[Starhawk]

2418.7
Admiral William Ross led the three heavy cruisers of the 3rd fleet confidently into battle with the 7 Phong Light cruisers, the battle report showed that all 7 enemy ships were destroyed before a single one of them entered weapons range. The result of this engagement was that the Royal Armed Forces assigned the 1st Germania Mobile army regiment to the 3rd fleet as soon as their training on Germania was completed.

Mestra System, Mestra II Orbit
The hammer Falls
“Alright you grunts we’re dropping in on the LZ in 5 mikes, lock and load!” Sgt Black shouted to his platoon who had formed up in the launch bay, along with every other unit in the regiment. The regimental prayer had just been finished and now it was the Sergeants turn to address their individual platoons.
Sgt Black smiled toothishly while he watched his platoon file into their dropships, “Now ladies and gentlemen I know most of us have seen action before, and we love it but I want you to remember, keep your heads down and your guns blazing, we are gonna rip the spines out of those yellow bastards and then we’re gonna piss down their necks, AND WE’RE GONNA DO IT SMILING! Do you get me you Grunts!”
“Yes SIR!” was the unanimous response over the com net, just before the dropship slid into a locked position at the Batton‘s drop rack.

An army infantry dropship was a relatively small craft capable of carrying ten fully armed troopers and two pilots, when readied for a drop operation such a craft is loaded into a “drop rack” mounted on the underside of a troopship, this turns the dropship “nose down” to the planet they are facing to increase initial drop speed.
The launch rack its self is basically just a super sized rail cannon which instead of launching shells acts as a “catapult” for the dropships loaded onto it, this initial “drop shot” accelerates the dropship to trans sonic speeds and dramatically increases the survival rate of deploying dropships due to the fact that most anti-aircraft gunners would have a hard time tracking a vessel headed straight down at trans sonic speeds.
An army “tank carrier” drop ship works much the same way except instead of 10 infantry it carries two tanks, or APCs, or 6 armed buggies.

The drop shot happened sooner then Black had expected and even he grunted as the dropship accelerated at twenty gees (only 5 of which were felt, thanks to inertial compensators), Black could feel the blood in his body pooling at his feet, even though the marines were all wearing environmental hard suits for this drop the gravities experienced for the initial ten seconds of drop acceleration was too much for the suit to filter out entirely, the veteran army Sergeant often wondered if anyone was even trying to make the suits more gee resistant or if some pencil pusher back home decided it would be too expensive.
His thoughts came to a rather abrupt end as the horrendous crashing noise of their dropship entering the atmosphere filled the troop compartment. Less then a minute later the pilot’s voice echoed over the com net.
“We’ve got a hot LZ troopers get ready for a rough landing.” the pilot sounded remarkably calm considering the fact that “flak” was already coming straight at the dropships.
Almost before realizing the time had passed Sgt. Black noticed the troop compartment door slide open and noticed he could see the ugly landscape of the enemy planet coming up fast.
The dropship came to a rest about a meter above the ground and the automatic crash harnesses of the army troopers unlocked and Sgt. Black bellowed for his troops to unload.
Enemy energy bolts filled the air, Icaran beams lashing out in return as the Icaran regiment surged towards the enemy defensive position.
Armed buggies raced on ahead of the infantry troops, their three man crews unleashing hellish amounts of fire for such a small vehicle cut down dozens of Phong defenders and opened a gap for the infantry to charge forward.

Black’s platoon was one of the “Alpha” units which meant they were in the leading elements of the advance and as such faced the heaviest enemy fire, the entire platoon fired as it advanced up the hill that acted as the enemy “fortress”, enemy fire came down upon the army troopers in relentless torrents, a trooper in front of Black was hit in the face by an energy bolt, his faceplate vanished and a spray of blood and gore was all that remained of the trooper’s once young face.
Another trooper fell just beside Black, a hole the size of a football burned in her chest, worse still a green glowing orb landed on another trooper’s body armor.
“God!, get it off get it…..” the voice was cut off and screams echoed from where the trooper had once been standing, the explosion erupting from the Phong grenade vaporized the trooper it had attached to and sent three others sprawling through the air, severed limbs, blood and internal gore spraying from their bodies.

“Continue the advance damn you! Follow the company flag bearer DO NOT stay STILL!” a voice bellowed from further up the hill and Black just barely recognized it as Lieutenant Steinburger, the company commander of the “Alpha” unit that Black’s platoon was a part of.
After what seemed like an eternity the lead elements of the company made it to the enemy positions on top of the hill, but the fighting was far from over as the enemy forces engaged the Icarans in a brutal series of hand to hand and close in firefights all along the hilltop.
The armed buggies that had led the charge along other portions of the advance finally came racing in along the hilltop and sprayed fire into the enemy resistance killing or driving off hundreds of Phong defenders.

Operation Hammer ended two weeks later when the Company that Black’s platoon was attached to seized the Phong government bunker and eliminated the entire planetary government staff. Remarkably only 12 Icarans had died in the battle, unfortunately dozens more were wounded many of whom seriously. The Capture of Hill 752 by the Alpha units played a critical role in breaking the defensive perimeter of the Phong colony and the loss of 10 Icaran lives on that hill saved hundreds of others during the two week invasion.