Candlelight Ridge
Liu Weijia
Callie didn't think she'd like the twilight on Videbus, because the planet's light at dusk was too close to bright red. Even if the looming war hadn't been, this red color was very reminiscent of blood, blood from the bodies of human ...... or Zerg warriors. Kairi took it as an ominous sign, as if the stars of this galaxy were warning her of the end that was sure to come.
But for some reason, at dusk, Kerri couldn't help but step out of her mausoleum-like underground command post of an ancient emperor and walk in the cool evening air, making herself a part of this blood-stained world. It had been that way every day since she had led her troops on the 397K Heights.
Major Kerri was dressed in a short-sleeved camouflage uniform, her long blonde hair tied casually around her shoulders by a red ribbon. Her armed belt and self-defense pistol had been left at her command post; she didn't want anything to get in the way of a comfortable walk. Looking at her own silhouette, which was being lengthened by the setting sun, Kaylee was a little surprised to realize that the blood and fire baptized figure was still shapely. She stopped and stared at the shadow, not taking a step away until the shadow of her teenage years was vaguely silhouetted.
There were busy men and machines all around Kairi, now in possession of the largest force she had commanded since her military days. At the moment this force filled the air, ground and underground of 397K Heights. Kerri wandered casually through her troops, oblivious to the men who broke off the task at hand to salute her hastily. The men could not see any expression in the black sunglasses on her face and were left to their own imaginations. Her eyes, hidden behind the lenses, were actually mesmerized. The SCV engineers building airfields and bunkers, the marines wearing armor and heavy machine guns, were not in her line of sight at the moment. Her vision traveled through time and space to see an old, silent, mundane town. It was as if Kerri was strolling down one of the town's highways, basking in the sunset.
Hometown ...... How many years had it been since the word had come to mind? It had been a long, long time since she had dreamed of this place. She couldn't even remember exactly how many years she had been away from Earth. Over the years, she had moved around dozens of planets in constant battle, and had no time to look back to the past, but at this moment on Videobus, she triggered the ghostly feeling of nostalgia. Yes, it was a very Earth-like environment, and it was indeed worth the federal government's efforts to devote a large number of troops to a bloody battle with the Zerg over it, but Kylie didn't believe she'd be moved by it. In these days, when the stars were red with blood, the hearts of those who could carry the Major's epaulettes on their shoulders had long since become as hard as that insignia.
Though her heart was as cold as a rock, Kerri's chest still seethed with compassion as she looked around at the old and new recruits hustling throughout the Highlands. Through her sunglasses, all the people in her eyes were surrounded by darkness, as if what she was seeing at the moment was the scene of the near future, when these people ...... were in hell.
Pity to pity, for the bleak future Kairi can not do anything, the fate of the bait has never been so. Remembering her mission, she knew as soon as she saw the stiff smile on the combat officer's face that what was about to befall her was anything but good luck.
"Major Kerri, I think you realize the dire situation we're facing right now." The staff sergeant's voice was quite pleasant, and he pronounced the words correctly, but Kaylee was distracted. No one in command criticized Kerry for her intemperate behavior with the cigarette in her mouth and the sunglasses in her nose. A real general who has been in the army before knows that he should tolerate certain behavior from his men. These experienced and valuable officers have been to death many times and have a disdain for death and life, so how can they still take military rules and regulations seriously?
"The unknown area is now expanding, though not at a rapid rate yet, but the Tethyr Mountains are all but out of our control." Anyone in the military knew that the so-called Unknown Area actually referred to the area that was already under the control of the Zerg. "All satellite detection devices attempting to fly over it have been crashed by suicide bats, and the reconnaissance units sent out have suffered heavy losses with very little information gained."
Kairi's heart clenched for a moment, thinking that her unit would unfortunately be sent on an unlucky reconnaissance mission, but it didn't take long for her to realize that she had been overly optimistic.
"Major, you realize that we are on the strategic flank of the Federation, and that General Headquarters will not be allocating very large numbers of troops to support us. In fact it is extremely generous of them to be willing to move the elite 323rd Air Assault Division and the 9th Marine Division here, bearing in mind that the dueling dynamics of the Ramada system are becoming more and more apparent." As the staff officer narrated, the laser holographic projection in the center of the command displayed a graphic animated presentation, casting grotesque shadows and light on the command's murky air.
