Battle of Shest Minor

The Battle of Shest Minor was the largest engagement of the Ssi-ruuvi Incursion. Having located the  factory on Shest Minor, Sorrik sent an invasion force led by Breek Zagrev to wipe out the  presence on the planet and capture or destroy the entechment facility. Despite enduring massive casualties, Zagrev ultimately triumphed and captured Shest Minor for the Empire.

The battle
In overall command of the Shest Minor operation, Breek arrived in her personal flagship, the Valkyrie. However, she left command of the space battle to Commodore Rensi Shal-Shatir and his, the Keltrayu. Breek herself took an invasion force of 350,000 Royal Army soldiers and seven other Centurions to attack the Ssi-ruuvi garrison.

Though the invasion fleet lacked Rin Sakaros and her, Shal-Shatir had made a study of Ssi-ruuvi tactics and deployed his fleet to compensate for them. The fight took nineteen hours and cost several capital ships on both sides, but Shal-Shatir was eventually victorious. His fleet took up blockade positions around Shest Minor to prevent any of the forces onworld from escaping.

The ground assault took three days. Unable to bombard through Shest Minor's, the Empire's forces landed outside the shield's radius and began an overland attack with troops, armored personnel carriers, and walkers, as well as mobile artillery pieces. Breek Zagrev and Veersh remained at the command headquarters along with a small support staff, directing operations, while the dozens of cohorts and the six other Centurions pressed the attack and other troops seized outlying outposts and cities elsewhere on the planet. The main attack force drove toward the Ssi-ruuvi entechment facility and shield generators in spurts, with the command section moving with it and supply lines starting

Losses were heavy and the Ssi-ruuk and their droids bogged the Empire down in fighting for kilometers at a time. Cora Convarion, Terran Saul, Syuug, and Genn Sudime all died the first day, and the lines between the center and far left flank on the Empire's side nearly collapsed under a sustained assault until an artillery bombardment drove off the enemy. Kyzk and Atrelle Sovex died on the second day, which saw the capture of an outlying suburb of Shest Minor's capital which had been converted into a detention camp. Some native Weyock were liberated, although the Ssi-ruuk had killed many and taken more back for emergency enteching.

Units which had seized positions around the planet sent what troops they could spare to attack the capital from other directions as afternoon became evening. Having been up for two straight days directing the battle, Breek took a brief nap during the night of the second day of battle at the insistence of her staff. Sato Raltharan assumed command of the ground operations and went to the front when the right flank began to fold backwards. He was killed in the engagement and the Empire's position weakened.

Awakening to find her last sibling dead, Breek feared the stalled campaign would eventually lead to defeat without a successful offensive. She took the field personally, leading the right flank in a counterattack that eventually caused the Ssi-ruuk to withdrew into defensive formation. Faced with withering fire as the Empire tried to break the line, Breek was injured and blinded in one eye by explosive shrapnel, but her troops rallied around her and she used the Force to tear down a communications tower three kilometers away. The loss of the tower disrupted contact between front-line troops and their commanders, as well as flattening the artillery and soldiers directly beneath it.

With new heart, the Royal troops pressed the attack, and the Ssi-ruuk lines finally broke in earnest. Driving fast and hard to keep the enemy off balance, Breek pressed her foes back until she could bring artillery within range of the enemy shield generator. Once it fell, Shal-Shatir's blockade initiated surgical fire to take out several clusters of Ssi-ruuk and captured or shot down all ships attempting to flee. Several wings of starfighters also conducted bombardments of their own. When the outcome became inevitable, the Ssi-ruuk admiral was shot down trying to escape, and Breek ordered that no prisoners were to be taken. Those few who escaped Shal-Shatir's bombardment were wiped out by the Royal Army.

Aftermath and legacy
Over a hundred thousand soldiers—more than a third of Breek's total attack force—were killed or wounded so badly they could not return to duty immediately, and Sorrik sent in five more cohorts to take over the task of garrisoning the planet and inventorying Ssi-ruuvi equipment, as well as cataloguing the dead. were noted to be in short supply; Breek Zagrev refused anything more than a form-defining synthetic optical implant to allow more seriously wounded soldiers in her command to receive prosthetics.

The seizure of the entechment facility doomed the Ssi-ruuvi campaign into the Golden Empire even before Rin Sakaros allied with the s. Aside from losing the facility itself, the few Ssi-ruuk taken alive were interrogated before being executed and gave up information on the movements of their fleet.

Seventeen soldiers at Shest Minor were honored with the Star of Valor, and four more posthumously received the Cross of Keltrayu. The seven Centurions who died fighting the enemy became immortalized in Royal culture as the "Shest Minor Seven", and the battle sealed Breek Zagrev's reputation among soldiers as a skilled, hardworking commander who cared about her men and was not afraid to share their hardships and dangers. Zagrev insisted on personally presenting all seventeen Stars of Valor to their recipients.