Battle of Blantleff, Day 1.
The rumbling of Star Colonel Uljin DeLuca’s rotary autocannons stopped after the last volley of long-range missiles left his launchers. Running dry fighting fuckin’ peasants, he thought. Not what I was expecting. The rest of his trinary was mopping up the stragglers while a few Blantleff Militia’s tanks and the odd ‘mech were retreating. Losses were at acceptable levels, all things considered. A few bioroids dead, a couple scrapped ‘mechs which they likely could fix out of their own supplies. Reports began flowing in from the other units in his cluster, basically saying the same thing. The new girl and her unlucky underling had done pretty well for themselves in their first fight, pushing the militia back.
“Listen up, twerps”, Uljin started barking on open Cluster comms. “We got our militia buddies on the run, but the bossman wants us to secure those farms. The MFB will get setup near the militia headquarters, bring in all your fleshpuppets for repair.” The battle at the capital and the surrounding was not going as well as Galaxy Commander Cochraine had wanted, based on the reports Uljin was getting from satellite feeds. I Legio and various mercenary units had dug in and was pounding any landing zones with mobile artillery assets. Star Captain Pox, commander of the cluster’s flyboys, piped up: “The enemy did not know we were coming, they were expecting the Lothian, quiaff?”
Uljin looked at the battle map one more time, trying to figure out where the remaining militia was running to. “Yeah, those fuckfaces were basically infightin’ to know which one of them was the most Roman of the Roman. It explains why they’re already up in arms and rarin’ to go.” Galaxy Commander Cochraine had warned Uljin that there could be issues with foreign partisans and with slave revolts. The Star Colonel did not care if he had to kill any labor caste or future labor caste or whatever Zalman had decided to do with these locals. What he did not like was the uncertainty as to what was going on.
“Okay, for now, let’s form up, get our things repaired real quick”, Uljin decided looking at the tactical situation, “and I’ll reassign some bioroids to people with losses from our reserves. Can’t lose more than a day or two in repairs right now, we need to push the locals to surrender or just wipe them the fuck out.” The Galaxy Commander could be calling them up to support his fight in the capital at any time, or he could simply want to make sure they had done their damn job. It was not that Uljin was afraid to disappoint his commanding officer. No, Uljin wanted to see Cochraine’s face when he would tell him he was done with his part of the operation before anyone else.
The militia was retreating towards what appeared to be a hidden field base in the mountains. The hunt was still on, and Uljin knew the new girl would be able to handle this while he swept the area one more time. Most Clan warriors wouldn’t take pleasure in killing partisans and would-be terrorists. Uljin asked for nothing more.
