Throughout the entire night, the Ascelin transports brought another 20 corps to the planet of Malla, and with the daily production of walkers and ground transports four of the Nukpana Heavy Transports were filled with ground equipment. So far, all three of the walkers and transports had done as well as they were expected only being held back with the small amount, to combat this Aleister ordered the construction of a few new facilities that would almost triple the output of the Sephia and quadruple the output of the Jagannath– even though building new 750 billion Stryminat ships was out of budget building a few ten thousands more 600,000 Stryminat walkers and transports were not.
Distributed across 11 different landing zones 9% of the planet was conquered, granted it was mostly wild territory with only four smaller cities, but progress was progress.
While the invasion was arguably one of the most important things that were currently going on, Aleister the king, who was supposed to be overseeing the slow invasion had his kingly gaze set on an ice waste of a planet– Ithapus Secundus.
While the Istaci were a good 10-15 years off it was still a goal to visit the planet at least twice a year to look at progress and to see the new recruits. While training has already begun, the actual facilities that were bored into ice mountains and into the ground itself have just been completed meaning it's now at full capacity.
With no escort, Aleister and his transport left a simple corvette taken from the fleet into a system adjacent to the Saigatis system. Entering the system minutes later the crew laid their eyes upon a few ships with bright lights like wielding arcs, and that is exactly what they were– with the most recent battle, the entire fleet stationed here was brought out of the system and was incorporated into the first fleet. With the scale of the battle, they were lucky to lose nothing greater than a cruiser, but that didn't mean they weren't damaged.
Transmitting the special daily code given to the pilots, the fleet who began to power up their weapons depowered their weapons and began to hail the transport. In the cockpit of Aleister's transport a hologram lit up between the pilot's and copilots workstation, it was the commanding officer on one of the ships.
"Passkey, Identification code, designation, and destination".
"184by12, 111, 1TS, Istaci training center" The pilot replied looking at the man dead on, who simply looked at a handheld wooden clipboard.
"1TS-184by12 Cleared for landing," The officer said after dragging his finger down a piece of paper clipped on the board. Getting the go-ahead the pilot reengaged the engines to full power and shot like a primitive arrow to the waste planet.
Back in the Orpheus class carrier, which held the commanding officer, another officer walked up to the hard transparent window aside from the man who was projected in the hologram.
"Vice-admiral Flibana, are we not to scan that ship?".
"Hahaha, scan it, captain there isn't a space-based scanner in a hundred light years that could penetrate that hull" Flibana giggled while patting the man on the back a little, before walking around checking on all of the lower officers, the captain, however, shrugged and walked to the lower deck where the chief engineer was along with other important people.
Entering the atmosphere Aleister's shuttle began to burn for a second which stopped just as fast as it began, unluckily the place they descended was experiencing one of the reasons other than the cold for why Ithapus was a hellscape, fog. The fog was so bad that they couldn't even see the plating just below the windows. Along with the fog large spikes of ice and rock jutted out from the planet, although most were fairly small a few could reach the height of mountains with thousands of spikes jutting out of them like sideway trees.
Pulling his stick back the pilot and copilot made a furious ascent above the fog, making their way up and past the fog in seconds they flew north to the Istaci training center, poking above the fog was a few large pikes. Seconds stretched into minutes which stretched into an hour before one of the only large openings safe from the large pillars of ice could be seen, nestled into the opening was a large complex of buildings like a metropolis, each building had dozens of bridges to other buildings across indoor roads– on top of the buildings rested large flak and a few Etherian energy cannons used on the Barre class, meaning if the fleet were to fall they would still have one hell of a fight before they won the planet as a whole.
Landing to the side of the complex where a dozen large pads were constructed for materials and intake of new soldiers, however, these now find themselves slated to be destroyed and built over as there is a new larger field for intake and material depots miles over– while the planet would claim the souls of any without proper suits and live-saving oxygen tanks, Aleister was not destined to die there as the landing pad they landed on retracted into a heated and oxygenated hanger room.
Walking down the ramp he noticed four rows of 10 former royal guards on each side of the path into the building, another thing he noticed was the landing pad was freezing, over a thick boot and warm socks he could still feel the almost brittle cold metal under foot. Walking past the cold metal and onto heated flooring, the soldiers all kneeled in perfect unison.
"Your majesty, it is an absolute pleasure to see you on such a fine day," Khoris said while deeply bowing "I assume you are here to inspect the new recruits?".