Xhollin (The Season of Sustenance)

  Day 221

  1 A.E.

  400 days since my arrival

  Everything was proceeding according to plan, albeit with minor setbacks. The enemy had managed to regroup in isolated pockets, launching counteroffensives. Their fleet had dispersed, manoeuvring rapidly to intercept my forces, but they were reacting rather than dictating the course of battle.

  Despite their efforts, they were steadily losing air superiority in some sectors. My Mosquito drones hunted their air wings, harassed their convoys and disrupted their logistics. The Hexapods functioned as mobile artillery, suppressing their defensive positions with precision strikes. Suicide drones exploited the breaches, overwhelming them. Assault, Sniper and Heavy drones moved in to neutralize survivors.

  Snipers and infiltrators, supported by Mosquitos, hunted and eliminated stragglers retreating to other positions. The Southern Hemisphere was rapidly falling under my control. Given my current progression, I would dominate some sectors within a matter of days. Meanwhile, my agents had successfully lured lost clones to their base, where they were recycled and replaced.

  The enemy fleet had adopted a scorched-earth policy in the South. Where there was nothing important they could lose, I concentrated on overwhelming force on their largest facilities, eliminating key threats with minimal force while keeping the bulk of my troops hidden within the tunnels waiting for the right moment for an all-out offence.

  The East and West offered stiff resistance, prioritizing the protection of their supply routes. Their defensive emplacements absorbed initial assaults, incurring moderate losses on my part. However, their armoured columns and air wings were mobilizing for a large counteroffensive soon.

  The North was a lost cause. Given the density of enemy forces, I had shifted priority to eliminating their air-wing capabilities until the last Mosquito was dead.

  Time was of the essence, my fleet was nearing completion and would launch within days. As the war progressed, my strategic advantage solidified. The South was largely secured.

  The remaining clone forces retreated East and West, salvaging what assets they could. Mosquito drones hunted stragglers, while Suicide drones lay in wait for retreating convoys.

  One key battle drew my focus, an eastern mining facility remained a persistent obstacle. The enemy had repurposed large mining rigs into makeshift defensive walls.

  They were effective in delaying my progress. I dispatched additional Hexapods to the sector and monitored enemy fleet movements for potential reinforcements.

  Mosquito wings were redirected to soften defences. Yet, they held firm, inflicting large casualties I had the remaining Mosquitos pull back with the most damaged returning for healing.

  As the battle stagnated, enemy armoured units launched pincer attacks on my flanks, forcing Hexapods to divert fire from the facility to counter the advancing mechanized units. While my Striders moved to intercept.

  Smaller drones without Hexapod support failed to break through, the enemy concentrated forces maintained overwhelming suppressive fire. Snipers duelled across the battlefield, while heavy and assault drones exchanged control over key areas in a gruelling push-and-pull struggle, with neither side yielding significant ground.

  Recognizing the stalemate, I chose a patient approach, allowing the battle to play out while shifting focus elsewhere. An ambushed convoy yielded several injured clones surrendering. Weighing the pros and cons, I determined they had no valuable intelligence, my infected network was already rapidly spreading. With no use for them, I ordered their termination.

  Another battle unfolded in the South, where a determined group of clones had barricaded themselves inside a small outpost. Snipers, heavies, and Striders pinned them down maintaining suppressive fire, allowing my assault drones to breach.

  Then an abrupt death, I sighed another overload.

  Their outpost self-destructed, its core overloaded, reducing the outpost to debris. This self-destruction tactic soon became common, any facility in a non-resource-rich area was now being sacrificed upon breach, denying me potential assets. A last act of resistance from their perspective.

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  However, as their fleet continued to divide its forces, rushing to contain my multiple offensives. The Northern front was collapsing rapidly, I ordered my remaining forces there to rampage, while bases in that region entered hibernation mode.

  Still, there were a few advantages to the chaos more ships were separated, and six targets were lined up moving to the Southern Hemisphere and attacking any of my drones in sight.

  With time ticking and my losses mounting, I decided the time was right to use star-lance missiles. Positioned in the closest tunnels to the surface, I blew their entrances open and launched a hundred and twenty-star lance missiles each one going as fast as they could to their intended target.

  Panic erupted across the enemy’s comms network. There was a general breakdown in communication as confusion reigned, and their forces scrambled to assess the unknown projectiles hurtling toward them. This brief delay gave my missiles precious extra moments to close the distance.

  The enemy countered, launching their missiles. A deadly exchange unfolded, both organic and inorganic warheads raced toward each other at breakneck speeds. I took direct control of my missiles, weaving them through the chaos.

  Their second defensive measure activated forcing a few missiles to prematurely explode from concentrated heat from their laser's defence network it became more complicated to dodge the speed of the lasers calculating and recalculating what angles to change the missile's trajectory to dodge the worst paths forward.

  Still, under my guidance, they persisted in pushing forward their larger guns joined their defence laying concentrated fire turning the void into clouds of shrapnel and killing a few more out of the one hundred and twenty I had fifty-three left

  It was a countdown to impact as minutes turned to seconds the missiles got closer dropping to forty-four then impact the first wave of missiles hit their outer hulls with supercharged plasma then the last wave hit their targets with acid.

  Seconds turned to minutes and I finally got the news I was looking for, open comms chatter confirmed my success. Two of the six targeted ships sustained only minor damage, their defences were more robust in eliminating star-lance missiles.

  A third ship had suffered severe structural breaches on its starboard side, with acid continuing to eat through decks their crew scrambled to seal the acid away as it ate itself through deck after deck injuries and deaths steadily climbed.

  The remaining three vessels were in critical condition, they were modified mining ships repurposed as troop transports, now descending into chaos. Crew members scrambled to evacuate as the acid ate through the ships' interiors, consuming bulkheads and critical systems from within.

  One ship managed to break away from lunar orbit, retreating toward deep space while broadcasting distress signals about catastrophic damage to its most vital systems. The remaining two, however, had no choice but to continue drifting forward along their trajectory, powerless to alter their course.

  This was an opportunity I couldn't afford to miss. I had four ships prepped for boarding and an arsenal of missiles at the ready. Without hesitation, I launched ten missiles at the fleeing vessel and another sixty at the remaining two. Meanwhile, my four ships split into pairs, each targeting a crippled enemy ship for boarding.

  Panic erupted across the enemy comms network. Frantic voices demanded identification until a live visual feed of my ships was broadcast. For a brief moment, silence fell over their channels then, chaos resumed.

  Time was running out. My ships pushed forward at maximum speed, closing in on the disabled vessels. The star-lance missiles streaked toward their targets as the enemy ships struggled desperately to manoeuvre out of their path.