Ravens of Eternity

213 Blood & Flame, Pt The Spirit of Amelia’s bridge lights turned dark red as a klaxon rang in Azrael and Claire’s ears. More shells struck the hull, and everything shook violently. Outside, entire sheets of armor were blown apart and shorn off.

“Armor’s at 63% integrity,” said Claire. “Those things really hurt! I’m overcharging rep-”

“Wait!” cried Raijin. “Overcharge thrusters instead and enter evasive maneuvers. Tanking its damage is not a sustainable strategy!”

“Got it,” said Azrael. “Gimme that juice.”

Claire immediately pushed the thrusters to the maximum, and applied 50% overcharge to them at the same time. The entire ship jumped forward suddenly, and evaded a couple of shells in doing so.

But that wasn’t enough.

Azrael bit her lip as she slid the yoke down and to the right, while she spun her yaw left. With Amelia’s main thrusters on full, she began to corkscrew away from the frigate. And in doing so easily evaded the next few incoming shells as she pulled further away.

“Don’t fuck it up, Azrael,” she told herself. “Just please don’t fuck it up.”

“You’re doing fine,” Freya said. “Breathe in, breathe out.”

.....

Both of them breathed in and out in unison, just like she instructed.

“Now break out of your corkscrew and bank hard portside,” Freya continued. “Use your yaw to evade oncoming fire, and try to outmaneuver them by pulling up on your vertical. They’re gunning for you, so the safest place for Amelia is literally right behind them. And if you get the chance, blast the shit out of their main thrusters.”

“Not too much!” countered Rajin. “We need their frigate to be operational for Truesight to inject itself properly.”

Although the Spirit of Amelia nimbly banked left towards the frigate’s rear, the frigate easily countered their movements. They simply slowed down and “spun”. They fired their rear port thrusters and their front starboard thrusters at the same time and amplified their yaw maneuver.

It allowed them to nimbly maintain some of its facing against the corvette, and continued to fire at it. Both ships were now circling each other on their port sides, and the Spirit of Amelia was still at a disadvantage – she only had forward-facing guns.

As Freya advised, Azrael used her maneuvering thrusters and slid up and down her banking turn. Most of the cannon shells whizzed around Amelia as she flew in an erratic wavy pattern.

But some still connected, and they slammed into her with great force. Entire sections of their armor blew off and fell to the ground below.

Freya and Max rushed past the frigate’s cannons just after they fired a salvo. Their vision blurred as the guns’ blast shook them deep inside. Their hearts pumped heavily in their chests as they wove around the enemy frigate itself. On their tails were five of the enemy Stormriders, all of whom fired at them with their rifles with abandon.

They easily evaded much of their fire, though those that struck certainly dented their armor. It wasn’t as effective against their B-ranked armor plating, so they felt relatively safe. But they were also in the same boat – most of their weapons were also C-ranked.

It would take concentrated fire from their pistols to get through their armor, and so were practically useless. Freya holstered her pistol as she pinged a point far ahead of the Spirit of Amelia.

“Amelia,” she began, “I’m gonna do a quick flyby right across your nose. The moment I do, fire all beamcannons. Hopefully we take out all of these nutjobs in one go.”

“You got it,” said Claire.

Her targeting stick slid out from the side and clicked into place in front and to the right of her. She grabbed it, and aimed right at the center of Freya’s ping. Her hand made tiny adjustments as Amelia banked closer to it.

At the same time, Freya and Max broke away from the frigate, and sped at an angle towards the same point. Predictably, the five prophets behind them continued their pursuit. They shot their rifles wantonly, but their beamcannons sparingly.

The Prophet leading the chase aimed his rifle carefully as Freya and Max straightened out their flight path. His grin grew as he pulled the trigger and bullets pelted Freya’s armor.

But it was wiped clean when a thick beam of plasma cut right into his mecha and consumed its central body into nothing. All that was left of the lead mecha were its lower legs from the waist down, and the top of its head.

Two others were unable to slow themselves and flew right through the beams as well. They too suffered the same fate as the first – absolute disintegration. One was cut apart just like the first, while the other was disintegrated from the chest upwards, pilot included.

All their disparate parts fell down to the ground as useless heaps.

The other two were fast enough to evade the beams and continued the chase, but were quickly met with a barrage of grenades from Max’s shoulder-mounted launcher. He detonated all of them just as they reached the two, and caused a massive explosion that pummeled the Prophets.

Shrapnel tore into their armor while the force of the blast shattered their sensors. Inside, the Prophets could hardly see a thing – their screens and MFDs were filled with warnings and errors. Even their live feeds were filled with static or shattered images.

“G-goddammit!” cried one of them.

Freya slammed into one shield-first and smashed it right into the ground. The dirt around it flung upwards as a small crater collapsed underneath. Then Freya sprayed it down with her chaingun and bit by bit tore through its armor. It only took three or four seconds until she bit deep into it and ruptured the power plant.

The Prophet and his Stormrider exploded with a resounding and satisfying BOOM.

While she tore it apart, Max lobbed another set of grenades at the remaining enemy mecha in front of him. They exploded all around it, the sheer force of which tore the mecha to pieces. Its pilot along with it.

On the other side of the enemy frigate, Xylo and Raijin fought off their own mecha. Since they knew they were expecting to go against mecha, Raijin swapped out her Plasmacutter for a Beamcannon.

