A few minutes after they had secured the control tower, Soshal gave the all-clear signal to Sevs. He then contacted the command. "Point alpha two is ready for extraction."

"Confirmed, stand by." Came the response. Sevs grimaced. He had hoped to know if the main team was going to extract their point. "Get ready to hole up, everyone. We have to hold the fort until told otherwise."

The other squad leader confirmed he had got the message as well. What followed was a tense couple of minutes of waiting. Eventually, Sevs sent Bexy down to go act as a spotter for Jason. It was something he should have done as soon as they took the tower. They didn't need all five of them sitting around up there when Jason was down there alone.

Now all they had to do was wait. Sevs figured the chances of them having to fend off an attack was pretty low. With all the spaceports attacked, they should prioritize defending the major ones as they were likely still trying to launch all their defenses. This small private place should be left alone.

Of course, they were trying to fend off an entire planet's worth of defensives. That had to make it so that the coordinated defenses might spare some troops that were otherwise in an inconvenient position to come and attack them. Right on queue, Soshal started reporting other spaceports being counterattacked.

Sevs, Robert, and Carl were watching in all directions, with Soshal monitoring all local communication traffic. Down below, Jason and Bexy provided cover while the others finished clearing out the facility. The atmosphere was tense, and no one talked.

Sevs was a bit worried that with Jason's injury due to chatter, the team might take it too far in the other direction. Of course, now was the time to be alert. A report came up that the base was now clear and that their second wave had landed. The captain had made it this time and assumed command.

As the captain was getting a hold of the situation, he had Sevs give him a brief rundown. The captain agreed that there really wasn't anything they could do other than hold tight. Though he did have Robert come down. "After all, no point in the Heavy being in the crow's nest. One of the other marksmen came up to replace him and take advantage of the position. Overall though, he seemed to think Sevs had done as well as he could.

"OH SHIT!" Soshal shouted from her computer. She furiously started typing at some time over wide comms, "We have incoming! Take cover."

"What kind of incoming?" Sevs asked Soshal, hoping to get numbers and direction.

"Thermonuclear." Came the reply. Sevs cursed. Looks like he was right; the enemy couldn't spare attention, so they decided that if they couldn't have this port, then the humans couldn't either.

Defensive turrets all over the base activated and shot streams of plasma up at the sky, but Sevs was looking at the readout over Soshal's shoulder. There were more than 30 targets, and the rate of them being knocked off by the defenses was just not fast enough. Sevs watched as nearly 15 megaton bombs made it past the defensive floor. Closing his eyes, he prepared for respawn.

***

When Sevs opened his eyes, we saw the respawn room. Surprisingly Captain Walters was waiting for them. As Sevs got ready to run to the drop stop, the captain held out a hand to prevent him. Sevs stopped and saluted. Walters wasn't much for the formality part of the military game they were all playing, but in public, Sevs wanted to play along. Besides, with what had just happened, he could really hide behind some formality.

To his surprise, Walters returned the salute just as crisply. Though he relaxed quickly and clapped Sevs on the shoulder. "Bad luck, man."

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Sevs just nodded. His mind was still racing. He knew there was nothing he really couldn't have done to prevent this, but he kept trying to think of what he could have done better. "Seriously, that was just bad luck. Sometimes there just isn't anything you can do. You just got to walk on and say it doesn't mean anything."

The last few words triggered something in Sevs's brain. Like it was a quote that he couldn't place. He thought for a second before nodding. "Oh, no need to drop again. Your spot was glassed, and the team is already on its way up with orbit. Besides, we can't hold this planet anyways. It took everything we had to get a foothold long enough for extraction."

"We are done?" Sevs asked.

"Well, you are done," Walters responded. "Not much more you can do."

They spoke for a few minutes more before Walters told Sevs to "Go debrief your men."

***

Sevs nodded and headed out to meet up with the rest of his squad. They were all waiting just outside the respawn points, ready to go to the drop pods. Jason actually took a couple steps in that direction before he caught on that no one was following. "What?"

"We aren't dropping again," Sevs said. "The mission is done. At least our part is. The extraction is already underway. Besides, our target was glassed, remember?"

Robert kicked the ground. "It's just a shitty way to go. Like there was nothing we could do better. It makes it feel pointless."

Sevs started to lead them to a private room where they could sit and talk. He would have to write a report, but that could wait a little bit. At least until the men were settled. As they walked, the mood was dull. Sevs wanted to respond, to tell them it wasn't pointless but needed a second to find the way to phrase it.

When they were all lounging in chairs, recovering, he finally had an idea of what to say. It wasn't going to be some amazing speech or anything, but he hoped it would help a little. "Sometimes what we do won't matter. That has happened and will happen, but it didn't happen this time. It might not feel like this, but the reason why we were broken was that we did everything perfectly. It was a gamble; just because it didn't pay off didn't mean that it wasn't a risk worth taking."

Sevs paused. He was only a few sentences in, and already it was getting a little bit off the rails. "Maybe this will put it in perspective. The port that the team that was extracted was using wasn't one that was completely locked down. The Tarlaki still thought that there was a chance that they could prevent it from being taken. So the team had just a long enough window to get the target out."

"If this was a possibility, why did we go in so early? They could have told us to wait to take it right before we needed it?" Soshal said. Oddly enough, she seemed to be the most crushed by this setback. Normally she was quite level-headed, but maybe because she felt that she should have been able to do something about it. For everyone else, it had just felt like an act from God.

"I don't think they predicted this. It sounds like this was the largest raid on a planet anyone around has ever done. Also, I don't think they expected us to take the port so fast. We were the second one on the entire planet to take the control room, and we did it with half the men." Sevs didn't mention that their target was the smallest by a long shot.

"How many others got glassed?" Bexy asked. Sevs looked over at Soshal, who had pulled up a screen she was swiping through.

"It looks like there were 156 targets in total. So far, 15 were nuked as well. Looks like we managed to capture about 30 of our targets. Slightly more than half failed to even get a foothold. We did get the second fastest clear, though." Soshal read out. "I would bet that everyone that we fully take will be nuked. It took about 20 minutes from the capture of control rooms till impact."

"The system is really playing hardball," Carl muttered. "We were lucky that we were able to get it out. I don't think we had more than one try?"

Soshal shook her head. "If we messed this up, then no. We wouldn't have another chance at all. At least not on this piece of information that we got from our captured ship. There may be other things that I don't have clearance for, though."

A quest alert popped up for them all.

Faction-wide Quest: Race to the new planet.

The edge of the Tarlaki empire has been found. Get to the new planet and settle it before all competition.

Reward: Planet respawn access

All around the ship, cheers erupted. Not just that ship, through all across the fleet. Even the people still on the planet were celebrating as the nukes fell.