General Mons sighed as he looked over the scene of the battle. This was the third time they had been ambushed since leaving the swamp. There was no way that the Narsians didn't know he was here now, and they most likely also knew where he was heading, based on the number of soldiers they had thrown at his unit.
Narsian morale was low though, thanks to their own personal Ghost Mecha. Tarith's Rage was now a fully close combat unit, and Major Nico had no qualms about throwing herself into combat at the first sign of hostilities.
The combat style was strange though. It wasn't anything that the Kepler Military taught, but it was much more efficient than any fighting style the General had seen before. He had seen precise and minimalist close combat styles before, from combat monks to rapier-wielding Cygnus officers, but this was different.
It didn't have the dignified presence of the combat arts he was familiar with, which gave the impression that the combatant was aiming for a noble victory. Somehow, all the strikes either cleaved straight down to split bodies in half or slightly upwards to throw arcs of blood through the air. Even the Kepler forces didn't want to be too close to Tarith's Rage, 'in case it forgot which side it was on', according to the Commander of Carpe Noctem's personal guard, whose position in line Nico had stolen.
[Are the terror tactics really necessary?] General Mons asked Major Nico, now fairly sure that she could actually hear the radio and simply chose to ignore it.
In response, she flicked a giant up in the air with the tip of her sword, then swatted the floating body with the flat of her blade, sending him crashing into the ground a hundred meters away.
The remaining Narsian forces broke and ran.
[You know, if I could prove you can hear me, I would have you up on charges of insubordination.] General Mons grumbled before cutting communications.
After the battle, Tarith's Rage moved to the front of the file so that it would be the first to detect and the first to reach the enemy. The strategy was incredibly effective at keeping the Narsians from approaching the unit.
Previously, they had launched rapid attacks, trying to cut down the Kepler force's numbers before the Carpe Noctem could react and wipe them all out. Now they actively avoided the column entirely, going as far as running away when they saw them on the horizon.
They had one more day to the Staging Area where the Kepler forces would meet before the battle and the General was getting eager to meet up with Stalwart and its pilot, Major Max. That young Pilot was the only one who could reliably keep Major Nico in check, and she seemed to have an instinctive knowledge of just exactly how far she could push the rules before actually being reprimanded.
But more importantly, she scared the troops. Some of the other close combat pattern Crusaders had tried to emulate her fighting style, but they were all noticeably slower and much more clumsy. Some of that could be attributed to practice, but there was no denying that Tarith's Rage had a kill count that was multiple times higher than the others.
Max was also a day away from the meeting point, at the back of the column of Academy Pilots, which was flanked and led by his own Special Tactics unit. They might be considered a military force in their own right, but escorting them with more practiced and better-trained troops lets them watch and learn on the way to the meeting.
Each of them had a learning program playing in their Mecha, giving hints and tricks for smoother operations and more accurate targeting. It was a highly irregular measure, but every time they came across a Narsian patrol the effects were visible in the improvements made.
Max had high hopes that by the time they made the destination the next day the Cadets wouldn't embarrass themselves around the troops that had dropped onto the planet. None of the other Unit Commanders knew what a low standard the local partisans were working with, so seeing these Line Mecha pilots would be their first experience with them, and build their impression of the planet.
It hadn't been so long since Max himself was a freshman at the Military Academy who had never touched an actual Mecha before, so he could at least empathize with the Cadets, even if he had never been in their shoes.
[Set up Camp. Take a Four-hour break and then we will push into the meeting point.] Max ordered, directing the unit to a hollow between two hills for the night.
Taking the low ground wasn't optimal as a battle strategy, but it would get them out of sight, and reduce the chance that they would be ambushed during their rest period. Many of the enemy units that they had encountered had overtaken them from behind, moving in the same direction that they were at a higher rate of travel.
If he had ever thought that a major offensive could be a surprise, those hopes were long gone after the first day of travel. Now, he just wanted to get everyone to the starting line alive and wait for his new orders.
They had only just started moving again, a few hours before the sun came up when Max saw a familiar signal on his scans. Carpe Noctem was at the back of a large unit of Heavy Mecha, and they were under attack by Narsian artillery which had set up in a valley to their right flank. The same right flank that his unit was approaching from.
[All units forward. Our target is the artillery emplacement. The faster we get there the less chance that they will be able to change targets in time to shoot at us.] Max ordered and the Line Mecha began to run towards the target.
The Narsians attacking the convoy had sent out attacking squads to delay the rushing close combat Crusaders, and that seemed to have taken all their attention. The Line Mecha managed to make it to seven hundred meters away without drawing any enemy fire.
[Line Mecha, take positions, and fire at will. Attack Pattern A.] Colonel Sanders ordered.
Pattern A was simple, everyone stopped, took a knee to make themselves a smaller target and more stable, then fired first at anything approaching them, and second at anything that looked like a big threat. As a strategy, it was laughably simple. As a combat technique, it was one of the best that the Cadets knew.
Max was focused on blasting away the Narsian defensive positions to let the Light Mecha get at them, so he didn't notice how the General's battle was going until suddenly his radar showed a tightly packed line of Crusaders rushing into the artillery position.
In the lead was a Bone and Bronze Crusader with a sword and shield forcibly pushing through the crowd of giants using pure bulk and momentum. Behind it, the others cut down the Narsians who had been knocked to the ground, staying close enough that none could get between them and break up the convoy.
"Nico?" Max gasped, recognizing those hazard stripes on a Bone white Carapace shell, and more importantly, the faded and chipped smiley faces on the bottom of a foot that had just raised to stomp on a screaming Narsian soldier.
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