That was a pretty damn uncharitable thing to say, but the fact was, the raiders' resistance was utterly pointless.
After all, just ten minutes before they launched their desperate bombardment against the Imperial fleet in orbit, the last raider warship had already been torn to pieces by a hail of gunfire.
Once a planet lost the protection of its fleet in orbit, it was helpless against the Imperial fleet's orbital strikes, Titans included. Even if its entire surface bristled with anti-aircraft weapons, it would amount to nothing more than a futile struggle before the inevitable.
A normal person would have surrendered by then.
To be fair, the Empire might have been big on martial virtue, but it didn't discriminate against those who knew when to bow to the inevitable and laid down their arms once their ammunition and supplies ran out. By this point in the war, they weren't planning to wipe out every last raider. The Empire had plenty of mines and farms across its vast territory that were short on labor, with more than enough jobs waiting to keep the raiders busy for the rest of their lives.
But if the other side refused to believe the truth and refused to surrender, the Imperial fleet could only oblige them in their valor. Perhaps that was part of martial virtue, too.
The Imperial servicemen watched as the glacier-covered white planet was swallowed by dreadful crimson and filthy black, their hearts unmoved. They all knew it was merely the inevitable spectacle of heat from thermonuclear weapons reacting with the atmosphere. Within six months at most, those glaring splotches would slowly fade. The melted glaciers would then transform the planet's entire surface, perhaps even forming "natural" rivers, lakes, and seas.
By then, all they would need to do was place a