Ravens of Eternity

446 Ragnar?k, Pt 1The massive battle over Dendrus IV continued to whirl around like a giant hurricane. While half of the Einherjar fought against Eris above it, the other half became deeply embroiled in the de Jardin’s fight against the Federation.

As their capital ships brought the fight straight to the front, the rest of their support ships hung back and helped out with the de Jardin ships.

Hundreds of support frigates and cruisers deployed countless remote repair drones and patched up every ship in sight. They were relentless as they went from ship to ship and closed up as many wounds as possible.

The faster the combat and capital ships could rejoin the front, the better. For all their sakes.

Many officers and crew in the de Jardin fleet were already drained from the intensity of the fight thus far. It had been a constant back-and-forth for the past few hours. In that time, their numbers had fallen down to half.

High Admiral Pavir quickly glossed over the battlefield’s current numbers, and sighed deeply at the reports.

—

Typhon Defense Fleet

Devastators: 4

.....

Carriers: 12

Battleships: 23

Cruisers: 90

Destroyers: 307

Frigates: 554

Fighters: 1005

Mecha: 1468

Drones: 2497

Turrets: 1545

–

Imperial Invaders (fleeing)

Devastators: 0

Carriers: 3

Battleships: 0

Cruisers: 17

Destroyers: 78

Frigates: 223

Fighters: 317

Mecha: 375

Drones: 406

–

Federation Invaders

Devastators: 6

Carriers: 10

Battleships: 27

Cruisers: 112

Destroyers: 252

Frigates: 433

Fighters: 1338

Mecha: 1505

Drones: 2971

–

Temple of Discord

Devastators: 5

Carriers: 13

Battleships: 21

Cruisers: 113

Destroyers: 244

Frigates: 537

Fighters: 971

Mecha: 1035

Drones: 2142

–

The Einherjar

Devastators: 3

Carriers: 8

Battleships: 11

Cruisers: 224

Destroyers: 350

Frigates: 590

Fighters: 1227

Mecha: 1235

Drones: 1781

—

Although the de Jardins wore down their enemies greatly, their own losses were equally as staggering.

Their casualties piled up with such insurmountable speed that all felt an encroaching and growing fear of death and defeat. It pressed so heavily on them that handfuls of gunners began to shake and shiver even as they aimed their turrets as best they could. Engineers began to stumble and stutter as they tried to optimize their ships’ systems.

Even many of the officers had been hit by that dread, and they began to second-guess their every decision.

Though these were all small moments in time, all amounted to something deadly enough to chip at the edges of their fleet. In a battle like this, every second mattered.

But no matter how frazzled and drained the de Jardins were, the Einherjar seemed to ride high. Every crew and every officer felt the dire need to win, to survive, no matter the cost. But they were held aloft by Freya’s Fleet Ascendancy.

Her very essence seemed to flow through all of them, and made them feel… indomitable.

All felt sharper, bolder, deadlier. They pushed themselves harder than they ever had before and truly took the fight right to the Federation.

“Permission to perform a breach,” High Admiral Halbrecht requested.

He looked up over the tacmap, at the rest of the officers around him, then rested his gaze on Anali de Jardin. His face was hard as he waited for her decision.

“Depends what you’re breaching to,” Anali replied. “We’ve gotta hold the defense and any move would only take away from that.”

“I want their flagship,” Halbrecht said without hesitation. “We take that down, and their offensive is as good as done. Without their numbers to throw at us, they don’t have a scav’s chance in hell.”

“You’ve got quite a lot of Federation ships to punch through, you know that, right?”

“And we’re all looking forward to it.”

Halbrecht’s expression hardly changed – it was clear he was dead serious about clawing his way through the Feds. Anali nodded in respect and admiration.

“You’ve got the green,” she told him.

A small grin spread across Halbrecht’s face as he turned to the officers on his own bridge.

“The operation is a go,” he told them. “Let’s show these dogs how the Einherjar fight.”

The bridge was filled with the hooah’s of everyone in it, which supercharged their morale significantly.

.....

Halbrecht’s subfleet broke off from Anali’s quickly, and as promised punched right through the Federation’s forward line. They breached it easily through shock and awe, with their bow armor reinforced and their main thrusters maximized.

At the same time as they charged forward, they fired every weapon they had in every direction ahead of them, and utterly decimated any Federation ships in their path. Lances and rail spikes and cluster missiles all worked in tandem to blast their enemies to shreds.

Though they caused great amounts of damage and wrenched huge plates of armor apart, they kept on barreling forward.

They found themselves the target of every Federation ship around them. Their armor was absolutely pelted from every direction, and with every weapon the Federation held.

Beams and shells and slugs and rounds hammered their plating with ceaseless resolve. Most of them scarred and scratched and nicked and dinged the armor, but none got through. Still, it was plenty enough to rack up. The dings and scratches and nicks turned to dents and pock marks in no time, after countless hits and strikes.

But no matter what damage they suffered, Halbrecht’s fleet carried forward undaunted, straight towards Tarvanos’ flagship at the far end of the swirling mass of deadly warships.

While Halbrecht, his officers, and his crew all held their heads high as they charged forward, Tarvanos and his people were in absolute panic. Tarvanos himself shrieked as their ship signatures approached his position, ever closer by the moment.

Though he wouldn’t have normally been afraid of their numbers, especially while stationed in a devastator, he had also seen the amount of punishment his enemies had taken. Or rather, what little punishment they had suffered on their push through their front lines.

“Show those buffoons our broadside and send them a full volley!” he screamed at his officers.

