208: ground campaign

The fourth planet of the E-102 Star System is a heavy industrial planet belonging to the Iofer Federation, its surface covered with heavy metal structures and industrial facilities.

The battle in orbit was in a state of stalemate.

The Angel Joint Fleet and the Iofer Defense Fleet were engaged in a fierce artillery battle in synchronous orbit; the glow of shields from both sides intertwined in space, and debris from explosions carved burning trails through the atmosphere.

Since neither side held absolute space superiority, ground forces could not receive continuous and stable orbital bombardment support, and the war returned to the most primitive and cruel struggle for the ground.

The core objective of the campaign was the Planetary Shield Generator Control Center located in the northern hemisphere.

Once this place was destroyed, the planetary shield would fail, allowing the Angel fleet in orbit to carry out precision strikes on the surface.

High in the atmosphere, millions of platinum-gold points of light were rapidly falling.

Those were the airborne troops of the Angel Empire.

Instead of using traditional fully enclosed metal drop pods, they utilized the formidable psionic power of the Angel people; every Angel warrior was encased within an oval psionic barrier, their wings tightly folded behind them.

On the ground, the Iofer Federation's anti-aircraft arrays began to roar.

Dense blaster beams and tracking missiles formed a comprehensive fire net. The points of light in the sky flickered out one after another, each disappearance representing an Angel warrior vaporizing in the high heat.

Yet, given the sheer numbers, over eighty percent of the Angel warriors still managed to break through the fire net.

At an altitude of five hundred meters from the ground, these warriors suddenly spread their wings.

Psionic energy surged as a massive deceleration field acted upon the air, causing their descent speed to plummet.

Immediately after, the psionic rifles and light spears in their hands began pouring fire onto the ground.

The ground defense line at the landing site was held by the Federation E-102 Ground Defense Force, 7th Armored Division.

This was a fully mechanized unit; the trenches were filled with automated sentry guns, and the muzzles of large mechs were aimed upward, firing into the sky.

As the first Angel warrior landed, the battle erupted instantly.

The tactics of the Angel warriors were extremely flexible; they used their wings and psionic power to perform high-speed maneuvers at low altitudes, darting up and down, making them difficult to lock onto, while the psionic lightsabers in their hands could easily slice through the power armor of the iofer infantry.

An iofer infantryman had just raised his blaster machine gun when a golden blade of light slashed from the side, cutting both man and gun in half.

But the counterattack of the Iof People was equally fierce.

The Iof People did not seek individual combat prowess but relied on dense fire coverage; an Angel officer had just landed when he was cross-locked by three automated sentry guns. His protective psionic shield lasted less than two seconds under the bombardment of thousands of blaster beams per second before overloading and shattering, and his body was instantly torn apart.

Then, more giant mechs entered the fray.

The balance of the battle was broken after the Iof People deployed heavy units, and the ground began to vibrate rhythmically.

Fifty "Tyrant-class" heavy combat mechs, standing twenty meters tall, descended from the sky using intra-atmospheric propulsion systems.

These mechs were the aces of iofer ground warfare; they were entirely covered in super-alloy armor half a meter thick, with no distinct neck structure and the cockpit buried deep in the center of the torso. Their legs were thick, and their feet were equipped with ground-gripping hooks to maintain stability on any terrain.

The mech's right arm was a twin-mounted 300mm electromagnetic cannon, while the left arm was a massive rotary missile launcher pod, and two laser Close-In Weapon Systems specifically for anti-aircraft defense were mounted on the shoulders.

“Crush them!”

The iofer mech unit commander issued the order.

The fifty mechs fired simultaneously.

The muzzle velocity of the electromagnetic cannon shells was extremely high, impossible to catch with the naked eye. A row of charging Angel warriors vanished instantly, leaving behind a fan-shaped death zone hundreds of meters long on the ground.

