It was pure, unmitigated chaos. The butcher's bill wasn't so much soaring as that it had launched itself directly into orbit. Genesis was annihilating everything in their path. The NavInt Admiral shut down the live feed of a post-battle site and shook her head warily. Just watching them was exhausting. Once again she had thought she had grasped what the super-soldiers were capable of. Once again her assumptions had fallen woefully short. The two thousand of Genesis were going up against millions of troops, and they were winning. Sure, the casualties they had caused were only a drop in the ocean, with Novican military losses estimated at somewhere between two and three hundred thousand, but when you looked at the larger strategic picture the game was all but set. Lines of command weren't so much broken as they were shattered. High Command still floated around, their location unreachable unless the Imperials fancied hijacking some shuttles and braving orbital defences, but high and low were cut off from one another. Sure, there were still hundreds, if not thousands, of units on the ground, but most large command centres and regional headquarters within their zones were now smoking ruins. Reports no longer could be verified, the dense urban structures prevented clear satellite feeds, allowing the Genesis to operate without the constant need for jamming, and, to top it all off, the super-soldiers had even resumed their original sabotage missions.
She laughed as the words "minor detour" popped up in her mind. She saw 627 tilt his head slightly so he could look at her and she winced at the sight of him. He was still encased in his massive armour, but he resembled a car-wreck more than a super-soldier. A car-wreck that had been run over by a tank, then blown up for good measure. The other Genesis had refused her suggestion to take him out of it, saying they needed to be ready for a quick exfil at any time. 627, who had to be in enough pain to kill a normal human being through the shock alone, had simply blinked a confirmation. Now he was just sitting there, a stolen rifle in his hand and a minor armoury scattered around him, just in case. Not that Dreamer had expected an attack, not when the Novicans were desperately rallying to get a grip on things. Given that there was no other Genesis left behind to guard her, it spoke volumes of how much confidence he had in that statement.
Still, she was happy for the wounded soldier's presence. Being alone, even with only one arm left to wield a weapon with, didn't bother her. No, the reason she was glad was because the man's Muninn was still operational —damned sturdy computers, those— and that through it she had access to the entire battlefield, leaving her free to play the field general. Well, a bit of one. Genesis had no real need of her. Instead she busied herself with further fostering discontent, while simultaneously trying to think of a possible Novican counterstrike. And the more she thought about it, the more she accepted a very dark realisation.
They can't be countered, she summarised her grim thoughts. Not by the rules the Novicans are playing with. Void, no damned wonder they came in wary of orbital bombardment. Nothing else can stop them. She ran it down from the top again. They had regrouped easily enough, merging several squads together into platoons, while retaining squad command. They had identified local command nexuses and patrol outposts, geographically mapped them all, then created a logical route that took them past all of them in the swiftest order. Then the charge had begun. The enemy had received no real warning. Their patrols going dark without as much as a warning from them had put them on alert, but that didn't help much when the super-soldiers were at the bases themselves scant minutes later. Those assaults were textbook examples of how to overrun a numerically superior position through advanced tactics. Cross-fire zones, distracting targets, covering fire, they had used everything. The APCs were wiped out by having one group fire at it from one side while another group ran in and surgically cut it apart with disruptors. Heavy weapon emplacements were kept pinned until a grenade could be tossed in, or they simply avoided its range of fire before breaking in through a wall and dealing with it from inside the building. Matters were significantly helped by the general lack of heavy weapons, experienced combat troops, soldiers in power armour, the utter division in enemy ranks, and Genesis itself moving faster than lightning. She had so far seen seven separate instances where stationary vehicles had been turned to scrap, the Novican crew never having had time to man them.
The long and horrifyingly short of it was simple. Genesis wasn't partaking in a war on a planetary scale. They were simply slaughtering people who could barely fight back.
No, she amended herself. That was an unfair thought. They had planned this meticulously. This wasn't a spur of the moment idea, no stupid move from a movie. They had laid out plans, well before the invasion ever started, and trained for it. It was perfectly aligned with the Imperial way of war. Gather intelligence, apply overwhelming firepower to disrupt enemy cohesion, sow chaos, then thrive in that chaos. It shouldn't have bothered her, but she knew damned well why it did.
Because normally it's the work of an entire army working closely together and preparing for months, if not years Not a damned, single unit planning it all in less than a week.
