Ravens of Eternity

Chapter 358

358 Search & Rescue, Pt As Freya and Lucifer tore apart the second Drogar squadron, the first flanked them widely on both sides. They watched as the two of them ripped through their forces with relative ease, and without taking much damage at all in exchange.

A sense of fear swept through a few pilots, heightened by the fact that their sensor sweeps revealed precious little data. Certainly nothing that they could exploit for an advantage.

All the data revealed was that they were faster, tougher, nimbler, and deadlier than their own ships. And on realizing that they wouldn’t be getting more intelligence, their bladechief could only harrumph in annoyance.

He slammed a fist on his controls, irritated by the two ships’ impenetrability.

“Fine,” he growled. “Time to launch our counter. If we can’t scan them, then we capture them. Switch to discharge beams. Yunsza squadron, launch assault. Weapons free.”

The first squadron came in at speed from wide angles, and quickly opened fire with their beams. And instead of the deep orange of their antiparticle beams, they were a bright blue.

But like before, the two cores evaded them with relative ease. They flew chaotically and impossibly as they darted between beams and danced out of multiple lines of fire.

“Entrapment maneuver!” cried the bladechief. “Go go go!”

His squadron immediately broke apart into different directions, then turned back inward towards each of the two cores. They attempted to surround them to some degree, then fired their beams successively, in an attempt to corner them further and further.

.....

And it worked for the most part – as they closed their beams in, the last down the line activated across their flight vector and cut them off. The cores passed through the disruption beams, which practically cut through the armor, and struck their energy systems directly.

The bladechief grinned widely in victory at having caught them in his trap. But it didn’t last very long.

Freya and Lucifer simply kept on flying unimpeded, and even fired back with their sniper cannons as they spun out in different directions.

“H-how?!” cried the bladechief. “We had them dead on!”

He quickly scanned whatever data he could pull together, even as his squadron attempted to corner the two Oni cores again. And his mouth fell open as energy readings revealed that their disruption attack did almost nothing.

It dawned on him that the two ships were using so little power that whatever disruption energy poured into their systems were useless. Whatever was generating their power could easily handle any sudden lack.

His hands curled around his flight controls in anger and frustration. The inability for any of them to do any significant damage to the two ships grated at him terribly.

Just as he was about to angrily issue new commands, numerous needle bolts penetrated his fighter from the side.

Not that his fighter was the only one that was hit.

None of the Imperial fighter pilots even realized that Raijin’s hawk drones had come close – their signals were miniscule. They darted into sensor range in a flash, attacked, then darted back out. Nearly two dozen of them fired into half of the squadron, and embedded numerous needle bolts into their chitin.

The devourer nanites inside ate their way through the thin casing, then began to chew through everything all around. The chitin armor, of course. But also the exoframe and modules beneath – if they punched through far enough.

Although the damage wasn’t severe, it was wide. And the fighters’ systems began to fail.

Then, the hawks came back around and shot them again and again, and did more and more damage to their inner systems.

Their navigational circuits began to error out, which caused a few to crash into each other violently. Some spun out as shards of chitin were thrown in every direction, then crashed to the ground below. Others simply found their weapons completely unresponsive, or their controls started to glitch out.

The squadron began to fly erratically more and more, until the bladechief finally figured out that they were under assault by something they could barely see.

“Full evasive maneuvers!” he cried out.

The fighters peeled away from Freya and Lucifer in an attempt to avoid any further damage. But it was too late – the hawks had already eroded their capabilities a great deal. And were far from done, to boot.

While the drones took apart the Drogar fighter squadron, the Blade of Damocles rocketed down from orbit. It came straight down towards the four Imperial frigates, and aimed every forward-facing gun it had onto them.

Besides their topside boarding cannons, which were currently tucked away, most of the rest of their broadside guns were like thick tuning forks. In between each of the two prongs was what appeared to be the frame of a cannon.

Normally, what would be spinning inside the cannon frames would be specialized anti-materiel shells.

But this time, they were loaded with long and thin tungsten carbide spears with hardened lithium silver cores. Arcs of electricity coursed up their lengths as the inside of the prongs lit up with electromagnetic energy.

Every spear glowed brightly as they were filled with raw electricity, and were covered by a thick layer of bright blue plasma.

Waves of electromagnetic energy swept between the prongs and through the barrels, which propelled the spears out like massive strikes of lightning.

They came down from the sky and slammed into the tops of the Drogar frigates in a blinding flash. Each was accompanied by a resounding sonic crack that echoed all around. The frigates themselves were pushed downward by the impact of the spears, which embedded halfway into the chitin.