The missile pods opened, and hundreds of micro heat-seeking missiles whistled out, tracing complex trajectories in the air as they chased those Angel people attempting to fly up to evade.

The sky turned into a sea of fire.

The psionic shields of the Angel people appeared incredibly fragile under the dual strike of heavy kinetic rounds and high-explosive warheads.

An Angel noble officer with two pairs of wings tried to use psionic telekinesis to control the leg of a mech; as soon as the invisible telekinesis touched the mech, its anti-gravity device and built-in field jammer reacted, tearing apart the psionic binding.

The mech turned around, and its laser CIWS fired precise bursts.

The noble officer's head was instantly pierced, and his corpse fell.

The Angel army's offensive was halted, forcing them to retreat to the periphery of the city ruins and use building debris as cover.

The one in charge of commanding this ground offensive was a general under the Governor of the Apocalypse Sector.

Looking at the group of mechs ahead like a steel fortress, he knew that conventional means would no longer work. The armor of these mechs was too thick; ordinary psionic rifles could only leave shallow marks on them.

“Send in the Inquisition Guard,” the general ordered decisively.

The Inquisition Guard was one of the few elite ground forces in this joint fleet.

They were composed of high-level psionicists from the Angel Empire, each possessing a psionic level of at least Grade 3 or higher.

On the flank of the battlefield, three hundred warriors wearing platinum battle armor engraved with runes stepped forward.

They carried no firearms; instead, each held a massive four-meter-long Ship-cutting Blade.

They formed a tight wedge formation and began to charge.

As they ran, the psionic energy of the three hundred people was linked through resonance devices on their armor, forming a visible, massive golden light-spirit entity above the phalanx—an angelic phantom wielding a giant sword.

“That psionic manifestation battle array of those bird-men.”

The iofer mech unit commander recognized the tactic. “Concentrate fire! Blast that light shadow!”

Electromagnetic shells and missiles fell like rain.

But this time the attack was blocked; the massive angelic phantom flapped its wings of light, deflecting or detonating all physical munitions and energy beams. The fire from the explosions flickered on the periphery of the light shadow, yet it could not harm the warriors inside.

Braving the dense fire, the Inquisition Guard reached the front of the mech group.

“Slash!”

The three hundred warriors swung their blades simultaneously.

The angelic phantom in mid-air performed the same action, its hundred-meter-long light sword sweeping out.

This was not a physical attack but a psionic severance.

The five “Tyrant-class” mechs at the very front were struck by the light sword. Their thick super-alloy armor lost its defensive capability against psionic energy, and the pilots and electronic components inside the mechs were instantly incinerated.

The five behemoths collapsed with a crash, the cuts smooth as mirrors without a single metal burr.

A gap appeared in the iofer line, and both sides immediately fell into a chaotic melee.

The psionic resonance of the Inquisition Guard could not be maintained for long; after delivering that one strike, the angelic phantom dissipated, and the three hundred elite warriors dispersed, charging into the mech group for close-quarters combat.

This was an asymmetrical battle.

The tiny Angel warriors darted between the feet of the twenty-meter-tall mechs.

One warrior leaped high, evading a mech's stomp, and thrust his Ship-cutting Blade into the gap of the mech's knee joint. After a psionic burst, the internal conduits ruptured, and the mech lost its balance and knelt.

Immediately after, another warrior flew onto the mech's cockpit canopy and stabbed down fiercely with both hands on the blade; the light blade pierced the armor plate and impaled the pilot's body.

But the Iof People did not break; the mech units began to change tactics. No longer trying to aim their main cannons at these agile fleas, they instead activated the high-voltage electric fields and thermal discharge systems on the mechs' surfaces.

Zzzt!

Several mechs released high-voltage current simultaneously, ionizing the air within a range of dozens of meters.

Several Angel warriors climbing the mechs were struck by the current, their bodies stiffening, and they were then seized by the mechs' mechanical arms.

Squish.

The massive mechanical palms closed, crushing the Angel warriors into a pulp.