But his orders came far too late. His devastator only began to face one of its broadsides at Halbrecht’s ships before it started to take fire. The massive ship lumbered as it spun slowly and carefully. Although a number of its guns had enough of an angle to fire, none were enough to stop the oncoming storm.

Halbrecht’s fleet opened up everything they had the moment they were in range, and absolutely shredded the devastator. His battleships in particular took the vanguard at a steep angle, and concentrated their fire on the enemy’s visible turrets.

They tore through their armor using their heavy plasma lances and completely shredded the machinery beneath. Entire connectors were severed, which caused a handful of the devastator’s turrets to float out into space. Others simply dropped downward as their motor systems were blasted into useless slag.

The battleships continued down the line as the devastator brought its broadside to bear, and one by one neutralized each and every gun they saw.

And that opened up the rest of Halbrecht’s fleet to completely eviscerate the devastator itself.

Every cruiser and destroyer focused their fire on the already-wounded sections of the devastator itself, and opened them up even further. In truth, all they did was capitalize on the wounds left by the prior suicide attack. Although that attack had initially failed, they left massive scars across its sides.

Scars which Halbrecht’s Einherjar now ripped open. Whatever damage the devastator’s repair system had been able to seal had been completely undone. Plasma lances and rail spikes shattered whatever patchwork they had initially formed, and reopened every wound anew.

A barrage of cluster missiles added the final necessary touches and blew open the devastator all the way. More than that, they caused the ship to lurch out of control. The sheer number of blasts completely threw the massive thing backwards.

The ship itself was in utter disarray – a quarter of its insides had been blown wide open, nearly of third of its crew had been neutralized, and its energy signatures were fading fast. Countless broken circuits sparked as the bodies of hundreds of technicians and engineers were flung out into the vacuum.

High Admiral Tarvanos coughed blood as klaxons rang out all around him. Half of his MFDs had been shattered from numerous impacts, including the one that shattered from his head hitting it. There was a splotch of blood on its cracked screen, which matched the one on his split forehead.

Some of his officers in the stations next to him were doubled over, unconscious. Or maybe even dead – he couldn’t tell.

“Emergency port out!” he shouted out as hard as he could.

He grimaced in pain as a result. It seemed to him that one of his ribs was broken.

“Sir! We can’t just leave our units-” began one of his surviving officers. But he was quickly cut off.

“Do as I say!” screamed the High Admiral. “If we don’t get out of here right now, we’re goddamned dead!”

“Y-yes, high admiral, sir.”

The officer immediately went through his terminal and initiated an emergency teleport.

Outside, all manner of thrusters shot outward at full blast and brought the devastator to a full stop. Its emergency teleport system immediately activated, and an energy lattice surrounded it as the port module charged up.

Tarvanos was practically at the edge of his seat as he watched the 15 second timer count all the way down to nothing. His heart thumped heavily as the seconds dwindled down. But it went completely still and choked in his throat as it flicked to “1”, but stopped.

It hung on his MFDs for numerous seconds, as though it was taunting him. He banged on it with his fist and demanded to know what the hell was going on. And he did so with countless curses in between each word.

“We-we’re getting port jammed,” said another of his remaining officers. “Incoming ships are blocking our exit, somehow!”

“What?!” Tarvanos stammered. “Whose ships? Are they ours? Imperials? Get me ident codes, immediately!”

The officer pored through his MFD, but the information he could glean was garbled, scrambled, and incomplete. They were in a half-dead ship after all, and most of their sensors were offline.

“No identification, sir, but they’re definitely hostile!” said the officer. “They’re coming in through a Hegemony port signal.”

Outside, right where the Einherjar and the Discordians were fighting tooth and nail, space flashed and warped all around them.

And when the galaxy spun back into place, what remained were powerful octahedral ships. The same octahedral ships that the Engineer and the Administrator used, and were now owned by Raijin.

—

Fleet of the Great Wave

Devastators: 5

Carriers: 10

Battleships: 10

Cruisers: 100

Destroyers: 200

Frigates: 500

Fighters: 2000

Mecha: 2000

—

“Apologies for the delay,” Raijin told the Einherjar through comms. “I was practicing how to control an entire fleet on my own. It’s tough, but I’m ready to fight.”

The Einherjar cheered as Raijin’s octahedral ships wove into the chaotic fighting. They watched as half her fleet joined Colviss, Orsethii, and Freya against the Discordian armada. At the same time, the other half descended down into the swirling mass and joined Anali and Halbrecht in fighting the Federation.

The omnitronium-plated ships dove into enemy lines without hesitation and dismantled enemy formations with stunning ease. While their nanoreactive armor layers absorbed and deflected and neutralized most incoming enemy fire, they shot back with blinding white particle beams from whatever direction they wanted.

They ripped into enemy armor with ridiculous ease. It didn’t matter if they were flimsy Federation armor plating, or the advanced armor that the Discordians used. All were rendered useless before Raijin’s Great Wave.

Her beams cut straight through countless enemy ships and severed them in half in the blink of an eye.

Little over a third of the ships in both the Discordian and Federation fleets surrendered quickly after that. They came to a quick halt, deactivated their weapons, and broadcast the universal signal of their capitulation.

A deep fear had dug deep into their cores as they watched the Einherjar and Great Wave fleets eviscerate everything with obscene precision and expertise. What were once their comrades in battle had been removed from existence violently, and in the blink of an eye.

They knew that fighting further only meant their assured destruction. And so, they held up their hands in surrender.