As the Narsians begin their charge, the Kepler Mecha launch a furious salvo back at them. Blue Kepler Plasma and White Ion charges meet Purple Narsian Plasma shots in midair, causing spectacular explosions, while the rounds that barely miss each other cause the surrounding atmosphere to crackle with localized lightning as the opposing charges attempt to equalize in the fraction of a second where they are in close range to each other.

Most of the mecha are only doing the most basic job of aiming, treating the mass of attackers like a solid wall that they simply need to put rounds into and break down before it reaches them.

It might not be elegant, or even particularly efficient, but at first, it is doing the job well enough. The volume of fire is thinning the enemy ranks much faster than the return fire is thinning their own.

[Infantry positions, full attack.] Max orders, and a flurry of light weapons fire, as well as Plasma Cannon fire, joins the Kepler attack, bringing roars of annoyance from the Narsians.

Up to this point, they hadn’t realized that there was a large infantry force at the mine and thought that they only needed to clear this circle of Mecha and attack them from behind to win. That strategy will not work if they get shot in the back when they try to circle the Mecha, and the infantry is set up a hundred meters back of the Mecha. Too far to include them in the rush.

Then the first of the infantry manned artillery, the mortar tubes, joins in the fight. They aren’t a large enough charge to directly breach most Narsian armor, but the impact force is high, and the advance grinds to a crawl as the giants are thrown from their feet while taking minor injuries from the Mortars.

But more importantly, the fire of the Kepler Mecha is not slowing down, they are giving everything they have to this wave. The Narsians know that if they weather it, the Kepler Pilots will be forced to move half their force back to the resupply stations, and either withdraw their lines or engage in some sort of stalling tactic to prevent being overrun.

[Commander, Light Mecha at twenty-five percent ammunition.] Nico informs him, taking up the duty of a supply officer for the attack.

[Odd numbers fall back to the supply points. Infantry, move the Crusader Class munitions forward.]

This is Max’s plan to weather the battle. The Light Mecha use easily swappable magazines for their weapons, so they only need to grab a handful to fill their supply. The Crusaders take longer to equip, and require assistance, so the Light Mecha will bring supplies for a Crusader back with them, and reload their battle buddy before rejoining the fight.

[The advance is fully stalled now, Commander.] Vincente reports from the far side of the encirclement.

The giants have been forced to hide in the swamp, using trees and islands for cover. They are now very close to the Mecha lines but waiting for the next wave to arrive before they advance again. Max is hoping that will give him enough time to get everyone reloaded and back at full capacity, or as close to it as possible with the damages they have taken.

[Commander, Narsian reinforcements have split. They are going for a single-point push.] Paul informs him, sending a copy of his sensor data through to the unit.

The mecha unit on top of the hill has been a nightmare for the Narsians, and the Crusaders have been using the naturally rocky terrain as a shield, knowing that plasma weapons have lousy penetration. The rocks around them have been repeatedly melted into a puddle of lava, slowly flowing down the hill, but now the plasma rounds are only hitting the liquid surface and doing no measurable additional damage.

Max suspects that is their target, gaining them the high ground for their heavy weapons, while the close combat troops push out into the Kepler force and kill as many as possible.

Mecha are a hard matchup for the giants, due to the ranged firepower, but in close, they are no match and fall as easily as any other human.

[Commander, enemy signal intercept. I have found out how they keep breaking our signal encryption.] Nico announces and a stream of technical jargon appears on Max’s secondary screens.

[In layman’s terms, Tarith. What do we need to do?]

[I have taken care of everything we can do for the moment, but it isn’t much. There is a traitor on the planet that is doing the work for them, using the authority of the local government to tamper with the satellite system. The Narsians were even supplied with the technology to jam and fool our radar by someone on this planet. But what I have managed so far is to disable their planetary command codes for our sector. We should have reliable satellite signals back in ten seconds, during the next sweep.] Nico informed him in a weary voice.

