Ravens of Eternity

284 Reclamation Overdue, Pt The neutralized enemy mecha fell to the side in a heap as Freya pulled her spear out of its chassis. Coolant leaked out of the wound she left on its armor as power faded from its circuits.

Not that Freya even cared. Since the first wing of mecha had been completely neutralized, she turned her attention to the column of hovertanks nearby. And charged at them with a flanking arc.

Half of them fired at her as she approached, but only one or two were able to hit. Even then, all they did was smash into her shield, which dented slightly from every shell. There were only two or three blast marks on it by the time she jammed the first one with her spear.

She pierced all the way through the relatively thin armor, and skewered the tank easily. It tore through both gunner and driver with ridiculous ease, then into the power plant behind them.

The tank itself swelled up before it exploded violently. Pieces of it scattered everywhere, even as Freya advanced towards the next hovertank.

Nearby, Kali was in the throes of battle lust. She threw herself at a number of tanks and swatted them with her axe. She swung upwards into one of them, dug halfway into its armor and structure, and flipped it on its back.

She crushed one end of it with a powerful stomp, then kicked it away violently. It slammed into the tank just behind it, which tore off sheets of armor and crumpled the structure from the impact.

A shell struck the Rakshasa’s shoulder, which caused her to stumble and stagger for a few steps. The force of the hit warped her armor very slightly.

But Kali was still angered by it. She turned to face the tank that just shot at her, and growled deeply.

.....

She hopped to the side just as it fired again, leapt forward, then brought her axe down right on top of it with all her might. It dug most of the way into its turret and main body and gouged out a huge gash over the top.

She then grabbed it with her two open hands and lifted it up in front of her. The gunner and driver were both jostled around violently inside as Kali manhandled the hovertank. They would have been thrown around inside if they weren’t already strapped into their seats.

And unfortunately for them, Kali charged the next nearest tank and slammed down on it with the one she was holding. Not that she was done. She picked it up again, flipped it upside-down, then smashed in on the bottom tank a second time.

And a third time.

Each time she brought the tank down on the other, the SSS guards inside were crushed and flattened and squeezed more and more. Their bones were shattered as their bodies were pressed down by the tank collapsing around them.

Then, she threw the wreck of one tank at a fresh one nearby and howled into the air as they crashed.

“This is just the best!” Kali screamed with glee.

“Is she always like this?” asked Lucifer.

“Not always,” answered Xylo. “Only when it’s really fun.”

“Well, it’s good to see a fellow bloodlust enthusiast regardless.”

While Freya and Kali were busy with the hovertanks, Lucifer charged eastwards towards the second wing of mecha – the ones with the long range artillery on their backs.

Once they detected that ze was incoming on their position, they quickly picked themselves up off their knees, then detached the huge barrels from their backs.

The cannons fell to the titacrete with heavy thuds just as the SSS mecha drew their rifles up.

Each of them fired burst after burst at Lucifer, who wove left and right as ze evaded their fire. Their bullets peppered the ground all around and kicked up dust as they bounced off or embedded into the surrounding titacrete.

Any that hit hir mecha merely left scratches on the pristine white paint.

“I just got this, dammit!” Lucifer yelled.

Ze fired a charged burst from hir rifle and demolished the closest mecha’s armor. The glowing red slugs raked across its chest, blew off chunks, and warped the structure underneath.

But Lucifer was far from done. Ze charged straight up, even as the mecha stumbled backwards from the force, and slammed right into it. The pilot inside was shaken to core as his mecha tumbled to the ground in a heap.

Lucifer wrenched the rifle out of its hands and fired full-auto on another mecha close to hir. The bullets dented its armor considerably in the first few seconds, then began to tear it open from the repeated force.

The armor itself splintered into pieces from the unrelenting assault. Ze followed up with a single fully-charged shot from hir rifle and tore through the rest. The mecha was thrown onto its back from the sheer force as the slug melted down the exposed structure, along with the outer shell of the core.

The devastating heat from the still-glowing slug caused the pilot to light on fire. He screamed in absolute pain as the heat and flames consumed him.

As Lucifer contended with a third mecha, Xylo fired a single fully-charged sniper shot at a fourth. It punched right through its armor with incredible ease – as though the armor was made of tin. It tore into the structure, ripped through a couple of modules, then pierced all the way through to the other side.

The bullet then embedded into a building far behind, but its travels ended there.

Inside the mecha, its pilot began to panic as multiple alerts flashed on his screen. Overheat warnings overwhelmed his MFDs as multiple systems and modules gained more and more heat.

Xylo had utterly wrecked its cooling module, as well as its repair module in a single shot, which caused coolant to spill out and short it.

Unable to fix the damage, the mecha simply overheated until its safety overrides forced a shutdown. The pilot frantically hit a number of his controls in order to restart the whole thing, but there was nothing he could do.

