Ravens of Eternity

294 Vicious Payback, Pt The destroyer’s large AA guns tracked Amelia as she wove through the cannonfire all around. And although their gunners knew their tracking was just slightly off, fired where their targeting systems told them to regardless. Precision simply didn’t matter with these weapons.

Their specialized Anti Armor shells burst all around the corvette, and scattered millions of tungsten shards in every direction. Thick black clouds filled the sky as the destroyer filled the air with peacekeeping shrapnel, which ultimately rained down on the streets below.

The Spirit of Amelia was pushed around by the force of the blasts, and peppered relentlessly by the razor-sharp shrapnel. Some bounced off and left mere scratches. Some hit hard and dug deep into her armor. Most bit partway in, and coated her surface by the thousands.

The worst hits struck in between armor plating, and inside their maneuvering thrusters.

She slowed significantly as a result.

Red alerts flashed on Azrael and Claire’s screens as Amelia shook violently from the explosions all around. But both grit their teeth and fought through the barrage as best they could. Azrael tightened her grip on the yoke while Claire nimbly inputted a number of commands on her screen.

“Overcharging repairs,” she yelled out. “Damage: armor 4%, structural 12%, maneuvering thrusters 37%. We can’t keep taking this!”

“Hit their guns,” Azrael said. “I’ll try to maneuver out of their angle.”

“That’s gonna be tough,” Lucifer interjected. “They’re negating your velocity by fighting inside of your circle strafe. They’re practically spinning in place to counter your agility.”

.....

“So how do we fight against that? Maneuver to the bottom?”

“No, they’ll simply roll to maintain facing. I recommend you simply throttle forward, push past them, then climb up.”

“So we run then?”

“A tactical retreat, but don’t go full speed. Gotta entice ’em to follow us into orbit. We’ll finish ’em off up there, away from all these people.”

“Thank you,” Freya said.

“Don’t get used to it,” Lucifer replied.

Azrael immediately took Lucifer’s suggestion and pushed Amelia forward. As they careened straight towards the bottom of the ship, Claire took her opportunity and fired the beamcannons at one of the AA guns.

The beam cut right through the barrels the moment Claire overcharged the beams themselves. She then focused hard on the turret itself, and blasted her way through the relatively thinner armor.

The beam slagged everything inside, and caused the AA gun’s barrels to slump down in defeat.

Amelia flew just underneath the destroyer, then kept on going. Her main thrusters flared wide as Azrael poured power into them, and sped past the destroyer.

And the moment they were clear, she pulled up on the yoke and began to pull upwards toward the sky.

The entire ship shook as the wind buffeted against her.

Behind Amelia, the Peacekeeper destroyer turned towards her slowly. Then, once they were aligned, its main thrusters also widened and lit up. The entire ship lurched forward from the sudden shift in direction and began to chase the fleeing corvette.

It angled upwards, slightly steeper than Amelia’s climbing angle. Not so much to intercept, but to line up its rail cannon for a shot. The interior glowed a bright blue as electromagnetic energy built up inside. At its brightest, the energy shot to the front of the barrel, and expelled the sabot round deep inside.

The sabot casings split off a fraction of a moment later, and allowed the round to speed towards the Spirit of Amelia... But cruised past dozens of meters off the mark. It eventually lost enough energy, arced down towards the ground, and utterly demolished whatever it struck below, dozens of kilometers away.

Inside the destroyer, its rail cannon operators were completely frustrated. Similar to the other gunners on the ship, their targeting was completely off! They grumbled to each other as they charged up for a second shot.

This time, they manually adjusted their aim to compensate for the difference. They tuned and tweaked their aim until they were absolutely certain of their accuracy, then fired once again.

The sabot round shot out like last time and screamed towards the corvette. Unlike last time, it veered in a completely different direction altogether, which utterly frustrated the cannon operators.

And then, once both ships left the upper exosphere, numerous copies of Amelia suddenly appeared on every single one of the destroyer’s targeting displays. Dozens and dozens of her, all around. A handful upfront, many on her left and right flanks, and even a few behind.

A few truly confused gunners fired reactively, and hammered the space around them with weapons fire. But of course, nothing hit.

“Stop firing blindly!” yelled the commanding officer. “We already know that our targeting intelligence is compromised! Datacoders – take our systems back! Engineers – replace the entire goddamned module if you need to!”

~

Kali spun as she swung her axe into a Peacekeeper’s leg and chopped it off with incredible skill. She continued to spin the axe and brought it around a second time. This time, she cleaved right through the same Peacekeeper’s chest, even as it tumbled forward from losing its leg.

She tore right through to the core, and turned the pilot into little more than a bloody smear.

At the same time, a second Peacekeeper a dozen meters away sprayed her down with his rifle. His bullets struck her armor all over, and added to the numerous dents and scratches already present.

