"War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over."

-General William Techumsha Sherman

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General Gergis sighed as he looked at the latest casualty report of the invasion, bringing one of his tallies hands up to rest his face in as he tried to square the numbers in his mind.

A third of the invasion force, nearly three thousand Turian soldiers had been dead before they had even landed on the planet, and what had seemed a random targeting of his deployment vessels had been revealed to be far more sinister after they had landed and taken stock of the situation.

The anti-ship missiles that had targeted his ships had almost without exception gone for the vessels carrying his heavy armor and gunships. It was immensely disquieting that they had been able to tell just which ships had been carrying what loads as now in stead of two hundred tanks and a hundred and fifty gunships, Gergis only had nine tanks, now that he had lost two to the alien defenders, and thirteen gunships after losing three of them as well.

With their high value and firepower, Gergis was fielding his remaining armor close to his crashed destroyer in an attempt to create a solid command post and regrouping point as soldiers tried to flee to him from across the city, only even as they did so, they were being savagely mauled at every turn by the same heavily armored soldiers, mechs, and even laser armed civilians!

This constant attrition and the raids on his drop ships had already added a frightening seven hundred and seventeen to his casualty figures, bringing him far too close to the fifty percent marker for his liking as he sighed and shouted at his officers to once again work on punching a hole through the static to reach the fleet in orbit.

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Admiral Garen Trenus was finding himself growing more and more nervous with each passing moment as he stood over the command table in his CIC, viewing the spotty image of the colony below his fleet.

The instant General Gergis had entered deep atmosphere with his invasion force, a hoard of missiles that had nearly crashed the guardian system from just trying to track them all had appeared, slamming into the dropships and wreaking havoc within the force. As the dropships had dived for the surface, Trenus had found himself unable to provide any form of support. With the invasion force weaving about in every direction in their attempt to find safety, any shots from orbit at the colony below would have inevitably taken out a friendly craft.

The issue of orbital support for the ground forces had only grown worse once the invasion had landed. Spread out across the entirety of the colony below, again Trenus couldn't order strikes on the missile launchers from before with assuredly hitting some of his own troops again, but then some form of jamming had cropped up across the entire colony. While the fleet was unaffected, it was impossible to reach the ground forces, much less know what was occurring other than when they spotted the occasional Turian ship explode on the planet below.

Without another choice open to him, Trenus was forced to sit down and watch as the siege played out, knowing full well these aliens would likely have reinforcements on the way. After all, a colony like this wouldn't be founded without a way to communicate to the main body. The only issue facing Trenus was how long it would take for the enemy to arrive.

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Four long days of blood letting followed the Turian's arrival at Shanxi. Everyday, more and more of the Turian invasion force under General Gergis lost more and more of it's troops to an enemy that continuously attacked from the shadows and roof tops, constantly depriving the invasion force of more and more of the soldiers necessary for occupation.

Growing more desperate by the hour, Admiral Trenus eventually resorted to orbital strikes on the third day in an attempt to attack any visible component of the alien forces below in the vague hope of interrupting the jamming preventing him from contacting General Gergis on the surface below.

As the dawn of the fourth day crept across the colony of Shanxi, a view from orbit showed the once proud and bustling colony city pockmarked with craters from where low caliber orbital strikes had hit the surface.

And yet the fighters on the world below grew even more determined for the attacks. The raids on Turian patrols became faster, bloodier, and even more common than they had already been.

By noon Shanxi standard time of the fourth day of the invasion forces casualties had surpassed fifty percent of the total force.

As dusk arrived in the colony below, the remaining X-COM forces prepared for another night and another day of bloody battles.

But this time they would not be on their own.

At the edge of the system, a single pinpoint of light flared into existence before disappearing just as quickly.

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Alright, my apologies right now, but short chapter right here. The next one, the second Battle for Shanxi will be much longer as the X-COM Navy arrives to retake the planet. Main reason here is that it's finals time and I don't have the free time exactly to get this chapter as long as I want. I reached a decent stopping point and I'm pausing there.

So ta ta till after I finish up my classes in a week and a half.