Facilities in the Block were producing weapons as fast as they could, but many of those had taken hits as well, and they didn’t exactly have much cross-compatibility with Confederate systems. Without the Detroit facilities, the Confederation might as well just pack it in, and Conner had little doubt that if that came to pass, then the Block would shortly be overwhelmed as well.

“Mr. President?”

Conner looked up, nodding to the CSS agent standing there.

“There’s an update coming through from DARPA’s New Mexico facility.”

“I’ll be right there,” he said, getting up. He took a moment to smooth down his suit, the only thing about him right now that was as immaculate as a President should be. Apparently, the invasion had not yet overwhelmed his caretaker’s sensibilities.

The New Mexico office of DARPA had been tasked with the job of building the tachyon waveguide components they needed to take the fight right back to the aliens orbiting so high above them. Right then, he’d give almost anything for a chance to remind those bastards that they weren’t untouchable, and the way to do that was through DARPA right now.

Not that it would matter much if they lost Detroit.

What good were cannons if you didn’t have any shells to put through them?

New Dehli was a smoking ruin, though it was something a cynical Westerner might suggest was completely normal. Large sections of the city had been razed, however, burned out either by the invaders or the defenders, with neither offering nor accepting quarter in the vicious street-to-street fighting that had gone on over the last month.

The newer sections, built to a more modern code, were mostly recognizable as the fires there hadn’t spread. The buildings that fell tended to collapse inward by design rather than topple to the side and take out an entire block in the conflagration. The older parts of the city were all gone, however, burned to cinders and then trampled by alien drones or Block soldiers.

For all that, however, little had been decided in the run of a month of fighting.

Both sides poured reinforcements into the breach, seemingly caring nothing for individual lives, and that had resulted in an effective stalemate. The Drasin were unable to procure a solid foothold, their numbers being annihilated as fast as they could reproduce. But their rate of reproduction combined with the influx of new forces from orbit prevented the Block soldiers from reclaiming the city.

It was a state of affairs that could not last forever, and the longer it drew on the more time and numbers would favor the Drasin, who were quite content to cannibalize their own in order to gain a few more soldier drones.