The change was immediately noticed by the ships in orbit. What Nico did to bring the satellites back under control was deliberately fail a brute force attack, resetting all the satellites in their zone to default settings as per their safety protocols and locking everyone out for one hour.

With the change in one sector of satellites, the errors being reported by the others were glaringly obvious, and the fleet changed strategies. No longer were they treating the planet as friendly, instead all on-planet communications were treated as hostile unless they came attached to a set of double verified command codes assigned to a unit dropped by the fleet. They then sent a handful of attack satellites out to eliminate the planet’s existing satellite network, and the single small commercial space station was commandeered in the name of the military, with the staff on board confined to quarters pending investigation.

The move would normally be seen as rather extreme, as the government facilities designated hostile would become military targets and anyone in them would be treated as a traitor, leading to a large number of human deaths. But it was the only way to guarantee that the species wasn’t being betrayed by some nihilist cult or foreign power intent on their annihilation.

Of course, the civilians and anyone in shelters were still a priority rescue target, but anyone attempting to govern or wield power on the planet that wasn’t from the Kepler Fleet would be wiped out.

In the bunkers below the planetary capital, none of this was known though, and the city defense force was going berserk trying to understand what was going on. First, the satellites went crazy, then when they got reports of an enormous Narsian force moving on the swamps for no apparent reason, the codes didn’t match up and the message couldn’t be relayed. Now the entire satellite network is going offline, and they still can’t communicate with the fleet.

They know the Abraham Kepler is in orbit, in fact, they have a Heavy Mecha unit here, from a Lander that barely survived the misdirected drop and somehow remained on target to assist them. But nobody can get through whatever jamming signal is being sent.

Nico did have a bit of luck gathering enemy force strength data before the local satellite network was destroyed though. It wasn’t good news, but she did learn that they had thousands more giants incoming than they thought, and not much time to prepare.

“Dammit woman, why can’t you ever send me good news?” Max muttered as he saw the new data come up in her message. They weren’t prepared to take that kind of punishment at this location. It’s not like the bridge, where they had an entire ruined city to fortify inside. Here they’ve got a long hill and a couple of Landers in the middle of a clearing in the swamp.

[Someone down below, find out what is so damned special about this mine.] Max orders as he tries to come up with a plan for defense.

Stand here and take it doesn’t sound like much fun, but abandoning their mission entirely might land them a court martial. So he needs something in the middle, that will slow the enemy, while still protecting the mine.

Max sends the outline of the situation to the other officers in the Special Tactics group first, hoping they can come up with something that doesn’t involve a heroic last stand for the nation. They all have different specialties, so there is a chance that they might come up with something that will work.

[We brought a collection of Blight Bombs, just in case. I can have the landers create modified booster shells to complement them. When the blight bombs hit water tainted by the boosters they will create a huge cloud of poisonous gas.] Paul suggests.

[No good. The Narsians seem to have gone high-tech for this attack, and they’re almost all using environmental suits.] Vincente disagrees.

[Though I wish I knew where they got all that tech from. Must have been the last planet they took.] The usually taciturn pilot complains, sending another round into a copse of trees where his sensors detected movement.

[I don’t suppose we can get another orbital strike?] Ari asks hopefully, looking over the enormous crater from the last one.

That might be an awful lot to ask for out here in the middle of nowhere.

The conversation is interrupted by the voice of an infantry officer who has been exploring the mine data.

[Sir, I believe we have found the reason for the attack. This mine isn’t just a mine. It is a dumping ground for the planet’s highly enriched fissile material. There are thousands of years worth of the leftovers from nuclear experiments buried at the bottom of these shafts.]

That means highly valuable stable isotopes and the possibility of crystallization. If the Narsians get their hands on this, with their expertise in the field of nuclear power, they could give themselves nearly unlimited firepower. The contents of this mine would be enough for them to shoot down Kepler transport ships the moment they reached orbit.