This strategic posture was a known fact, ...... Kerri thought to herself, so she did not remind the gifted announcer of another known fact: that precisely because Videbus was on the strategic flank of the Federation, its loss could potentially put the main forces of the Ramada system at a disadvantage, and that it was by no means an insignificant stone. It is by no means an insignificant stone, and the battle that will take place here will most likely be the prelude to the Armageddon battle in the Ramada system. Moreover, it is a rare Earth-like planet with a very favorable environment. Both sides are bound to have a vicious battle here.
"I don't think there's any need to say more about the Zerg's rate of expansion, if we don't take down the Zerg forces on this planet as soon as possible, it won't be long before Videbus will no longer belong to us ......But on hand, apart from the two regular divisions that HQ has deployed, we only have a few small independent combat units and local garrison troops, the maneuverable force is too small. As for the situation of the Zerg forces, we don't know much, but there are indications that they don't want to let go of Vedebus Star, and the amount of troops they have invested clearly exceeds the troops we have here, so the situation is hard to be optimistic ...... Therefore, we mustn't carry out a large-scale strike easily, and we must use strategy to make up for the lack of troop strength. " At this point the staff officer paused as if to allow Kairi time to enjoy the pleasures of wisdom.
Now Kairi gazed at her clone minions. With just these dull-witted men with only simple stress response abilities, perhaps God would have a hard time leading them to a good victory.
In the distance, behind a line of metal bunkers, a few Titan mech giants strutted back and forth, the sunlight bouncing off of them and into the air. In front of the defense line, the flexible and swift vulture chariot is laying powerful intelligent mines ......397K highland seems to have become an impregnable steel fortress. However, it was still difficult to be optimistic in Kylie s mind. The ones operating these imposing technological weapons were still clone warriors - B-class clone warriors, who were somewhat smarter than robots but still not comparable to natural human warriors, and could not be expected to utilize them in closely coordinated, integrated, three-dimensional offensive operations. Once they were called upon to conduct complex offensive operations, these simple-minded guys were going to be in disarray. Kairi only hoped that these advanced clone fighters' ability to fight defensively was as godlike as the staff officer had bragged.
A tower of anti-aircraft missiles was slowly being assembled by the mechanical engineers; two siege tanks, freshly unloaded from their transporters, were bracing themselves to drive huge steel spikes into the ground, raising their bowl-mouth cannons to threaten the distance. None of the technological weapons issued to the clone fighters were state-of-the-art, and a good portion of them were even old and battle-damaged repairs that had been replaced by other units, which inevitably discounted their effectiveness to a greater or lesser degree. Even more intolerable is the fact that a considerable number of technical weapons are not real, and like many of the buildings on the upper levels of the mountain ranges, they are only the fruits of the labor of confused enemy forces. These "scarecrows" had caused Major Kelly to lose her temper, but she knew in her heart of hearts that bait was just bait after all, and there was no reason to prepare a real meal for the prey.
The fighters maneuvered their equipment tirelessly. The terrestrial infantrymen with nothing better to do refused to sit idle either, patrolling back and forth with their rifles alert. These man-made warriors were extremely dutiful, the same could not be said for the natural human warriors. The naturals would be lazy and show cowardice in battle, but their faces were varied: some were happy, some were sad; whereas the faces of these warriors were uniform. One thing was the same on both sides, though, and that was that they would all become corpses, sooner or later.
Darkness grew gradually out of the earth of Videbus, the air emanating black particles as if by a night god, and the silent mountains in the distance were the first to be engulfed in a foggy twilight. It was there that countless Zerg demons and devils lurked. It was clear to Kairi that there were monsters leaping there every minute, wanting to come over and try to see if they could tear her and her troops all to pieces.
Kicking a small stone casually away with her right foot, Kairi turned toward the command post to escape the darkness that was about to overwhelm everything. She didn't take the original path, and so she saw the bunker. Outside the bunker, Paxton was running his long fingers over an electronic map, explaining the terrain and mission notes to his men. The titanium star-shaped amulet swung lazily around his neck. The final sunset over Videbus gave the amulet a dazzling glow.
