Ravens of Eternity

455 No Quarter, Pt A dozen or so Einherjar battleships flashed into empty, pitch black space. As the galaxy swirled back into place, each of the crew in the ships themselves were suddenly filled with absolute dread.

It was more than the creeping void that surrounded them – it was the ghost of the planet itself right next to them. Though it was pitch black just like some of the planets in the system, its gravitational pull tugged on their ships just the same.

They all felt a pit form in their stomachs as they floated deep in the middle of Godeater territory. It was a sense of dread that seemed to grow steadily at time marched onward. It seemed to weigh extremely heavily, and pulled them all down further as a result.

It was as though something tugged at their very being, closer towards Godeater itself.

Anali wiped the copious amounts of sweat from her brow as she stared at the readouts around her. Not only that, but she found the blankness on the live feeds utterly unnerving. She quickly replaced them with all kinds of reports and data readouts.

But that hardly kept the feeling at bay.

One of her analysts quickly swapped in a gravitonic mesh array, which showed where every planet and celestial object in their system should have been. Or, rather, it showed where their gravity wells were as they spun around their dark stars.

Only a few systems were still visible on every spectrum.

“What’s the status of Dendrus IV?” asked Anali. “I want its location confirmed immediately.”

.....

“Our target is exactly .032 light years away,” said an analyst closest to Anali. “As far as our sensors can tell, it’s behaving as normal and has retained its original orbit.”

“And our slingshot planets? Are they still in place?”

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“Yes, ma’am.”

Anali took a deep breath and did her best to steady herself. She felt shaky all over, anxious. There was this pressing dread that hung over her on top of it.

They were about to attack something that had literally wiped out entire swaths of the galaxy and consumed countless people. No matter what anyone said about Godeater, it was clearly ruthless and practically invincible. Raising a hand against it felt like suicide.

But she pushed through all of her anxieties and worries quickly. If they did nothing, then all were as good as dead anyway.

“This operation has the green,” she said.

The small fleet composed only of battleships turned their heading off into the distance out to the darkness, towards some invisible, undetectable planet at the very edge of the system itself. Each of the battleships was armed as normal – their turrets were installed all along their broadsides while their emplacements were installed on their topside.

What was different however, was that each had a massive gauss rifle that hovered in a fixed position along the bottom side. They stood in place using the same technologies that the Imperials used with their floating turrets and weapon systems.

The rifles themselves bore the design language of Yggdrasil Station, where they were long and octahedral in shape. Each one stretched nearly the entire length of the battleships that carried them, though they were far thinner. It seemed from a distance that the rifles were like massive needles beneath the lumbering behemoths.

The rifles’ edges glowed as their electromagnetic coils charged up with excessive amounts of energy. They even began to vibrate at incredible frequencies as the energies rose higher and higher.

And then once they reached their peak, fired one after the other.

Each of the rifles fired disc-like projectiles at incredible speeds, many thousands of meters a second. The discs themselves had convex bodies that tapered to wide points at its outermost edge, and were made of a supremely smooth omnitronium shell.

Their thick metallic exteriors protected the much more fragile, gyroscopic and magnetically stable interior. There, a complex electronic array with a massive electromagnetic battery held unbelievable amounts of energy within. All of it simply waiting to burst out.

All of the disc projectiles spun as they flew at top speed across space. They passed right through huge dust clouds and ripped them apart from the sheer velocity. They cruised past a stretch of loose meteors before they reached their target planet.

But instead of hitting the planet, they instead just skimmed its edge. Just enough to get captured by the planet’s gravitational pull. The discs were immediately drawn inward, closer to the planet itself. As a result, their trajectories adjusted ever so slightly as their outer shells glowed from the heat of atmospheric entry.

And at the same time, the discs stole some of the planet’s rotational energies for themselves. While the discs sped up, the planet slowed down. Because of the burst in speed, the discs easily escaped the planet’s gravitational pull and sped off to the void beyond.

Each of the now-glowing metal discs shot forward at speeds many times faster than their original velocities, far beyond anything any human could even withstand, much less survive. The discs themselves couldn’t have survived their own spinning, if not for the sheer strength, toughness, and resiliency of their omnitronium shells.

And if their inner workings weren’t automatically stabilized in the center, those cores would have torn themselves apart long ago.

The discs’ glow ebbed and vanished as they sped across open space with blinding speed. They all entered another star system in no time at all. They cruised past a beautiful and bountiful gas giant, which also tugged on them due to its vast gravitational well.

