Ravens of Eternity

445 Ragnar?k, Pt 1Waves of Freya’s shared energies swept through Colviss and Orsethii, both of whom actively felt it happening. They both instinctively realized what Freya was doing, for the most part anyway. And although they didn’t understand how she was accomplishing whatever she was doing, they certainly welcomed her efforts all the same.

The two could easily feel themselves get more and more emboldened and empowered as the moments ticked by. In spite of their more aggressive natures, both still felt their apprehension and dread lift away.

“We can’t win if we’re on the defensive,” Colviss exclaimed. “Pull in all the debris and initiate advanced repairs!”

Waves of red energy swept inwards towards both Colviss’ flagship and Thanatos. And by drawing in their antigrav fields, also pulled in whatever debris they had captured. Countless shards of chitin affixed themselves back onto the shattered armor, along with countless tungsten slugs, shells, and rounds.

Though they were scattered chaotically on the half-wrecked chitin plating, it didn’t take long for the devastators’ robust repair modules to do their work. Swarms of nanites wove through the chitin’s molecular structure up to the broken shards and forlorn munitions.

There, they broke those wayward chunks further and further, down to their atomic components. And at the same time, they stitched them back together almost like new. They fused the elements back onto the ship’s chitin in the most efficient composition and array possible.

Not only that, but they took the excess tungsten and carbon from the Discordians’ munitions and added them into the mix for added resilience. The chitin plating was built back up bit by bit as the repair modules worked overtime.

By the time half a minute had passed, most of their shattered armor had been replaced and reinforced further. Even any omnitronium they could extract was laced back through the plating.

Colviss then turned towards Orsethii with a wide grin on her face.

.....

“Your dreadfleet has the green. Happy hunting.”

“About damned time,” Orsethii replied.

Orsethii’s subfleet split away, veered to the left, and went straight for the Discordians who had set up their firing line on their leftmost flank. They immediately received a great amount of incoming fire, but Freya’s Fleet Ascendance helped them weather it all.

The dreadfleet crossed the distance between their two fleets with speed and temerity. As they took on Discordian weapons fire, they answered with their own. Beams and lances crossed each other as missiles exploded close to their hulls.

As they wove through the Discordians’ weapons fire, Orsethii analyzed her opponents across numerous holographic reports. Her tail flicked every so often as she found datapoints worth noting.

Otherwise, she saw that the left flank’s numbers consisted of half the Discordian’s total, minus the devastators who had advanced down the center line. There were six carriers, nine battleships, and close to fifty cruisers. There were hundreds of destroyers and frigates supporting them, along with well over 1500 skirmishers.

In sheer contrast, Orsethii’s assault fleet was pitiful. At least where numbers were concerned. She only had a total of sixty strike cruisers, a hundred heavy destroyers, one hundred ninety four frigates, and eight hundred skirmishes.

Though to be fair, all of them were heavily armed and armored, down to their heavy fighters and mecha. They were an entire subfleet designed to take down much larger foes after all.

Orsethii adjusted her targets, and focused the majority of them onto half of the carriers.

“Move in for the kill,” she barked out. “On my marks.”

Her fleet didn’t even hesitate to follow her orders. As they had done countless times before, the heavy fighters in the fleet shot forward first. They were quickly met with relentless streams of plasma-coated flak pellets, though they easily evaded the vast majority of it.

And if any did hit, the fighters’ thick omnitronium-laced chitin easily shrugged off the damage. The best they could do was chip off small flakes from the plating, but not much more.

At the same time, each of the heavy fighters charged up their front mortar pincers to the absolute maximum. Their very tips glowed a bright orange as the pitch-black devourer nanites were brought into existence at the very center.

All of them practically ignored any of the Discordian fighters and swooped down towards their closest target – one of the carriers. They came in extremely close, and flew down its entire length at top speed.

The dreadfleet heavy fighters then pounded the carrier with their mortars while flying at dizzying speeds across its hull. Being that close allowed them a great deal of precision and hid them from the carrier’s defensive turrets at the same time.

That amount of tactical freedom gave them the ability to run amok on the carrier’s surface, where they flew as though they owned all of it. Squadrons of fighters pounded on the carrier’s weakest points, as marked by dreadmother Orsethii.

The heavy fighters performed attack run after attack run all across its hide, and bore deeper and deeper wherever they struck.

Mortars smashed into the armor with incredible precision. Countless waves of orange energy dispersed across the plating and diffused down into the circuits below. There, their energies clashed with whatever energy shielding was present and chipped away at the carrier’s internal defenses.

As they did so, power to the ship’s repair module became weaker and weaker, which allowed the mortars’ ravenous devourer nanites to chew through the plating with greater ease. While plasma lances attacked metals, and disintegrator beams dismantled carbon, devourer nanites chewed through absolutely everything in their path.

They broke down everything they touched further and further all the way down – to hydrogen and helium. The process was energy intensive, but massively effective.

The mortars ate into the carrier’s outer plating with ease and bore down to the structure below.

