3.27.
Despite the successes of many of its defenders, most of the landing zones of the Rosantean forces managed to dig in. Many targeted civilian areas, taking hostages to prevent the defenders of Earth from retaliating against the invaders with the full force that they were able to bring to the table.
In a suburb of St. Petersburg, a small flutterfly drone disguised as a hummingbird recorded war crimes.
Eolai’s heart went out to the poor people who were being lined up and executed. The motivations of the executioners seemed to be to demoralize the remaining defenders. Or perhaps they had simply determined that they had too many civilian hostages and needed to reduce the number.
Perhaps they were trying to provoke a premature attack.
Perhaps they were just monsters.
Eolai closed his eyes to that part of the battle. He was a thousand miles away, and the nearest of his soldiers wouldn’t arrive in that zone for hours if he sent them now. He considered how to respond. There was one option. The collateral damage would …
Well, it would be economic. There shouldn’t be any flights left in the area to disrupt. A concentrated kirata beam would disable the soldier’s armors and leave them helpless. Or at least mostly disarmed.
He contacted Diego in orbit.
“I need a kirata beam on this location,” he said. “Five mile radius, no more than that.”
“You want me to shoot the Earth?” Diego asked.
“Yes. They are executing civilians. The Kirata beam will stop them without causing unnecessary collateral damage.”
Diego was silent for a moment. “Moving into position.”
The connection was cut. A moment later, the feed from the flutterfly drone went dead as the entire region was hit by the EMP-like weapon.
Eolai hoped that it would make a difference.
He returned his attention to the other soldiers in the transport. They were ten minutes away from their destination. The enemy had landed in force in Mesoamerica, and they were en route to lay siege to the dug-in soldiers.
He had one hundred of his infantry men and women with him.
They were going up against twice that number.
He turned his attention to the flutterfly drones that were keeping an eye on that location. He noted the layout of the base that the Rosanteans had constructed and began planning his assault.
At least he wouldn’t have to worry about collateral damage, the base was far from the nearest settlement. A part of him wondered if it wouldn’t be best to bombard this target from orbit as well. But no. Though they were outnumbered, he had confident in his soldiers. They would put an end to this base, and he would lead them through it.
~~~~~~
The Other Shoe dropped into normal space directly behind the ninth Rosantean flagship to assume command since the start of the battle, firing all of its weapons at once and overwhelming the ship’s countermeasures. It kept firing until the flagship was nothing but slagged scrap floating in the orbit near Jupiter.
Captain Moon had been receiving real time data from the forces of sol-system, allowing her to make her dramatic entrance as effective as possible. With hundreds of ships constantly jumping around the solar system with the use of the hyperatomic plane, slipstream, and even a few crazy bastards who were piloting fighters equipped with Tunnel Drives, it seems that the sensors of the flagship had been overwhelmed.
Space was roiling with a thousand forms of energy as weapons and drives and shields were deployed. The third battle for Earth was the largest space battle to take place in centuries, and the defenders weren’t willing to give an inch.
The attackers, on the other hand, were beginning to question the purpose of their mission.
This was just a Darkworld. Yes the Empire could take it and justify it as a way to expand their territory for a few hundred lightyears anti-coreward. But was it worth a war with the Yonohoans? A war which, it seemed, the empire was posed to lose?
Captain Moon barked orders at her Yukopan crew, interacting with the hologram as she ordered them to reposition and join the interlocked battle plan with the other defenders of Earth. They’d already significantly contributed to the battle with their sudden and unexpected arrival, and she wanted to keep the pressure up.
The third battle for Earth continued on in space.
~~~~~~
John stood over the corpse of the last of the Rosanteans who had been trying to establish a base in the forest. He realized at some point that it was the same forest where he’d first arrived on Earth. A little bit of irony, perhaps?
“Eight-seven,” he said.
He walked through the buildings that were being constructed even now by the nanites the soldiers had placed. He could destroy them, but it would be a wasted effort. Instead he went to their computer systems and pulled a download of their tactical network. Which, he was pleased to notice, was in complete disarray.
He pushed the network data to Trewali, who pushed it to Turnball, who in turn simply looked at it.
There were thirty-three dug in bases. The base in St. Petersburg had just been stricken by a tactical kirata beam, leaving a massive blank spot in the network where technology had simply quit working.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
The situation was dire, but compared to the initial projections of a thousand dug-in fortresses ready to strike out at nearby civilian and military targets, the defenders had put up a fine show. As he examined the locations of some of the bases, he came to a conclusion. One which he knew might cost him his career.
