Four
Two withdrawals.
Eleventh day of the seventh month, year 110560of the imperial calendar (January 8th 2153).
5 tack south of the apes' defensive line.
Elven lines command group.
'What do you mean by "I can't give you air support with dragons" Heixisys!'
Strategos Aera was funning, the magicians in his retinue had already made a telepathic census of his forces, 100,000 minds of his army couldn't' be detected, that meant he had already lost an eighth of all the troops with he began the battle and many of the still living were emitting such dreadful thoughts of pain that his magicians were overwhelmed and incapable of discerning the wounded of the unharmed. And as if that weren't enough bad news Heixisys was denying him of air support.
'Strategos Heixisys says that she can't spare any, the fleets with the automaton carriers haven't stopped of engaging her dragons and wyverns and not only that but more and more automatons have joined from the city at the north, my lord.' Said the telepath whom was trying to control his voice to don't reflect the immeasurable fear the felt. In part for the display of uncontrollable rage of his lord and part for the fear to the possibility of the enemy slug thrower targeting them with their dreadful white smoke.
'Listen well Heixisys, I don't care how, but I need your dragon to pin down the enemy while we try to get in effective range of our slug throwers.' Bellowed Aera to the telepath whom quickly transmitted the message.
After a few moments in which Aera rage and desperation grew the telepath relayed the answer.
'Strategos Heixisys will commit 100 wyverns. She says that she can't dispose of more my lord.'
'Oh great, thanks, you are free to leave telepath.'
The telepath bowed and left Aera to think what to do. He indeed couldn't do much beside order retreat even if that could cost him his rank and maybe his head, Chaesalor won't take kindly his defeat and probably will arrest him to send him back to be court martialed before the Emperor himself. But the moral of his troops was about to break after more than 20 minutes of unidirectional slaughter, many were already fleeing back to their landing point even with the threat of being executed.
'Order the elven troops to retreat and the beasts to keep pushing towards the enemy, also deploy the slug throwers and order the orcs to crew them, they will be our rear guard' Said a calmer Aera.
The elves in his command center stopped what they were doing, only the sounds of elves and other races in pain and the sounds of explosions not too far keeping the command center from failing in complete silence, with all the presents looking at his commander in utter disbelief.
'What the heck are you looking at?! MOVE!'
With that the elves woke up from their stupor and sprang into action.
One of his aides meekly asked.
'Do we provide of magicians for the orcs to shield them?'
'Are you an idiot? No self-respecting magician will risk his life protecting that trash. Order them to stay there until the cannons are fully deployed and then enthrall the orcs before they retreat or they would run.'
'As you order my lord'
Aera didn't hear the answer of his aide, he was destroying his most sensible documents to keep them from failing in apes hands when they recaptured the stretch of land where his command ten was located.
'My lord, the apes are retreating.'
'What?'
UEI defensive line, Palmer Island, command tent.
While the face of Colonel Federov was stern and rigid his mind was actually feeling a cautious joy at how well the defense was going.
In just 20 minutes the elven attack has been broken and almost stopped in its tracks. The enemy completely unprepared to deal with one of the most horrendous yet effective weapons of mankind.
Federov knew it was dumb luck that his plan worked but he wasn't going to complain for it. Once the shields were gone the enemies were just a mob of little more than practice targets for their men, one that became panicked and headless after the surprise of the white phosphorous.
And thanks to it, most of the larger trolls were being snipped by the tanks after the shields in those sections fell, his greatest preoccupation was gone. He was worried that the shield some trolls were using was thick enough to stop even APFSDS rounds and they could chase them in their retreat, those beings were the fastest by far in the enemy army covering 500 meters in 15 seconds, but his worries about them proved soon to be unfounded when they fell after few shots.
What wasn't unfounded was the fact that the army wasn't stopping even with the carnage delivered to them, at least not all of them. The wolfmen, crabmen, orcs and few other monstrosities had keep their advance to the point where not only the autocannons of their IFV had begun to fire but also the heavy machine guns.
It wouldn't be too long until the enemies got close enough for them to get in range of their infantry's rifles and general purpose machine guns.
That would put them dangerously close to the 500 meters mark he and Yang considered as an enough safe margin to retreat to the defense line set by Major Ramirez at the north. Neither he, Yang nor their troops fancied to fight in hand to hand combat with the things coming at them.