Still, the Genesis weren't out of the woods yet. Neither them nor she had managed to track down the enemy unit that had ambushed them, though she suspected they had reached the Novican HQ. The orders from there were rapidly getting more vicious and direct. Someone had clearly shifted their focus from minimising civilian casualties to achieving actual goals. So far they weren't having the most luck with those orders, though. It took time for commands and battleplans to trickle down from the top, and the Novican forces needed time to regroup and get themselves organised once again. It was amazing how often folks in charge forgot about the simple truth that a mob of armed men did not an army make.
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Even so, the Novican HQ was rapidly adapting to the situation, giving dangerously intelligent orders. They were almost comically simple in nature, but this allowed even the most confused and slow-witted commander to grasp them. It was clear that they were planning to pin down the Genesis by throwing enough bodies at them to drown them in blood if necessary. That could end up horribly. The Imperial forces were trying to secure some of the shield projectors in order to prevent an overeager commander up in orbit from using them as target practise, but there still was the matter of an actual army making its way planet-side. Dreamer had straight up admitted that they could beat them, but not without sacrificing their main objective. He never mentioned his own predicted losses, and at this point she wasn't quite sure if she still dared to ask.
So Genesis was on its way to deal with it before it could become an issue. The one thing she could not comprehend, no matter how she wrapped her mind around it, was why the enemy commander wasn't moving to counter it. A man who successfully managed to predict Genesis' path and ambush them had to be special forces, or an infiltration specialist. If the ambush itself hadn't been proof enough, then the newly incoming orders would have made it undeniably clear. The new guy in charge knew what he was doing and wasn't trying to minimise his own losses or limit taken damage, but was willing to pay the necessary price to force the invaders away from critical locations, and to funnel them closer together. That meant he understood the threat the Genesis posed. That meant he understood their goals and what they were trying to do. That meant that he had to know that they were planning on stopping those reinforcements dead in their tracks. And yet no orders came. Steps could easily be taken that would have hindered the Genesis, or potentially even prevented them from succeeding. But they did not come. Which was concerning. It was clear to her that Grevorich had been pushed aside by the newcomer. It was still his name on the orders that came out, but the man did not have the tactical acumen for this. Ground officers knew what type of orders came from above, and how to translate them for down below. Grevorich wasn't a ground officer. The man was a typical staff office, which rendered most of his commands useless given the lack of capable ground officers on the planet. She didn't know who their new opponent was, but she did know that the man knew his business.
Grevorich had gained his power through a coup, though. She would have suspected another coup, not uncommon within the Novican culture, except that the man was still alive. Unless the audio-transcripts were fabricated, which she doubted. The man did sound ill at ease though, tension straining his voice. Not noticeably, but she was trained to pick up the faint traces. That all but confirmed it to her that it had been a hostile take-over, or at least not a willing partnership. She bit her fingers in annoyance. Genesis was being predictable at the moment, following logical routes and taking steps that had to be taken to continue with their mission. The routes would be hard to figure out, given the speed at which they were moving, but ambushes could still be set up, though Dreamer and his ilk were probably already wary for those and for potential minefields. No, the real question was why he wasn't moving to save at least a part of the incoming reinforcements.
She would have given her remaining arm to be a fly on the wall in the Novican HQ. There had to be a reason why the enemy commander wasn't doing more.
She closed her eyes, trying to think of the possibilities. She left the tactical reasons behind for now. There were few things that threatened Genesis, and only one the super-soldiers truly were concerned about. Given the state of the planet, however, that tactic being employed would be devastating. It would do a good part of Genesis' job for them. A good part, but not enough. Still, it made it unlikely. Novican officers simply lacked the Imperial clarity and determination to do what must be done. Unless... Her eyes shot wide open. Unless... Void, she whispered. If that was his plan, then he was without mercy, and far more skilled at manipulating the field than she'd given him credit for. The bastard would've fit in perfectly with the Imperial Military and she couldn't help but feel a mite of grudging respect for his dedication.
She opened an emergency line to Dreamer, the man picking up near instantly. Sounds of combat roared through the com-link, but he himself sounded as calm as if he was going for a casual stroll. In a few quick sentences she hurriedly shared her predictions with him. He didn't understand, as he hadn't understood before. Of course he didn't. Human emotion was beyond him. Still he listened, and sent her an affirmative ping at the end.
It nearly floored her when his only new course of action was to send a squad to her location, to ensure she'd get off planet should everything else go wrong. One way or another, Genesis would fulfil all their mission objectives. Eliminate Nagalan. Ensure the survival of the Admiral. Even if their entire unit would be obliterated in orbital fire.
Cindy scratched the second item off her list. In the face of such a cold, calculated answer, she no longer found it possible to question their loyalty to their given orders. Or why they had been dubbed 'sentient weapons'.