Ravens of Eternity

438 Ragnar?k, Pt Two all-volunteer squadrons flew out of the main de Jardin devastator’s hangar bay. Each one held a dozen fighters as well as a dozen mecha. Not only that, but each of them had a 24 drone escort flying alongside.

Each of the pilots triple-checked their instruments and MFDs even as they flew towards their staging area.

“Squadron Karna, ready,” said one of the squadron’s captains.

“Squadron Achilles, ready,” said the other.

“Acknowledged, Achilles. Acknowledged, Karna,” replied an officer over comms. “Your wings have been cleared, and your missions are a go.”

With that, both of the squadrons immediately sped off. Though they didn’t fly straight into the massive swirling battlefield and instead they angled downward and kept away from all of the fighting.

They flew in a large arc beneath the destructive cyclone as fast as they possibly could. The sheer force of gravity pressed against their bodies as they accelerated faster and faster. And right when they got halfway, at the peak of their arc, they turned their noses and guns back upward.

All 96 of them headed back up into the fray, right at the edge of the swirling, twisting mass. There, countless ships in the Federation and the Empire were busy attempting to repair and rearm.

Each of them fired on numerous ships that were out there being attended to – mostly fighters and mecha. They quickly tore through their armor with highly concentrated plasma lances and obliterated anything underneath. Most swept across the piloting cores beneath the armor and structure, which completely exposed the pilots inside to the wildness of space.

.....

If they weren’t ripped apart atom by atom, then they certainly choked to death as the oxygen was violently sucked out of their cores. Which one was more painful, only the dead knew.

Despite how much damage squadrons Karna and Achilles caused, neither stuck around to dogfight with anyone. They simply eviscerated as many enemy pilots as they could while they passed through the swirling mass and headed towards the enemy’s primary devastators.

They wove around evasively as all manner of defensive fire flew past them. Imperial and Federation ships from all around them fired at them relentlessly, and from nearly every angle. The weapons fire was so thick that the pilots gripped their controls tighter and tighter until their knuckles were bone-white.

Thankfully, their drone escorts shielded them from the majority of incoming fire and took the shots with grace. Most of them were torn apart and exploded violently, which allowed the pilots to keep on going.

When they left the massive field of ships, less than half the drones were left. Even a couple of pilots never made it out. But the rest of them grit their teeth and doubled down. The two squadrons then split up and angled themselves into attack runs on the two devastators.

Squadron Karna went for the Imperial devastator, while squadron Achilles went for the Federation one.

Karna took half of the remaining drones and quickly headed for their target’s surface. They evaded any incoming defensive fire from the turrets, and dove in an evasive arc towards the armor plating. Much like Imperial fighters, they hugged its hull close and stayed under their turret’s angle of fire.

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They all flew practically unimpeded towards the closest hangar bay and ducked straight into it without hesitation.

Karna’s mecha wing immediately fired their heavy underslung plasma lances across every grounded fighter on the landing pads. Their crackling arcs of energy ripped right through the unpowered and unprotected ships like they were made of paper.

Without their energy shielding active, the metal compounds on the plating were open to attack. They simply fell to pieces as Karna’s plasma lances sliced into them like a hot knife through butter.

While the mecha took care of any potential threats, Karna’s fighters ripped into the hangar bay’s active threats – defensive emplacements and security forces. Each of them fired numerous micro missiles at every Imperial combatant in sight, and absolutely carpeted their locations with explosive fire.

Any turrets were quickly torn apart while armored security personnel were blasted to bits. All were immolated in a wave of fire shortly after, and in the end the only thing left of them were blast marks and blackened soot.

Once they ripped through everything possible inside the hangar bay, the mecha wing sped down an access passageway into the adjoining repair bay. There, dozens of Imperial fighters and mecha were under close repairs by all manner of personnel and drones.

Or at least, they were doing so before Karna’s mecha intrusion. Every single engineer and mechanic ran for the exits in a panic even before Karna opened fire.

Most got away cleanly while the rest were mowed down ingloriously.

Once the floor was clear, each of the mecha then fired their shoulder-mounted mortar launchers at a demimatter battery array in the middle of the bay itself. Large, brightly glowing orbs of plasma struck the battery array’s armored outer housing and slagged it an instant later.

They chewed through the armor effortlessly before they ate into the batteries themselves.

And the moment the outer housing was pierced, their intense gravity wells sucked everything in towards them. The robust outer housing collapsed inward, along with whatever remained of the armor plating above that.

And while the entire repair bay began to collapse in on itself, Karna retreated to just outside the hangar bay.

From there, they watched as a good chunk of the Imperial devastator collapsed in on itself, as one of its voracious demimatter batteries devoured everything around it. Decking and exoframe and chitin shards fell inwards as the batteries imploded.

It ate up more and more of the ship and left a massive gaping wound on its starboard side before the demimatter energies were sated. Dozens of decks were out for all to see, open to the void of space. It looked almost as though something large and unseen took a bite right out of the ship.