'Air raid, the freaking dragons are coming!'
At that Federov and Yang gazed far from the butchering their troops were doing to the sky where several dozens of the smaller dragons, wyverns were quickly closing at their forces.
That worried him a little, he trusted his men and Yang's men and the considerable number of Anti Air assets they had, trust that was rewarded by the strings of fireflies flying from their SPAAGs directly to the dragons. Dragons that began to fail in parts leaving behind green clouds of mist and falling carcasses after the golden shimmer enveloping them was gone after few seconds.
But some managed to come close enough to launch small fireballs at them before following their same end that the rest of their comrades.
Everybody present threw themselves to the ground and then a wave of heat washed over him and screams, screams were heard.
'Are you alright Yang?'
'Peachy'
Colonel Yang was the first to talk as both stood up and saw a fire ravaging one of the tents near them.
'Causalities?'
One of the members of his command staff, whom was retrieving a fire extinguisher answered.
'Three men are death, and five are badly burned at least, one of the tanks got hit but only lost the reactive armor and the machine gun.'
The two colonels cursed for the loss of lives, human lives, and while they wanted to help with the fire they needed to manage a battle.
'They are at 750 meters Federov' pointed Yang.'
'Do you thing we should order the retreat now?'
'Yes, if those dragons come again while we are mounting we will be sitting ducks and even with the beating we are giving them they aren't stopping.'
Federov saw their lines, some tanks already were receiving fresh loads of shells and propellant gel in their rear access ports, a characteristic that allowed the auto loader of the tank to restock its main gun ammunition and propellant while allowing the pilot to engage any hostile at moment's notice.
But even if they have enough ammunition and more coming from the city, what they didn't have was time and distance between them and those monsters.
'True, alright, give the order'.
At that Colonel Yang nodded and turned to the comms station.
'Captain, give the order to withdraw, we are leaving.'
UEI defensive line
'You heard the Colonel, Sergeant, we are leaving.'
Sergeant Anya Abramova received the control of the main gun while the lieutenant drove backwards to keep the frontal armor towards the enemy.
So far for her the battle has been, pleasant, even if she never would admit it to anybody, not even to the Lieutenant. They might be a small a self-confined team whom shared almost everything and trusted each other with their lives but even he wouldn't understand her personal joy killing slavers.
She had seen what human slavers are capable of doing to fellow humans in all the continents in this planet but as a woman there was certain horrors in slavery that men almost never suffered and she despised above everything else, in the past lead to her volunteering to be in firing squads of slavers condemned for such crimes.
And now here, some aliens came and where attacking earth. And while she had not proof of their intentions, everything about them reek of them being like the colonial empires of the age of sail, empires which were built on top of the backs countless slaves. She couldn't help but despise them as much as she has despised the slavers killed whenever the UEI brought another human community into its protection.
She wanted to make these aliens pay for daring to threaten mankind, and for the past minutes she had done exactly that with the heavy and general purpose machine guns of their tank but now she could use the big gun. Slaving both secondary weapons to the tank's AI she selected target, one of the large triceratops and destroyed it with a frag round.
While the environment was very target rich, she noted that under the portions of the enemy army still protected by shields something was happening.
'Mmm, Leonid, look at this.'
Lieutenant Lebedev was concentrated driving, while he didn't fear running over their own infantry, the AI used their transponders to keep him from running over them, he didn't like to be distracted.
'What is it in Anya?'
'The enemies are mounting cannons, like those ancient cannons of the Napoleonic wars.'
The feed of the forward facing cameras zoomed in an area where some green and ugly monsters were indeed deploying some blue weird looking cannons.
'Report it back to command'
And as Lieutenant Lebedev said that, the enemy cannons opened fire with pink colored bolts.
UEI command group.
'The troops report we are taking fire from the old looking cannons.'
Colonel Federov could see it clearly, while the enemy weapons had the range to reach their lines, obviously lacked the accuracy of their own weapons.
'It seems that their weapons have longer ranges that we thought but their accuracy is poor.' Observed colonel Yang.
'It doesn't matter, they are still a threat, look at where they hit.'