Massive flakes of armor were thrown in every direction as cracks spread across the surface.

Worse, numerous arcs of electricity danced across the chitin, and discharged unbelievable amounts of energy straight into the frigates’ exoframe. Excess power swept through their liquid wires and into numerous systems.

The alerts and damage reports alone were more than enough to get the four ships to scramble. Their slipstream drives opened wider as they swirled up and outward towards the Republic destroyer. And of course, they fired back with their thin orange beams as best they could.

They raked across the surface and caused numerous thin cuts in the plating. The Drogar then followed up with burrower missiles, whose drill-like tips dug further into the armor. And once they got far enough, exploded with enough force to cause the destroyer to shake.

As the destroyer slowed down and leveled off, the frigates flew further towards it with speed and agility. They did their best to evade as much defensive fire as they could, though their armor easily repelled any chaingun fire.

AA shells burst along their trajectory, which struck their chitin and chipped off large flakes from the force of the blows. But it hardly stopped their advance.

They charged up to the destroyer as fast as they could, and practically parked themselves as close as they dared. The ships were practically touching, even as they flew.

Which meant that the destroyer’s main guns couldn’t hit the frigates at all – they were simply too close.

And because they hugged tightly, the frigates’ guns could do their work. Their thin orange beams shot out again and scored the destroyers’ armor without restraint.

Inside the destroyer, Admiral Nehara sat in her command chair and watched as numerous damage reports scrolled past her screens. They simply kept on climbing up and up, as though they had no recourse or defense against the Drogar.

Not that she was in the least bit worried.

“All broadside guns spool up to maximum,” she commanded. “Get ready to fire. All portside thrusters – perform a sudden overcharge burst in five... four... three...”

Moments later, the destroyer’s port side thrusters flared out brightly. They pushed the entire ship suddenly towards the right, and in doing so slammed into the two Drogar frigates that hugged them there. The impact shattered some of their chitin armor, and caused numerous cracks to spread across their surface.

But more importantly, it put a bit of distance between the frigates that sandwiched them.

The ones they collided into were flung aside from the force of the collision – they were thrown far enough to give their starboard guns the time to bear down on them. And fire at point-blank range.

The situation was similar on the other side, and numerous arcs of lightning appeared to fire outwards from the destroyer.

Destructive plasma-charged spears struck the chitin of all four Drogar frigates that surrounded them. Thanks to their weakened armor, the spears sank deeper than normal, and tore off larger chunks of chitin armor.

Not only that, but the spears had punched past the exoframe, through numerous systems, and into the decks beyond. They discharged their electricity in the blink of an eye, and completely overwhelmed whatever circuits they hit.

The internal damage control systems in the frigates quickly shut off any power linkages and completely isolated where the spears had penetrated. Though they were able to confine the damage to certain sections, whatever they did hit was overwhelmed by electricity and were completely burned out as a result.

Then, the destroyer fired again and riddled those starboard side frigates even more. Their spears tore into the chitin and blew apart large chunks even as the plasma they carried burned out even more systems.

Any guns that weren’t directly hit ultimately shut down as their internal systems burned up from the inside out.

The two frigates became more and more sluggish as half their systems became more and more overworked. Since half of their systems and modules had been torn apart or completely neutralized, the other half had to struggle just to keep them in the sky.

“Pound them to dust,” commanded Nehara.

The destroyer aimed its missile emplacements straight towards the two frigates, then fired numerous missiles at them. A dozen of them struck each of the ships, right where their chitin was weakest. And with violent explosions tore whatever was left apart.

Waves of kinetic energy swept across the surface, and blasted the cracked chitin into a fine powder. Large chunks and tiny flakes were thrown in every direction from the force, as both frigates were blown open. The exoframe beneath the wrecked chitin armor was also ripped open, and any crew on the other side were blasted into mist.

The damage was so severe that both were crippled by the blasts, and whatever was keeping them up in the air failed. Their bottom slipstream drives simply cut out, and both ships careened helplessly towards the ground.

The first one struck the ground bow-first with such force that its bow armor was torn off in an instant. The soft exoframe underneath collapsed in on itself, and anyone in that front section was crushed flat.

The second came down right on top of the first, which caused their armor to break apart violently at the point of impact. Chunks and shards and flakes flew everywhere as the two ships warped around each other.

The one on top eventually tipped over and fell down with a massive crash, which scattered even more chitin in every direction.

“Now,” Nehara said. “Let’s tear apart the other two.”