Marines by Jay Allan Page B

most ambitious planetary attack ever attempted.  The initial landing by four full assault battalions was supported by a division of regular marines, British special forces, planetary militias drafted from nearby systems, a couple units of allied Russian commandos – almost 25,000 troops in all.  Achilles took every ship Fleetcom could muster plus three dozen civilian craft commandeered for the operation.
    Everything went wrong from the start.
    The huge concentration of Fleet units managed to take out the orbital and ground-based installations, albeit at a heavy cost.  Then, it was our turn – over 2,000 assault troops in the first wave. 
    About five minutes after we launched we realized that the bombardment had been a lot less effective than the reports had indicated.  The enemy had a prepared network of strongpoints connected by deep tunnels, and it turned out these were mostly untouched. 
    First came salvo after salvo of surface to air missiles, launched from super-hardened underground silos that had survived the orbital attack.  Our launch procedure was designed for an assault against heavy resistance, and the sky was filled with debris, decoys, and every manner of ECM device.  They still managed to shoot down about 15% of our landing ships.
    The initial plan called for us to secure a perimeter and set up a makeshift landing area for the heavy forces.  As soon as we hit ground the word came down – we had to take out some of those missile sites first, assaulting the bunkers one by one. 
    The logic was sound – if they’d managed to shoot down 15% of our agile 5-man landers the heavy troopships and tank carriers would get blown away.  But it still meant launching a series of search and destroy missions against very long odds.  Infantry, even powered infantry, going up against an enemy armed with tanks and artillery can expect to take it hard.  And we did.  Very hard.
    To make matters worse, while our troops were hitting the missile sites the enemy was hitting us, trying to snuff out our foothold before we could bring in reinforcements.  The fighting went on for three days without a break.  It was a damn close race, but we just managed to knock out enough of their missile capacity that the General decided to launch the phase two landing.  By that time most of our units on the ground were down to 50% strength.
    Air cover was critical during these early days.  We had established total air superiority over the entire planet on the first day.  Atmospheric fighters launched from our orbiting fleet carriers conducted continuous sorties throughout those first three days, providing crucial support to our efforts on the ground and annihilating the enemy air forces. 
    The high command had been certain about our control of the sky, but the enemy had another surprise ready when the first wave of heavy landing ships came in.  They had maintained a large reserve of aircraft in a hidden underground base, and these were launched in a single massive strike against the inadequately escorted landers.  They were mostly antiquated cargo planes reconfigured to carry batteries of close range air-to-air sprint missiles.  Against fighters they would have been annihilated, but as launch platforms targeting landers armed only with point defense lasers the result was disaster – less than half of the first wave made it to the surface.  In addition to the loss of almost 3,000 troops and 80 tanks, the attack resulted in the destruction of a large percentage of our available landing craft, retarding our ability to get the rest of the force down to the surface.
    Fleetcom responded quickly, and Admiral Scheer scrambled every atmospheric fighter we had.  They didn’t arrive in time to save the landers, but they did manage to intercept the enemy aircraft as they were returning to base.  Outgunned, outclassed, and low on fuel, the enemy planes were wiped out. 
    While the air battle was raging, the enemy launched another full