"They have eleven Behemoth-class battlecruisers and twenty-six Kraken-class destroyers. Our fleet does not hold the advantage."
"Transmit my order to the entire fleet: execute exactly as planned—no changes."
"Grant Vice Admiral Warfield full operational control and carry out the prearranged operations plan," Augustus said. "Second Fleet, with Iron Justice as flagship, is not to get bogged down. Make short-range warp jumps to the S-315, S-314, and S-708 star systems, luring the enemy to split and pursue."
"After First Fleet completes its jump, Second Fleet is to jump from S-489 to the Sara system and encircle Alpha Squadron's fleet loitering there."
"Divide and annihilate them—defeat them in detail." Augustus said.
"Sir, Alpha Squadron's Marines are commencing their landing." The face of a Revolutionary Army lieutenant flashed onto the main screen—an officer responsible for overseeing the control center within Command.
"Our radar has detected Alpha Squadron landing forces over the Skull Plains and Red Mesa. Our fighters are taking off."
At that moment, Augustus's staff officers and military advisers hurried in.
"Skull Plains and Red Mesa lie to our north and east, less than 160 km from the capital district. If they land there, the troops assaulting the capital will be caught between the defending forces and Alpha Squadron's reinforcements."
"Whose brigade is closest to the enemy?" Augustus called out.
"Mira Han and Tychus Findlay's two brigades," a staff officer answered. "Including other supporting units, a total of 11 000 soldiers."
"Order Tychus Findlay to have one mobile infantry brigade interdict Alpha Squadron's relief force and withdraw at the fifth minute after contact—order Mira Han and the remaining units to pull out of the capital district and fall back south—back to the Command Center," Augustus said.
From the map before Augustus, Fort Martin lay directly beneath the capital district. Between them stretched a wasteland of highlands, hills, and ravines strewn with jagged rocks—a region of complex terrain especially suited to mountain troops.
This place was called the Wasteland Canyon, extending more than 960 km in depth. The first 320 km formed an open valley, but the deeper it went, the narrower it became—viewed from the air, it resembled the cross-section of a bottleneck.
"Have the other units reached their assigned positions?" Augustus asked.
"Raynor and Gustav's forces have arrived in the Wasteland Valley. Colonel Hank's Firebats have already entered the bottleneck zone of Wasteland Canyon. To the west of the capital district, Lundstein's 1st Division has begun its general assault on the Governor's Palace. They are expected to breach the frontal defenses within half an hour and drive the Governor's forces northward."
Immediately after, photos taken by reconnaissance drones and oral reports from frontline commanders began streaming back to the Command Center for two hours straight.
February 18, 2490, 23:00 local time. Two divisions of Alpha Squadron's Marines, two armored brigades, one Drakken railgun artillery brigade for combat support, and one service support brigade—totaling 36 000 Confederacy soldiers—were delivered to Mar Sara's southern hemisphere by transports and APOD-33 shuttlecraft in three batches.
The Confederacy forces took less than two hours to land on the crimson Gobi and desert at Mar Sara's low latitudes. Four air wings—around 300 Wraith fighters—provided fire support for the landing troops, while the science vessel Amerigo descended below the planet's thin atmosphere.
If the intelligence was accurate, Alpha Squadron's commander, Colonel Edmund Duke, was acting as overall commander of this campaign, showing remarkable audacity by personally appearing at the front to lead the Confederacy forces in crushing the rebels.
The Confederacy army advanced in three columns toward the capital district from the Skull Plains, Red Mesa, and Ridge Plains. Among them, Tychus Findlay's mobile forces would meet two of those columns head-on—roughly 20 000 Alpha Squadron troops.
...
At this point, it was already 16:00 on February 19, seventeen hours since Alpha Squadron had landed on Mar Sara.
Augustus was standing at the very center of the Fort Martin command center, keeping a close watch on the Revolutionary Army's communications network across all levels of command. Before him floated a holographic projection screen of blue-green lines, displaying a constantly shifting operations map.
Behind Augustus, control consoles lined the walls and observation windows. A flood of information was streaming into the command center via wireless communications. These came from the capital district battlefield, from the forces of Raynor, Tychus, and Mira Han, as well as from Revolutionary Army outposts, mining zones, and dozens of other regions and departments. All of it was eventually reclassified, filtered, and compiled, then transmitted to the main console where Augustus stood.
Standing before the consoles were Revolutionary Army operators and staff officers in dark gray, high-collared uniforms. They all wore flat-topped caps with the Revolutionary Army's cap badge; their uniforms bore golden wheat stalks, a golden wolf's head, and the Pan-Terran Party's emblem. To serve in the staff corps, an officer first had to be upright in conduct and faultlessly fulfill his duties; second, he had to be a member of the Pan-Terran Party and pass a psionic evaluation.
The holographic operations map in front of Augustus was constantly shifting along the time axis. Symbols representing friendly and enemy forces sometimes moved, sometimes remained still. These figures came from the last reports two hours earlier—neither accurate nor timely. Alpha Squadron's main force could very well have moved hundreds of kilometers overnight using vehicles, while Augustus's command center remained completely in the dark.
Even so, for Augustus, this operations map still gave a clear and intuitive reflection of the battlefield situation.
Before the landing, Alpha Squadron's fleet had attacked the Revolutionary Army's First Fleet in synchronous orbit over Mar Sara. After a brief but fierce exchange of fire, six Revolutionary battlecruisers executed short jumps to the nearest three star systems.
