Ravens of Eternity

244 Semi-Finals, Pt Final Bastion watched the Ravens’ position with utter trepidation. Although their scout had circled around in an attempt to make visual contact, he was constantly driven off by Freya’s beamcannon.

Clearly they could see them, but not the other way around.

It was utterly baffling to Deadeye, as his advanced sensor suite was among the best in class. Admittedly, Raijin’s Skymirror was literally the best A-ranked EWar system available, but it still shouldn’t have beaten his equipment by such a degree.

He came to the conclusion that beating his equipment meant that they had a world-class coder on their team. They would have had to modify their shroud’s algorithms to perform beyond what Skymirror was capable of.

Certainly, every team ran custom code on their equipment. But this was far and beyond expectations.

At the very least, he could safely assume they hadn’t moved from their spot.

“Not entirely sure what they’re up to,” he told his team. “They literally haven’t moved a single millimeter, but I haven’t been able to see in.”

“Don’t they know that they’re losing?” said Tailspin. “They can’t just sit around and wait for the match to end – it’s been what? An hour already?”

“They’re prolly doing full repairs,” said Broadlance. “I know I would be if I got smacked around like they did. Our loadout’s no joke.”

.....

“We need to keep raining down on them,” added Castle. “Just bombard them into the dust with the big gun. I mean, we all know where they are.”

“No can do,” replied Tailspin. “They’re within minimum limits – my targeting intelligence is hardcoded not to fire within 500 meters.”

“So remove the limits and pound ’em to the ground.”

“I can’t just ‘remove limits’ – It’s a matter of operational security! If we bombard that close, we could end up hurting our position. Limits exist for a reason!”

“Okay so what if we get shaken up a bit? If we wipe ’em out, then they won’t have the capacity to counterattack. We should be sacrificing our position for the killing blow!”

Deadeye had been listening to their debate and weighed his choices. So far, they were winning. And judging from their previous skirmish, knew that they had a huge advantage over the Ravens.

Besides waiting and bombarding, they also had the option to charge. But that was perhaps the least attractive option. They had zero need to disrupt their own position. Simply, if even one of them charged out, it opened up the possibility of a strike through a defensive hole.

Bombarding meant that they risked their own position by doing so, but would have ensured a complete victory. However, there was a simple flaw in that. None of them were certain of their opponent’s location.

He reasoned that their shroud was, with very high probability, a total ruse. Just because they saw vague signals in a specific location didn’t mean that their enemy was actually there.

Freya was definitely behind those buildings, because she physically fired from them. But it didn’t mean the rest of them were next to her.

“We play it safe,” said Deadeye. “We’re already winning, and we’ve shown we can repel them. All we’ve got to do now is keep it up. Stay tight, stick to the original playbook. At best, they’ll never attack. At worst, they’ll attack at the last possible moment to try to shake us. Clear?”

“Yes, captain,” replied the others in unison.

Just as the tension between his teammates eased, a signal appeared on his sensor’s MFD. He quickly overlaid it on his main screen so he could study it. He grinned as it appeared far from where they presumed their position was, but still within 500 meters. Which meant his hunch was right, and the choice to hang back was best.

It quickly turned to a grimace as he realized the rest of them could be anywhere. They had absolute control of the battlefield’s fog of war, and had an hour to plan any attack.

But he couldn’t make decisions based on theory or conjecture. He had to act based on the facts that he had in front of him.

And the facts said that Xylo was charging up for a shot.

“Reinforce all shields immediately,” he ordered. “Sniper shot incoming!”

Deadeye watched as the power readings on Xylo’s sniper cannon raised up towards the maximum. He calculated they were trying to pierce through and assassinate one of their Bulwarks.

In a way, he was right.

His mouth dropped as he saw the sniper cannon’s readings rise higher and higher. It was drawing far more energy than its attached power plant could even create.

