The Bortele System was burning. Gas harvesters plunged into the brutal depths of the gas giants they once harvested for fuel and other materials. Light mechs on scouting duty suffered ambushes that caused them to get torn apart by the transphasic hyper energy cannons of alien phasefighters. Multiple alien fleets surrounded one stronghold after another. They methodically bombarded orbital defenses from afar and choked any attempt to launch serious counterattacks. Enormous energy beams and projectiles the size of meteorites struck the Titan Shields that protected many settlements from annihilation. These powerful energy barriers could only hold out for so long before they collapsed, causing the residents who failed to evacuate in time to pray that their underground shelters were deep and sufficiently far away to survive the cataclysms that would ensue. Ever since the Bortele System had been designated as one of the key nodes of the 5th defensive band, it had turned into the most important stronghold of the Torald Middle Zone. If Bortele fell, the ravages of war would completely engulf the Krakatoa Middle Zone! The human defenders assigned to resist the alien invaders fought harder than before. The stakes were far too high. Many of them still had families in the Krakatoa Middle Zone. Even if this was the case, they still felt responsible for the lives and deaths of trillions of colonists. Whether these brave human soldiers could all evacuate away in time depended on how long they were able to stall the advancing aliens! It was under these dire circumstances that the expeditionary fleet of the Golden Skull Alliance sought to make a difference wherever possible. The port system where they previously traded away their plunder and replenished their supplies had become a raging hot battleground! In fact, the expeditionary fleet was not supposed to be here. The Larkinson Army and the allied forces fighting alongside it all required a lot more time to replenish their spent mechs and recruit additional personnel. Their starships also hadn’t been able to repair all of the damage that they accrued in previous engagements. However, Saint Commander Casella Ingvar and several other leaders chose to cut their pitstop at Davute short and rush towards the Bortele System in order to make a difference. Their intervention definitely helped. Many soldiers regained their confidence when several ace pilots of the Larkinson Clan and the Cross Clan chose to fight by their side. The incredibly flashy and ostentatious performance of her Knights turned entire battles around. Thousands of Knights and dozens of Barons struck the enemy phasefighters and warships like ancient heroes come to life. Her Command Field blessed all of the mechs with an aspect of her true resonance, enabling them to hit their targets many times harder than normal. Combined with the perfect command and coordination of a true ace commander, her forces regularly routed invasion forces while outnumbered three to one or worse! Yet for all of her efforts, the aliens simply did not relent. They took their losses with grim determination. Their faith in their native gods and their hatred towards humans overwhelmed their need for survival. To the aliens, the Red War was not a game between high-level players. It was a holy war that directly determined which side gained possession of the Red War. No matter whether they were nunsers, orvens or zzamayels, each of them were more than willing to fight to the death! 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚 Their fanaticism exerted immense pressure on the over-stressed linefighters. The lack of time to recover and repair was taking a toll on every soldier, including the members of the expeditionary fleet. The mechs and mech pilots outside of the control of her Command Field began to slip up and make mistakes that they shouldn’t have made under optimal circumstances. As stress, fatigue, trauma and other mental ailments caught up to the mech pilots, the Planetary Guard units of Bortele found it necessary to apply the glows of their Pacifier mechs on soldiers that desperately needed relief from their haunting nightmares. As the proportion of forces getting killed or becoming unfit to rejoin the fight increased, the pressure on the remaining defenders also rose. This turned into a vicious cycle where the aliens continued to gain ground no matter whether they won or lost a battle. Several smaller planets and strongholds had already fallen due to the enemy’s willingness to absorb great losses. What was worse was that reinforcements weren’t coming in as fast as everyone hoped. The colonial states in the rear definitely had enough mechs and manpower to spare. They even dedicated a lot of their efforts on building additional fixed defenses as well as other combat vehicles such as tanks, starfighters and submarines. Yet the leaders of all of those states no longer had faith that the fifth defensive band would hold. So what if the frontlines at the Upper Zones held? That wouldn’t save the states located in vulnerable regions like the Krakatoa Middle Zone from getting swept by an alien tide! After realizing that no one could save them aside from themselves, the Davutans no longer sent anything but token forces to the frontlines. They decided to keep most of their core fighting forces in their own territories in order to meet the alien attacks that were bound to arrive sooner or later. The Saint Commander’s expression grew ugly at the selfishness displayed by all of those colonial states. It was no wonder that Ves always looked down on these local and regional interests. When their safety and power base were at stake, their leaders always made decisions that benefited their own narrow interests! The clearest sign that the states had abandoned any pretense of reinforcing the increasingly diminished linefighters was the refusal to send out the 77th Warborn Mech Division. Although Casella Ingvar hated the so-called Saint General, her personal animosity towards him paled in comparison to the need to save trillions of civilians from relentless alien raids. She truly