"Oh, but you don't understand!" said the Regional Subdirector. "This planet is but a rock pool before the vast, endless ocean of the Tides. We span the stars, fight the Azura on a thousand different worlds, and our victory is inevitable. But to destroy [i]your [/i]kind, as we will have to one day, we will be forced to equip ourselves with anti-materiel weaponry. This means that we can't destroy your civilization without destroying your artifacts and cities; this means that any materiel that passes in to your civilization cannot be repurposed and so represents a net cultural loss for the galaxy after it has been drowned. So you see how unreasonable your position is? Don't you realize that, if you persist on this path, you will lose something far more important than your lives: your [i]legacy[/i]?"

The Regional Subdirector extended its tentacles in a sign of earnest pleading. "Please. Take a moment to consider the big picture. Consider the future generations who will witness you in our museums. All we want is for you to give up this undead foolishness and resurrect into biological bodies which can, at a future date, be exterminated cleanly with poison gas and neutron flaying. Be [i]reasonable [/i]about this."

[Friction roll: 6; Aotrs advantage]

The rebuke of the Aotrs scouts is immediate and decisive. 

The elimination of the Subdirector is done without casualties - and indeed, the Battlecrab reaction to its death is to retreat rather than attempt to engage. Moreover, the retreat seems to have prompted a reorganization of the Tidal garrisons in the region, which is resulting in a temporary degradation of their anti-ship envelope in the region. The airspace is suddenly much less contested, opening the possibility of Gating in another dropship. 

*

But even as the possibility is raised the flickering communications and sensor blackout of an oncoming Azura assault begins. They are coming in airborne, moving extremely fast and low. So fast and so low, in fact, that some of them impact trees or rock formations at high speed and crash spectacularly into the ground, but damn if it doesn't make them hard to accurately target, especially with their sensor-jamming effects.

The force is primarily dismounted airborne infantry, backed by a cluster of close range plasma-vent warspheres. The plan at this stage is to engage on all fronts at close range and pursue any retreating forces savagely to prevent them from falling back into prepared secondary positions. The Knights hold back this time, chastised from their earlier injury, and wait to commit to exploit a breakthrough wherever one occurs. It's an ugly plan. Casualties will be huge. But given that this is a frontal assault against an entrenched and prepared enemy in daylight, while on a time limit, the tactics are hardly objectionable. 

*

"Oh, please don't tell anyone about me," said Boldness, rubbing her head as though pained. "Lot of reasons, but chief amongst them is that I represent the central government and everything gets insanely complicated if people out here on the periphery know that the core is watching. It shouldn't be too complicated though; just understand that there is a [i]lot [/i]of ritual to Azura politics and it gets more intense the higher you get. The more absurd their demands the more seriously they're listening to you. They politically [i]cannot [/i]acknowledge foreigners as equals, so if they are [i]actually [/i]interacting with you as equals they need to balance that out with extremely intense fiction. If you hear anything that makes you balk, politely stall them rather than outright rejecting. They won't budge, but they won't break contact entirely either so you can find a different angle."