Kelly stopped to watch Paxton, the look in the other man's eyes when he first saw her still fresh in her mind. At the time, the bold, spirited, handsome young man did a double take and stared at himself for a few moments, the temperature of his gaze rising. Within seconds, Callie thought she had seen one aspect of the man's personality, and she could even imagine how this amorous man, dressed in stylish frocks and packing his red hair like a flame, had charmed the silly nurses on the medical team at the base ball ...... Typically speaking, Ghost Warriors have a rather polarizing set of personality traits. Some of them have been warped by the harsh training and bloody killings, and since then, they are gloomy and cold and don't believe that there is any joy in life, and regard themselves as dead people. The other part of the opposite, because of the stealth skills, often to the enemy with a large kill and their own unharmed, they are too complacent, see war as a romantic game, and then produce their own such as the illusion of knights, contempt for the enemy and their own people in the other soldiers, and think that the world's women do not not like their own. It seems that Paxton belongs to the latter type of Ghost Warrior.
"Hey, Major!" Paxton's face broke into a grin when he saw Kelly standing silently to the side, "The men are ready to go into the mountains first thing in the morning to lurk." In the twilight he was all powerful and dashing in his dazzlingly fitted special stealth combat suit, making him look truly like a knight.
"Well ......," Kylie said with a jerk of her chin at the nervous looking Ghost Warriors around Paxton, "they've all seen the world, haven't they?" The Ghost Warriors were all naturals, as the breed had to operate independently behind enemy lines for long periods of time, requiring a high degree of autonomy.
"They don't send rookies up there to lead ...... for Paxton," Paxton said rather smugly, clearly much more relaxed than his crew, "They've all been to war, and eaten rations for the field army ......"
It's possible ......Kelly's sharp gaze swept over the blanched young men, whose so-called time in battle might have been nothing more than a stroll across the charred earth to the already unprotected enemy The building put a few shots ...... Kelly sighed in his heart, playing where to get this batch of cowards? Recently, the above is always transported to her batches of small, unhelpful people ...... looking at these wild and wilful or think they have seen through the red dust to what all scoffed at the child rashly gave his life, Kerry can not return to heaven. The war has never been more brutal, the war zone whole regiments and divisions have been wiped out from time to time, experienced officers and soldiers are becoming increasingly rare, newcomers have been rare to meet a guide to guide them to recognize the war to understand the war to adapt to the war so that they can survive the teacher. In Kerry's experience, those who have a radical or romanticized view of war will not end up well. The warriors should be made to understand this, but time is running out, and there is little hope of making them realize the truth in just a few words, so it's better to let them learn on the battlefield by themselves. War was the harshest and most effective teacher, it could brand the truth on a person at once, paying no attention to whether or not the other person could handle it. "Very well, it seems you should all know what to do and what to look out for ...... Good luck lads." Callie flashed them a rare smile, she hoped the sunglasses would make her smile look confident.
"Major, I like to see you smile, you have a nice smile." Paxton quipped flippantly, "If I complete my mission successfully, I'd like a small reward ......"
"Say, what can I get you?" Kerri's smile remained.
"A kiss." Paxton said naturally.
Kerri couldn't help but let out a laugh. She reached out with her right hand and gently patted Paxton's face, "Little boy ...... you promise to get me back alive before you do."
"That's without a doubt. I just hope I get this reward I deserve when the time comes." Paxton said as he looked into Kaylee's eyes.
"Well, if you want this so bad, you'll get it. It's nothing ......" Kerri waved them off, "Well, I should be getting back ...... Have a good one, but hopefully I'll see you guys again." She said and turned to leave. She noticed the look of disappointment in Paxton's eyes. I thought you were smart ...... Kelly thought to herself, you don't have to be disappointed at all, in this day and age it's just so simple and so easy to get a kiss or more from a woman. Everyone's life is precarious and no one has time for the kind of chasing and ducking games they used to play ...... But it's impossible to get a commitment because no one can commit to anything nowadays.
This little bit of faint candlelight in the long night,
is the angels guiding your song.
In the underground command post, Kerri's adjutant, Francis, was as busy as ever. Noticing the Major's return, Francis stopped what he was doing and solemnly reported, "Major, the command network has been built, you can smoothly command every combat unit and even every soldier." Francis was thin and honest looking, and his demeanor was always alert and composed.
Kelly nodded in satisfaction. Francis seldom disappointed her upset, this advanced electronic bionic human is very efficient, calm and meticulous, even the most insignificant trivial matters can be handled in a well-organized manner, is a rare good assistant to the commander. Their artificial brains have both the precise computational memory of a computer and the fuzzy judgment of a human brain, ensuring that they can get the job done. Unfortunately, they were not human after all, and their artificial brains could not be compared to the human brain on an overall level, so they could only act as assistants, and could neither independently command a mission nor integrate into human life.
