Ravens of Eternity

394 Thanatos Rises, Pt Admiral Anali de Jardin gawked at the tacmap in front of her with absolute awe. Freya’s captured devastator had caused so much damage that there was literally nothing left of the enemy. The other admirals in the tactical bridge were equally as awed.

High Admiral Halbrecht gasped loudly at everything he had seen thus far. He watched as the devastator’s weapon signals rose far beyond anything he had ever seen in his career. And he watched as it single-handedly wiped out a fleet. Or at least, what remained of it.

It suddenly dawned on him that warfare had changed significantly just now. He wasn’t sure how, exactly. Only that it did. And that perhaps the galaxy would never be the same again.

A slight tremor shook through him as Freya joined the tactical bridge. Her holoprojection shimmered even as she connected.

But the reason he felt a tinge of fear wasn’t just because she seemed colder than the last time he saw her. It was also because of the thin black lines that were etched into her face. There was an eeriness to them that deeply unsettled the High Admiral.

Although Halbrecht was never truly keen on being her subordinate, he never outright sought to disobey her, on any level. He had always gotten the impression that going against her was both futile and fatal.

Her newfound countenance practically cemented his impression of her, and promised himself to never become her enemy.

“The Einherjar is now complete,” Freya began. “And we now have everything we need to begin our campaign in earnest.”

She was met with a few grunts and nods of approval, especially from the Discordian admirals and leaders.

.....

“Can we move to the next phase of the assault?” asked Anali. “We might’ve secured the planet for now, but there’s no telling when reinforcements will arrive.”

“We’ve plenty of time,” Freya answered. “But yes, let’s move on to the next phase. All sub fleets are free to attack – report back by the end of the cycle.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

The Einherjar fleet then split up into numerous subfleets, each led by a battleship. Each of them adjusted their heading then barreled their way in different directions. They headed towards the vast crystal facilities on top of every plateau on the island.

And once they got to their destinations, they turned all of their plasma lances downward, and fired. Countless blinding light blue beams fell onto the fabrication bays and completely tore the compound crystal plating apart.

The beams chewed through the fabrication bays with such ease that it seemed almost like they were made for exactly that purpose. Entire sections of the crystal structure were sliced apart cleanly. Large slabs of plating and structural framing fell inward and crushed everything beneath.

More than that, the slabs were so large and heavy that they flattened everything they struck, whether they were machines or people.

The Einherjar’s plasma lances also ripped through to the critical systems inside, and sliced them open. Demimatter batteries and generators imploded violently as their casings were ripped open. Meanwhile, exothermic power generators and hyperion batteries exploded with obscene force.

The giant fabrication pools were also ruptured or blasted open, which caused the builder nanites inside to spill through into the maintenance tunnels just underneath them. Any drogar technicians who were working down there were literally smothered by a fine powder of ores and compounds and raw materials.

Some of the hatcheries and datanodes and offices were breached as well, which allowed fabrication sand to fill them up and contaminate them.

But the Einherjar’s attack hardly stalled.

Up above, the ships raked their beams across their targets. They literally scored them over and over until the facilities themselves could hardly remain standing. Each and every single one of the ships blasted the plateaus until every fabrication bay was nothing more than piles of useless debris.

Freya and Thanatos floated above the plateau in the center and exuded an overwhelming aura of destruction.

Though they had previously wrecked one of the fabrication bays by forcing their way out, and despite the cruisers that crashed into the other bays, most of the facility was still mostly intact. Its primary crystal cluster was still holding strong.

And more importantly, according to deep scans hundreds of meters beneath the surface, countless more labs and facilities were unharmed beneath.

Though that was certainly about to change.

Like the devastator at Rhylen Terra, this one also had hundreds of weapons. There were the mortars along the top and bottom sides, and disruption beams along the broadsides.

But also floating along its broadsides were two massive stinger-like cannons. Each of them were close to 2 km in length – almost as long as most battleships in the galaxy. They were massive weapons that were suspended by antigravity and electromagnetic forces.

It was very much similar to what the Oni cores were capable of, only they couldn’t move all over the devastator itself. They could spin in place, or shift to the topside or bottom side either alone or in pairs. But they couldn’t slide to the front, and were relatively ‘fixed’ where they could travel.

Not that it mattered – they could face and turn any direction regardless of positional constraint.

Freya scoured their subsystems and submodules and pulled up all the data she could about them. And at the same time, she aimed them down at the very center of the facility itself.

–

Vyzeth Warfare Inc. “Scythe” Supermassive Graviton Wave Disruptor 2x [SS]

–

Both of the weapons hummed and vibrated as they built up massive amounts of energy. And instead of the usual spheres of orange energy, space around the very tips of the stingers warped visibly. It seemed as though they literally pulled reality closer towards them.

When the humming hit a fever pitch, the two guns released the tremendous energies they had collected. Powerful waves of nearly invisible gravitonic energy smashed into the plateau itself. Despite their incredible concentration, they hardly did any kinetic damage at all.

