Ravens of Eternity

Chapter 399

399 Harbingers of the Apocalypse, Pt Nyvrass II, Nyvrass System, Imperial Domain of the Boundless Drogar

The space above Nyvrass II was in absolute chaos. The burning wreckages of half-destroyed Imperial ships rained down onto the vast city-scape of the industrial planet. They came tumbling down from lower orbit, and crashed into the massive industrial complexes below.

The entirety of the planet’s surface had been completely converted into a single industrial city, and was jam-packed with manufactories, fabrication bays, material depots, munitions storage, recycling plants, and so on.

Absolutely everything needed to create weapons of war was built on the planet itself. The planet was home to an entire wartime production chain, starting with containers filled with raw materials to crates filled with fully-furnished naval guns.

And because the planet itself was covered in these industrial buildings, no matter where the ships fell, they did tremendous amounts of damage.

A half-destroyed Imperial cruiser plowed through some of the taller coral towers and ripped them in half. While their upper halves tumbled down and destroyed more buildings below, the cruiser itself crashed into a vast manufactory campus.

The cruiser’s chitin cracked and splintered and broke apart on impact, all while the campus buildings fell down all around. The coral structures simply crumbled and fell apart as though they were made of loose sand and rock.

Any drogar inside the campus buildings were crushed and turned into bloody paste. Those outside or around the campus were toppled to the ground and buried under tons of coral debris.

Everywhere all over the city, countless ships of various sizes fell from the sky. Fighters and frigates and destroyers and cruisers – they all fell down and crashed into the vast city below.

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The remains of a frigate fell down in massive chunks, much of it on fire, and crashed down all around a chemical processing facility. One of its slabs of chitin armor ripped through a huge chemical tank and spilled its volatile liquid all over the place.

Streams of the vile liquid spurted out and splashed on everything around. Although it seemed completely harmless at first, the substance began to liquefy anything organic that it touched. Drogar technicians and engineers ran around screaming as the toxic liquid burned through their utility robes, and their skin, and their muscle, and their bone.

Many of them died in excruciating pain as a result.

The rest were killed as more of the frigate fell down on top of them. Huge chunks of wrecked exoframe or destroyed modules tumbled down and demolished everything they struck. They plowed through the buildings themselves, toppled the walls and ceilings, and crushed any of the industrial machinery inside.

Some landed right on a number of workers and ended their lives in an instant.

Another huge shard of the ship ruptured another nearby tank which released a gout of heavily compressed gas. It instantly caught on fire from the many burning sources all around, flared out widely, then caused the caustic liquid to also catch on fire.

And those chemical fires spread with such veracity that some of the drogar who were already being eaten alive suddenly found themselves alight as well. They flailed and ran and shrieked and cursed as sheer pain wracked their bodies.

Some fell to the ground and died in abject suffering as the flames and toxins consumed them.

Massive flames and fires such as that one spread all around the city as more and more ships crashed down all over.

The destruction and devastation was absolute.

To the drogar below, it was akin to armageddon. Their skies fell as their streets were torn apart. Every ship that fell caused the ground to quake violently.

Mangled, crushed, or burnt bodies were everywhere, as was their blood.

The screams of the dying surrounded them on all sides as towering flames and thick plumes of black smoke rose up into the air.

High above, the ships of the Einjerhar were engaged in a pitched battle against a heavily-armed Imperial fleet.

The Imperials fielded a devastator, 7 battleships, two dozen cruisers, nearly a hundred destroyers, countless frigates, and thousands of fighters and mecha. Which was very close to even against the Einherjar, at least from a numerical perspective.

The two fleets circled around each other, much like a slowly swirling tornado, but with far more destructive power. In fact, the eye of this storm was far from calm.

Bright orange disintegrator beams crossed against bright blue plasma lance beams and struck their targets. Chitin was torn to shreds as armor plating was ripped and scarred. Pieces of ships from both fleets rained down and wrecked more of the planetary city below.

Numerous squadrons of tri-pronged light Imperial fighters flew around an Einherjar cruiser like a swarm of piranha. They picked at its armor with their bright orange beams and scored the plating with every pass they made.

The squadrons literally sliced patterns into the cruiser, even as its overworked repair nanites attempted to undo any of the damage.

Regardless of the damage it was taking, the cruiser didn’t even bother with the fighters. Instead, it continued to aim its own weapons at the Imperial destroyer across the eye of their turbulent storm.

They didn’t need to bother with them simply because the Einherjar’s frigates had them covered.

A half dozen of the frigates flew over to assist the beleaguered cruiser. But instead of using their own plasma lances or rail cannons, they instead turned their EM Pulsewave guns towards the enemy fighters.