Yang noted what Federov meant. The drone feed focused in the impact site of one of the enemy shots. It was charred, with pink crystals fragments nailed in the rock. It was obviously that the bore of their weapons was quite big, probably as big as the mortar of the ancient Sturmtiger.
'True, but fortunately almost all our marines are ready to leave.' Pointed Yang.
And that was true, almost all have gotten into their respective IFVs and APCs but with them the volume of fire pouring into the enemy lines was reduced significantly to only the autocannons and machine guns in the vehicles.
'Common let's go'.
And with that, both Fedevor and Yang boarded their respective command vehicles.
Elven lines
'They are retreating.'
'We can win this.'
The screams of victory of the stupid beasts could be heard by Ara Olatris, one of the shield magicians in charge of powering the shields covering the deployment of the large slug throwers.
She definitely didn't want to be here, not after what she saw what happened to some of their fellow magicians specifically targeted by the accursed white smoke. These apes somehow manage to use some unholy and horrendous weapon to surpass the shields and burn like nothing she has ever seen.
But she didn't have any other option at least until the cannons completed their deployment and heating to allow the Celezite shells to correctly be fired. To her relief she saw the cannons glowing, sign that it was ready to fire at any given moment.
Now she had only one job left, enthrall the orcs to keep firing until they were killed but it wouldn't be so easy, it never was.
'Smoke!!!'
One of the orc screamed and Ara Olatris saw the powder and smoke slowly falling. Unlike the weapons dropped by the enemy automatons the powder wasn't heavy enough to be stopped by the shield, increasing the strength only stopped the largest white pebbles but most of the powdered substance still fell on top of them once came to a stop.
Ara screamed and ran before ending the enthralling of the orcs, and keep running until her lungs burned for the effort. She look behind her and saw the cannon position where she has been standing few seconds earlier to be consumed in the white smoke.
'Hey, magician, what do you think you are doing?'
Ara turned and saw a Tourmarhe commander. He didn't outrank her, technically, magicians are directly under the command of the strategos but here in the heat of battle or in this case a massacre, officials can made their lives miserable.
'Retreating as we were ordered.'
'You didn't finished your job with those orks.'
'And what are you going to do about it?'
Ara threatened Tourmarhe commander conjuring some flames with his mana. Without celezite to act as a power source and the effort to operate the shield she was sure that couldn't incinerate the elf in front of her. Fortunately she didn't have to. The elf just left her pass, and is not like they were looking to become the next target of the enemy weapons.
Then a mighty tremor threw her and all the elves to the ground. Beyond the shield she was currently under there was nothing but swirling dark clouds of smoke.
In the retreating forces of the UEI.
Federov saw the drone feed with impassivity. Shortly after they began to retreat, the monsters moral that was about to crumble suddenly was revitalized and began a frenetic chase of his and Yang's troops.
That was half expected and provided the perfect opportunity to use one of the loitering ammunitions that were being deployed by Mayor Ramirez as more and more supplies and reinforces arrived from the continent.
And the results of that was what he and Yang were seeing. The impact of the five tons thermobaric bomb directly diving in the large portion of the army that had lost their shields.
His plan worked beyond what he had right to expect, even if the drone image showed the grotesque result of the white phosphorous in the enemy.
But that didn't matter, the thermal image showed the enemy army considerably diminished in size, he calculated that about a fourth has been eliminated.
'Do you think we should pursue Yang?'
In his headset he heard the voice of his fellow colonel.
'Negative, we would expose too much to those cannons if we close in. Let's stick to your tactic of burn their crews operating the shields.'
Federov shuddered remembering the tank whom by its bad luck got hit by one of the enemy pink bolts.
The crew survived, the shot failing to penetrate the crew's armored cocoon and the 1.5 meters of frontal armor, but the impact wrecked the tracks with pink crystals that seemed to grow into the tank structure for a while after the impact, almost transmuting the tank hull itself.
A total loss of the vehicle even if the crew survived.
'Sir we have a communication from the fleet'.
'Thanks. Yang I have to attend this.'
'Of course.'
The voice of his fellow colonel was replaced by that of Admiral Malikov.
'Report colonel.'
'Admiral, we have managed to halt the advance of the enemy army in the valley.'
'With the use of white phosphorous.'
Federov twisted his mouth in disgust. Would the admiral reprimand him for the decision of using it? But then why nobody had stopped his request of the weapon?
