Professor Vector Loban
The battlefield no longer resembled a quagmire.
It had become a giant, expanding junkyard.
Debris and broken parts littered the surrounding space. Broken mechs, broken combat carriers and broken alien warships spread across space in every direction.
A lot of pieces were bound to get caught by the local planet's gravity well. They might even get pulled in and crash onto the surface, causing a lot of devastation to its recently terraformed ecosystem.
Other hazards also existed as faltering power generators exploded after reaching their limits and previously unexploded ordnance blew up for one reason or another.
Further complicating the state of the debris field was that a lot of survivors from both sides of the conflict managed to survive the battle that had recently come to an end.
Both humans and aliens of two distinct races still clung to life in the more intact pieces of ship wreckage or inside the escape pods flung into space.