741 Improvise, Die, Revive, Adapt, Die, Revive, Overcome, and Repeat.
The breaching pods launched by the stealth forces, despite being accompanied by missiles, weapons, and their own defenses, still had a very low success rate due to the advanced multi-target tracking systems of spacefaring civilizations. To counter this, the empire employed a tried-and-true strategy: overwhelming those systems with sheer numbers. This tactic was only possible thanks to their atomic printers, allowing them to mass-produce breaching pods and launch them to their almost certain destruction without risking any lives of their soldiers in such an operation.
As a result of the numerous obstacles, only an average of one percent of the breaching pods successfully penetrated ships without being destroyed. Some forces experienced a higher number of breaches, while others, like the Shadari, had almost none. The Shadari''s advanced detection systems allowed them to identify the pods from a greater distance, providing a buffer zone that enabled them to intercept and eliminate all of the first waves of breaching pods before they could cause any damage.
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Ismail Maylander opened his eyes, adjusting to his newly assigned body, a robotic copy that had been activated the moment a breaching pod successfully penetrated one of the ships. With the empire’s forces stretched thin, more robotic soldiers than actual imperial troops were being deployed, and soldiers like Maylander were reassigned based on availability. Thanks to the low success rate of the breaching pods, there were just enough soldiers to control their robotic counterparts and launch an immediate counterattack.
There was no time to hold back. With over a billion enemy forces swarming, restraint was unnecessary—no matter how many they killed, there would still be plenty left to interrogate later. Now, the focus was on eliminating as many invaders as possible in the chaos that had begun to unfold.
He wasted no time. Rising to his feet, Ismail Maylander quickly fell in with his new team, immediately engaging the enemy as they attempted to flush them out. Without even seeing the enemy, he fired instinctively, relying on the wealth of pre-collected data. He knew that by the time his bullets reached their destination, they would intersect with the enemy soldiers’ movements.
The EMP blast that came standard with the breaching pods had wiped out most of the surveillance systems in the area, leaving the enemy to fight blindly. In contrast, Maylander and his team had the advantage of a 3D representation of their surroundings. Every movement they made was optimized, allowing them to take the path of least resistance while inflicting maximum damage on the invaders.
The enemy forces, showing their experience in space warfare, quickly adapted to the situation. After realizing that the infiltrating soldiers were far more formidable than anticipated, they shifted tactics. Instead of continuing to engage head-on, they sealed the breached section and cut off the supply of breathable air. Without hesitation, they began flooding the area with sedative gas, aiming to either incapacitate or kill the intruders.
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"This star system is quite interesting," remarked a strikingly beautiful humanoid female, her body adorned with what appeared to be hundreds of thousands of independently moving scales. She glanced to her left, where a breaching pod had embedded itself in the wall, and watched as the invading forces began to emerge from it.
There was no trace of fear in her demeanor, nor any sign of reinforcements rushing in to fend off the breaching forces. It was as if her mere presence was assurance enough that she could handle the situation alone.
The soldiers poured out of the breaching pod without hesitation, immediately opening fire on the woman standing before them. They unleashed a relentless hail of bullets, aiming to turn her into a honeycomb, fully aware of the dangerous species they were up against. They knew they couldn''t afford to hold back.
Yet, despite the barrage, with weapons firing at maximum power, she didn’t flinch—not even an inch. She simply stood there, watching them, as though their attacks were nothing more than a fleeting inconvenience.
This relentless assault continued until some of the soldiers eventually ran out of bullets. As they moved to reload, the woman finally made her move, she took a single step from her original position—and in an instant, she vanished.
She reappeared next to the soldier who was still firing, while his teammate in the midst of reloading. Before he or anyone near him could react, her hand pierced through his chest as if it were a lance.
The soldier barely had time to register what had happened before his robotic body exploded, the force of the blast inconsequential to her as she tanked it like it was nothing more than a hit from a soft pillow.