The mecha shut down all at once, even as it attempted to correct its balance. Then it simply leaned forward and smashed into the ground, lifeless.

Xylo sped forward as she zero’d in on her next target. Instead of wasting another sniper shell, she instead fired controlled bursts of the rifle in her hands. It wasn’t particularly powerful, and was rather standard. But it worked plenty enough against their B-ranked chassis.

Her rounds peppered an enemy mecha on various points and absolutely destroyed its weak points. She aimed right at its major joints – left hip, left elbow, right shoulder – and riddled them with controlled bursts.

The bullets slipped through the gaps between the armor, and shredded the mechanisms underneath. The rounds chewed through the soft machinery and tore them apart from the inside.

And as the mecha began to stagger and stumble, Xylo rushed right up to it and smashed its head with the butt of her rifle. Its armor dented inwards severely, and broke a few sensors underneath.

The force of the blow was also the final straw on its broken joints. They shattered into pieces as the mecha automatically attempted to maintain its balance, and put too much pressure on them. The hip was the first to break apart – the leg crumpled just as mecha’s upper body toppled over.

It fell down into a heap, at which point Xylo fired another burst into its sensor cluster. The bullets tore into the already weak armor, and ripped the delicate sensor cluster underneath apart.

Unable to see and barely able to move, the pilot merely laid there with his mouth wide open. He watched with utter astonishment as his wingmates were trashed one by one by one. Their faces blinked off his comms display as more and more of them were killed or neutralized.

He realized his good fortune that somehow he was spared from the violent carnage.

It wasn’t just their opponents’ superior equipment that won the day – the precision of their attacks completely overwhelmed all of them. The corporate forces were clearly no match against the overwhelming expertise of the Conspiracy of Ravens.

Freya slid to the hovertank’s flank, even as it fired at her in point-blank range. In response to its attack, she thrust her spear forward and punched through a tiny gap just beneath the turret. The spear’s two edges easily ripped through and widened the gap significantly.

It sank through to the cabin and eviscerated its two occupants in the blink of an eye. Both turned into slabs of bloody meat as she drew her blade out of the tank.

Without anyone to drive it, it simply listed off to the side and struck the smoldering carcass of another hovertank.

Satisfied her prey was dead, Freya scanned the battlefield around her and appraised the situation.

“Hovertank regiment’s down,” she said. “Need assistance?”

The last of the long range mecha fell to the ground in a heap as Lucifer tossed hir second rifle at its feet.

“Wing two is down as well,” ze replied.

“My takeover is complete,” Raijin reported right after. “Their data teams are certainly doing their best to regain control, but we have plenty of time to do what we need to.”

“How much time?” Lucifer asked.

“Hours. Perhaps more. It depends. Also, I have already intercepted an order. There are multiple mecha wings on the way – six groups of six. One of them is heavily armed and armored.”

“From what direction? And what’s the ETA?”

“All around. The closest will arrive here in two minutes.”

Lucifer quickly thought through their options. It didn’t matter if they sped towards the next district – they’d easily follow. Even without communications to help them, they would simply follow their signals.

“Flood their comm lines,” ze finally said. “Make it look like every other district’s getting attacked, somewhere. Like the whole planet’s under siege. That should get people panicked, and also give us a little bit of room to breathe.”

Raijin didn’t hesitate, and immediately commanded her Truesight and Oversight Engines to falsify communications, just as Lucifer had suggested. She then manually commandeered the emergency communications protocols, adjusted it to her liking, and then set it loose.

Every building on the planet immediately rang out with alarms and klaxons, and flooded every hall and room with constant evacuation alerts.

Combined with the false reports, alerts, and requests for help that her Engines created, most of the planet simply fell into utter chaos.

Workers up and down the warehouses and all throughout the corporate offices flew into a panic. Most people were simply startled by it all – things such as attacks simply didn’t happen. Not in the Inner Sector. And definitely not in a Corporate System.

They had paid for their security, and expected nothing but the best!

Most were immediately ordered to follow standard procedures and evacuate as previously drilled. Managers yelled at their people to shuffle out of the buildings quickly, but orderly.

Many followed instructions as best they could. Others ran around in a frenzy. A few were fearful. Not of any attacks, but rather the loss of productivity and profit.

People were most confused in the districts where the supposed attacks were happening. Though report after report of devastating explosions and fires and collapses were coming through the comms, the people just didn’t see it. It was all fine from their point of view.

But when they tried to send comms to counter the misinformation, instead found that they didn’t have the ability to send a single communique. It was like they were cut off.

And while panic spread throughout the entire planet, whatever wings and units were sent to investigate instead were forced to split off in different directions. SSS’ internal security was suddenly bombarded with hundreds of thousands of requests from all over, and were suddenly pressed for resources.

While they stumbled and fumbled, the Ravens skated towards the closest Databank block. If they wanted to find Amelia and liberate her, they first needed to find out exactly where she was.