Jaimie caught him as he seemingly fell from the sky. "Hey baby, did it hurt you when I fell from heaven?" Astral was on his corny pick up lines as Jaimie rolled her eyes and dropped him to the ground, looking down, seeing the cuts and realizing she should have not done it. "How has the battle been so far?"
"Well, we have lost every moon so far outside of one, and Titan's forces are starting to encroach." Jaimie tapped her side as bandages came out, she started to wrap him up in them as she looked at his eyes, encrusted with gold as the cracked parts had three different colors. "What happened to you?"
"The Seventeen sent their recruit after me, and he gave me alot of trouble, however, Hephaen died in the process." Astral fell silent as he looked up to the Merle. 'Send the signal to start the backup plan, one of you.' Astral pointed his right arm up as a cyan beam fired through to the Merle.
"Is that the plan being set into motion?" Jaimie asked as she grabbed the arm and wrapped up the final set of cuts on the arm. "As for the planet itself and the forces here, we have held fine, lots of losses but no ground has been given up by Zane, Achilles, Airsoft, Proto or Omaha. The Dogpound has fallen back to a singular line. Zeta is doing the heavy carrying there." Astral stood up as he summoned his gauntlets as they appeared on his wrist.
"And the space battle numbers are still looking good enough to keep pace to not kill us from orbital bombardment?" Astral calmness was alarming to her as she tilted her head at him. He checked the battle logs as he saw how many they had lost. A deep sigh left his body as he heard someone approaching, heavy footsteps that he had recognized.
"Heh, he is back for another beatdown from me?" Astral held his blade up as he realized this was a trap if they stayed in place. "Jaimie, take care of him and I can handle the rest." He held his right wrist up and fired an aggression beacon, alerting all inside the city this is where he was as he got pulled into it by a giant vine. Jaimie looked at God Emperor as he stood there with no fear.
"I am the one who killed you last time." Jaimie smiled as she held her spear up.
"But you won't be able to do it again." God Emperor laughed as the abilities by him felt enhanced compared to normal. Jaimie wouldn't worry as she smiled, spinning her spear rapidly into the ground as in the distance she saw the space station explode in a set of wings.
'Thirty men did what few thought possible, they will be remembered.' Airsoft stood up along the outskirts as the armor on his right side was replaced, his arm still charred and combined with the undersuit as he held the pistol with his left hand. "This will feel weird, but it's good to see me back in the fray." He stood up and charged into the frontline once more as the swarms of enemies became more varied rather than just one faction or the other. They were working in great coordination with each other despite their differences.
"Proto, Omaha! I need you two to figure out where their communication is coming from." Airsoft gave the command as he received a new communication from a callsign he didn't recognize.
"No can do Airsoft, its in space, we are tracking the callsign and the commanders, its coming from the central ship inside of Titan's fleet, all attempts to crack through haven't worked." Viper Seventeen commented to him as he looked down to the planet. He and Viper three were poking and prodding to try and enter the blockade as they had difficulties.
"If you can cause chaos down here we can seize the advantage but we need their communication gone!" Airsoft was taking out the light targets as the two mechs standing on either side of him were taking down the larger units and vehicles as the frontline of Achilles forces.
"If you guys can hold out for two hours we can slip through and try and take it down from above." Viper three commented as the two Viper wings were dealing with other fighters but finally found the weak point.
"Got it, and godspeed you two!" Airsoft commented as the mech to his right got hit with a rocket and fell over. Airsoft peeled the shell off and pulled the pilot out to get them to safety. "All forces on this line fall back one level!"
Zane heard this alert as Sal and Pete were waiting at line two for him. "All clone forces on the fourth front, fall back one level!" Zane gave the command as the artillery opened fire and gave them ample cover to retreat.
"So does this mean we are losing?" Minn asked Nevada as the two of them were behind cover. Zeta never ending fire was covering the entire area as they mech had no other choices, their weapons couldn't break him, his will or his shielding.
"It means we already lost, all we can do now is hold out for as long as humanly possible to buy as much time as possible. Astral can turn the tides at any moment." Nevada stayed behind cover as he remembered the scene on earth of him decimating all the sacramentum in a single moment.
"If Astral can turn the tides to our favor why hasn't he?" Hawaii laid down behind the cover as missiles stuck their position. Zeta held his hand up as each missile struck his shielding, failing to break him as he let loose his own barrage of missiles into the frontline.
The three fronts held strong as the space battle became a struggle, no ships could land on the Merle due to its shielding, despite it trying to be breached it also provided more than plenty of anti ship support while the Alliance's fleets dwindled.
The attacking armies were still functional as some had a handful of ships and others still had a majority of their fleet. All of them converged above the planet as if it was destroyed they could finally take on the Merle and take it out for good.
Their key problem was not the fact of numbers, but of the way Ally, Pollen, Lucky, Adam and Astrid were able to outmaneuver them with wide brush strokes stronger than what they could deem possible, covering for every possibility at once while they could only take it one step at a time.
The fleets meant they were finally at the number they needed to hit, one thousand to one in space, but still ten thousand to one on the ground, they needed Astral sooner than later to finish what he has started by trapping the high power members of the attacking fleet inside of the city to finish the job.
But the only problem was, the powers that Astral couldn't slow down were watching closely, Titan was still the biggest threat, and if he went unchecked he could defeat the entire army while Astral was distracted, but there was no time to worry about it as Adam opened up the message that he had received. Tearing out multiple pages of his notebook he prepared what they discussed.