The special forces elites of the 10th Brigade didn’t have the same terrifying battlefield dominance as the Interstellar Warriors. Despite the armor plates welded onto their exoskeletons providing protection for their vital torso areas, they weren’t enough to completely ignore enemy gunfire, let alone the significant number of laser weapons in the hands of the elite Honor Guard of the Kingdom of Stefano.
Their offensive tactics, relying on laser guns and electromagnetic rifles, could easily destroy ordinary soldiers, but when facing the few Sentry Mecha, they too lacked effective means. Only their most elite, trained to T2 level, holding anti-tank rifles could pose a conventional threat to those ‘Knights.’ Other special forces elites needed to either get close with chainsaw swords or plant bombs, or otherwise hope to have anti-armor rockets or mortars at hand.
But the good news was that, thanks to the extra power provided by the exoskeletons, they could carry a variety of heavy individual weapons, much more powerful than ordinary infantry.
Compared to the Interstellar Warriors, their biggest advantage was in their numbers.
After Anat and the other twenty Interstellar Warriors drew most of the enemy’s attention, using the Iron Curtain Queen as an irresistible bait for the Stefanians, Matins led another twenty men smoothly shutting down the rest of the Fortress’s air defenses, and even cleared a space suitable for Windfalcon Fighters to drop soldiers and supplies on the upper part of the Fortress.
This air-drop brought down a thousand special forces elites—a number fifty times that of the Interstellar Warriors.
Moreover, the Phoenixes hadn’t retreated, they would also join the battle.
After handing over the task of guarding the Fortress and watching over the high-ranking Stefano prisoners to a special forces company, forty Interstellar Warriors formed squads and led a large number of special forces elites to commence operations.
The battle lasted for almost two days.
Matins, as the commander-in-chief, basically accomplished the mission of leading the troops to seize the entire Fortress.
The Stefanians were truly fighting bravely, but their subjective valor couldn’t make up for the gap in actual strength between the two sides.
Not to mention, could it be that these elite warriors of the Alliance were weak in their combat will?
Impossible.
And indeed, it was because of their relentless fighting will, enduring heavy casualties, accepting seemingly suicidal missions, that they died so quickly.
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The Stefanian Honor Guard was almost completely annihilated. Fifty Sentry Mecha and over eight thousand elite soldiers, virtually the kingdom’s most elite force.
The Iron Curtain Queen saw all this with her own eyes, her heart bleeding.
No one knew better than her how much effort she spent over the years of her reign to build such an Honor Guard. Their existence was not merely to defend the Fortress—she had larger ambitions, and this Honor Guard was the backbone of her future plans.
But now, all was lost.
Was she a futile monarch?
No.
But when her enemies were extraterrestrial visitors, the unbeatable Interstellar Warriors and the Alliance Army, she, bound by her own limitations, found herself utterly powerless.
After the most elite Honor Guard of the Kingdom of Stefano was decimated, the battle temporarily subsided.
The forces of the Alliance held their position within the Fortress, with no immediate intentions of advancing outward.
Despite three more waves of Windfalcons bringing thousand more special forces elites, along with a battalion and an artillery company from the 31st Airborne Division, boosting the Alliance’s total military presence to around four thousand, Matins, as the commanding general, did not deploy troops beyond the Fortress.
Inside this capital city, there were still two hundred thousand Stefanian soldiers.
These royal forces were far from as powerful as the decimated Honor Guard, but they were still numerous and possessed over a hundred Sentry Mecha, as well as two Knight Titans.
Yet this main force of two hundred thousand didn’t launch another massive assault on the Fortress.
It wasn’t that they had some other purpose in mind, mainly… they were shell-shocked.
Nearly all the kingdom’s high command had been captured; many Honor Guard officers had died in the previous two days of battle. Among the survivors, it was difficult to find a suitable candidate to lead the troops.
They even summoned a retired general back to service.
The chaos within the army needed sorting out, and the next steps required more profound planning.
Moreover, they weren’t completely inactive.
They also tried to muster forces to retake the Fortress.
But it was clear they couldn’t.
The two hundred thousand forces, initially not stationed within the city, were far inferior in quality to the Honor Guard defending the Fortress. After several failed attacks, they had suffered significant losses. Although their casualty rate was nowhere near that of the almost annihilated Honor Guard, the participating units showed a marked tendency toward combat hesitance and reticence.
Despite some zealous and loyal officers urging the troops to attack repeatedly, the results were very poor.
This caused the conflict around the Fortress to generally calm down, with only some low-intensity fighting in localized areas.
