Mission Year 2206
Fierce battles rage across Terra Sparta as the proactive defence expedition continues with great savagery. Spartan rover teams have been employing hit-and-run tactics, ambushing the less mobile Mind Worms and their Broodmasters, disengaging before the boils manage to close in. Several operatives have been lost to the onslaught, though not without inflicting some considerable damage in return.
Bruised and bloodied blackshirts taste the fury of Planet
As the fighting at the front intensifies by the day, all hope of a peaceful resolution has been obstructed by sunspot activity, temporarily rendering conventional planetary communications impossible. Unable to receive instructions from Eastern Command except by means of extremely long-range telepathy (an unreliable method at best) local officers have assumed near-total control of the operation. Under the new regime, Defiance Freehold, now renamed Camp Joy in honour of its new Commander, has been thoroughly pacified by the Garden Eco-Police, quite likely in a harsher manner than the Council would have approved of.
Surviving prisoners have been put to work, and while nerve-stapling still remains anathema to the Gaian forces, they have made examples out of the most insolent of the manfools. More than a few troublemakers have been sacrificed to the worms, and row after row of severed heads adorn the battlements - constant, brutally efficient reminders of the price one pays for defying Mother Planet.
1st Peacemaker Company destroys Spartan Heracles Rovers
Though clearly inferior in terms of formal training and outfitting, Gaian troops have so far been able to offset the disadvantage with their telepathic warfare. Amplified mind warping attacks, long-range psych scans and non-consensual thought transference has helped secure several victories, while local Empath-to-Empath telepathic coordination has provided an excellent means to work around the sunspot interference. In late December M.Y. 2206, another group of Heracles Rovers was thus ambushed and destroyed, this time by the 1st Peacemaker Company. Mere days later, Spartan rovers in the north were overwhelmed by Broodmaster Starfruit and her psionic host, utterly obliterating both vehicles and crews within.
Despite these successes, however, the Spartans show no signs of giving up, and while they could field near-endless recruits to make up for their losses, the Gaian expeditionary force dwindles at every casualty. Without reinforcements, it will be increasingly difficult to hold current positions, and judging by what the Empaths have managed to glean from Eastern Command, they can expect precious few to arrive in the immediate future.