Liberating Avesia was a fairly straightforward task for the Infrastructural Navy. Most of it's settlements were coastal, had defenses that were at best out of date and were fairly easy to either capture or force capitulation out of. Even so there were a couple of towns that were inland and a whole lot of estates. Many of these were abandoned by their owners, some had defenders holding out desperate. Even so they needed to be cleared out. Mobs of armed liberate slaves were on the move around Porta Liberium (renamed Svobodagrad by Drive) were on the march, but to deal with the holdouts quickly and effectively army forces were deployed, among them was Nadia and her squad. Snuffing those bastions quickly before they had a time to dig in and coordinate with each other was critical for the speedy execution of the campaign. Drone recon had identified these bastions and had dispatched companies to clear them out.Last afternoon she'd cleared out an estate which had been the base of about sixty of the bastards that had been desperately trying to throw up some walls around their estate pushing their slaves as to the breaking point to do so. They'd gotten lucky and had only suffered a couple wounded in that attack. Half of that bunch of slavers did not even have guns, just swords, maces, axes, crossbows and boarding pikes while those that did had little idea of how to use them properly. A few of them were actually old matchlocks. That night they'd feasted on the spoils of their victory. Earlier that morning they sent the wounded, captives and children in that base back to Svobodagrad under escort, but they had another target eighteen kilometers away. Normally that would have taken the better part of the day of marching, but fortunately for Nadia and the rest of her company they'd been provided with and trained in the use of one of the Committee's latest marvels. They called it a Bicycle.The formation moved in single file with a couple of scouts a hundred meters ahead to probe for anything unexpected. She was alert, their had already been jumped by a suicidal young fool who had the bright idea to run in screaming with a scimitar and a flail in each hand to a gunfight. Despite everything she actually enjoyed the climate of the place, it was a wonderful change of pace after a Coldland winter and being cooped up on an over-packed ship. Maybe after the war she'd move to Colony-1, get a bicycle and explore that region. Of course to do that she'd need to make sure that she'd live to see that happy day and to make sure her squad lived to see their happy post war civilian lives (whatever they may be), which meant sorting out these slaving bastards in a proper and efficient manner.Previous- Infrastructure: Part Two Hundred and Sixty Next- Infrastructure: Part Two Hundred and Sixty Two