to be rested and ready when the morning orders that would accompany the drop arrived. The fact that a wave of drops would reach an entire planet at the same time made for very odd schedules in some parts of the world. Having the reinforcements show up at three in the morning was one of the better options.

From the ground, a night drop looked like the sky itself had opened up to rain hellfire upon the massed forces inhabiting the planet. First hundreds, then over a thousand streaks of fire lit up the clear night sky, blocking out the stars and rendering night vision pointless.

The ground was lit up as bright as early dawn, in a warm red light that gave off a peaceful feeling totally contrary to the tide of armored Landers that had caused it.

The Narsian forces began setting up anti-Lander weapons, while every Kepler asset in the area was searching for them so that the threat could be eliminated without causing any real damage.

As Max listened to the incoming troops' reports, he found there was even more good news that Command had hidden from the Communication channels. Four additional drop ships had recently arrived in the system but had been ordered to remain hidden behind an outlying planet, maintaining radio silence so that the full force drop would be a surprise to the Narsian forces.

Even now, they weren't officially announced, but Max knew how many Landers a Captial Class drop ship like Abraham Kepler could hold, and recognized the ship movement locations as being from a different planet's orbit.

The spectacle of so much massed firepower gave hope to the beleaguered forces of the Kepler Military, and the orders to find and kill the Narsian defenses were spreading through the ranks faster than even Max's enhanced mind could process.

So, he focused only on orders for his region and waited. One by one, the groups around them were sent to eliminate positions until finally, it was their turn.

[Noctem Regiment, Unit 17, combine assets with survivors on location and proceed to grid BE8 for the elimination of heavy weapons. Stalwart Special Tactics Unit is to reinforce city scouting forces in grid TA24. Make haste, Stalwart, they will need you there by 2300 tonight.]

The order is a bit shocking to Max. That is on the far side of the swamp region, hundreds of kilometers away from his current location. Making it there shouldn't be a problem with the swamp boats, but it is a very long relocation when there are cities much closer that are also under threat.

The only thing that Max can think is that the region has been assigned to a different ship's forces and that once it is mostly cleared the Noctem Regiment forces will also be moving out to make way for the new arrivals to hold the area.

Command prefers that method, minimal overlap lets them segregate responsibility and keeps the Central Command from being overwhelmed by smaller troop movements while focusing on the big picture, the battle on the planetary scale.

[You heard the Fleet. Pack up, and get ready to move. We have to make decent time to get to our new destination.] Max ordered, doing one final system check on Stalwart.

Everything checked out as properly repaired, and Max ran his [Optimization] Skill on the mecha again to bring it all up to peak performance. The process takes a few minutes, so Max took the chance to double-check his System bonuses and see how his progression was coming along.

Keres Max

[Compatibility Determined] Rank A

[Primary Attribute] STR 2.5x modifier

[Secondary Bonuses] DEX 2x, SPD 2x

[STR] 3+110%

[DEX] 3+60%

[SPD] 3+60%

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[Innate Talent] Mind Reading

[Additional Function Unit Optimization]

[Additional Function Multi Point Targeting]

[Additional Function Split Fire]

[Additional Function Perception 1]

Everything was coming along well, and his secondary stats had evened out again, bringing some balance to his physical abilities. His body had also undergone two rounds of physical enhancement thanks to the System's attempts to prepare the vessel for the changes it saw as necessary. That made his bones exceptionally hard to break and increased his senses to well beyond that of his childhood, though neither was deemed worthy of a quantifiable category by Nanobots.

Once the unit was ready, Max set their first waypoint on their journey through the Swamp. The now destroyed Uranium mine. Traveling a known route was faster than making your way through an unknown swamp, so Command couldn't have any complaints about his route. Plus, it was very important to all of them that they returned to the scene of that battle and laid their brothers and sisters in arms to rest.

What Max didn't know was that he wasn't the only Kepler unit currently headed for the mines.

Deep in the swamp, a young Second Lieutenant, freshly graduated from the academy only days before the recruitment stood at the head of a small column of infantry assembled from a half dozen different units. Every one of them came from the survivors of an attack or a downed Lander, and they were all equally lost in the swamp, unable to see the sky through the foliage, and no longer having any working communications equipment.

"Just what we needed. Now the moon is gone too." The blonde-haired officer complained, looking at the red glow of the sky.

"At least we know those are our own Landers. Plus, they will all be traveling from East to West. So if we go that way, it's guaranteed to be North." A stout and swarthy Private answered cheerily.

The Private had a point. They might not know where they are, but they knew there was a large force North of them somewhere. They had heard them on the Command Channel four days ago before a Narsian attack had destroyed their last working radio.

Their luck on this mission had been abysmal. First, they were shot down, then they were just plain shot at, and now they were doing their best not to drown in the sudden holes that appeared below the swamp. For days, it had been mostly flat, but suddenly, there were enormous craters below the surface, deep enough to swallow a trooper whole.

With the gear they were carrying, it was impossible for them to swim, so the holes were a nightmare for their progress. The Sergeants declared that this was most likely the sign of a Mecha battle, with their giant weapons boiling away the water and blasting through the muddy bottom, which meant that they should be near a large group of friendly forces.

At least in theory.

"Sir, we have found something, I think you need to come to check it out." Their scout called out from his position a hundred meters ahead.

Clearly, that something wasn't Narsians, or he wouldn't be shouting in the middle of a swamp, but the Lieutenant moved forward to check it out anyhow.

What they found was a massacre. There were the remains of a section of solid ground, now blasted to rubble, along with the shells of over a hundred mecha and thousands upon thousands of Narsian corpses. In the very center sat a pile of Narsian bodies as tall as a Corvette Class Mecha. By rough estimate, there had to be nearly a hundred of them piled up there, with something on top, laid on a piece of camouflage netting.

"Spread out and check for survivors. Some of these mecha don't look too bad, and it doesn't look like the Narsians ransacked them, so they might not have had the manpower left." The officer sighed, running his fingers through his filthy hair as he tried not to vomit while processing the scale of the destruction here.

The smell of the swamp had long since ceased to process in his brain, but this smell, of burnt flesh, spilled oil and the lingering smell of hot metal and explosives was utterly revolting.

When he was in the Academy, he was told that "War is Hell." But at that moment he decided that the training officers were wrong. War is war and hell is hell, and of the two, war is the more reprehensible. For in Kepler, the army is conscripted. How many of these dead soldiers would have willingly left their home planet, his home planet, if they had a choice?

They were just beginning the search, using their rifles' power cells to activate the locks on the fallen mecha to check for signs of life inside when a rhythmic clanging became audible in the distance. A mecha squad was returning to the scene of the battle.

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