Many of the devastator’s crew floated out from deeper within the ship, their faces frozen with fear as they choked to death.

But Karna’s attack was far from over. They quickly regrouped, then immediately dove back down towards the devastator. They focused their fire on the largest openings and blasted open any sealed doorways. They carved through the weaker decking and walls as they dove further and further into the belly of the devastator itself.

As they did so, they exposed numerous passageways and rooms to the vacuum of space, and slaughtered even more crew along the way. But they had no other choice – all that was in front of them at that moment was to kill or be killed.

Nothing else truly mattered.

~

The bridge on the Imperial devastator was washed in dark red, and rang with a highly demanding klaxon. Warnings and alerts flashed on many of swarmfather Delvath’s holoprojectors, all of them critical.

Officers and analysts and technicians on the bridge were all harried with panic as the alerts dominated their screens.

—

ALERT: Hull Breached

Status: Critical

–

WARNING: Massive Pressure Loss

Location: Field Operations 5 – D3, D4, D5

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WARNING: Massive Asset Loss

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ALERT: Critical Repairs Required

Estimate: 103.5 bn Krohn

—

“How did these apes do this?” Delvath screamed.

In front of the swarmfather was a holoprojection of the interior of his own devastator. Or rather, where the interior was being utterly destroyed by a handful of fighters and mecha. He watched as they dug further and further into the ship itself, straight towards the primary engineering section.

Absolute frustration was plastered on his face, though it was quickly replaced by a rising anger.

“Nevermind that!” he said before any of his analysts could inform him. “Activate every countermeasure we have! Deploy every skirmisher in our other hangars and put these annoying pests down! And seal every deck with every anti intrusion system at our disposal!”

Numerous squadrons of Imperial light fighters activated almost instantly. They flew out of their hangar bays on the other sides of the devastator and swarmed towards the gaping hole where Karna had entered.

They flew down the long, thin shaft that their enemy carved out and slowly but surely began to catch up to their prey. The first few Imperial pilots locked into their signatures as fast as they could, and opened fire the moment they were in range.

Thin bright orange disintegration beams burst forth from their stinger-like guns. But instead of hitting any of the fighters or mecha, whatever drone escort they had left got in the way. While the remaining escorts soaked up that damage and were blown to pieces, the fighters and mecha in squadron Karna ripped through the last barrier in their way.

They evaded into their target area – primary engineering. The entire room was incredibly voluminous and spanned numerous decks up and down.

In the very center stretching from top to bottom was the massive demimatter generator that dozens of technicians and engineers tended to constantly. Its transparent housing revealed a black cosmic mass in the middle that seemed to absorb countless beams of energy poured into it.

A kind of shadowy energy exuded from out of it, which was absorbed by an array of delicate machinery.

Karna didn’t hesitate and immediately flew around the frigate-sized demimatter generator at top speed. Each of them fired on it with everything they had and from every angle they could. Plasma mortars and lances tore the generator’s outer housing apart as though it were never there in the first place.

Missiles blasted apart anyone and anything around it with such force that the decks and walkways surrounding warped heavily.

The squadron hardly cared about the Imperial fighters that swarmed in after them and kept firing their weapons at the demimatter generator. It didn’t even matter how much weapons fire they took, they simply overcharged everything they had and went out with a bang.

Every single one of them was ripped apart by the Imperials’ concentrated beams. They ate through the armor down to the structure, past the core, and into the pilots themselves. Despite their dying screams, each of the pilots of Karna continued their assault.

In the end, all were eliminated with ruthless ferocity.

But it didn’t mean their efforts were in vain. Their weapons fire chewed into the demimatter generator’s outer housing with absolute ease. They bore further down through the numerous armor plates and safety layers all throughout their assault.

And in at the very end, the very last of the Karna hurled himself into the demimatter generator itself and punched through the final armor layer. The resulting explosion tore it wide open, which immediately sucked in everything around it.

The generator’s machinery itself was first to go into the synthetic miniature black hole. They wrapped all around the ultradense core before it all vanished. Right behind it was the rest of engineering. Everything that wasn’t nailed down was drawn towards it through the generator’s sheer gravitational pull.

All the crew were pulled right in without effort, and vanished into a tiny speck in the middle of everything.

They were soon followed by the Imperial fighters flying all around. The only way out was through the narrow tunnel the Karna had dug, and that was still being used by incoming fighters. All were thoroughly trapped.

So, with nowhere to go, their ships were soon pulled in by the black hole’s gravitational pull. All ultimately fell in and tumbled down to their deaths, pressed and pulled and stretched as they spiraled down for all eternity.

~~~

Author’s Note:

Hello readers!

The novel will be going into hiatus for a few weeks as I will be moving across the country. Once it starts up again though, I’ll be finishing up the story. There’s perhaps about 40 chapters left and I’m pretty excited to get into it.