“Scratch that,” he quickly followed up. “Everyone – reinforce mecha armor. Double up around your sensor clusters!”

His team immediately followed his orders. Their armor immediately thickened as nanites added extra layers to them. The two Bulwarks were armored even more so, especially on their front sides.

Xylo’s signal flared brightly on his screen, then vanished.

Outside, Xylo’s 200mm tungsten carbide round punched through both shields, right where they overlapped. It tore through Broadlance’s shoulder, and lodged itself into Tailspin’s chest behind him.

All in the span of a fraction of a second.

Dust and gravel were thrown in the air along its flight path a second later, but were pushed further out of the way by a trailing wave of sound moments after that.

Then, the sonic CRACK of Xylo’s rifle reported across the field, which was about when Final Bastion realized that they were hit. Broadlance and Tailspin’s screens were quickly filled with alerts, but they were far from critical.

“Damage report!” Deadeye ordered.

“Severe damage to left shoulder articulation,” said Broadlance. “Can still carry the shield though.”

Tailspin scanned the damage alerts, but found nothing worse for wear. He grinned as he gave his report.

“Chest armor puncture,” reported Tailspin. “Structural warping minimal. Mechanism damage negligible. No module damage.”

“Remove reinforcement and overcharge repairs,” Deadeye said. “Let’s get back up and running before they shoot again.”

“I’m not impressed,” said Castle. “They did all that just to break a shoulder? I thought these broads were supposed to be tough.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” replied Tailspin. “Still though, got all the way through to me, which is pretty crazy. I mean, that’s so much armor to get through, right?”

Just as she finished talking, electricity shot through her mecha, and overloaded all of her systems. It caused it to reboot for a brief second.

Grafted onto Xylo’s tungsten round was a modified version of Raijin’s stun bolt. It delivered its attack shortly after impact, and shut down the mecha just long enough for Raijin to inject her code into it.

And like before, she gained complete control of it in the blink of an eye. There was a microsecond between when the mecha’s circuits powered on and its intelligences fired up. She used this miniscule amount of time to inject her own Engines, which acted on their own to take over the circuit.

Their battle lasted less than a few seconds. And to Raijin’s code, it could hardly have been called a battle at all.

Their code spread before the circuit’s installed intelligences could even fight back. They never even realized anything was wrong before they were wiped out of the databanks forever. And once her two Engines had full control, simply handed them over to Raijin.

Tailspin began to panic as her mecha moved on its own. She flipped switches and attempted to alert her team, but absolutely nothing worked. All she could do was watch in horror as her gun slowly angled itself down further and further.

Deadeye was filled with utter curiosity as he watched Tailspin’s Bigfoot retract its stabilized footing, and knelt on the ground. At the same time, its gun pointed further downward.

“Tailspin,” he said with a chuckle, “we haven’t won yet. What the hell are you-”

He only realized too late that Tailspin had been fully compromised, and dashed straight towards her in an attempt to stop whatever was happening.

But there was nothing he could do.

Tailspin’s barrel tapped on the ground right in front of her, and immediately blasted it with a round. Point blank.

All four members of Final Bastion were overwhelmed by the sheer blast, and were thrown around in every direction. Deadeye was flung dozens of meters away, and into a partially bombed-out building.

He struck a number of the remaining support pillars as he crashed into it, which caused the rest of the building to collapse on top of him.

A huge cloud of dust blew out in every direction as it fell.

The two Bulwark mecha were thrown forward violently, and slammed chest-first into their dug-in shields. Their sheer mass and bulk uprooted and twisted the shields as they careened past and out into the streets in front of them.

Both ate a healthy dose of titacrete as they slammed into the ground, and caused it to crater from the impact. Though their armor was relatively unharmed, the structure underneath had warped and sustained some damage.

Tailspin’s Bigfoot took the brunt of the damage. Its armor had absorbed a great deal of the blast itself, and had blown apart. Its gun had been completely wrecked, and its barrel had blown out and burst.

