Archangel Orbital Platform

	High above the theater of combat, the wide black wings of the Archangel circled through the wisp-thin limits of the upper atmosphere. It hummed along, riding on a bank of four hydrogen engines similar in nature to the fleet carrier that served as her mothership, lingering above the Archangel in low orbit. With a slow, measured motion, the Archangel turned, arcing back over the raging assault far below that scoured the twilight forests of the alien world. Far below, UNN armored and airborne forces struggled to uproot the Betelguesan defenders that had twisted the world to their will in pursuit of fortifying their ill-gotten hive from just such an assault.
	On the command deck, Flight Commander Sirka Sibirsky leaned forward in his flight couch, watching the data feeds stream up from the battlespace to the displays before his ice blue eyes. The immense Polar studied the arrayed forces, how they traversed the rolling marches and forested hills that dominated the coastal basin. The armored forces tried to stay on the high ground, rolling through the forests lest they became bogged down in the loose silt and mud of the marshes. The lighter airborne infantry tried to fan out to secure the marshes that flanked their advance but became stalled among the shallow waters and prepared defenses of the despised bugs.
	Among the data feeds came requests for fire support from anywhere to help break the stalemate the assault had run into, be it from surface side artillery, orbital guns, or CAS strikes from the carrier wings of fighters and gunships, but each was restricted by one part of the bug’s defenses. CAS flights were having difficulty piercing the webs of anti-air fire long enough to be effective and the orbital guns were too powerful to hit targets close to the ground forces. And the Avalanche artillery vehicles already planetside were able to help, but they could only fire so fast compared to the deluge of requests flooding the battlespace.
	Sirka chanted a low dirge to himself as he clicked the chain of mother-of-pearl beads of the rosary in his left hand. It had been a welcoming gift from the unofficial chaplain of the Sevastopol following his recruitment. While he was not a devout follower of the human’s native faith, he still found the rosary to be a helpful focus amid the stressful points in his training and deployment. With a deep sigh, Sirka finished the dirge and finalized the list of priorities in his head before he spoke in that rolling baritone rich with the Borealan’s heavy accent.
	“Stations, status reports. Time is short for our brothers fighting below us.”
	“Mass drivers primed and ammunition ready,” First Lieutenant Andropov replied. “Point defense cannons are responsive.”
	“Reactors at optimal levels,” Technical Sergeant Kaminski detailed. “Able to maintain orbit for next six hours at minimum.”
	“Navigation ready for any adjustments as needed,sir” Second Lieutenant Chernov chimed in.
	“Communications and sensor banks active, sir.” Maldan added.
	“Good. Report our status to the Sevastopol and open gun ports and open a channel to ground forces. It is time we set about our task.”
	“Sevastopol acknowledges, gives green light to engage. Channel is open, sir.”
	Sirka cleared his throat before speaking in his low, calm tone.
	“To all UNN ground forces operating around Aiger’s Marsh, this is Archangel Orbital Fire Platform Michael. We are on station to provide fire support to this battlespace, so watch your heads and mind the heavens.”
Sirka turned back over his flight couch, nodding to the row of fire control officers seated along the flanks of the command deck. He forwarded priority targets he’d determined from the data feeds before turning his attention back to the wide arcing view screen before him, showing the darkening curvature of the world below him as night crept in with its cold malice.
	Along the underside of the Archangel, blisters opened, revealing banks of pintled mass drivers along the port and starboard flanks. The coil-wrapped batteries spun and tracked numerous targets far below on the planet’s surface before they began to whine and crack with a rain of tungsten rods. While only a fraction the size of the kinetic rounds launched from the carriers, cruisers, and battleships hanging in higher orbit, they still carried a tremendous force behind each metal spike.
	On the ground far benlow, the first volleys burned through the atmosphere with a neon pink trail from a series of chemical reactions with the local gases of the alien atmosphere. The rods thundered down into the rolling crest of a low kill rising above a wide stretch of marsh, crashing into the Betelguesan tunnels and pillboxes with a spray of muck, silt, and water that hissed and steamed as it fell back to the newly cratered surface. The barrage continued as more volleys carpeted the hill, pounding the defenders and suppressing their guns enough to let the light infantry assault across the stretch of marshes to clear the killing fields. As the infantry continued their assault and began scouring the bug tunnels with plasma and grenades, the Archangel shifted its fire, walking the batteries of mass drivers to another series of targets along the main ridge through the area. The tungsten rods tore through the dense canopy to tear up bug mortars that rained fire across the surrounding lowlands and stalled the UNN advance through the area.
	Target by target, the Archangel Michael left its wrath be felt across the theater, working in conjunction with the other assets in the battlespace to overwhelm the bug defenses, giving the ground forces room to breath and organize the next bounding step in the assault over the hills and marshes to whatever local objective they held. Sirka hummed to himself as the Michael made another wide arc over the battlespace, firing volley after volley down from the upper atmosphere. It had been little over an hour after the first barrages tore into the hill over the marshes when a sharp wail from the radar alarm rang through the command deck, drawing a hissing command from Sirka’s lips.
	“Maldan, what is going on?”
	“We’re being painted, sir. Looks like the fleet missed an anti-orbital site during the opening bombardment.”
	“Do you have a bearing?”
	“Approximate sir, coming from the nightside of the planet, I’m passing the data to fleet so they can smash that- Shit, launch detected from port bow. Speed unknown.”
	“Navigation, hard to port and climb. Engineering, power to propulsion. Pull in the guns and dump counter measures.”
	The crew fell silent as the Archangel banked hard, the increased thrust pushing them back into their flight couches as they accelerated up and away from the planet. Outside, the mass drivers ejected their heat sinks, letting them fall away into the atmosphere before retracting back into the blisters lining the hull of the Archangel. Small bays along the underside of the wings opened and dropped a cluster of missiles out into the thin wisps of atmospheric vapors before their engines ignited and they burned hard away from the Archangel. The missiles tracked towards the inbound missile and the source of the radar beams, closing the distance before detonating into a spray of small tungsten rods and a cloud of spinning metal shards and gases.