Kairi walked over to her seat and sat down, her brows not frowning slightly as the many displays in front of her were like battlefields waiting to be reviewed. Reviewing the defense system of the highlands, looking for possible places of negligence, adjusting the defense deployment, checking the connection with the command. Her nimble fingers traced through the command menu, her consciousness quickly focusing in on the details of the tactical arrangement.
It was late in the night, and Kerri ordered all lighting to be activated. Soon, the entire high ground became illuminated, shining brightly in the darkness of the land. This violation of battle orders had its own reasoning, the scent of the bait had to be as strong as possible.
Kairi was so tired that she could hardly compete with the ever energetic clone warriors. "Francis, it's time for me to rest. Notify all posts to be on heightened alert."
Francis nodded in agreement.
"Francis, won't you rest for a while?" Even for an electronic bionic, working for more than 70 hours straight was worrisome.
"Thanks, Major, I'm all good." Francis replied without looking up, continuing to immerse himself in the transactional work at hand.
Kairi slumped into the closet-like crib in the lounge area, wondering how many more days of restful sleep she would get? In her sleep, Kerri had rare dreams of her parents - though they were only two blurry figures - and she dreamed of the razed remains of the colonial village, and heard her own cries ......
Then she dreamed of the town that had inhabited Earth for more than a decade. The town of more than ten years, the sun was like blood, the song was loud, and a group of young professional soldiers went into the starry sky without any hesitation. Everywhere were couples holding hands and looking at each other with tears in their eyes, a blonde girl cried especially pitifully, but her lover was not moved. The girl held the boy's hand tightly and said, "If you really loved me, you wouldn't have left. The boy, however, jerked his hand back forcefully and responded, No, I love you, but I have to go, it's my duty!
Kairi woke up suddenly, her face wet with sweat or tears, how could she have dreamed of Kastor? Shaktar had been one of the main bases of the Zerg, were the bones of Kastor and his comrades who had died in battle there safe today?
Dreaming about this is never a good omen; the memories will cause the soldiers to stay in their lives, which will inevitably lower their chances of survival. It was important to know that the first to strike was the strongest, and on the battlefield the only way to get through it was to be determined to kill the enemy, and to be determined to stay alive was to be sure to be doomed. Callie wiped her face and walked out of the rest area. Francis reported that Paxton had left with his team about an hour ago.
Seeming to hear the sound of increased blood flow, Kerri's heart raced, as it had when Carstairs left ...... How could she have been so attached to that frivolous playboy? This anomaly may be the nerve tension on the eve of the outbreak of the Great War, she has been war worn out lust, it is unlikely that she will be moved to that boy. Kerri looked at the time, it was time to go out on patrol again.
The mountains were killing in the morning light, and just over there, Paxton was walking the edge of the blade with his men. Will they return safely? A fleet of Ghost fighters, shaped like falcons, whizzed over Kylie's head and headed high into the sky, seeming to pierce the atmosphere. They would be tasked with contesting airspace and picking up the slack in the next operation.
Continuing to adjust her deployment and wait for intel from Paxton, the rest of the day was even a little boring for Kairi. It was almost dinner time when the first batch of intel finally came back. Kerri hurriedly chewed a few mouthfuls of military cookies before devoting herself to analyzing the intelligence, her expression becoming increasingly grave.
The situation was as bad as Command had said, the Texian Mountains had been turned into a nest of Zergs: hatchery centers littered the valleys and crags; lightning-fast raptors swarmed over the ridges and steep slopes; suicide bats danced over the mountains, threatening any alien craft in the starry skies; and snakes, which killed the enemy by spraying corrosive fluids, stood in groups at the entrances and exits of the valleys, emitting a vicious hiss from time to time. The Stinging Snakes, which killed their enemies by spraying corrosive liquid, guarded the entrances and exits of the valleys, emitting vicious, hoarse roars. There are no native Vaderbusians in the picture, as is the case with the Zerg, parasites whose innate greed and brutality drives them to devour every living thing in the universe, ingesting each other's DNA and using it to create efficient killers to serve their own ambitions. They have no restraint, and their goal is to bring all the creatures of the universe under their control.
The situation was dire, and there was only one viable option now - and that was to attack! And it must be done quickly. If the Zerg here are allowed to grow, it is feared that the only way to destroy them would be to use thousands of super-nukes, but that would be tantamount to wiping Videbus off the star map.
