[u][b]Anurite Basin
Ashtar-Jasaran Battlefront[/b][/u]

Manderra Kurath flinched as a sniper round punched through the last shreds of her shields, and immediately ducked behind cover again. Her squad of five had suffered two casualties --one dead, one injured-- already to the anti-materiel rifle their hidden opponent was wielding. [i]“Kurath!,”[/i] her sergeant hissed over the squad psynet. [i]”Locate that sniper before we suffer any further losses.’[/i]
[i]“I am attempting to do so sir, please be patient.”[/i] The problem was there was so much chaos. The Jasaran forward operating base had fallen, but now they were engaged in a gradual, combative retreat. With ambushes, traps, and mines, they forced the Ashtar to fight for every inch of ground. All throughout the dense jungle, Jasaran and Ashtar alike lay dead or dying, brewing up a storm of despair, anger, triumph and agony. Trying to locate a single mind in all of that while under fire was taxing. Psionics didn’t so easily correspond with the real world; she couldn’t simply extend her mind ‘that way’. Distance was a factor, but direction was meaningless without two points of reference. Manderra flicked her thoughts about, delicately touching an array of minds, sampling their surface thoughts and feelings. Nothing.
[i]”Centurion Aminene, I hate to ask such a thing of you but…”[/i]
[i]”Your thinking is sound, Psion. I will rejoin you soon enough.”[/i] Perfectly understanding her intent, the wounded soldier stood up sharply, completely exposing himself. A sniper round promptly exploded through his chest, but Manderra knew exactly what to look for. And there it was; a small surge of elation at a successful kill. She locked on to the mind in question, and probed deeper. It was indeed their sniper. Abandoning all subtlety, she forced herself into the sniper’s mind, and from that brief contact, determined the sniper’s location. While her enemy was reeling from the mental intrusion, Manderra, swung her own rifle up, quickly glanced down the scope, and placed a burst of gamma laser fire through the Jasaran soldier’s head.
The sergeant nodded in satisfaction. [i]”Excellent shooting Kurath. Let us push forward.”[/i] And off they went, ever deeper into the jungle.

[hr]

[u][b]Anuria High Orbit
Archangel class cruiser [i]A Vision Pierces the Void[/i][/b][/u]

Lieutenant Ardelen Verath smirked as another SIF trooper accidentally activated another grenade still attached to his own belt. This particular soldier wasn’t fast enough, and the grenade detonated in the middle of his squad, killing several of them. The grenade trick was an old favourite of the Ashtar that was proving quite effective on Anuria. It was an easy enough trick to pull off, even through psionic shielding because it required so little contact. Every soldier had it drilled into them to never point their weapon at someone they didn’t plan on shooting. That discipline, combined with IFF technology, meant that it was almost impossible to get a soldier to shoot one of their comrades. But the grenade trick, all it took was a slight poke to get a soldier to arm one then forget to throw it. Sometimes their comrades would spot the danger and throw the offending grenade away, but not often enough, and it still forced the enemy to waste ordinance.

It was a good deal simpler than psionic combat on the Sakturi front, where dedicated support psintegrae were needed to constantly shield their allies from mental assault. A squad without such support would find itself dead in seconds, regardless how sophisticated their psionic jamming, as enemy psintegrae spotted the vulnerability and attacked en masse; nothing so simple as setting off a grenade.

Of course, the Ashtar had grenades of their own, and some other nasty tricks. Verath reached for a Stihlpont grenade, and activated its psytech transponder. He threw it around the corner at the recovering SIF troopers, and activated it midair in their midst. Screams echoed down the hallway as ultra-strong monofilament carbon spikes pierced through armor and tore through flesh. That was one SIF squad down, but there were many more to go.

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Captain Tameron looked at a display of the ship’s interior. The SIF soldiers were everywhere. They’d been kept out of main engineering and the armory, but otherwise the incredibly effective troopers seemed to have the run of his ship.
“Captain, shield power has just dropped considerably. The MSSC boarders must have removed a shield generator. The Vaegir are still scoring hits, and we will not be able to hold the ship together for long,” his first officer reported.
“Enough of this. Initiate self destruct sequence,” Tameron declared emphatically. “I look forward to serving with all of you again.”

On his command, the primary harmonics chamber in main engineering stopped sustaining the perfectly stabilized omega particle matrix, and instead began to actively break it apart. Twenty three and a half seconds after issuing the command, the reactor reached a critical breakdown point and exploded. A massive, bright blue explosion immediately engulfed [i]Pierces the Void[/i] and surged outwards, tearing at any ships unfortunate enough to be nearby. Space itself seemed to bend and heave as colossal forces pushed its against its limits. Then, the explosion abruptly winked out, and there was not a single trace left of the Ashtar cruiser.