Some slipped between the weakened armor plating and cut into the Rakshasa’s structure underneath.

He followed up with a trio of rockets, which exploded and left a thick gray cloud in their wake. The pilot grinned, happy that he did some damage to her. But it disappeared the moment the cloud did as well.

Kali charged at him through the cloud, with the wreck of a mecha in her hands. She slammed into him using the dead one, and threw him on his feet. Then she raised the wreck of the first over her head, and smashed it down on the second one.

And then again, with so much force that pieces flung off, and their chassis began to warp. She slammed down again and again, until only unrecognizable scrap remained of them.

Nearby, Lucifer charged towards two of the Peacekeepers, and took the majority of their weapons fire. Bullets raked hir mecha’s armor and added to the multiple dents that marred the surface.

Though ze evaded from most of the rockets, one luckily struck hir shoulder. It tore off much of the protective armor there, and partially revealed the mechanisms and structure underneath.

The rest of hir mecha’s pristine white livery had also been marred by numerous blast marks, in addition to all the bullet indentations.

Ze sped right up to one, then blasted him close to point-blank with hir scattergun. He was thrown back by the force of the blast as his front chest armor was completely torn apart. Some of the shrapnel pierced through to the core and eviscerated the pilot inside.

Before the red-hot glow from the shrapnel could cool, Lucifer fired a trio of grenades from hir own launcher at the second one firing at hir.

They slammed into the enemy Peacekeeper in the abdomen, chest, and left shoulder. Each one burst open with a small explosion on impact, and spattered a highly caustic ionized hydrofluoride gel all over.

The acid quickly ate through the titanium armor plating, and chewed through any metallic elements around. It dissolved everything in its wake, and revealed the structure and mechanisms underneath.

Its pilot was utterly horrified as he watched the core around him melt down and get eaten away by the last of the acid. Then, the last thing he saw was Lucifer’s Mantis as ze fired hir scattergun into the core itself.

The Peacekeeper’s mecha was also thrown to the ground from the force of the blast, its pilot shredded to oblivion.

Lucifer turned the gun over in hir hands and admired it deeply.

“What a lovely thing I’ve found!” ze exclaimed. “I’m gonna keep it forever!”

While Kali and Lucifer mopped up the Peacekeepers around them, two chased heartily after Xylo. They too sprayed her down, and flung numerous rockets at her, even while she fled evasively around them.

She fired back with tight bursts as well, and tore into their armor bit by bit. Though her return fire was more of an afterthought – she was much more focused on not getting hit by their weapons. Especially the rockets.

Her Phantom wove left and right aggressively as rockets pounded the space where she would have been. It only had B-ranked armor, and couldn’t weather the damage as well as the others could.

So she skated circles around them, and harassed them as she evaded.

Of course, she also charged up her sniper cannon at the same time, and held the shot for the right opportunity. And when she sped in an arc around them, she lined up the perfect shot, and fired.

In a split second, her fully-charged slug ripped through both of them. The first was torn apart completely as his chest was punctured. The hole blew outward, caused the chassis to bubble around it, and annihilated everything inside the core.

The slug slammed into the second, and tore through its layer of armor, bit deep into the structure, struck a module, then punched into the power plant behind it. Energy spilled out through the hole violently, and caused the entire mecha to explode from the inside.

It was torn apart from the blast, its pilot along with it.

That Idiot suddenly found himself alone. All of his Peacekeepers had been completely annihilated, and his destroyer was all but blind and useless. Shock filled him as the Ravens surrounded him.

It was followed by a sharp sense of fear.

He was supposed to be the one doing the killing, not the one who ended up dying. He quickly spun around to run, and poured power into all of his rear thrusters. They flared out as he began to speed away.

But then a red-hot beam shot out from behind him, and struck him across both legs. The beam cut them off at an angle across his thighs. The sudden loss of bottom thrust caused him to fall forward, and his legs to tumble behind.

Then the beam shot him squarely in the back and slagged his rear thrusters until they were reduced to useless lumps of metal.

He rolled onto his back and sprayed down Freya with his rifle as she charged towards him. But the majority of his shots were easily absorbed by her thick tower shield. She even shrugged off the rocket he launched at her, and barely let it slow down her charge.

It also slammed into her shield and severely dented it, but she simply thrust her spear forward and jammed it into his right shoulder. She kept on going for a few more meters and dragged him along with her.

Then she twisted her grip, turned the spear’s blade, and tore his arm off all the way.

“I give up! I give up!” That Idiot yelled as the both of them came to a stop. “Please don’t kill me!”

But Freya simply reared back with her spear, and pierced through his left shoulder in response. She twisted her grip again, and tore off this arm just as easily as the first.

“Pipe down, coward,” she said. “I’m not gonna kill you. Not yet, anyway. And besides, you’re way past a quick death. No, you deserve something far better than that.”