Ravens of Eternity

353 The Drums of War, Pt The Hegemony admiral was absolutely awestruck by the destruction that was heaped on his fleet. He was even more awed by the seeming chaos that enveloped all around him, and could only watch haplessly at the Empire’s expert use of their fluid swarm.

It was nothing like he had ever experienced, certainly nothing like any Hegemony or Federation navies he had fought against. Every ship in the fleet was hit on every side, and whittled away as every moment passed.

He could hardly see a tactical way out of their predicament, and had no way to reverse their positions.

Worse, they were beaten out technologically, on every level possible.

He cursed loudly to himself at the disparity between their forces. He knew the Empire was more advanced than them, but didn’t know it was to this extent. It seemed that they had made leaps in tech just in the past few years alone.

And that bode poorly for him and his people.

“Maneuver into a tight wheel formation!” he commanded. “Focus all offensive fire onto the enemy battleship! If they’re out here to erase us, then we’re gonna do our best to hit back as hard as humanly possible!”

“Aye, sir!”

The Hegemony fleet immediately began to maneuver themselves, and almost completely ignored the enemy ships that ripped away at them. They moved into a much tighter, barrel-like formation, but with the battleship right in the middle.

.....

And as they drew closer together, squeezed out the Imperial cruisers and destroyers. Their maneuver forced the Drogar to abandon their concentrated attack on the battleship and instead circled the Hegemony fleet as a whole.

The tight formation also allowed their ships to defend each other from the Imperial fighters, and blasted them with their defensive weapons. The Hegemony destroyers and frigates in particular fired clouds of AA flak right across their cruiser’s hulls, knowing that the friendly damage they did was relatively minimal.

Most pellets simply bounced off their relatively robust Hegemony armor plating. But the chitinous armor on the fighters was far less lucky. The red-hot flak pellets embedded themselves into the chitin, and softened them severely from the heat. Further rounds of destructive flak tore them to pieces.

Many were split apart violently, and crashed into the scarred cruisers they were attacking.

But that was far from the only weapons they used. Heavy plasma beams criss-crossed between the Hegemony ships as they ripped into the multitude of Imperial frigates that scoured their surfaces. Their beams slagged their chitin armor and turrets with equal ease, then followed up with their charged miniguns.

Tiny streaks of blue punched through the softened chitin and ripped through everything else inside. The frigates’ exoframe and interior decks were no match for the relentless stream of minigun slugs. The rain of particle-charged tungsten literally tore through everything they hit, and dug down deep.

Many Imperial frigates burst open as they exploded from the inside, and crashed into whatever cruisers they were circling. They broke apart as they tumbled across the scarred armor plating, and scattered broken chitin segments, parts, and Drogar along the way.

And while their defensive systems ripped apart whatever small ships were plaguing them, their larger weapons bore down against the Imperial battleship.

As they maneuvered, they also faced their port sides at the enemy battleship, and staggered each other to allow half to fire on it.

The Hegemony cruisers and destroyers opened up their barrage with every single available broadside beam, and raked across the Imperial battleship’s chitinous armor. The intense heat quickly dug glowing scars into them, and softened them further the longer they lingered.

Then, the entire outer formation around the battleship began to shift and move. They cycled down, then behind, then up, then back around, like a massive rotating wheel. And in doing so, constantly struck the enemy battleship with one half while giving the other half enough time to cool their guns.

And once the enemy’s chitin began to glow and soften, they fired their cannons and cluster missiles with the same fervor. Countless shells and explosive clusters struck the battleship’s softened chitin, and blew apart massive flakes of armor.

Numerous cracks spidered out all across and caused countless splinters to fly out in every direction.

The Imperial battleship lurched from the sheer amount of kinetic energy it received, though it began to steer itself back along its path almost immediately.

As it did so, the Hegemony cruisers and destroyers ended their wheel maneuver, and peeled away from the center. In doing so, they revealed their own battleship underneath.

And the numerous torpedo tubes it had been preparing the entire time.

The tube operators finalized their aim, then fired in unison. Dozens of fusion ion torpedoes rocketed straight towards the enemy battleship, and slammed into its shattered and scarred chitinous armor. Space warped in all directions as the numerous explosions rocked the ship’s surface.

The Imperial battleship’s incredibly thick chitin armor shattered into fine shards from the combined force. Gargantuan clouds made of chitin shards and dust almost literally covered its surface.

The Hegemony admiral grinned at seeing the destruction before him, as the enemy lurched back even further. He could almost see the soft exoframe behind all the clouds, and just about tasted victory. All they needed to do was fire another volley.

