All the while the mining crews continued to work below the surface, monitoring for Hadarak tunnels trying to dig underneath. Esna had her own little ‘moles’ to intercept and destroy them, so the battle was taking place both on the surface and below it. It wasn’t a battle to conquer the planet, and if Esna tried to do that she’d lose. The Hadarak had too many lairs here, and she didn’t have the personnel necessary to go after all of them. So when one fell they’d spawn more at others and you’d be fighting forever until you brought in enough troops to hit them all at once.
Clan Kai’sa would be doing that later, when the High Guard fleets were making the space lanes their own, but right now they didn’t have enough ships, so Esna had to focus on building her Clan until then, and her path to do that was in battle, taking resources from the enemy, and even their corpses in some cases. It was messy and ugly, but once they were dead they were just floating trash in space anyway, and the Yeg’gor was too valuable to pass up and just throw into a star along with the rest of their corpses.
That was the reality of this war, and if you let it consume you it was easy to lose your way, but Clan Kai’sa was not in jeopardy of that. Their homes were literally above their heads, and when they got battle fatigue from so much carnage they were recalled to the sanctuaries within the Zedas and were reacquainted with what civilization truly was. There you could recharge and denumb your senses before going back down again. Esna refused to become the enemy, and if carnage was what was necessary, then honorable carnage would be their way forward.
No Hadarak was going to be tortured. No Hadarak was going to be harvested before it was completely and long term dead. No Hadarak would be killed if it surrendered…though to date none ever had. She was not going to ‘farm’ the Hadarak. She was simply picking up resources off the battlefield from the dead, and she made sure her Clan understood that as they were constantly having to face these monsters down day in and day out.
And today was no exception. Esna ran out of ammo 9 times, meaning her pack was fully empty, and she had to be resupplied by couriers carrying ammunition up to the wall guard. Many were Rammus, but other smaller races that were not good at fighting the Hadarak directly had become part of her Clan to play support roles, and they were damn effective. Esna didn’t have to leave the wall up until the assault was over, after which drones were moved out to remove the dead Hadarak back away from the wall many miles to keep the firing lines clear.
As they did Esna retreated to one of the barracks in the mining site along with part of the Commandos while others took their place on the wall or near it, waiting for the next assault, some of which happened 3 or 4 times a day…and sometimes there would be a lag of a week between attacks.
Esna didn’t take part in all of them, nor did any of the others. They all had to rotate or risk getting burnt or flabby. They still needed to train, and standing on a wall shooting wasn’t improving anything other than their aim. So once this assault was over she took her leave and got out of her armor inside the well-shielded barracks as well as her clothes, dumping them in a sweaty pile at the foot of a shower tube in a row along with many others. No one was shy here, for this was field work and they weren’t going to build individual quarters for everyone, so there were a lot of naked Commandos getting cleaned up, but she could make the shower tube opaque if she wanted.
Esna climbed up on top and sat down, sliding her feet into the warm water as she was about to slide off the edge and go in all the way as she paused and sniffed both her armpits before she washed the sweat off.
Neutral watery smell, which meant her body was operating normally. With that quick, regular check done, she slid over the edge and dunked herself below the top of the shower tube water level, slicking her 3 inch long hair back as her head came back up and floated with her feet a few inches off the floor of the tube. She held on to the side and just soaked as her mind was still caught up with the rigors of battle, but slowly her body slowed down, then her mind followed some time later. The other Commandos were not much different, and the shower tubes served as both cleansing units as well as mini refuges from the carnage outside.
They allowed them to drop their guard and relax, and after all these millennia of repeated battles Esna had it down to a science. After only 18 minutes she was refreshed and drained the tube before climbing out and resetting it for someone else to use.
After grabbing a fresh uniform she headed over to the mining site command center and started working on her strategy stuff, linked into the orbiting Zedas so she could get information from all over the planet as the other Commandos sought out training