After weighing his options, Duke ordered his fleet to pursue based on the detected jump signals. The fleet split into four elements, leaving in Mar Sara's orbit only Alpha Squadron's flagship and three additional Behemoth-class battlecruisers. Two hours later, these four ships encountered eight battlecruisers from the Revolutionary Army's Second Fleet, which had jumped in from other systems. The two sides immediately clashed in synchronous orbit.
On the planet's surface, the first forces to engage were the air units. From the three airbases in the capital district, Fort Martin, and the Hinterland Region, the Revolutionary Army had dispatched over 2,000 Avenger sorties, clashing with Alpha Squadron's four air wings across multiple battlefields. Because the Revolutionary Army's air force held the advantage, the Confederacy could not freely use transports to deploy forces across Mar Sara, and had no choice but to rely on rail and road hubs to move ground troops.
Two divisions, one armored brigade, and one artillery brigade of Alpha Squadron landed on the Skull Plains and Red Mesa north of the capital district. This force, numbering over 20,000 and equipped with power armor and Gauss rifles, advanced 64 kilometers southward before encountering Tychus Findlay's four mobile battalions.
As Colonel Duke had expected, the poorly equipped and weak "rabble" collapsed at the first touch. Tychus fired a few shots before running, tossing a pile of supply crates to Alpha Squadron's vanguard and boarding an armored personnel carrier he had gotten from the Mar Sara Planetary Defense Force, skirting around the capital district to retreat south toward the Desolate Gorge.
Smug with triumph, Colonel Duke immediately ordered two of Alpha Squadron's marine brigades to pursue Tychus's forces, while he himself led the remaining six brigades straight to support the capital district, arriving two hours later.
But by then, Augustus had already ordered the First Division under Lundstein, west of the capital district, to launch a general offensive. In only half an hour, Lundstein had driven the Mar Sara governor and nearly 30,000 routed Planetary Defense Force troops out of the capital district, forcing them into a northward retreat.
This led to Alpha Squadron's two forward marine battalions—rushing to relieve the capital district—colliding head-on in the night with the disorganized Planetary Defense Force and militias in rout.
The result was catastrophic. This force, cobbled together from Planetary Defense Force units, civil defense troops, and a small number of marines from all over Mar Sara, came from dozens of different regions. They had dozens of commanders with equal rank and authority, none belonging to the same chain of command.
Because the Mar Sara governor, the supreme commander, had failed to carry out his duty of restraining the troops during the retreat, this panicked and leaderless rabble plunged straight into Alpha Squadron's marching marines and armored columns.
Chaos erupted. Tens of thousands of panicked Mar Sara troops and Alpha Squadron soldiers became mixed together. Shouts rang everywhere, the searchlights of powered armor flickered wildly. When one untrained militiaman accidentally discharged his weapon, the soldiers began firing at each other.
Colonel Duke was forced to order his men to clear out the governor's deserters. After leaving behind over 1,000 corpses and several times as many wounded, the governor's forces once again broke apart, fleeing in all directions.
This disgraceful chaos dragged on through the entire night. By the time Alpha Squadron reached the governor's mansion in the capital district—now reduced to ruins—daylight had already broken. When the Revolutionary Army retreated, they had clearly still possessed ample time and capacity to remove their heavy artillery and supplies, not leaving behind even a single severely wounded man or fallen warrior.
This morning, Augustus's monitoring department intercepted Colonel Duke's report, in which he declared that he had crushed the rebels after retaking the capital district. That report would need at least two weeks to be relayed through the numerous interstellar communication relays, have its signal amplified, and finally be transmitted to the Terran Confederacy Navy Headquarters on Tarsonis.
In his report, Duke proudly named this campaign the "Duke Offensive," bluntly stating that the rebels were no match.
With this, Augustus finally confirmed that it was indeed Edmund Duke personally leading Alpha Squadron's landing on Mar Sara. It fit perfectly with his usual style of warfare—along with the fact that Augustus had clearly enraged him, driving him to a desperate eagerness to wipe away his earlier humiliation.
Alpha Squadron's motto was always: strike first, leave first. They were known for launching assaults ahead of their allies, tearing open enemy lines like a heavy hammer, then withdrawing once the job was done.
After reclaiming the capital district, Duke's Alpha Squadron didn't pause to rest but pressed southward, pursuing the retreating forces of Tychus Findlay. In just six hours, they crossed the capital district, the state of Lorenza, and the Sandworm Wastes—nearly 10 million square miles of terrain. On Augustus's operations map, Alpha Squadron's route appeared as an almost perfectly straight line.
Meanwhile, over 60,000 troops under Augustus—Raynor's forces, Harnack's forces, Mira's forces, and the returning Lundstein Division—were converging on that line from multiple directions. A great encirclement was rapidly taking shape.
If neither Augustus nor his staff and military advisers were mistaken, Duke's target was the Fort Martin command center itself. Alpha Squadron's fleet in synchronous orbit above Mar Sara could easily identify this vast military installation. It was the obvious primary strike target—the heart of the Revolutionary Army's command system.
At that moment, Revolutionary Army transports were taking off from Fort Martin's airfield. Augustus received a report that Tychus's forces had already escaped into the Desolate Gorge. The two Confederate marine brigades Duke had sent in pursuit were close behind, and the main body Duke was leading from the capital district was also rapidly approaching.
At Alpha Squadron's marching speed, they would need less than an hour to reach the final barrier before Fort Martin—the rugged terrain of the Desolate Gorge.
In Augustus's eyes, Duke was nothing more than a fly about to fall into a spider's web.
---
I will post some extra Chapters in Patreon, you can check it out. >> patreon.com/TitoVillar
---