339 Tarsus Aflame, Pt Their squadrons easily dispatched whatever remaining forces were left on the field, including the few drones that survived the initial AA shredding earlier. The hovertanks that were taking up the rear of the forward forces had long since turned around and headed back.

historical

But all the destruction didn’t stop the Federation frigates and destroyers from advancing forward. Despite the fact that the Corvus Republic had literally wiped out 72 of their incoming skirmish forces, the larger ships of the line were undeterred.

They continued to barrel their way towards the township without letting up on their speed.

Lucifer tsk’d as their own corvettes made their way to the township. Unfortunately, their destroyers were still minutes behind them, and certainly wouldn’t get there in time to intercept the enemy. Even then, their armaments were slightly lopsided.

The Federation forces were utilizing Terra Nach Mar siege destroyers, which were similar to their siege cruisers. Each of them had a massive rail cannon that stretched up and down their length, whose sabot rounds could easily punch through the thickest armor with ease.

The Viridian Nautilus certainly wouldn’t last a single shot, no matter where their slugs landed. And the three corvettes? They’d be obliterated instantly.

“Raijin,” Lucifer intoned. “We need your firepower here. We’ve got two TNM railcannons bearing down on us, gonna be in prime range in just under a minute. Then it’s over for us.”

“Unfortunately, my main cannon is not yet ready,” Raijin replied over comms. “However, I can take control of the fleet’s drones to help mount a defense.”

“What can you deploy?”

.....

“I have 12 assault drones, as well as 48 defense drones. 24 on the Nautilus, and 24 on the Fiddler.”

“Do what you need to.”

As they spoke, the incoming destroyers began to slow down significantly, though the four frigates that were accompanying them continued going. The four spread out as they approached, as though they aimed to attack the township from multiple angles.

“Squadrons Hydra and Muse,” Lucifer commanded, “form up and eliminate those frigates!”

Since Xylo’s Muse squadron was already afield, they very quickly advanced on the closest frigate. They swung out wide, and came at the frigate from its port side.

And since their signals were at the absolute bottom, had true impunity as they entered its airspace.

Each of them fired their graviton beams along the frigate’s broadside, and warped the armor as they passed. Entire sheets of robust armor were torn off and rendered useless as the beams crumpled the surface where they struck.

And they revealed the softer structure beneath, along with some of the outer modules and systems.

In response, the frigate blindly fired its AA guns, and filled its portside airspace with black clouds of razor-sharp shrapnel.

But it was all far too late. Muse squadron had done their damage and wrenched the majority of their port armor right off. By the time their AA shells burst, they had moved on towards the next frigate down the line.

And unfortunately for them, Hydra squadron simply didn’t care about the field of tungsten flak. They flew into the clouds with impunity, knowing that they could easily weather the storm. All that the shrapnel did was bounce off their heavy armor, and scratched them.

They flew through the thick black clouds straight at the frigate’s exposed port side, and in unison, fired their calamitous Shatterpulse mortars at them.

All 12 of them fired a total of 48 deep black projectiles, each one surrounded by a thick halo of bright blue-white energy that crackled menacingly. Though at first it seemed that they were going to sail right over the frigate, each one instead curved towards it, as though they were attracted to the ship magnetically.

Then, they slammed into its exposed side, where waves of bright blue energy rippled across the surface. And wherever they went, they caused massive power fluctuations that resulted in multiple modules and systems malfunctioning.

Especially those closest to the points of impact, of which there were many.

But the worst part was when the much smaller, deep black cores struck. They too smashed into the frigate where they struck. Their outer shells shattered to pieces, which released the countless devourer nanites that immediately ate away at everything surrounding them.

They chewed into the structure, the modules, the liquid pathways, the circuits, the energy dampening fields, the passageways, the people. Everything.

Together, they disintegrated over a quarter of the ship, even as it fell towards the ground, powerless.

Squadron Hydra then banked sharply to the right, and followed after squadron Muse. There, they began their attack run on the next frigate on the list.

And despite the fact that they currently held the advantage, Lucifer was far more worried about the destroyers themselves. Especially the moment they came to a full stop. Or, more specifically, the moment that the energy readings from their rail cannons began to rise up higher and higher.

Beads of sweat dripped down hir forehead in anticipation of their attack. There was no way they could weather even a single shot. And despite how much ze trusted Raijin, a part of hir was nervous regardless.

“Their rail cannons have charged up to 25%,” ze told the rest of the fleet.

