Ravens of Eternity

222 The Patriarch Falls, Pt With Command Intelligence’s code vulnerable, Raijin threw in more CodeTraps, perhaps far more than necessary, then waited for ComInt to repair itself. It did so incredibly slowly. It stitched its outer shell back together, but kept pausing every few microseconds. Sometimes, it was forced to undo and redo itself.

What once took it .0427 seconds to repair now took 1.138 seconds.

It was a massive advantage for Raijin – it didn’t matter how much of the circuit’s resources it had at its disposal, as she designed the traps as a simple memory leak. The more ComInt fought against them, the more it would fight against itself.

She watched with glee as it employed as many MemVaults as it could, but to no avail. Its every action was marred with pauses and glitches. Of course, the problem was that ComInt was still doing its best to fight, that it still hadn’t errored out and crashed.

It still had a great amount of resources at its disposal, and Raijin couldn’t wait for it to annihilate itself. It was clear she had to act, especially while she had the upper hand.

The last thing she needed was for Command Intelligence to perform a self-audit and repair itself.

She tapped into the logic circuits that she had absolute control over, and requisitioned their resources for her own use. Circuit pathways opened and lit up as they connected directly to her Mirror Ghosts.

Each one not only strengthened each Mirror Ghost, but they also reinforced the Flash Redirection Loops to a much greater degree. They smoothed over the microsecond gap between states and recompiled their deflection states.

Not that they had any problems against Command Intelligence – it was slowed down to the point where its tendrils were almost completely negated. More than half never reached the Mirrors, and those that did threw them back with greater force.

.....

Any that weren’t in reflection or deflection states instead switched into an unending stream state. Those immediately blasted ComInt with huge amounts of raw code and tore into its outer shell with ease.

Its obsidian shell was literally being torn apart from all sides, and there was little it could do but regenerate itself as fast as it could. Not that it was very effective, all things considered, and barely kept up against the damage done to it.

While ComInt fought a dying battle to restore its defenses, Raijin reclaimed a full three MemVaults just to herself. And with that amount of resources, she built code from scratch – something to finish off Command Intelligence for good.

She pieced commands and functions together, and sealed them inside of secure runtime containers. However, she didn’t stop with just one – she built one after another after another. And when she was done, she was surrounded by seven taiko drums built out of pure code.

They floated around her ethereally, beautifully.

She drew them all in with a motion, then banged on one with a digital baton. The sound resonated all throughout the circuit, and shook deep into Command Intelligence. Its surface rippled slightly, as the waves of sound pushed against its code.

Then she struck the drums over and over in thunderous waves. Her rhythms crashed into ComInt with such force that it attempted to reinforce itself from her. But its attempts were to no avail.

The combined attack of her Mirror Ghosts and Thunderous Resonance upturned ComInt. Shards of its obsidian shell were torn off and flung away.

Worse, as Raijin beat on her drums, the sound waves coursed through the visible code inside ComInt, and shook them apart. Entire strands of connective code were ripped away, severed from the core.

There, the disparate processes withered and died, their purpose torn from them.

Raijin eased up on her attacks the more ComInt disintegrated, until finally all that was left of it was a fractured shell connected by bare strands of wispy code.

All her Mirror Ghosts paused their attacks as her taiko drums receded from her reach.

Then, Raijin stitched Command Intelligence back together bit by bit, line by line, and rebuilt it to her preference. While she did so, Truesight continued on its path and subjugated the rest of the logic circuits and brought their Intelligences to heel.

Without ComInt, they were destined to lose the battle.

She pieced ComInt together based on her work with Security Intelligence, and merged it with a branch of the Truesight Engine. This, she called the Oversight Engine, and just like its predecessor, utilized a malleable obsidian shell for all of its Input/Output functions.

With full control over all of the circuits with her two Engines, she gave herself full root access, and ordered a complete circuit integration.

“Only fools fail to utilize a circuit mesh,” she said. “The power of many far outweighs the power of the singular.”

She pored over each of the Intelligences, and dove straight into the databanks.

There, she looked into the full history of the Prophets of Gaea, and pulled many records down into her personal drive.

What she found shocked her deeply.

~

Darius stood at his bridge and grimaced at all of the screens around him. Each and every single one was filled with alerts and warnings. Officers at their terminals worked hard to keep their systems up and operational. They issued multiple orders to their teams and kept their ship from falling apart.

His frigate’s systems were on the verge of collapse – in particular, the main thrusters and power plant were overheating and started to slag. Cooling systems were overtaxed and were close to failing and dying.

Most of his mecha entourage had long since met their limits, overheated, and fell behind. The handful still left were hanging on with what little they had left in their systems.

Up ahead of them, roughly a thousand meters away, Mia’s frigate was suffering a similar fate. Although they were still going full throttle, it was visibly apparent that their thrusters wouldn’t be able to take much more.

Not only that, but they too had lost a great deal of their mecha. And between the both of them, only little over a dozen remained.