While a Plasmacutter could, in theory, do a tremendous amount of damage to enemy armor, it could only be used in melee. And Raijin was not a fan of that at all.

She and Xylo flew backwards as the two of them took potshots at the four that chased after them. The Prophets’ bullets left small dents on their shields, while their beams left deep gouges.

Not that it mattered much.

Xylo’s sniper cannon made short work of anything she hit. Her rounds were made of tungsten carbide and were tipped with synthesized omnitronium. They tore into the mecha’s armor effortlessly. It was as though the Prophets’ Stormriders didn’t even have any armor in the first place.

Raijin’s Beamcannon was equally devastating against them. Since they were without shields, she was able to cut right into the mecha themselves. Instead of burning through armor, she instead focused on their joints.

She reasoned that cutting through armor simply would have taken too long.

A blast of pure energy shot out from Raijin’s Beamcannon, and sliced right through an enemy mecha’s right hip. Its leg broke off almost immediately, and fell away.

The mecha itself began to slow down – much of their upwards and rear thrust came from their legs. Losing one imposed a severe penalty to their velocity. And as it fell back from lowered speed, Raijin continued to cut off parts – the other leg, both arms, the head.

This all but made the mecha useless, and its various parts fell to the ground thousands of meters below.

The two of them simply dismantled their opponents with frightening speed.

Mr Jurassic easily kept up with the enemy frigate on its starboard side. When they traded blows on their first pass against each other, it was clear he could easily tank the damage. Their C-ranked cannons could barely scratch his armor.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t do much to the frigate either.

Locke and Fluke both fired relentlessly at the frigate. Their powerful gauss cannons pummeled the armor and left huge dents where they struck.

But the plasma they were charged with was dissipated quickly by the ship’s robust electronic shielding. If it didn’t have that shielding, the charged plasma would have fried any repair nanites present on the armor itself.

To Locke and Fluke’s irritation, they could only watch as the frigate repaired its armor to full while their guns were forced to reload.

They spun around to follow the frigate along its starboard side and continued to pepper it, but were completely unsure what to do. Neither ship was able to take out the other.

“That bird’s way too tough,” said T-Rex. “My guns can hardly scratch its armor.”

“Oh, they’re scratching it, alright,” countered Locke. “It’s just putting it back together faster than we can hurt it.”

“Quit aiming at the armor,” chided Freya. “Hit its thrusters instead – just do that over and over until they get the message.”

“Easy for you to say!” said Fluke. “Those things are hard as hell to hit!”

“Better than doing nothing,” said Locke.

He quickly adjusted his aim at the frigate’s forward starboard thrusters, and squeezed the trigger. Multiple shells struck the thrusters and the armor that surrounded them, and pulverized whatever they could.

The thrusters themselves were torn to shreds and flattened with every strike, more and more. Efforts to repair them were quickly squashed by another round of cannonfire from Fluke. Not only that, but the wells where the thrusters sat were quickly clogged up by the hollow tungsten-carbide shells.

It quickly became impossible for them to repair.

All three men in Mr Jurassic grinned as they realized how much they crippled the beast. And so continued blasting more and more of their maneuvering thrusters – not just on the starboard side, but also up on the top deck and along the gunwale.

They utterly trashed each of their thrusters one by one – at least all that they could see from the starboard side.

As the frigate’s starboard side maneuvering began to slow down and choke, the Spirit of Amelia was able to complete its maneuver and circle around. Her armor had been ripped up and torn apart, and some of the structure underneath had also taken some damage.

“Damage report,” Claire began, “31% armor integrity remaining, 89% structural integrity remaining. Performing structural repairs now.”

She poured in extra energy into Amelia’s repair module, which began to stitch the ship’s structure back together with greater speed. At the same time, Azrael spun the ship far out of the frigate’s firing arcs, and settled into a deadzone at its rear.

Now in a safer spot, both women found themselves able to breathe easier.

“Okay, now what?” asked Claire. “We’re behind the thing – do we just start melting down the thrusters?”

“Here,” said Raijin. “Start with this.”

She pinged one of the frigate’s thrusters, and pinpointed to specific submodules behind the main thrusters.

“Cut from here to here,” she began, “and then cut this part out. Use only 30% power when you do this. This should cause quite an interesting reaction.”

“Got it,” replied Claire.

With the frigate partially crippled and an easy target, Claire took Amelia’s guns in her hand once again, and aimed at one of the frigate’s main thrusters. Her four plasma beamcannons blasted into the thruster, and quickly turned a part of its outer focusing shell into slag.

As Raijin instructed, Claire adjusted the beams and carefully carved out the thruster’s electromagnetic amplification submodule and worked to completely neutralize it. The entire thruster sputtered out and died even before she was done.

They all could only imagine the panic that was happening inside the ship. The frigate’s maneuverability had been cut nearly in half, and was only getting crippled further.

It wasn’t long until the frigate’s remaining thrusters lit up brightly. Amelia’s sensors reported them being overcharged to maximum capacity, and pushed right to their operational limits.

It began to blast away from them at great speed, even as Mr Jurassic kept pelting it with his gauss rounds.

“Let ’em go,” said Freya. “We’ve got our own wounds to lick.”

She turned her mecha down towards the settlement below, which was now peppered with random debris from the battle. Mecha limbs, armor plates, flattened shells – they were now omnipresent in and around the town itself.

“And we may as well clean things up while we’re here,” she continued. “We’ve still got work to do, after all.”