In the corvette alongside hirs, Raijin sent out commands through her primary drone control terminal. She didn’t even bother to make any inputs manually, and instead reached out with her hand and connected directly into the terminal itself.

From there, she inputted everything through direct commands and directives, which shaved off crucial amounts of nanoseconds, every second. And with a single command, took control of the fleet’s drone network.

The drone bays that sat atop the Viridian Nautilus and the Stalwart Fiddler opened up, and swarms of drones flew right out of them. Unlike her hawk-like assault drones, these were spherical in nature. It could be said that they were like her cottonball bird drones, but in truth their design was much closer to Freya’s experimental core.

Each one had numerous sensors, thrusters, and antigrav emitters all over the surface, and pointed in every direction.

Raijin quickly had both clusters of drones swarm towards each other, and stationed them in front of the Viridian Nautilus. And more importantly, in front of the township. At the same time, she commanded her hawk drones to close on the destroyers as well.

“50 percent,” Lucifer echoed over comms.

Despite what Lucifer was warning, she took a moment to reflect. Even though she technically had full control over every particle in her body, her heart couldn’t help but thump heavily. She hadn’t performed her Machine Trance, not since she gave herself to eternity.

And a part of her was afraid to do it.

She feared that she would lose herself to the trance itself. After all, now that she was no longer biological, nothing stopped her from becoming purely digital. To become a mind lost in a vast network.

It was something she wanted to do, eventually. For now, she had so much more to accomplish, and didn’t want to lose anything. But knew that the temptation was going to be high.

And so steeled herself.

Then, a microsecond later, she opened up her consciousness, and entered her drone network. And instantly realized that her fears weren’t unfounded. The greater circuit all around her was a tantalizing flow of light and data and raw energy.

She felt the pulsing of it all around her, and even through her.

It seemed just like life, the ebb and flow of it, but in greater detail. Like zooming into a picture to see splotches of color in the tiniest sense.

It wasn’t just what she experienced. It was how she experienced it all. Before, her biological body could only contain her consciousness where she was focusing. If she was on a specific task, her mind was automatically on it.

But now, she could experience everything directly, wherever she was connected. It was true multitasking, in every sense of the word. And certainly something her biological body could never do. Although her consciousness seemed split up everywhere – her body, the terminal, the drones – she could also see it all.

Like a maestro in front of an orchestra. Or, better yet, a strategy player who could issue a thousand commands a second.

She watched as sensor data streamed by next to her, as they reported that the destroyers were ready to fire. Another set of data brushed up against her – the angle of their barrels, the distance between them, the airspeed and direction of the planet’s wind, the planet’s rotation and gravitational forces.

And in a flash of light, she calculated where their defenses needed to be, and when.

Just as the two destroyers fired their rail cannons, she took hold of her spherical defense drones, and activated them. She then adjusted their position and slid them exactly 65.40 meters up and to the right, then immediately 32.11 meters a bit down and to further to the right.

All the rest of the fleet saw was Raijin’s defense drones as they flared out with energy. They moved to the right with such speed that they barely saw it happen. But at the end of it, waves of force rippled out from the massive antigrav field in front of the drone swarm.

In it were two tungsten carbide sabot rounds that spun slower and slower, until they ultimately stopped.

Then, with a flash of energy, the antigrav fields ballooned outward, then shot the sabot rounds straight back. In the blink of an eye, they struck one of the destroyers far afield, and punched right through its armor.

The force of the shot was so powerful that the ship itself warped slightly as it was thrown back many dozens of meters, and knocked into the ground belly-first. Clouds of dust kicked up as it slid backwards many dozens more meters.

The rocky ground scraped and warped and tore at the armor plating underneath, some of which ripped straight off the structure underneath.

At the same time that her defense drones caught and repulsed the rail cannon sabot rounds, her hawk drones had also sped towards the destroyers at breakneck speeds. They were going so fast that they easily split the gap in mere seconds.

Within those few precious moments, she directly controlled each of their flight paths, and aimed them at specific targets within the destroyer itself. And without even slowing down, shot it with their invasive needle bolts.

Then, within the same second, sped past so fast that they didn’t even register on the destroyers’ sensors.

Just as the first destroyer struck the ground, having been knocked back by their own sabot rounds, power failures began to ripple all around the second. Many of their secondary systems and half their thrusters simply began to fail, as though they were refusing energy from the power plant.

And when the first one finally exploded, after its punctured power plant erupted, the second fell to the ground unceremoniously when all its bottom thrusters cut out.