“Maybe so, Private. But they won’t expect this. If we move fast enough…”

He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. His people were Marines. All they needed was the order to go.

*   *   *

“Forward, all forces. The longer we wait, the more time they have to dig in.” Millius was walking forward, watching his three centuries—what was left of them—shake out into an assault formation. Frontally charging an enemy on high ground wasn’t an act of tactical brilliance, he knew that. It would be difficult and costly. But anything else took too much time, and after the last month he wasn’t about to let another hundred of these cursed Confed Marines to break out loose into the countryside. He’d managed to keep the tritium production facility mostly operative, despite several attacks, but with so many fresh troops, he knew the Confeds would hit it again and again…and if they had enough chances they’d get lucky.

Casualties are bad enough, but if I let them destroy the production facility, I’ve singlehandedly blown the whole mission…

No, there was no time. It had to be a frontal assault, and whatever the cost in blood to crush the enemy, he was prepared to pay it.

The way is the way…

He watched as his forward units surged up the slope…and were cut down by the deadly fire. They pushed forward at first, ignoring their losses. He expected nothing less. They were Alliance stormtroopers, after all.

But the troops dug in on the heights were good too. That was no surprise. He’d spent a month trying to hunt down a single platoon, and whatever arrogance and sense of superiority he’d had when he landed was long gone. He didn’t know what was happening in the space above Santis, but the arrival of enemy ground troops and the failure of Commander Rigellus to communicate in over a week weren’t good signs. Had the intel been wrong? Had the Confederation been able to send a strong enough force to overwhelm and destroy Invictus? The intel reports had certainly failed to warn on the effectiveness of the enemy’s ground troops.

He saw his lead elements, about halfway up the rise. They were slowing…in places they were stopping entirely. But they weren’t running…he swore the day he saw an Alliance force rout would be the day he met his death in battle. They were firing back at the enemy, scrounging for the miserable few bits of cover available on that mostly open hillside.

No…

He knew he had to keep his forces moving. They couldn’t win a firefight, not against a dug in enemy on higher ground. They had the numbers to win by sheer force of weight…but they had to keep going.