wished that the mech pilots and champions of the 77th Warborn fought alongside the forces of the expeditionary fleet! She was even willing to let General Ark Larkinson preen like a peacock on the battlefield if that was what it took to delay the alien advance for a few more days! Unfortunately, none of her messages received a satisfying response. The Davutans were clever enough to use excuses such as the amount of time it took to replenish the serious losses suffered by the Warborn Mech Division, but Casella was no fool. She understood logistics pretty well considering that she used to run the Living Sentinel Mech Legion. As long as the Davutans sincerely wanted to reinforce the fifth defensive band, they could have dropped a few protocols and taken a few shortcuts. The Warborn could have been fighting alongside the members of the expeditionary fleet if Davute was truly willing to send out this elite mech division. Yet rather than doing so, Davute withdrew many of its forces back to its own territories and refused to let them leave. It was not alone in this behavior. Other colonial states no longer upheld their collective duty and responsibility to red humanity and kept their own forces in their own separate regions. This caused red humanity’s fighting forces to fracture and splinter! The lack of any overarching strategy or coordination meant that it would be trivially easy for the native aliens to defeat all of the defending forces in detail. The Davutans could not possibly withstand the invading aliens by relying on its own mechs and auxiliary warships. The states located further in the rear should ideally send their armed forces to places like Davute, but that did not happen. Instead, those states were happy to let states like Davute perish while consuming the resources of the invading aliens! They all hoped that by the time the alien invaders moved deeper into human-occupied space, they wouldn’t be able to press as hard as before. Casella had little hope that this would come true. The lack of troop concentration would keep the native aliens in high spirits. The casualties they suffered by defeating the humans piecemeal would be limited. Your next chapter awaits on freewebnovel This was a game of attrition that red humanity was bound to lose! The Saint Commander felt extremely frustrated about this unfolding disaster. She refused to acknowledge that all of those cowardly and selfish leaders were blind to the mistakes they made. Yet despite knowing that logic was against them, they still refused to coordinate any defensive efforts with other states! Suffice to say, the visible lack of support from the hinterland of human space had a negative effect on everyone’s morale. No matter how much Casella and the others tried to reassure them, the linefighters that were suffering and dying in the Bortele System felt increasingly abandoned by their rear. Honor and glory meant little as death continued to spread across the Bortele System and beyond. The lack of reinforcements and the dwindling stockpiles of supplies continued to take a toll on the remaining defenders. Although ace pilots such as Saint Commander Casella, Saint Dise Larkinson and Saint Linda Cross tried their best to rally them during every major engagement, they faced their own difficulties! "Careful!" Two greater phase lords worked together to accelerate a large rock from afar. Their spatial manipulation had given the rock such a powerful push that it soared forward and threatened to crash against one of the largest orbital fortresses of Bortele III, the final remaining stronghold in the port system! Thousands of Commandeered Transcendent Punishers and other ranged mechs unceasingly struck the space rock. Huge chunks of stone got chipped away or vaporized into particles. Yet against a space rock that was the size of a metropolis, none of the damage inflicted by the empowered mechs could make much of a difference! The orbital fortresses were forced to divert their firepower from the enemy warships and focus their most powerful guns on the space rock. Thunderous primary cannon batteries struck the incoming asteroid with a combination of solid projectiles and energy beams. The space rock quickly shattered after enduring this bombardment! The human defenders had no time to celebrate this small victory. The two greater phase lords had already begun to launch another space rock that one of the alien assault fleets had especially retrieved from the nearest asteroid belt! Again, the humans dedicated more firepower to intercepting the space rocks, enabling the enemy warships to press forward more aggressively as they endured less attacks than before! "Let me loose!" Saint Dise aggressively requested a private communication channel. "My Decapitator thirsts for phase lord blood. These rock throwers need to die." As much as the Saint Commander wanted this to happen as well, she still shook her head. "No. Absolutely not. I told you before that it is a trap. The aliens aren’t even hiding it that well. The 2 erudite greater phase lords are being guarded by 4 martial phase lords, two of whom are wielding Saint Piercers. They know they outnumber us and are practically salivating to bait us into their killing zone." "I don’t care! I can outfight any of them! These greater phase lords or not, I can easily maneuver around them so that they will only get in the way of each other! Trust in my skill, Casella!" The Saint Commander’s expression grew pained. "It is not your skill that is in doubt. It is your mech that is in question. It can’t keep up with your strength." That was a brutal observation, and one that Saint Dise could not refute. As much as she believed in her ability to defeat the strong with the weak, the circumstances were far too stacked against her this time. Perhaps the story would have been different if Casella and Dise received the ace mechs that they deserved, but that was an impossible dream. The fact of the matter was that the First Sword Mark II and the Minerva Mark I were simply too weak to overcome the might of 6 greater phase lords that were fully aware of what they were facing.