Meanwhile, the iofer infantry began using the mechs for cover fire; some soldiers equipped with heavy kinetic shotguns possessed terrifying lethality against light-armored units at close range.

The battlefield turned into a meat grinder.

The Angel people traded lives for the chance to destroy mechs, often requiring the sacrifice of over a dozen warriors to completely disable a single “Tyrant-class” mech.

Meanwhile, the Iof People used their numerical and firepower advantages to advance layer by layer.

In the center of the battlefield, the fighting was particularly intense within a derelict refinery.

This was the only path leading to the planetary shield generator.

The Iof People had deployed a “Destroyer” super-heavy assault mech here; standing forty meters tall and walking on four legs, it carried a twin-mounted plasma cannon on its back.

It was like a mobile fortress, blocking the entire intersection, and the surrounding anti-gravity field generators prevented anything from passing through here from high altitude.

Any Angel troops attempting to rush the intersection would be vaporized by the plasma cannon.

“We must take down that big guy!” shouted the Angel frontline commander. “Have the 2nd and 3rd Assault Regiments provide cover, and get the 4th Psionic Demolition Team ready!”

Hundreds of Angel warriors launched a suicidal charge to draw the Destroyer's fire.

The Destroyer's plasma cannon roared, each shot leaving a lava pit a hundred meters in diameter on the ground.

Taking advantage of a gap in the fire, twelve psionic demolitionists wearing black stealth robes flew close to the ground, rapidly approaching the bottom of the Destroyer.

Each of them carried a metal box engraved with dangerous runes.

Those were Psionic Compression Bombs, an extremely unstable high-yield explosive.

“For the Empire!”

The demolitionists rushed between the four legs of the Destroyer mech.

The Destroyer's belly machine guns began to strafe, and six demolitionists were shredded along the way.

The remaining six successfully reached the mech's belly armor, attached the metal boxes to it, and then simultaneously initiated the detonation sequence.

There was no countdown; activation meant explosion.

BOOM!!!

A black spherical shroud of light expanded beneath the mech's belly; it was a phenomenon caused by space being collapsed by psionic energy.

The Destroyer mech's multi-thousand-ton body was hurled upward by this massive force, its belly armor completely torn apart, and the damaged reactor inside triggered a sympathetic explosion.

A massive mushroom cloud rose.

The shockwave swept across several kilometers, blowing away both Angel people and Iof People alike.

The wreckage of the Destroyer mech burned, blocking the intersection but also blasting open the defense line.

The follow-up Angel troops stepped onto the scalding ground, crossed the wreckage, and rushed toward the planetary shield generator.

Very few of the iofer defenders guarding the generator remained.

Twenty minutes later.

The control center of the planetary shield generator was captured.

As Angel engineers cut the main power lines, the layer of pale blue energy barrier shrouding the E-102 fourth planet flickered a few times before vanishing completely.

Without the protection of the shield, the iofer army on the ground was exposed to the muzzles of the Angel fleet in space orbit.

“Orbital bombardment coordinates confirmed.”

“All fleet, volley fire.”

In space, hundreds of Angel warships fired simultaneously.

Beams of light pierced through the atmosphere, precisely covering the assembly areas and industrial zones of the iofer army.

Countless pillars of fire rose from the ground.

Those once invincible “Tyrant-class” mechs had no resistance against the orbital strikes, being directly reduced to droplets of metal by the high-energy beams.

The last of the Iofer Defense Fleet made a desperate final stand but was ultimately wiped out by the more powerful Joint Fleet.

The battle ended within a week.

The Sector Governor responsible for the offensive on the E-102 Star System watched the report of heavy casualties, his facial muscles twitching.

This victory had no tactical beauty; it was purely built on a pile of lives, and it had consumed his own private army.

But he had to win, because behind him, a terrifying woman was coldly watching it all.

If he didn't take this planet, he might be the one destroyed.