“Fire at will!” he cried out.

His torpedo teams immediately got to work, and began to reload their tubes. Massive 60 meter torpedoes were loaded into them by swarms of antigrav drones while the tube operators primed the systems to fire again.

But while they were reloading, the clouds of dust stopped dissipating. A flash of reddish energy swept from the outside in, which immediately caused much of the shattered material to return to the battleship.

Almost like they were being magnetically attracted back inwards.

They began to pile up all over the surface, though the chitinous dust didn’t recombine or repair in the slightest. It still remained dust, though tightly compacted by whatever energies drew them inwards.

The admiral tsk’d in annoyance, then quickly ordered everyone to fire everything they had.

His fleet quickly adjusted their formation and began to stretch themselves out. At the same time, they fired absolutely every weapon they could at the battleship. Their beams, cannons, missiles, and torpedos all shot out and careened towards their target.

And as they did so, another flash of energy swept from the Imperial battleship. This time however, it went from the inside to the outside. Then, it extended out a few hundred meters away from its surface and caught all the munitions the Hegemony fired with one massive antigrav field.

The beams passed through with absolute ease, of course, and they struck the powdered chitin without problems. Though this only caused the dust to simply melt back into each other, and re-strengthen the chitin.

The superheated plasma did little more than fuse the chitin dust back together, and helped the Imperial battleship restore its armor plating.

Everyone on the Hegemony fleet was stunned at what they were seeing, and were forced to cease their attack. It wasn’t just the beams repairing their enemy’s ship – it was the sight of their own munitions floating helplessly in the antigrav field. It was as though they were trapped.

But they didn’t remain trapped for long.

Another burst of energy swept out from the Drogar battleship and flung the Hegemony’s munitions back at them. And with far more energy than what was used to propel them in the first place.

The Hegemony’s own tungsten shells slammed into their armor, and dented them heavily where they were hardest. They punched right through where they were weakest. They caused multiple dents and tears that simply ripped into their armor.

The cluster missiles didn’t break open early, and instead detonated fully on impact. Every single cluster inside them exploded with such concentrated force that they practically blew apart the smaller ships.

Any that hit the myriad destroyers and frigates tore their armor right off in entire sheets. They were easily wrenched away and blew apart whatever else was underneath – structure and systems and crew.

Some were torn open so violently that they were turned inside out before they themselves exploded.

The fusion ion torpedoes were flung back towards the Hegemony battleship, though their detonators were wisely deactivated by the admiral. And since their contents were benign without any atomic reactions, they simply bounced off their thick armor helplessly. They didn’t even leave a single scratch.

Unfortunately, right at the exact moment that they bounced off, multiple thin orange beams shot out from the Drogar battleship’s defensive beam emplacements. They fired with exacting precision and shot into each of the torpedoes, right where their arming triggers were located.

There, the beams initiated fusion reactions that cascaded throughout the torpedoes themselves.

Then, they erupted right next to the Hegemony battleship. The overwhelming force blasted their armor plating apart, and literally wrenched them off their connectors. The entire ship was thrown back with such force many crew inside were knocked into nearby walls and broke their bones on impact.

Even worse, the explosions were so potent and so close that they even reached into the structure below the armor, and blew open multiple massive holes in the hull. Parts and modules and systems and circuits were thrown in every direction.

Crew members who weren’t torn to shreds were flung out to the cold void where they froze and suffocated to death.

On the bridge of the Imperial battleship, an imposing Drogar with dark blue-gray scales stood in the very center. He bared his sharp teeth with delight at the destruction that his ship had wrought.

Inset into the floor in multiple rows of semi circles were all of the terminals and the technicians who manned them. Though they had their own screens, their output was primarily projected into the air above their terminals, so that they were in the air surrounding the center.

And on the circular walls surrounding them was a single wraparound screen that was split off into multiple live feeds from across the fleet.

“Swarmchief Leroth,” said one of the technicians, “The initial report on Damage Inflicted is ready.”

“Mhm,” the swarmchief replied. “I’m more interested in the damage received report. Is that available yet?”

“Just finished, swarmchief,” said another tech. “Data is up now.”

As the tech spoke, the projection field above him shimmered slightly as its data updated.

Leroth walked closer to it, looked the data up and down, then nodded in satisfaction.

“Seems our defenses are working as intended,” he said. “Are we mandated to make any further tests?”

“No, swarmchief.”

“Very well. Send it off back to Central. Raw, so they can digest it all in full. Now, let’s get rid of these apes, yes? We’re certainly not needing them any longer.”

“Yes, swarmchief.”