For an hour after he returned to base, Max napped, getting his mind in order for the next set of orders that needed to be given. As his body progressed, he needed less and less sleep to function at full capacity, but this last advancement seemed to be the real tipping point. After only a single hour, he was refreshed and ready to face the day again, confident he could last through much more than just a single shift if needed.

Most of the pilots weren’t at this point yet, and wouldn’t be for years to come unless they had a particular affinity for advancing through battle. Fortunately, the orbital strike had made their lives easy, and the single unit patrols on the perimeter could safely be extended, giving the Pilots four hours off between two-hour shifts on duty. As the area stabilized, that could be extended to a full six hours, but that increased the chances of inattentiveness near the end of a long shift, so Max preferred not to do it if at all possible.

[Special Tactics Unit, gather at Stalwart] Max instructed, bringing his unit jogging over from where they were resting in the base or underground.

Once they were assembled, Max began his orders. [Mecha squads, you will be going on a cleanup mission. One in each cardinal direction except towards the crater. Mecha only for that deployment. I have a separate mission for the Infantry.]

The swamps were too deep and difficult to navigate for any of the infantry vehicles they had brought, so there was no point in them slowing down a hunting patrol of highly agile Mecha. Instead, Max was going to have them take care of the second most important aspect of life on base. Supplies.

[Infantry, keep to your original squads and search the landers that are beyond the perimeter for anything useful. Rations, ammunition, repair devices, raw materials. If it’s there, bring it to us here. I don’t expect them to get cleared out quickly, but there isn’t enough room to move them into the compound and I will not be giving up our resources to the Narsians.]

That was the sort of mission that infantry soldiers could appreciate. Not only were they not intentionally heading for combat, though they might find it anyhow, but they were also tasked with improving their own quality of life.

More of the infantry would be sent out soon, but as the elites, Max wanted his own men to scout the area first, making sure that there weren’t any hidden pockets of resistance. If they did find one, the Special Tactics unit was not only better equipped to fight, but also to run away and survive.

[When you reach the first lander in your zone, have the Materials Printer create Pattern SBM0420. It is a flat-bottomed boat with a crude gravity drive. It won’t hover, but the drive is silent and the disruption to the surrounding water is much lower than a hover boat, with a negligible energy signature.] Nico adds, giving them a way to get around efficiently.

The boats are flimsy things, made of a single sheet of light metal, but they take only a little more material than a single armor penetrating Battle Cannon round and can run off a Plasma Rifle energy clip for an entire day. They’re relatively fast as well and can be loaded with a large amount of gear.

Max had forgotten about those things, regarded more as children’s lake toys than military equipment, but he sees the logic in Nico’s mind in her instructions. The Narsians will likely take them as civilian vessels if they do detect them, and if they make them after leaving the camp, the enemy won’t be alerted to their use until the first round of them arrives back at camp with supplies. Assuming that the mine area is under surveillance by the Narsians of course.

The capabilities of the Narsians have been surprising this mission, so Max isn’t willing to discount that they might have much better technology than usual.

The mecha are the first to leave, followed by the scrounging squads. The crater area isn’t a great threat at the moment, so Max holds off on sending any more mecha squads out, letting them rest until they are needed. Even if they haven’t had time to learn much, being suddenly awoken to go on missions is a favorite tactic of academy instructors everywhere, so they should be able to scramble on short notice.

It would be nice if there was a senior officer on location though. All of the Unit commanders are Majors at the moment, and Max is the senior officer, so he can’t even order one of them to take over until he is redeployed.

The first few minutes of the mission go quite smoothly, as no Narsian would dare to stay so close to an enemy fortification. That doesn’t last long though.

[Contact Squad Alpha. 12 Narsian infantry, all injured.] Ari reports as her mecha wing moves through the swamp.

These are survivors of the orbital strike, soldiers who were on the very outskirts of the blast and managed to escape with their lives. Even injured, they are still fierce combatants, and Max can see that some of the light mecha have taken damage, based on the condition updates that the Mecha send back so Commanders can tell how their troops are doing.

When everything is good, the unit will show solid green where Max has placed the displays on a side screen inside Stalwart. With only thirty-five mecha to keep track of, they are simply four rows, three for the squads, and one with himself and Nico on it. There’s no such luxury for the infantry, but he has worked out a system for that, using separate sections of the touchscreen to indicate casualties and injuries, as well as reported ammunition shortages.

The random numbers might not make any sense to others, but to Max, it is a comprehensive overview of the units under his command.

Soon after the infantry reported that the boats have been created and that they have loaded what they can from the first landers. It seems that the other units left almost everything behind, bringing only their food supplies and what ammunition was in the mecha. The first few landers they came across were among the first to land though, and fully mechanized, so they might have assumed that they would be returning, and they didn’t have any infantry to carry resupply provisions for them.

Even emptying a single lander is too much for the squads. They built six swamp boats each, for the five-man fire teams that would board them, but there is still more valuable material inside than they can carry.

[Return to base once the boats are loaded. We will send a larger-scale mission tomorrow at first light.] Max instructs, checking the amount of sunlight left. There’s plenty for at least one more trip, but building and loading the boats took more time than expected, and he doesn’t want the infantry trapped out in the swamp after dark.

The Narsian army doesn’t need night vision technology, they can see well enough in the dark on their own, like the feral cats that inhabit the slums of Kepler Terminus where Max grew up. Only absolute darkness is enough to stop them.

The infantry boats all make it back in good condition if you disregard minor damage due to the fact that nobody on board a few of them had ever piloted a boat before. Kepler 111 has lakes and even oceans, but for kids who went to the academy at twelve years old and grew up in the suburbs of a megacity, those were things from picture books, not something that they had ever seen themselves.

Max is a bit annoyed at the fact, then he realizes that he too might have the same issue, if not for his Innate Talent of Mind reading. He has never been on a boat before, much less piloted one, at least not in this lifetime.

[Bravo Squad has made contact]

[Alpha Squad has made contact]

[Alpha Squad has made contact]

Ari and her team really did pull the short straw today. They hadn’t gone a full ten minutes on patrol without running into something, mostly injured remnants of the main push on the mine, but Charlie Squad under Vincente in his Mecha, Morning Glory had yet to meet any form of resistance. In fact, they had hardly even seen any signs of enemy movement on that side.

[Bravo Squad requests reinforcements, portal force detected.] Paul calls and Max perks up, checking the data that he relayed from the newest orbital scans since Paul could only detect a mass of heat signatures.

They haven’t made contact yet, but they are picking up hundred of Narsian infantry, and the pattern suggests that they have made a base of their own in the swamp, setting up a defensive perimeter and multiple improvised heavy weapons bunkers.

[Second Shift to your Mecha. Enemy force detected for elimination.]