Ravens of Eternity

208 Blood & Flame, Pt Planet FON-550, Gilbrath System, Federal Colonial Territories

A seemingly peaceful settlement sat on fertile plains covered with soft golden yellow grass. It sat in the middle of a serene valley, which was sandwiched between a lush yellow and orange jungle, and a wide blue-green river.

The light green-blue skies above were almost completely hidden by thick, fluffy clouds, and the system’s yellow star shone brightly through a gap among them.

And all around the settlement itself were hundreds of colonists, all doing their normal, daily routine. Many of them plowed their croplands with simple hand tools, some tended to their shops or cleaned the settlement. A great number of others ran around the settlement itself, as though they were training for some great marathon.

All of their faces were pallid, and their eyes were dead. Their muscles were large and swollen from overuse, and they all moved with an unnatural efficiency.

And because the weather on this settlement was incredibly nice, they often wore thin, loose garments. Due to that, the cybernetics that ran up and down their spine was easy for all to see.

Not that anyone got to. All around the settlement were a number of hovering security drones, perhaps a couple dozen or so. Although most of them were simple anti-personnel drones with cannons or chainguns, a handful were a little more robust.

They were 4 meter tall drones that walked around on reverse-jointed legs. On top of its legs was a ball turret that held twin cannons capable of tearing through armored vehicles. They walked with the speed and precision of a raptor, and had a full 360 degree firing angle regardless of facing.

The drones patrolled the settlement in little swarms, each one led by one or two antivehicle drones.

.....

In the center of the town sat a 4-story town hall, but the top half of it looked far different from the rest of the settlement itself. It was made with more robust materials, and its large windows were a transparent metal polymer.

On its armored roof was a large missile battery that also had the ability to rotate 360 degrees. It spun around slowly as its sensors searched for targets to annihilate.

The Prophets had converted the town hall into some kind of semi-armored bunker. At least, compared to the typical settlement, which typically only employed antipersonnel drones for protection, at best.

Inside the top floor, a Prophet kitted out in their standard combat gear stood by one of the windows and talked to Mia through the terminal next to him.

“You’re certain, Crusader?” he asked. “Callie and her team truly went quiet?”

“I’m on my way to investigate now,” Mia replied. “No matter what, I want you to keep your people alert, just in case.”

“You think the Federation found us? You think they might find the rest of our bases?”

Mia immediately turned sour at the thought. The last thing she needed was for Father’s plan to fail while she was in charge. Failure was inconceivable to her – it would have been an insult to the work he had started.

“It’s possible her operation was found by chance,” she replied. “But the base’s security intelligence isn’t responding to me, either. Could’ve been Feds, could’ve been a storm. Either way, I don’t like it. Now, you’ve got your orders, and keep things copacetic.”

“I’ll have the system print out more drones immediately,” he said.

The screen winked out and the connection terminated, which confused the Prophet somewhat. Mia always signed off properly, no matter what.

His questions were almost immediately answered, when an alert popped up in Mia’s place moments later.

–

Perimeter Breach Detected

Location: Sector 3A:F8

–

Alarm quickly washed over him, and ran to the other side of the observation tower. Along the way, he hit a few buttons on the center console and activated a lockdown mode. By the time he reached the window, armored slats slid down the entire building and covered it completely.

Peepholes along the windows slid open, and allowed the Prophet to continue his oversight. Nervously.

And in the distance, an explosion shattered the silence. The Prophet’s eyes grew wide with shock as plumes of smoke rose into the sky.

He ran over to the closest terminal and attempted to call Mia, but was immediately blocked.

–

Alert: Communications Dampened

–

Panicked, he ordered half of the settlement’s drone defenses to Sector 3A:F8 and hoped it was more than enough to contain the problem. Then he activated Blood Mode on his Hallowed, and ordered them to defend his position to the death.

Outside, hundreds of Hallowed dropped everything they were doing and ran straight towards the center of town. While they went in, numerous drones rushed out.

They headed out in a stream towards their intended destination – sector 3A:F8. And despite their mad rush to get there, they saw nothing. The only thing their sensors picked up was the wreckage of a few patrol drones.

Just out of their range, Freya and Xylo skated their mecha in a wide circle around the settlement itself.

Freya was piloting the mecha they found – it was a B-ranked Hrothgar Tyr “Stormrider” Elite Mechanized Assault chassis. Currently, it was painted white and gold, but Freya was determined to change that. On its shoulder was a C-ranked Ragnarok Armaments Antipersonnel Chaingun, which loaded directly from an ammunition pack on the mecha’s back.

Xylo was in her own mecha, a B-ranked Terra Nach Mar “Phantom” Mechanized Infiltrator. Its paint scheme was dark blues on smoke grays, in a pattern meant for nighttime incursions. On its shoulder was an A-ranked Terra Nach Mar “Executor” Sniper Cannon.

Each of them wielded a C-ranked Federal Shipyards Machine Pistol, which was paired with a B-ranked Federal Shipyards “Citadel” Tower Shield.

“It almost feels like we’re bullying them,” said Freya.

“Feeling bad for the synths all of a sudden?” teased Xylo. “I mean, we could hop out now and take them on foot if you want...”

“Hmm. Tempting.”

But instead of hopping out, Freya pushed forward on her controls and angled her mecha directly towards the settlement. Now that the majority of the drones were ordered out, they were relatively clear to make their attack.

Xylo went in after her, but hung back roughly 500 meters, and acted as her overwatch. Her sensors scanned every building all around them, and watched for any drones to pop up.