From there, they opened up large swaths of the interior decking. They exposed a number of interior hangars, where dozens of fighters, mecha, and drones were waiting to deploy. Or, perhaps more specifically, the heavy fighters exposed the repair bays next to each of those hangars.

Any crew down in those hangars or repair bays were immediately exposed to space, if they weren’t chewed into oblivion by the devourer nanites first. Most were flung out into the void where they froze to death as they suffocated.

As the carrier’s crew were slaughtered, the robust power storage units inside the repair bays were becoming more and more exposed. Whatever little armor they had posed little threat to the Einherjar’s weapons.

The moment that a dozen of them were completely visible, Orsethii charged in with her strike cruisers. All sixty of them bore down on the carrier with their stinger-like cannons, and fired their caustic munitions straight into their targets.

The stingers punched into the power storage units with absolute ease, and ruptured their armor like paper. Each of the units instantly erupted with massive electrical explosions and flung bits of their own insides in every direction.

Worse, the caustic toxins within the hollow stingers were flung along with them. Most embedded themselves further inside the carrier and chewed deep into every deck.

~

“You’re an utter fool, Merlin!” uttered High Templar Sin. “A damned, blind fool! Can’t you see what Eris has done to you? Is that fat ledger of yours worth the pain she brought down on you? That she continually brings down on you?!”

“You’re the fool!” Merlin countered quickly. “I’ve all the drink and the women and the ducats I could ever ask for! All my wishes have been fulfilled! Like I said, the scars are just a momentary pain. Well worth the hours of happiness in between. Can you say the same!?”

“That ain’t happiness, man. That’s you escaping from a shitty life – one where you’re beaten and scarred at some tyrant’s whim.”

Merlin’s mouth fell agape as the words passed through his ears. He came dangerously close to realizing just how right Sin was, that all the excess he reveled in was merely distractions from the oppression he had suffered.

But he couldn’t go further with the thought, and immediately pushed it out of his heart and mind.

He was too afraid of the truth, of the implication of his existence. At the sadness of it.

So he did what he always did and buried the thought and the idea, and refused to acknowledge their existence. The very notion that he had fallen into a shit life yet again, was no more.

“Who the hell are you to preach your shit to me?!” Merlin erupted. “Overcharge topside launchers! Wreck these miserable goddamned traitors into goddamned dust right this goddamned minute!”

Sin grimaced as he watched countless signals from Merlin’s fleet light up. Their weapons charged up all the way, then pushed past their normal operating maximums.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you, brother,” Sin murmured. “Overcharge armor reinforcement modules – weather their barrage. Then immediately counter with our own…”

Sin shivered midway through his order, and paused for just a moment. Once it passed, he looked up at his officers with greater resolve. He had been truly hesitant to kill Merlin – he had hoped to turn him against Eris instead, to have him join the ranks of the Einherjar.

But it seemed his former comrade was too far gone to save.

“Triangulate Merlin’s battleship,” Sin continued after a long moment. “Find his flagship and bring everything we’ve got to bear. Let’s give him a quick end.”

The Einherjar steeled their armor even further just as Merlin’s cacophonous barrage struck their hulls. Like before, all manner of weaponry struck their armor and scarred or dented or blasted or scratched with relentless fervor.

Their physical munitions drummed the surface wildly, which echoed up and down the passageways. It was almost deafening to any who operated closest to the exterior plating. But even then, their wills hardly swayed.

Freya’s Fleet Ascendance made sure of that.

And as Merlin’s barrage ended, Sin’s weapons angled themselves at their enemy. Hundreds of their turrets aimed specifically at one of Sin’s battleships. His analysts pored through the data they had, located Merlin through whatever comms signals his ship emitted, then specifically targeted the bridge deep in the center of the ship itself.

“Fire at will,” commanded Sin.

Sin’s subfleet opened fire with absolute precision and prejudice. Thick overcharged plasma lances raked Merlin’s battleship and completely slagged massive sections of its armor plating. They tore into the ship with such ferocity that countless crew in Merlin’s fleet were frozen with fear.

But the plasma lances were hardly all they fired – Sin quickly followed up with his gauss cannons, and literally fired bursts of supercharged electromagnetic slugs into the battleship. Each of the slugs shattered the weakened carbon lattices as though they didn’t exist, and punched deep into the battleship itself.

The constant barrage of gauss slugs caused the battleship itself to get pushed around violently. At the same time, they tore open the structure and the decks inside, and wrenched everything wide open.

Entire sections in the ship were blasted apart from the rain of slugs, and shredded whatever was inside. Machinery and crew were pulped into a bloody mix of broken bone and metal to the point where absolutely nothing was recognizable in the slightest.

Then, Sin finished up with fully charged rail cannon spikes. His ships fired an entire volley straight into the center of Merlin’s now-crippled battleship, where they punched right into the bridge itself.

The massive spikes literally tore through everyone and everything inside the bridge and completely annihilated them in the blink of an eye.