'Sir if I may say we didn't other option. The bombing by our air assets weren't having any success taking down the shields.'
'Colonel, I won't not reprimand you, even if personally I find the use of such weapon as barbaric it worked when others weapons didn't. General Cohen wants to know how did you and colonel Yang come up with the idea of using it.'
'By observing the bombings of the past 4 days while they advanced into our position. I noted that while the bombs themselves were stopped, the smoke lingering after the explosions actually could penetrate the shields.'
'A vital piece of intel about them, thanks you colonel. What else have you noted about them?'
'Their cannons sir.'
For the next minutes Federov described the effects of the enemy shells on their unfortunate tank to be hit.
'Those elves are more dangerous than what we think Colonel but in the meantime you have new orders. You will chase the enemy at a prudent distance and harass their retreat. Avoid killing the wounded enemies unless fired upon, NBC teams are landing as we speak to handle them.'
'NBC teams sir?'
'Yes, they are aliens, we don't know if the microorganism they bring are compatible with our biology and potential diseases or incompatible and thus inert. The council don't want to take any chance with an alien disease escaping, we already have a daunting task if we want to quarantine the places they have been.'
'As you order sir.'
The link with the admiral was cut and that left Federov thinking. Those aliens were weirder but for him it was clear for the footage recorded by their drone, in how the elves broke and left as soon as they plan didn't work, leaving the other races to fight and die. It was obvious, at least for Federov that they were an empire with a caste system, and those different species were from previous conquests of other world.
But now he had more things to do.
'Yang we have new orders.'
'I know, admiral Zheng just informed, we are to pursue and harass them, damn it.'
'There is nothing we can do about it. We should neutralize their cannons first though.'
Central command of the UEI military forces. Roxby down city, coast of the Great Goyder's inner sea, Australia.
'And that is what the colonels has informed us about them.'
Cohen was looking at the faces of the Admirals Malikov, Zheng, McElroy and General Paschal.
To Cohen it didn't make any sense. Weapons capable of transmuting materials like magic? Elves? At least they proved to be far from invincible, even if some of their capacities were problematic.
'How long until we can begin operations against their camp base in site zeta?'
McElroy responded 'We are still contesting the control of the air space over them, even with the extra fighters from the continent there still are 3000 enemy air units and we have lost 12 aircrafts against them. Most of them as we tried to push and bomb the troops outside the compound.'
'What about high altitude bombing? Those dragons are living beings, they shouldn't be capable of breathing at high altitudes.'
This time was General Paschal, the commander of the reinforcements from the South American continent, whom answered. 'I sent a bombing squad while McElroy's air complement distracted some of the dragons but apparently they can breathe up there, while their climb rate is nowhere near that of our fighters, those dragons don't have problems reaching 18 or 19km of altitude and have proven to be capable of intercepting our bombs with their fireballs if given enough time to chase them.'
General Cohen was meditating, the capabilities of the enemy were insidious, but there should be.
'What about the main cannon of your cruisers and destroyers.'
The Admirals shocked their head. They knew which weapon the General was talking about. The 100mm two stage light gas gun, designed before the great catastrophe of the 2070's, when the rail guns failed to deliver the promised capabilities that everybody expected, the two stage light gas gun was a militarized version of the hypervelocity research guns of the space agencies of the past. With the only complication over conventional guns being the necessity of constant production of hydrogen gas, they were an easier concept to militarize than rail guns and were capable of firing a 30kg shell up to 7km/s at a range of 250km.
'Their shields sir, we ordered the shelling of the landing path of the dragons but the shields resisted even hypervelocity impacts.'
General Cohen meditate again. He knew that there wasn't white phosphorous rounds for that weapon. Why would be? The energy released by hypervelocity impacts was enough to obliterate most of human man made fortifications, yet those shield refused to fall.
'It doesn't matter, continue with the bombardment. If their dragon's shields drop after some punishment, the ones protecting their ground troops should too, we only have to punish them enough. General Paschal, if that doesn't work you are to prepare white phosphorous bombs to bombard them once their air cover has been thinned out enough. Admiral McElroy prepare your marine complement and coordinate with General Paschal, as soon as he can launch bombing runs your marines go in.'