Command-RT33125

Planet Sigma-8A. A death world. Extremely dangerous due to the wild beasts that attack anything alien. But they are not the main threat to the Faea Empire.

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Your colony's mission is exploration and assimilation through military means, including capturing key resource points, destroying the enemy, and building a defensive satellite network.

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The final battle for a patch of territory containing vital minerals and metals was costly: a ton of damaged or broken equipment, but even worse—the loss of life. A third were killed, another third were wounded...many of them lost the ability to operate their neural interfaces.

The resource sites were successfully captured. The mission was accomplished, but at what cost... All the resources obtained there will go toward building a network of combat satellites, and a tenth will go toward replenishing arsenals and repairing combat equipment.

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The hangar seemed gloomier than usual... The mission was over. It had never been so difficult. The enemy—the hostile Conglomerate of Seventy Planets—spared no effort, neither their own nor ours.

Silence reigned all around, broken only by cautious steps, the sighs of the wounded, the hissing and rustling of medical equipment, short conversations... So muffled by the general shock that they were barely distinguishable at a distance of ten meters.

You were sitting next to your wrecked combat robot. Pilot, yes. How long ago did you graduate from the Academy? After today, it feels like a hundred or two hundred years have passed...

You closed your eyes, rubbing your cheek with your fingers. The glove lay nearby on the floor... You'd already been injected with the medication, not counting the residual effects of the built-in injections in the cabin. Or what was left of them.

Nearby, to the left, between the chaotic rows of equally battered and tattered equipment, familiar voices were heard... Your personal maintenance team. Every pilot with a combat robot has one.

Mechanic, engineer, medic... Well... It looks like the peace is over...