Command immediately approved Kerri's request for a harassment attack.
A quarter of an hour later four heavy siege tanks took off in two transports and swooped down on Kerri's chosen target in the night. The Zerg creatures in the target area hadn't yet noticed the Ghost Warriors watching them from stealth; the Zerg were expanding too fast and their defenses were too porous for the noisy transporters to attract the Zerg's attention, so the four Siege Tanks took advantage of the situation to drop down and take over a cliff near the incubation center.
Without hesitation, the siege tanks unfolded their seat plates and mounted their main guns, and with a thunderbolt, hurled large fireballs at the Zerg worker bees, who were buried in the crystal ore collection. A group of worker bees were suddenly reduced to flesh and blood in the sound of fire from the exploding shells.
The worker bees immediately scattered and fled, quickly reaching safety and burrowing underground. At the same time, more than ten raptors that had been hiding underground and hadn't been discovered by the ghost warriors leapt out of the ground and rushed at high speed towards where the tanks were.
Kairi's heart sank, the brain worm that commanded the Zerg creatures fighting here was a fighter, would her plan succeed in luring it in?
The furious raptors, fueled by high levels of adrenaline, made a mad dash for the tank. But there was nothing they could do when they got to the bottom of the cliff, which was so steep that even the most agile of the raptors could do nothing but throw their heads back and hiss angrily, waving their blades and feet and sending sparks and debris flying through the rock.
Kelly sneered and ordered the tanks to focus their fire on destroying the incubation center as soon as possible. The four tanks immediately locked onto their targets and started firing sharply. The incubation center exploded into a shower of blood and debris.
Kairi ordered the tanks to retreat and ordered the group of Phantom fighters cruising in near-Earth orbit to activate their cloaking devices to meet the transports as they retreated.
As Kerri expected, the Ghost fighters intercepted the suicide bats swarming after the transport. A volley of powerful combat missiles immediately blew up the first batch of suicide bats in the air, sending a shower of blood and flesh crashing down.
The first round saw Kairi take the lead, scoring points for the first time. But Kairi couldn't smile; this was a small victory in the face of the Zerg's immense reproductive capacity, and now she had to take immediate steps to guard against Zerg retaliation.
The Brain Bug is really experienced, it immediately divided the large number of Stingers into many small teams, each team is assigned a Lord, to patrol the mountains in a net search. The lord is the nemesis of all stealthy soldiers, this huge octopus-shaped creature suspended in the air has strong mental ability, and can sense the presence of the ghost warriors from a long distance.
Kairi instructed Francis to help all the Ghost Warriors reach information ****healthy coordination of their actions, while reporting to Command for permission to activate the nuclear missiles in small numbers. Facing a very experienced opponent, Kerri decided that another sneak attack would be unwise, and that apocalypse-class nukes were now the only thing that could give the Zerg a deeper understanding of the 397K Heights.
But the superiors thought it would be inadvisable to expose the ultimate weapon too soon, lest they spook the Zerg. Kairi was speechless, her superiors might have a point, but she couldn't risk her own troops. Every man and every gun mattered in the upcoming defense battle. Callie forwarded all of the audio-video feeds that Paxton had sent back to Command, perhaps this would allow her superiors to gain a sense of what was happening.
Despite Paxton's and their desperate attempts to hide and Francis's best efforts to cooperate, they lost the signals of two of their companions over the course of the night. A squad of Ghost fighters on a daredevil hunt for the Zerg Lords were also so corroded by the Stinging Serpent acid that they were nearly out of action. By dawn, Command finally relented and authorized the activation of the two nukes.
This time Paxton took matters into his own hands. En route he heard the dying screams of another of his men, his face white but his pace unaffected. He selected a hatching center with a large population of mining worker bees, which was not thoroughly searched due to the large number of patrols sent out and the presence of only one lord. Paxton alertly nudged the projection point of his guided laser into the rocky crevices of the crystalline mine and waited for the nuclear missile to fall from the sky.
The biological carpet tissue unique to the Zerg was muscular to tread on, and a slight writhing came from under Paxton's feet, making him nervous. A spiny serpent had inadvertently wandered into Paxton's vicinity, so close that Paxton could make out the gunshot wounds on its hard armor. Perhaps it was a souvenir left to it by the reconnaissance force not so long ago ...... Paxton had just entertained this thought when the thorn snake suddenly bobbed its huge head restlessly, as if it had sniffed something out of the air. Paxton, in a cold sweat, closed his eyes and listened.
