Free Naero's War: The Citation Series 2: The High Crusade by Mason Elliott

covered most of the three main continents, sprinkled with a few mountains and foothills here and there. There were very few deserts, and extremely small polar ice caps.
    The Metrans had a system population of only 1.8 billion souls–almost all of them Besh, with their gray-green skin, green-black hair, and small ears. Mining and lumber were, of course, the two biggest exports.
    Here the Ejjai invaders had primarily split their forces and were locked in two separate, all-out struggles with the locals, naturally around the two largest gigacities, Bronten and Turam, each on a different continent.
    Ejjai military doctrine consisted of having their battle groups surround the two gigacities within rings of artillery, gunships, and gravtanks. They proceeded to shell the the defenders relentlessly and without mercy, while gunships and warships modified for ground assault raked the defenders and the civilian population indiscriminately.
    Once the defenders were sufficiently beaten down, the invaders began to collect the locals for the meatships, efficiently wiping out area after area.
    This strategy was very effective against mostly static, planetary defenses with weak militaries.
    The Marines of Bravo Command slipped onto the surface of Metra-4 without being detected, and organized two massive surprise assaults directly against the two main bodies of the invading forces.
    When night came, and darkness shrouded Bronten and Turam, the Marines unleashed their carefully orchestrated assault plans.
    Naero had been forward, scouting as usual with Company 36, and Squad 3 of her assigned recon platoon. Squad and Fireteam 1 leader Python Wilde, younger brother of the Anaconda, led the rest of her fireteam into harm’s way, consisting of Rebecca Cooper, Neesha Flynn, and Felix Blooding–no near relation, apparently, to an assistant cook Naero had known during the Annexation War, famous for a certain gravy he made.
    Fireteam 2 was led by Corporal Chang Han, Vincent Fay, Nicholas Kowalski, and Ted Kim. Squad 3 was rounded out by Corporal Lance Allen, Bryan Mitsubishi, Gabriel Patton, and Luke Barrett in Fireteam 3.
    Shetanna and her dozen Marines watched and painted Ejjai gravtanks and vehicles, belching forth out of a big enemy transport, assembling into their attack formations.
    They put all of those vehicles into play on the main combat grid, where they would be tabulated and assigned targeting profiles and priorities. Yet as they watched, another similar transport came down and began to disgorge its forces, making for a very tempting profile for an advance attack.
    Every enemy target couldn’t always be engaged at once, especially as enemy forces increased in size and became very numerous. Thus they had to be prioritized and attacked in the best order possible for maximum success.
    Naturally, higher value targets had a higher priority in the flow of attack and were engaged and eliminated first. This was done according to the integrated firing profiles of the Spacer Marine Battle Command System, its series of linked, powerful AIs, and the leadership, right on up to General Walker himself.
    “Sergeant Wilde, that’s a lot of enemy armor coming online,” Naero noted over their secured helmet link. “That’s going to be a major problem for everyone when they start to maneuver and fire.”
    “Yes, sir. I agree, sir.”
    “Wilde, let’s drop the sir stuff when we’re on our own. There’s no brass here.”
    “Copy that.”
    “How can we possibly resist such rich targets of opportunity? What say we seize the initiative here, swoop in and use up all of our explosives and ordnance. I mean drop it all where it counts–grenades, charges, microbombs, and float-seeker smartmines–everything we’ve got–in order to take out those two transports and perhaps some of those other ships, while they’re still unloading those tanks.”
    Python nodded. “I like that idea a lot, N. But after we do all that, we’re still in the middle of a