The settlement’s automatic sensors finally picked up Freya’s energy readings just as she passed through the 1500 meter threshold. An alert blared out through its systems, and every drone was recalled to intercept their attack.

The missile battery above town hall spun towards Freya as it targeted her. The exact moment it had a full lock, it fired a handful of missiles into the air.

Each one shot in an arc above Freya, then turned straight down towards her.

But she was nonplussed by the attack. She calmly raised her shield above her head, then zig-zagged out of their path as best she could. Missiles rained down around her exploded into the grassy soil around.

Two struck her shield in near unison, and detonated right on impact. It was heavily dented and marked with blast points, but still held strong.

Freya poured a little power into its repairs, and began to stitch it back together, albeit slowly.

Her chaingun WHINED as it spun up, then fired a long burst at the missile battery with a truly satisfying BRRRRT. It only took seconds for her to shred it to pieces. The payload in some of the missiles burst open from being punctured, and exploded.

The whole thing lit up as its many missiles exploded, one after another until they all exploded with a grand BOOM. A wave of force flew outward, and flung dust and debris out in every direction.

“I have pinpointed the Prophets’ databank,” said Raijin.

She was in the Spirit of Amelia along with Azrael and Claire, and hovered 15 km above the settlement itself. Unlike all the other vessels in their little fleet, Amelia was perhaps the least powerful. Merely a C-ranked Hermes Aerospace Freight Corvette.

The best things they had were the four beamcannons, and their ultra-long range sensors, which gave them visibility up to 50 kilometers. Though, given the sensors’ age, its accuracy fell off sharply after 20km or so.

On Raijin’s screen was a top-down schematic of the entire settlement, like a map. Multiple color-coded signals covered the map, each one denoted which were biological, drone, or system intelligences.

She sent a ping to everyone and pin-pointed a set of servers on the third floor of town hall.

“Either of you will need to be within 15 meters of the Prophet’s Systems Controller,” she continued. “Then I will be able to initiate my attack and take control.”

She then sent another ping, this time at an unusually large engineer’s workshop a dozen or so meters south of town hall.

“I have detected signals from another partially-assembled Stormrider here,” Raijin said. “Please avoid damaging it.”

“Wilco,” said Xylo.

T-Rex appeared on Amelia’s comms displays, his face filled with excitement.

“How about us?” he asked. “What do we do?”

He, Fluke, and Locke were all in his corvette a dozen meters above Amelia. The oddly named “Mr. Jurassic” was an A-ranked OmniLux Group “High Executive” Luxury Corvette.

Both the port and starboard sides each held a dome turret, which were manned by Fluke and Locke on the bridge just behind T-Rex. Each turret had two guns that stuck out of them – all of them B-ranked Ragnarok Armaments “Thunderclap” Plasmaslug Gauss Cannons.

They were certainly above and beyond, especially for a ship that size. No other corvette could withstand a single barrage from all four of its guns.

Like he had mentioned, it was sleek and beautiful and heavily armed and armored. It looked at home next to some quintillionaire’s megayacht, as one of its security vessels. The words “sexy” and “devastating” were both used profusely in its marketing materials.

Some would say obscenely.

“Um, honestly, best thing you can do right now is just keep an eye out,” replied Azrael. “I mean, your guns are serious business. They’d flatten that settlement, Freya and Xylo included, without any problems.”

“That is a problem in and of itself,” countered Raijin. “We cannot lose the opportunity to gather more data or more weapons. But it does not mean an orbital bombardment is off the table. Perhaps as a last-case measure.”

Down below, Freya and Xylo tore through the settlement, and whatever defensive drones were around them. The chaingun and their two machine pistols made quick work of whatever armor was around them.

Not that they lowered their guard – they knew that drones that were sent out to meet them were no doubt on their way back. While their armor could easily resist their bullets, it didn’t mean they were completely invulnerable.

They still had the chance to slip through the gaps and cut into the structure.

Xylo pored over the battlemap as Freya cleared out everything around them. She focused on town hall itself, and noted a few enhanced bio readings on the top floor. She spotted one of those readings peering at them through window slits in the armor.

“Prophet sighted,” she said. “Taking the shot.”

Her shoulder-mounted Sniper Cannon’s aiming mechanisms performed micro-adjustments as she zeroed in on her target. Then, once everything was perfectly lined up, she fired a single round.

A huge 100mm tungsten carbide sabot round shot out with incredible speed. Within fractions of a second, it punctured the top floor of town hall with incredible ease. The force of the shot caused the armor to cave in around both entrance and exit holes moments after it punched through.

As though it was late to the party.

The Prophet himself was torn into bloody chunks by the massive slug, and painted the inside of the top floor a deep red. The bullet itself kept on flying, and impacted into the side of a hill, tens of kilometers away.

She and Xylo came up next to town hall, whose front square was crawling with Hallowed. In fact, they were practically everywhere, like ants. They were forced to hover three meters higher, to avoid being climbed up on.

“We’re in position,” said Freya.

.....

To top it off, drones began to surround them on all sides – a few already began to fire at them.

“Hacking in now to send a halt command,” said Raijin. “Stand by for two minutes. At most.”

She then digitally launched her attack through Freya’s core. She wrestled with the settlement’s Security Intelligence as they fought off the incoming wave of drones.

After exactly 147 seconds, and hundreds of rounds fired in every direction, Raijin sent out the halt command across the board, and everything stopped in their tracks.

“It occurred to me that these Prophets didn’t see this coming,” said T-Rex. “And that really tickles me.”