Waves of electromagnetic energy shot out from each of them, and practically smothered the cruiser with wide arcs of fire. The energies coursed through the Imperial fighters, and caused their liquid circuits to flow wildly and uncontrollably.

All of the magnetic minerals and metals in the fluid itself were severely hampered or extremely accelerated by the various pulses. This caused numerous malfunctions in the fighters themselves, and all kinds of fatal errors and synchronization problems erupted.

Various systems and modules overheated or were overcharged or underpowered or underperformed. And this massive fluctuation caused the fighters themselves to fly around erratically. Some began to spin wildly in the air as their thrusters blasted out energy uncontrollably.

The pilots inside panicked as they attempted to regain control of their own systems. But there was nothing they could do as they were struck wave after wave of EM energy.

Red alerts filled their screens, even as they flicked on and off. Modules began to shut down as their cooling devices began to overheat from the wild fluctuations.

Many of the fighters simply fell away as their energies bottomed out. They crashed down to the city below, and added even more death and destruction in their wake.

And despite the cruiser also getting bathed in EM Pulsewave energies, they were hardly affected. In fact, their hyperionization modules were attuned to accept those same energies and absorb them. The extra energies coursed through the armor’s attached modules, and helped resist further disintegration damage.

More critically, the energies also overcharged the repair modules and increased the nanites’ speed and effectiveness. It allowed the cruiser to shrug off most of the Imperial destroyer’s weapons fire, and also to shoot back with their own rail spikes in response.

Dozens of the tungsten projectiles punched into the thick chitin and caused massive cracks to spread across the surface. They bit deep into the exoframe, then released their electric payload all at once.

Pure electricity coursed through the destroyer’s insides, and instantly fried a number of its critical modules and systems. A handful of liquid circuits also shorted out and burned up.

The destroyer’s crew panicked as they attempted to restore and repair the damaged modules around them.

Outside, half of the destroyer’s portside weapons slumped as they lost all power and control. Then the entire thing began to list downward, as some of its bottom thrusters sputtered out. Many of its crew went into absolute panic as they ran down the passageways to the escape pods.

But before the Einherjar cruiser could celebrate their win, their still-weak port side belt armor was struck by numerous disintegration beams. A battleship swung into position above the falling destroyer, and fired back in retaliation.

Since the battleship’s guns were a whole size larger than the destroyer’s, their beams more easily cut through the cruiser’s armor. They dug into the partially-scored plating and ripped it apart atom by atom.

It took only another couple of seconds before they reached the structure and began to rip that up as well.

Even with the frigates’ extra energy, the cruiser’s hyperionization modules could hardly keep up against concentrated fire from a battleship.

Just as the Imperial battleship tore through the structure and began to eradicate everything beneath, massive black mortars wrapped in orange energies struck their broadside guns. The dark orange energies wrapped around the floating turrets themselves and neutralized much of their power.

At the same time, the dark nuclei burst open and spewed voracious nanites everywhere. They splashed all over the turrets themselves and immediately began to eat through the stinger-like guns and their protective chitin.

The mortars had also struck the battleship’s main portside chitin armor as well, and began to eat through that.

But Freya’s attack was far from over. She fired the rest of Thanatos’ topside mortar group at the battleship and completely enveloped its port side turrets with the catastrophic nanites.

And as she began the mortars’ long and slow charging process, she turned her port side disintegration beams towards the battleship, then fired.

Hundreds of them struck the heavily-scarred battleship and ripped through the already-weakened chitin. Even as the mortar’s nanites ate away more and more of the battleship, Thanatos’ beams chewed into its soft insides.

They tore apart everything they touched, from chitin to exoframe to modules to scales and blood and bone. Any drogar caught in the beams were completely unmade as the devastator’s beams excruciatingly ripped them apart.

More critically, the beams struck the life support systems and ruptured the various gas canisters around it. These instantly exploded from the internal pressure, and absolutely shredded everything within reach.

Liquid circuits were violently ruptured, and their contents sprayed out. Drogar were torn apart by warped sheets of metal and killed instantly. Various modules and systems were punctured and torn and blasted apart.

Worse, a chain reaction of powerful explosions erupted inside the battleship itself, and they swept up and down every deck. Its exoframe bulged out as cracks spread across its chitinous surface.

Then massive portions of it broke open as balls of white-hot fire punched through the cracks. The entire battleship split into three massive parts as huge explosions completely wrenched it apart. Countless chitin shards were thrown in every direction as the ship’s broken sections careened down towards the city.

They crashed down onto a city block and completely annihilated it. Their burning wreckages crushed every coral building they struck and left gigantic craters in their place. Huge clouds of dust were kicked up on impact, which covered everything in a layer of grime and dirt.

With another enemy battleship on the ground, Freya turned Thanatos’ guns back on the Imperial devastator across the storm’s eye.

And without a moment’s hesitation, fired.