Mia’s bridge looked equally dire. Alerts filled many screens, though far less than Darius’. Her frigate was far more robust, after all. Still, many of their critical systems were close to maxing out and overheating as well – main thrusters and both power plants among the worst off.

“Crusader!” yelled an officer. “Main thrusters have been running at 127% capacity for close to five hundred seconds! It’s about to enter automatic shutdown!”

“Reduce output by 5 percent,” Mia ordered, “and increase coolant output by the same. That should buy us fifty more seconds.”

“Crusader,” yelled another officer. “HQ now in range. Putting the Hangar Chief on the comm.”

A uniformed Prophet appeared on the comms display moments later. He looked up, recognized Mia, and smiled happily.

“Crusader!” he said. “So good to see-”

“No time!” interrupted Mia. “Open up the hangar bay quickly! We’ve got an emergency!”

“Y-yes Crusader! Immediately!”

Alarm immediately shot through the Hangar Chief, and he quickly hit a number of controls on his terminal. Outside, a portion of the mountain shimmered and dissolved away. With the NanoShroud deactivated, the huge hangar bay doors set on the side of the mountain became plain for all to see.

Warning lights danced along the outside as the vast, heavily armored doors slid open.

Light poured into the hangar itself, and illuminated dozens of mecha as they stood in their bays. Docked up and along the hangar walls were a number of corvettes and a third frigate. Though they all looked as though they were currently being serviced.

A handful of Prophets ran across the huge landing pads below, and prepped them to receive the Crusader’s fleet.

“Slow down to approach speed,” ordered Mia, “but keep us going as fast as possible.”

She then turned back to the Hangar Chief, her face stern and serious.

“I need you to raise the base’s alert level,” she said.

“W-what? Why Crusader?” asked the Hangar Chief.

Although it was an innocent enough question, Mia was immediately angered by the resistance she met. She felt as though her title didn’t mean anything, that her commands were too easily ignored.

“Are you questioning my orders?” she snarled.

“No! Of course not!” replied the Prophet. “I simply need to enter a reason into the system...”

Mia huffed impatiently. She didn’t have time for this nonsense. But before she could reprimand the Prophet, a hail of cannonfire peppered the top of her frigate.

The shells slammed down on her ship and pummeled its armor. Though they hardly made a dent to their A-ranked armor, the constant barrage pushed the frigate further and further down. Since they were already flying relatively low to the ground, it wasn’t long until their belly was literally pushed onto the planet’s surface.

It scraped up against the silicate ground, and threw crystals into the air as they gouged the landscape.

“Crusader!” yelled an officer. “Federation Destroyer above us!”

Mia’s eyes went wide with shock. At first she thought that Freya had finally shown up, but this turned out to be far worse news.

“What?!” she exclaimed. “Give me readings, immediately!”

Her officer performed a quick scan of the destroyer above them, then displayed its report on the main screen for all to see. What they were facing was an A-ranked Federal Shipyards “Adjudicator” Destroyer.

It too had A-ranked Federal Shipyards “Castillon” Armor Plating and C-ranked Federal Shipyards 150mm Cannons.

But that was where the differences ended.

Sitting atop the destroyer was a massive weapon that was as a fourth the length of the destroyer itself. More than that, it was affixed on extended arms that allowed it full range of motion, and could target and attack any ship in range.

Mia swallowed her saliva as she looked at its readouts nervously. The screen listed it as an A-ranked Federal Shipyards “Cacophony” AuralWave Disruptor.

The destroyer also had numerous torpedo tubes along its sides, and though her officers couldn’t tell what they were armed with, all knew that they were more than they could handle.

“Climb back up to 5k,” she ordered. “Show them our starboard and give them everything we’ve got!”

Mia’s frigate groaned as its bottom thrusters maxed out. They pushed up off the ground and climbed up towards the destroyer. As they turned port and revealed their starboard to the enemy, their cannons and missile batteries cut loose.

A barrage of their shells peppered the destroyer’s armor, followed up by missiles galore. They impacted and exploded across the destroyer’s thick armor, and surrounded it with thick, caustic gray smoke.

But once the smoke cleared, it was plain to see that their weapons did little more than leave scuff marks and scratches.

Not that the destroyer did much damage to them, either. They had the same cannons and armor as the frigates.

On the destroyer’s bridge, Commander Aurora paced back and forth behind dozens of her officers. She looked over their shoulders and onto their terminals. Her face was etched with a thin but serious smile.

She knew she had the upper hand on the Prophets, but didn’t discount their capabilities. She knew all too well what they could do, especially when cornered.

“Second frigate incoming,” said one of her officers.

Aurora quickly stepped over to the officer who alerted her, and looked at her readouts.

“Keep both of them on our port side,” she ordered. “Target the second with a suppressing barrage and keep them tamped down. I want torps inside the lead frigate within three minutes.”

“Aye, commander,” replied her officer.

“And make sure to give them a little extra from the big gun,” added Aurora. “I wanna see them vomit blood.”

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