Even before she made it back to the base camp, Nico was barking orders for units to swap out, rotating the most exhausted back for a period of sleep and a good hot meal, while the fresh pilots took their place.

At first, Max didn't see the need for her to hurry, but then his radar slowly began to fill with red dots as the Narsian attack waves turned from organized groups to a cohesive mob. They must have hidden survivors from previous waves in the water and had them wait to join the next group of attackers.

They are under half an hour out from the front lines already, and the density of the attackers is steadily increasing. His new [Perception] skill that increased his rate of thought really came in handy at this moment, allowing Max to make full use of [Split Fire] and [Multi Point Targeting]. To the other mecha on the line, it looked like his lasers were guided, every shot hitting a different target, even though they knew that the weapon should be a hard-mounted barrel, adjusted by arm movements.

Max was going easy on the Battle Cannon rounds, for now, knowing that he had an entire shift on the line at the minimum and that if he went all out on the hard ammunition, with his increased rate of fire, he would definitely run out.

That is why the Mecha only spent two hours on the line at the most, with the standard shift being one hour. At the maximum rate of fire, two hours was enough to severely deplete solid ammunition, while an hour of intense combat was the point where it started to get mentally draining, even with the enhanced minds and bodies of the System-enhanced Pilots.

They didn't need much sleep, but an off hour to rest their minds was still necessary to keep them from mentally lagging and making careless mistakes under pressure.

[Temperature alert] Stalwart reminded Max as the barrels of the Pulse Laser Array slowly rose in temperature with the constant firing.

They had been modified and System optimized, but he still couldn't fire them at maximum output forever. The number of giants that were charging them was getting close to overwhelming though, now that the hidden forces had reached the forefront of the battle.

They were even getting to the tree line, under a hundred meters away from the defensive line now. Max added blasts from his Plasma Shotguns to the mix and reduced the power of his lasers to seventy-five percent, letting them cool down a little without reducing his rate of fire. That's the best he could do, and he could see that the rest of the mecha at his location were in a similar position.

With the enemy tightly packed and getting closer, Max switched from standard shells to the High Explosive version more commonly used for artillery in his Battle Cannon, the advantage of the Dual feeder that they had installed after taking the facility on Belmont.

The explosions shook the ground and boiled off the swamp water into a steamy fog that limited actual visibility to only a few meters, but large sections of the enemy forces were destroyed with every shot, giving the line a half-second breather now and then, as the Narsians moved to fill in the gaps left in their assault.

[Close Combat Mecha Forward] Max instructed as that still proved to be insufficient to keep them at bay. The light mecha and a few crusaders with claws or combat shields moved up to push the enemy back from the more vulnerable long-ranged units, and the long-ranged units of the squad started picking their targets more carefully, trying to eliminate those with the best close combat weapons before they could reach melee range.

It was standard procedure for the Kepler military, and it had worked well a thousand times before, so Max was fairly confident it would again, even if they were now beginning to take damage.

"Stand Fast. The next unit should be here soon, we just need to hold until they arrive." Max announces, looking at his notifications and seeing that they were still five minutes away.

Nico had sent the rested units out early, only thirty minutes into their hour-long break, just long enough for the mecha to get restocked and the pilots to be served a proper meal. Not much of a break, but the intensity of the attack was much higher than anyone had anticipated.

Neither orbital scans nor radar had detected this many Narsians in the area, so Max suspected that there had been more portal openings, either in the swamp itself or nearby in the hills where these giants were coming from.

[Just our luck isn't it? We had to be the ones that pulled the double deployment Narsian invasion with untested recruits.] Nico jokes to Max, her text message popping up on his heads-up display where the joke won't be seen by others and damage morale.

[They're not untested anymore.] Max sends back as he unloads on a Narsian Heavy weapons team with both his shotguns and his Battle Cannon.

Their weapons aren't the only thing increased, so is their armor, making them the Narsian equivalent of a tank squadron. The combination of weapons is enough to take them down though, and Max lets loose a sigh of relief.

[Prepare for Incoming Orbital Strike]

'That's the robot voice of Abraham Kepler, but why here and why now?' Max wonders, right before the sky lights up with brilliant purple lightning.

The ship used a dispersed pattern orbital lance to eliminate everything from a few kilometers away from the defense force to the edge of the swamp. The temperature warnings on Stalwart light up again, but this time not for his weapons, but to inform him that the exterior temperature is unsafe for infantry troops.

[All infantry back to base and get underground.] Nico instructs a few seconds late.

It seems that the strike was a surprise to her too, or at least it came much sooner than anticipated. The Narsians have been shocked by the attack as well, their carefully planned attack formations faltering and the mecha on defense tearing through the survivors at a rapid rate.

Max takes a moment when his position becomes clear again to check the official logs, not seeing anything about a strike by Abraham Kepler. But there are four more drop ships now on planetary station, all having arrived within the last twenty minutes. It's possible that they planned a series of strikes on high-density enemy targets over the Fleet Channels, with updated encryption, so Max wouldn't have received them, but that doesn't make it any less shocking when you get a notice of friendly fire two seconds before an orbital strike.

[Here is the updated intelligence] Nico sent over to Max as he was clearing out the stragglers of the Narsian attack and considering what might have prompted the orbital bombardment.

Looking over the data that Nico sent, which had just minutes ago been made available to the Commanders, he finally understood. When Nico rerouted the landers of the first wave, she sent the entire population of Abraham Kepler to this one continent. One out of the nine that were on the planet. The overwhelming force cleared out most of the Narsian troops, and even now they were making great headway with the second wave.

With one secure continent, they were free to launch attacks on the others, and could safely stage supplies, repairs, and logistics. Despite the early setback, the tactic was unintentionally brilliant, sending them all to the lowest value continent with the fewest enemies. The Kepler forces now had a secure foothold on the planet, and the ships of the fleet were planning to do the same thing on another continent, but with twice as many troops, to account for the increase in Narsian soldiers.

If it worked again, the four ships would take two more continents in short order, and then they could push out to attempt to take the rest.

This would make for a slower battle than blanketing the entire planet at once, but according to the Fleet data, it should reduce 'Resource Expenditure' or as soldiers called it, casualties.

Their orders were to hold the swamp while the next waves came down, while the units on dry land scoured the region for surviving Narsians. Bringing the population of them to zero in a day was realistically impossible, but estimating by the number of red dots that disappeared from his radar, they lost tens of thousands in a second today.

[Contact South] Nico informs the back line mecha, who have been mostly waiting and killing off sporadic attempts to encircle the mine.

Not that they haven't been in combat, just not as intensely as the unlucky lot in front of the main push to break their forces.

[Contacts are under control] The Southern line reports and Nico sends a round of deployment orders, bringing Max's group back to base and sending out an equalized force to hold the perimeter, lacking the doubled patrols that Max set up for the attack.

That leaves them with a third of their force available in an hour to go on patrol, hunting the swamp for Narsian survivors and additional hidden attackers. The muddy and bloody part of the battle is about to begin.