The barrel itself had split and bent and warped severely. Smoke rose out from its gaping wound. It was, in effect, useless.

Worse, her mecha was thrown back with incredible force, and smashed into the fortified building where their armies were holed up. Inside, their simulated soldiers and troops were crushed as the building crumbled in front of them.

Floors caved in as the mecha settled itself into the building, and sat in a crater of its making.

And the entire army’s defense bonus collapsed significantly.

As Xylo had predicted, that supercharged shot had completely destroyed her gun. Specifically, it had bloated up and bubbled outwards at the point where the Ultradense Hydrogen piston tube was joined to the barrel.

The intense back pressure caused the metals in the tube to warp completely, to the point of bursting.

It too was completely useless, but at least was able to fire that one round.

“Gun’s down!” she declared. “It’s all on you two now!”

Freya and Kali immediately blazed forward and charged the two Bulwark mecha.

“No worries,” Kali cried out with excitement. “We’ve got this!”

They raised their shields up, which they had almost fully repaired. They decided to leave some of the razor-sharp shrapnel on them, so they could get a better grip of their opponents.

With their thrusters at maximum, the both of them slammed right into the two Bulwark mecha, just as they were picking themselves up off the ground. They were still recovering from the concussion of the blast when they were thrown around a second time, but in the opposite direction.

Their own shrapnel bit right into their armor as the Ravens’ shields were shoved right into them.

Castle’s Bulwark stumbled at Kali’s ferocity and fell down into the crater that his teammate had blasted into the street. He fell right on his back helplessly. Castle himself was concussed, having been knocked around back and forth so violently.

His armor was gouged and scratched and already somewhat dented. In essence, it had weakened thanks to the energies it absorbed.

Kali immediately capitalized on this, and swung her axe straight down onto one of his shoulders with incredible force. The axe cleaved straight through, and embedded itself into the cracked and crumbled titacrete below.

With a roar, she pulled it out of the ground, and swung it down a second time. Only with this swing, she struck the other shoulder and cleaved that arm off as well.

Critical alerts flew past every single one of Castle’s screens, which left him utterly stunned. There was literally nothing he could do as he watched Kali’s Rakshasa raise her axe one more time.

And when it landed, all of his sensors went dark.

While she tore into Castle’s Bulwark, Freya pushed further against her opponent. She overcharged her thrusters and slammed Broadlance right into Tailspin. The impact caused the building around them to shudder, and cracks spidered out from the cavity Tailspin sat in.

The whole thing was about to collapse, but Freya was far from done.

.....

She jammed her spear right into Broadlance’s armored neck and severed it part way off. Then, she fired its coilgun. The sabot slug inside flung out of the barrel and tore off whatever was left of the Bulwark’s neck, and smashed into one of the remaining support beams in the corner.

Cracks rippled out from it, which caused a cascade of structural failures. Those cracks led to huge fissures, which led to entire sections collapsing.

Freya herself dashed back and away, just as the whole building came down on top of Broadlance and Tailspin.

The majority of their troops along with it.

Their bodies tumbled down as the building fell apart all around them. Chunks of titacrete and corpses literally rained down on the two downed mecha, and buried them. Huge plumes of dust flew into the air as it all collapsed on itself.

“Stop!” cried Deadeye.

Although he had quickly clawed his way out of the building he was thrown into, he found that his team had suffered miserably in those few seconds. Their impenetrable defense wasn’t as impenetrable as he believed.

“We concede,” he continued sullenly. “You’ve won.”

Up above, the announcer came back into view of the crowd with an astounded look on his face.

“It appears that the Ravens have won the match!” he cried out. “At the moment of Final Bastion’s surrender, the Ravens suffered a 14% attrition rate, while Final Bastion suffered over 83%! Absolutely incredible! The Ravens are now poised to fight in the finals! Could they be the next champions? Come back next cycle and find out!”