But the thorn snake wiggled away, and Paxton opened his eyes and looked up at the sky to see a pinpoint flash of light piercing the firmament. "God's punishment ......," Paxton whispered to himself, turning off the laser guidance unit and withdrawing at high speed with the aid of the walking aids on his combat suit. The missile had entered the terminal inertial guidance phase and did not need to be guided anymore.
Kelly saw the huge flash of the nuclear explosion on her monitor screen; nothing in the Zerg race could currently withstand a single blow from such an ultimate weapon. The loss of the worker bees had taken a long time to restore the mining site's production capacity, which was even more deadly than the direct killing of enemy combat soldiers.
A quarter of an hour later, a second nuke, guided by another Ghost Warrior, blew up another mining site.
The Zerg were sorely beaten! The entire Texian mountain range turned into a boiling pot of water as Zerg warriors dug in and frantically searched for Ghost Warriors. Kerri decisively ordered Paxton to recall them.
Coming back wasn't easy either, as Paxton and the others risked their lives to escape, losing two more of their comrades before breaking out of the mountain pass. As they took on their original forms in front of Kerri, it dawned on her that they really did seem to be ghosts returning from hell. Two of them were already wounded, and one of them, obviously too agitated, kept screaming, "Fuck, they're coming! They're coming! Thousands of them! We're finished, we're dead this time! The hills are full of them ......"
Kelly signaled the hygienist to sedate the man. Even if her men were full of clone fighters, she couldn't condone this kind of behavior that shook the heart of the military.
On the sidelines, Paxton's face was grim, the foppishness gone. Anyone who had personally experienced a battle that had cost them nearly half of their troops would be changed. Only two short days, your eyes have changed, it is really good, faster than I learn, that is all, as long as you can learn to grasp the war, you will succeed in living ...... Kylie's heart has a sense of relief, maybe she a little like this boy.
Kelly waited for Paxton to ask her for the reward she had promised to give, but Paxton seemed to have forgotten about it, gazing longingly into the distance at the blood-red sunlight of Mount Tex, where five of his men had died. Callie waited again and finally turned and walked back to the command post, she didn't want to disturb Paxton's meditation, it was best at this point to allow him to take his own time in comprehending what he was experiencing so that he could learn as much as he could, and he deserved to be enlightened in that way.
The Zerg had indeed reacquainted themselves with the 397K Highlands in a profound way. It was still dark when their advance force, dominated by Stingers and Raptors, appeared on the plains in front of the mountains. As time passed, the troops they had assembled grew in number, covering each other as they steadily advanced towards the highlands.
Borrowing the help of her detection radar, Kairi believed that the enemy forces had taken the bait. As she watched the enemy approach, Kerri couldn't let them get ready. She sends out 4 Vultures, intending to lure the enemy into the Siege Tank's artillery kill range before the advanced troops can follow.
The four chariots raced at high speed through the night to the enemy's staging area, firing a volley of shells at the forefront of the Stingers before immediately turning around. Kairi was glad that a large number of Stingers were coming after her, and she commanded the vultures to utilize their unparalleled high speed to fight and retreat, leading the enemy troops and firmly grasping the initiative on the battlefield.
A group of raptors suddenly jumped out of the ground behind the vultures and intercepted the vultures, which turned out to be the sentries of Zerg's army, and let the vultures pass by without moving. The vulture chariot's thin leather armor was quickly torn to shreds by the raptors' sharp knives and feet, the engine stalled on the spot, and the driver was dragged out and chopped into pieces. The other two chariots ran for their lives before escaping the raptors' claws. The pursuing raptors retreated as soon as their first companion was blown to pieces by the cannon fire, and the vipers stayed out of range of the cannon fire.
Kairi had to admit that her enemies were cunning, they were prepared, and she couldn't hope to use a few tricks to backstab them. After a moment's thought, she ordered her units to take a defensive position on guard and not to try to venture out any further, while requesting air support from Command.
After being busy for a while longer, Kerri felt it was time to grab some sleep. She wasn't worried about a surprise attack, with their current force structure they could only mount a ground charge, but without a large number of Thunderbeasts in front of heavy artillery fire there was little hope of success. Kylie slept peacefully, ready to meet the upcoming battle.