And in doing so, altered their trajectory yet again, and sped them up even faster than before. The discs spun faster and faster as their hulls glowed bright once again from the friction. And because they stole yet more rotational speed, they caused the gas giant to slow dramatically.

The planet’s own gaseous form began to dissipate as its gravitational pull weakened significantly. As a result, it began to lose much of its outer gasses. They simply dissipated out into the void of space.

But the disc projectiles kept on going, even faster than before. Their glowing hulls cooled a second time as they spun out even further and even faster through the emptiness of space. They continually skimmed past shadowy planets and dark stars, where they continually stole bits of gravitational energy with every pass.

As they did so, they made their way closer and closer towards Dendrus IV, to Godeater, their true target.

And as they neared, they began to slow down every time they passed another dark planet. Instead of stealing gravitational energy, they began to deposit them into whatever celestial bodies they skimmed past.

Some of the more unstable ones had their surfaces shake and crumble as their rotational energies increased. At the same time, each of the discs slowed more and more until they reached the Purgatory system itself.

There, they slowed down further as they went from planet to planet and deposited any excess rotational energies they had. And once they had the exact velocity they needed, angled straight towards Dendrus IV.

Once again, the disc projectiles cruised into its orbit in an attempt to skim it. But their greatly slowed speeds were easily caught by the planet’s gravitational pull. And instead of getting flung off to some other system, they were pulled further down, where they were quickly caught by Godeater’s antigrav field.

Each of them came to a slow halt as they skidded across the field itself. Their frenzied spinning also slowed significantly before they came to an outright stop.

Then, once they had gone completely still, their bottom sides glowed as pure electric energy poured out. Arcs of pure white electrical energies struck the mirror satellites across the antigrav field. And like a vicious and terrible lightning storm, ripped their outer housing apart.

All of the discs poured out massive amounts of electricity down to a dozen or so mirror stations and ripped them apart with abandon.

Like supremely overcharged plasma lances, the electrical arcs burned through the stations’ metals and left only carbon scars in their wake. Countless arms raked across the stations’ surfaces and tore those outer housings apart as though they were made of paper.

Their destructive power hardly stopped with the housing, however. They tore further down into the structure and circuits beneath, where they utterly slagged and melted any fragile components they touched. Purely conductive metals in the circuits such as silver and copper exploded in numerous flashes even as their fabricated housings vaporized.

Worse, electricity coursed through the stations themselves. The massive torrent of energy overloaded all their safeguards and fuses quickly, and burned through any regulators in its path. Electricity poured out in every direction, through the stations’ structure and the walls and floors and ceilings.

Even the formerly human crew who had been turned into shadow puppets were affected. Rows and rows of semi-human drones were electrocuted to death as they sat in front of their terminals. Their mindless bodies shivered as massive amounts of electricity poured through them.

Their bodies glowed as they were cooked alive from the center outward. Most then caught fire from the unbelievable heat, and ultimately burned to a crisp while their corpses convulsed.

All they left in the end were fragile carbon husks that barely resembled their former selves.

Everything inside the stations were absolutely devastated by the powerful energies. Worse, all their linkages and maneuvering systems had been completely burned out, which left them unable to retain their orbital position.

Their antigrav fields flickered before they vanished outright. At the same time, the energy lattice nodes that held them aloft next to the other mirror stations blew apart. Without those links, the satellites began to fall down towards Dendrus.

Each one careened towards the inky black surface with little grace. Thick black smoke poured out of their scarred housing as its heavily wounded internal systems sparked and exploded. Then, they hit the planet itself, where they broke and shattered and splintered on impact.

The Einherjar’s Storm Discs then fell down right afterwards – without an antigrav field to hold them up, they had no choice but to come down. Their massive, heavy bodies smashed on the downed mirror stations and destroyed whatever was left.

It didn’t take long for Godeater’s shadow to creep across the broken debris and swallow it all up.

Anali and her team cheered heartily as the damage reports scrolled on their screens. Even Anali herself exhaled at length, and with great relief.

Although it was only a handful of stations, their attack was clearly a success. They had caused some damage to Godeater’s defenses which were mere pinpricks in comparison to the whole. But it was more than enough to fill them all with some measure of hope.

It was proof that they could do something, anything, even if what they did was tiny. It was proof that all wasn’t totally lost. Not yet.