“Conduct orbital bombardment on these nine enemy bases,” he instructed.
Major Mary Phillips watched as he highlighted the locations on the holographic earth floating before him. She swallowed. It was a good move, tactically. But the ramifications were …
“Sir, Please repeat your orders,” she said.
“Conduct orbital bombardment of the enemy bases located in Nevada, North Dakota, the Yukon, the Kalahari, the Sahara, Argentina, the two in Siberia, and the one in Madagascar,” he repeated.
“I ask again, please confirm your orders,” she said.
“Blow them to kingdom come with the wrath of the heavens, Major. Orbital bombardment on the highlighted locations. We must prevent them from digging in further and conducting raids against our people. I will accept the responsibility for any civilian casualties and collateral damage as a result of my orders, however I believe that acting now will ultimately lead to more lives saved than if we do not act,” He explained.
“Yes sir,” she said, and she forwarded the fireplan to their forces in orbit.
It took longer to confirm the orders than it did to commit them.
Moments later, the enemy forces were down to only twenty-four bases.
The battle for Earth continued on the ground.
~~~~~~
The connection request surprised him out of his analysis of the battle. Captain Anders had exhausted his supply of subspace munitions, but he remained an active part of the battle in his contributions to identifying priority targets and managing the overall flow of the interlocked fireplan.
It came from Renosa, one of the Yonohoan ship captains who guarded planet Totola. He frowned, wondering what she wanted at this time, but he put the connection through.
“Greetings in this time of strife, clansman Anders. I bring you relief at this critical juncture. We have strained our engines to arrive in time to make a difference, but half of my fleet will be arriving within moments. I request tactical data in order to make our presence known and effective against the enemy.”
She sent him the details of her fleet, and he grinned.
The flagship of the Yonohoans, as piloted by Diego Cruz, had almost single handedly kept the orbitals around Earth clear of enemy forces.
Twenty more ships nearly identical in form and ability were less than ten minutes out.
He directed them towards the regions that were seeing the highest level of combat and waited, his breath bated, as they emerged onto the battlefield simultaneously.
Not from the hyperatomic plane, but slipspace.
Surrounded by enemies on all sides, they unleashed their fury in the forms of a dozen different weaponized energies. The Yonohoan weapons tore through Rosantean shields and kept tearing through hulls.
The surviving enemy realized that the battle, already going so poorly, was lost with the addition of these reinforcements.
Some of them realized that if planet Totola was sending reinforcements, then that meant that their sister taskforce had also been destroyed.
The demoralized enemy abruptly vanished into the hyperatomic plane.
Earth’s defenders allowed them to escape.
The Yonohoan cavalry did not, jumping after them to bring them the pain.
The battle for the solar system came to an abrupt halt as there was nobody left to shoot.
~~~~~~
The colonel in command of the Brussels landing zone was on the line with his compatriots when abruptly, one by one, they looked towards the sky and screamed. He was the first to realize what was happening.
The enemy was bombarding their own planet to cleanse the Rosantean infection with fire from the sky.
He looked around at the city, which was virtually empty of civilians since his men had arrived. Another one of his compatriots abruptly screamed and died. He swallowed. Was he next?
He cut contact with the leadership of the other invading forces and nervously instructed his computer to contact the enemy general. It took several moments for the computers of his command station to make the connection. Once they had, it was voice only.
“To whom am I speaking?” General Turnball demanded.
“I am the commander of one of the bases in a city. I do not know the name. I believe it is on the continent you call Europe. I wish to surrender in exchange for the lives of my men,” the colonel said.
“Brussels? Are you in Brussels?” Turnball asked.
“Yes. A city. The civilians are hiding, but they would still die if you bombarded this city as you have done to other locations. I wish to surrender to preserve the lives of my men and your civilians,” the colonel repeated.
“Very well,” General Turnball said. “Disarm yourselves and await further instructions.”
The colonel nodded and issued the instructions to his men.
Across the globe, the leaders of the enemy forces learned of their defeat in orbit and the lengths to which the defenders would go to secure their planet. One by one they surrendered.
Those that did not, such as the force in Mesoamerica, were systematically destroyed over the next two weeks.
The battle for Earth came to a stop.
The defenders were victorious.
But the cost was steep. Both in the damage to the planet itself, and in the number of lives that had been lost.
The people of Earth were, perhaps for the first time in history, united on one matter entirely.
Never. Again.