Having my eyes encased in water while still in my eye sockets was an experience. I offered to pop my eyes out for easier application of her power, but Francesca just laughed at me thinking I was joking, so I just stayed silent after that.

I found myself restless though. Hearing the battle just a few trenches away, I should be at the front line. I did a stupid and now people are dying because of it.

Sure enough though, fifteen minutes later I could see again. "Thanks Fran." I said before turning around and jumped good across the trenches, landing back at the frontlines in no time.

As I did so I smiled.

The Drakoshi forces had been obliterated and were on the retreat. The tank support from the flanks had done serious work. From what I could see a dozen or so tanks had been destroyed, but the piles of Drakoshi corpses were something else.

Pursuit wasn’t really possible for the Phalanx, but I spotted the mech I interacted with earlier shooting her weapon as she slowly entered the front lines. Watching for a moment, the weapon she was firing looked more like a sniper, clearly a mech built for longer range, but as the weapon fired I watched its trajectory. Sure enough, a ten foot Drakoshi got hit and a hole bore through its chest.

Seeing it as a focal point I spoke through the communicator. "Phase two was a success. Phase three activating. Squad rendezvous near the knight. We will move out from there."

Nerissa, Rhapso, Tamara, Gabrielle, Willow and Sithrik arrived at the rendezvous in a few minutes. Though a few extras tagged along. Two to be exact. Rhea and Morrgan.

The latter I looked at for a moment as he approached. I had recognised his strength the other day when he was able to crush a Drakoshi’s skull with just his hands, but the fact he had lost his shirt in the fighting and had taken no injuries, while being at the centre of the engagement was impressive.

As they approached, Rhea then spoke up. "Sentinel, permission to join you on your mission? My expertise in this type of operation is second to none. I promise I will be an asset."

I nodded my head. "Of course, we are keeping the squad small for covertness, but one or two additions will be fine. Just make sure Cockburn and Skaja know so they can take that into consideration during defence... I assume you also wish to join us Morrgan?"

The man proceeded to look me up and down with a smile on his face before nodding his head. "Yes Sentinel. I simply wish to prove myself. Despite my many strengths, my best trait is being able to move unseen. To be unnoticed when I desire. Place your trust in me, Sentinel. You will not regret it." He said, placing his hand on my arm and began stroking slowly.

I took a step back, due to bad touch, prompting the man to smirk playfully at me.

"Uhh. Sure. Why not? As long as you know the risk, I won’t refuse your request." I then turned to the edge of the battlefield. The remnants of the Drakoshi’s crushing defeat were allowed to retreat at my orders.

"We shouldn’t waste any more time lingering though. We will go to the tanks and run from there, no point going through the field. Let’s move."

At my words, everyone began to run. I lingered behind and spoke into the comms. "Skaja. I’m moving out. Command is yours again."

"Of course Apollo." I heard a moment later. "Good luck, I’ll work on the clean up. Any last orders you need to give?"

I was about to say no, but at my feet something shiny stuck out in the mud. Picking it up. I smiled at the fallen pauldron. "Yes, during clean up, do not discard any silver pauldrons. Place them at the front of the trenches on spikes. We should allow the Drakoshi to see all their lost resources. It’s only fair we give them a chance to reclaim them."

I heard Skaja chuckle before replying. "I would hate to have you as an enemy... Again. You are too good at all types of warfare. It will be done. Skaja out."

After breaking communication, I checked my Mindspace. Sapphire was there, but Onyx was missing. Feeling the connection through the link, she was vaguely in the direction of the Drakoshi, so I would most likely be picking her up at some point.

With that out of the way I began to run after the other eight.

....

"Hah~ Hah~ fucking stitch. Hah~" Lena said breathily as she arrived at the rendezvous point. She looked around before running over to the knight. "Hey! Knighty knight. Did you see the sentinel? I need to show him that I didn’t get gut checked this time!"

The knight then turned to Lena and asked, confused. " Gut checked?"

"Oh sorry. I keep getting stabbed in the gut by Drakoshi. It’s been pissing me off. I wanted to show Apollo that I didn’t get stabbed today so I could come with him on his mission."

The knight looked at her before pointing into the distance. "The Sentinel already left. About five minutes ago."

"He did!?!" Lena’s body slouched. "Aww man. I was looking forward to some sick combat banter with him. I got sent all the way to the south of the elite line. A bunch of shite. Oh well. No use crying over it. Hey, what’s your name?"

"My name is Alex? Why?" The knight asked.

Lena shrugged her shoulders. "Dunno. My name is Lena by the way. I’ve got a good feeling about you. And I make friends with all the right people. So let’s go get some din dins. I burned so many Drakoshi with my whips today. I need nom-noms."

Before Alex had a chance to respond, she felt her mech’s hand get pulled along by the ginger in front of her. She was planning to help with the clean up, but she didn’t actually have to... ’Why not? What is the worst that could happen?’

...

We covertly tracked the Drakoshi retreating force for hours without detection. After a while the Drakoshi stopped running and began to form up in groups. Allowing for me to witness an interesting phenomenon a few times.

Every so often an armoured Drakoshi would stop moving. The rest of the other unarmoured ones it was with would rush away and watch from a distance as the Drakoshi began to pull away at its armour.

The moment it did, a change underwent its body as they could grow one to two feet in a moment. The moment they were no longer ’chaff’ they did not even look towards where the other armoured Drakoshi were. They were now superior to them. They just walked ahead.

The science boner wanted to rise at what I was witnessing, the sudden growth influx, the muscle gain... I wanted to know how it worked so bad. These clones were genetic curiosities. I wanted to know more.

But now was not the time for me to share blood between two heads, I needed the main one fully operational.

Eventually we reached an open plane so we had to stop our stalking for a short while. To the north, there was a ridge with some high ground that Rhea pointed out. Our group made our way there as it would provide some oversight, making it easier to plot our pursuit course.

After ten minutes we arrived at the top of the ridge and I took a peak over. We did the right thing not pursuing further.

In the valley just past the small plane, was a massive Drakoshi outpost. It wasn’t a small thing like the fort we took. This looked like a well manned command point. There were no walls, but with the amount of Drakoshi we were seeing. They didn’t need any.

"There are so many..." Morrgan spoke. Prompting me to reply.

"High ups told us we were going to be facing a full clan in the south. I suppose when your troops are only being spread out a few thousand miles compared to a few hundred thousand, you can afford to group up more."

"Shit, get down!" Rhea suddenly declared and everyone did just that.

Suddenly there was a boom that came from above us, then another and another.

Looking up my eyes spotted three ships flying into the atmosphere. As they did, a large laser suddenly appeared in the sky, shooting through two of them and clipping the last one before deactivating.

"At least the navy isn’t totally useless." Willow whispered next to me.

I said nothing as the ship that was clipped crash-landed right into the plane below up, close to the outpost.

We watched on curiously for a while as Drakoshi ran over from the outpost to investigate. Ten minutes later, the ship opened up and close to three thousand fresh armoured Drakoshi began to pour out with a few dozen silver pauldrons and other unarmoured Drakoshi.

This was a staging ground for their troops to mobilise.

This was not ideal.