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46 he had around Ida. The
Skarrons had attempted to land troops there and failed three times, with his
fleet intercepting their transports and kicking the crap out of their warships,
preventing them from setting up a blockade in mid orbit as they had done in
other systems.
    That left the Skarron fleets roaming the system and
attempting to intercept ships moving about. Randy had been out hunting them as
well and making a lot of kills while the local population of 12 billion Humans
and 153 billion Kiritak worked to produce more drones at an astounding rate.
Rotunna was a system that didn’t need naval reinforcement, for they simply made
their own, and the Skarrons hadn’t yet fielded enough ships to challenge them
in any meaningful way. They’d preferred looking for opportunities for ambushes
and sneak attacks up until a few months ago when they’d finally made their
move.
    They hadn’t been stupid enough to assault the major
planets, but they had hit Heimdall’s single Sentinel
with an enormous fleet…half of which the defense station wasted before they
took it out. The Skarrons had had to close to short range to kill it with their
plasma weapons, meaning the Sentinel’s own short range defensive weaponry also
came into play, though the enemy had tried to hover in the sweet spot that
would allow their plasma to hit but the Sentinel’s maulers to remain
ineffective.
    But there really was no safe place anywhere around a
Sentinel and the Skarrons had paid a heavy price to take it down. Afterwards
they spammed the moon’s orbit with ships as Randy’s fleet came out to engage
them in a massive conventional brawl…all of which was a diversion to get their
ground troops down to the moon. It had been well planned and some 2,385
transports jumped in and headed down into the atmosphere simultaneously,
preventing Randy’s fleet from stopping them.
    They didn’t hit the cities or outposts at first,
merely coming down over top the moon-spanning forest and burning out some
landing zones where they could deposit their ground troops…minus their walkers.
The forest was too tall and too thick for them to operate with, so the
transports merely hung in the air over top the LZs until enough of the trees
had been cut down and disposed of to allow the ships to land.
    From there they’d burned back more forest to create
room for their walkers to deploy and hold ground as they began building
prefabricated structures and setting up their own outposts on the surface. It
wasn’t long before they had shield domes covering them and a foothold on the
moon that they began expanding upon.
    Trick of it all was, Star Force’s mechs couldn’t
operate in the forest either, making this ground war purely infantry save for the open areas surrounding both Star Force and now
Skarron infrastructure. The Hobbits and Skarrons had moved out on foot almost
immediately and filled the surrounding areas with troops that eventually hit
one of the outposts. They’d suffered heavy losses to take it, but the forest
came right up near the edge and didn’t have much room for mechs to operate,
instead relying on a number of defense turrets. With a combination of plasma
and their annoying shoulder-launched missiles they’d taken them down and
secured the outpost, but not before the Kiritak there were evacuated.
    That was the one small gain the Skarrons had made, but
with every day that passed they were cutting out roads through the forest for
their walkers to travel on. It was hard work, for many of the trunks were 10+
meters in thickness, but the army of workers they’d brought with them were diligently making progress. Randy had bombarded several
of their LZs from orbit, but every time he did more Skarron ships would appear
from wherever they were hiding within the system and force him to stop.
    One tactic the Skarrons had picked up was not showing
their full hand, leaving Randy guessing how many ships
they had insystem rather than showing him up front with a