Instead, those energies washed over the entire facility and emanated deep into the plateau. Everything inside was bathed with so much hypercondensed gravitonic energy that space and time warped around them.

The drogar began to age significantly faster – to the point where people literally withered as the moments passed. Their bodies began to shrivel as though ravaged by decades of time. Some of the older ones outright turned into desiccated corpses, or whatever was closest.

Worse yet, their weight began to climb higher and higher, to the point where they could hardly hold up their own bodies. It was almost as though the gravitational pull of the planet increased by the second.

Every single one of them found themselves pressed into the floor as their bones broke from the stress.

But it wasn’t just the people that were affected – so too did everything else around them.

The eggs in the hatcheries began to mature inside of their shells. But since they were designed to be combined and attached to exoframes, they quickly died and rotted as a result.

Machinery began to corrode and oxidize and degrade wherever they sat, as though they had suffered decades of neglect.

Worse, their weight also increased greatly. The entire structure collapsed on itself, unable to hold up its own weight. Walls and ceilings simply fell where they were, and flattened everything they struck.

The plateau itself caved in the middle as the numerous rooms and passageways deep inside collapsed. And as a result, everyone and everything inside of the facility was crushed into oblivion.

~

Machinefather Gravoss and Senator Konleth’s faces were filled with shock and horror. On the large screen in front of them was the scene of complete devastation. Avathii VII had been viciously attacked, and every single fabrication bay on the planet had been razed to the ground.

Most had been literally turned into useless piles of smoldering rubble, and some were even still aflame. They had clearly been set ablaze long after they were torn down to the ground.

But most horrifying to them was the utter devastation that the central facility had suffered.

What was once a plateau was now an oversized bowl. And whatever used to be the planet’s primary fabrication facility was nothing more than flattened shavings at the bottom of said bowl.

“How long ago did you say this was?” asked Gravoss. “Only two cycles ago?”

Just off to the side, a nervous military messenger bowed slightly as he nodded. The last thing he wanted was to give bad news to two of the planet’s most powerful people.

But orders were orders.

“Yes, machinefather,” said the messenger. “This is live footage, but we’re certain the attack happened close to 22 hours ago.”

Gravoss threw his hands in the air and guffawed.

“How’s this even possible, hm? Why didn’t reinforcements stop this... this slaughter!” he cried out. “Any emergency signal should’ve alerted the system’s main defense fleet!”

“Didn’t you read the report?” chided Konleth. “They wrecked the planet’s port beacon, which means the system fleet couldn’t come on time. The next closest one was where, exactly?”

“Avathii Nine,” replied the messenger.

“Avathii Nine, thank you. And it took them a cycle and a half to travel the distance through standard propulsion. The perpetrators were long gone by then.”

Gravoss groaned audibly. He could hardly understand how such a critical planet was so poorly defended.

“Only apes are this careless with their systems,” he said. “Which clan owned this fabrication planet? Actually, you know what, never mind. I don’t care. Serves them right for failing this hard with their security. Allows me to pitch my own shipyards to the Empire.”

“This isn’t the competitive opportunity you think it is,” Konleth retorted. “The loss of two devastator fabrication bays is far more than you can make up for. I can’t imagine how many hundreds of trillions we lost here. Maybe even a quadrillion.

“This is a massive setback for the war effort. And for our profits. I’ll bet the markets are having a crisis of confidence right about now.”

Gravoss groaned again, this time as though there was a stabbing pain in his stomach. Before he could moan and groan even more, the messenger next to him cleared his throat.

“Apologies, machinefather,” he said. “That isn’t all.”

“There’s more bad news?” Gravoss shrieked. “How could this possibly get any worse?”

“I wouldn’t exactly say it’s bad news, sir. Here, take a look.”

The messenger swiped on his forearm miniterminal and sent a recording straight to the screen in front of them.

It was a recording of Freya’s communications to the Imperial fleet. Or, rather, it was a recording of her threat to the Imperial fleet.

Both Gravoss and Konleth’s eyes went wide as the recording played. Fear literally filled their hearts as she spoke

“...Ra’ventrii, subjugator of the Reborn...” said her recording.

Gravoss was especially fearful and anxious and angry. As a result, he went into a tirade of curses and epithets. Though Konleth was also greatly disturbed, he placed a hand on Gravoss’ shoulder and attempted to help calm him down.

“Don’t worry about her,” he said. “I know what to do.”

“What do you mean, you know what to do?” Gravoss argued. “We already tried to kill her, and we failed!”

“We still have Orsethii,” Konleth replied. “She’s got her own fleet now, too. And, she’s an expert at killing ape fleets. You see how well she’s doing at the front, yes?”

“So what? This gods-damned ape has a devastator at her command! She could actually raze our fleet! What if she attacked us here? She could annihilate every city on Taloren without breaking a sweat! Our war would end instantly!”

Konleth scoffed.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” he said. “They’re just one fleet. We have control of the Empire. The war isn’t going to stop unless we tell it to.”

“Tell that to the new Emperor,” Gravoss replied flatly.

“Soon enough, I won’t have to.”

.....

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