On fast approach, four contacts moved as one towards the Cybran beachead. They skimmed over the ground, two breaking off to continue their inbound vector, kicking up spray as they circled into the waters. In their wake, a distant contact was deploying, readying for its part in the assault. Dark Rain was with the Avorian response, and they had decided to send top of the line units as their response.
Armored Intelligent Mechs (A.I.M.s), all, the two approaching on direct vectors were Wildcat and Dragon Furor. Wildcat, a Rifle-class A.I.M., carried a long, menacing rifle in its hands, slit optics glowering as it began to paint targets, readying to fire. Dragon, Claymore-class, was its larger cohort, a quad mech, thus far relying on its thrusters to move the heavy, intimidating bulk of the mech, stylized after its namesake. Wildcat began to lag behind Dragon, the latter beginning to extend the heavy barrels of its cannons. The Rifle turned its head slightly, catching sight of the other pair. With both, munitions prepared to cut the air downrange.
Sparrow was a mass of blades, sharp edges gleaming the light reflected off the spray in its wake. Wakizashi design, it was almost skeletal in size, weaving circles around its partner, Fisher Hawk. Moderately armored, the aptly named Saber A.I.M. held in one fist a gunblade, keeping focused on the target. Missiles slid to ready position, almost as if eager to begin the killing.
And in the distance behind them all, hydraulic rams slammed into the earth to anchor the bulky, boxy form of Wizel. From its blocky body, very long barrels extended in mass, like a small stand of tree rising to nearly 40ft in the air. Smaller, hovering nodes detached, floating off on counter-grav drives to move to locations around the target zone with startling speed. These fed data right back to the Lancer, its multitude of very long range howitzers adjusting for windage, range, and targets. Siloes began to open.
All five seemed to be waiting for something, holding their fire and their fury.
And then eight beams lanced the air like a second sun, throwing a blinding glare into the sky. At their origin in the Astral Sea, steam plumed hundreds of feet in the air, vacuums caused by the passing of the titanic bolts were rapidly filled by water, hiding once more the lurking behemoth of the Apophis. The octad of shots pierced the air and the distance between the surface of Terra and the ships in orbit in all but a second, delivering crushing blows of 50 gigatons/second into the vessels launched from the Cybran base. Designed to simply shatter shields and pummel through armor like paper, the mighty bolt of the Abyss cannon was a force to be reckoned with.
And as one, the thunder began. Wizel began its long range bombardment, slamming shell after shell of hyperkinetic fury downrange to deliver heavy, 50mm tungsten slugs slamming into the larger structures and vehicles of the Cybrans. In their wake, dozens of missiles began to rise, splitting into smaller and smaller micromissiles until dozens became hundreds, all targeting points of congestion of troops and materials. Wildcat, Dragon, and Saber began to fire off, the former pairs heavy rounds simply aimed at concentrations of targets, screaming sonic booms as they hurtled from railcannons at Mach 8 speeds, each adding more to the payload of missiles as they launched splitter torpedoes from their internal magazines. Sparrow rammed its thrusters up several notches, sprinting inwards and weaving a dextrous dance of evasion, sparks flying from its bladed form as is sought to enter the fray with flashing blades, roaring short range guns, and sprays of blood and bodies.
However, the rounds fired missed the lone figure by substantial margins, striking for vital targets with uncanny precision. For each of the pilots were engaged in a simultaneous neural link with each A.I.M.s onboard AI, forming a union of man and machine that communicated instantly between each unit, and possessed the reaction times of the AIs involved in the attack. The only limiting factor was each A.I.M.s own functional capabilities, and they were designed to be the most mobile, agile, and armed mechanized strike unit in deployment.
Shields flared around the A.I.M.s as laser impacts hit, and instantly their responses were known, powerful boosters thrusting them in complex evasive maneuvers. Their returning fire was witheringly accurate, attention shifting from the inert drones to active firing units, hammering hyperkinetic slug after hyperkinetic slug to their targets, trailing thundering sonic booms the whole way. Sparrow quickly readjusted its inbound vector, darting back and forth over the waves, advancing ahead of its squad on thrusters tuned for speed.
Fisher Hawk followed in its wake, trading the headlong blitz of Sparrow for a angled route to flank its partner. With the Cybran force having cleared out of civilian threatened areas, drew forth a second gun-blade, unleashing searing balls of plasma bolts from the plasma cannon built into its twinned blade. These secondary weapons traded speed for power, erupting in gouts of solar-hot plasma on contact, while an overhead rail extended and settled into place, hurling rapid fire penetrating shells, each shell containing air-ignition fuel-bombs to scatter, should they penetrate the armored hulls of the Cybran Vessels.
Wildcat and Dragon veered course, the bulky Claymore unit accelerating massively with twin tails of prolonged boosters, kicking up a wall of water to either side as it raced after its support pair, side mounted tomahawk launchers opening and loosing torrents of fast, "lock and blitz" rockets, even as it changed ammunitions from impact to HVAP DU rounds, the thunder of its cannons growing ever louder. The Rifle wafted airborne, bringing to bear multiple long rifle barrels to add more weight to its precision firepower from hull mounted heavy rifles and cannons. Additionally, it opened its more basic artillery ports, launching on skybound trajectories lighter explosive shells to rain down on the Cybran vessels.
Wizel, for its part, was mainly just adjusting its long range bombardment, but was also extending from its frame inner box-like protrusions, each one opening at least half a dozen silo ports. The only unit cleared to carry heavy missile armament, the Wizel carried several hundred Jericho reaction-warhead missiles, which it now loaded en masse, carefully targeted with imaging and signature guides, and let loose.
Each missile raced across the ground for nearly a kilometer before curving towards the heavens, reaching a height of 6kms before pausing to turn, holding position on the counter-grav drive that had brought them thus far. Carefully, they aligned to their targets, the primary Cybran warships firing on the A.I.M.s and cruisers, before unfurling racks of smaller missiles, the prow of each missile extending as the inner warhead prepped for launch. Seven to each launch, each targeting its own point on the enemy fleet. What was initially hundreds became thousands, as powerful thrusters ignited and sent them racing across the sky, brilliant stars with a deadly mission.
Each warhead created a reaction, splitting apart the atomic structure of the target by generating a specific magnetic field that drew away the molecular bonds. Their explosive power was nonexistent, and individually, the damage they wrought was minimal, opening fair sized holes in a target. But stacked in the numbers they were, and with the precision of the targeting queue delivered into their computers from the Wizel, there was a margin of surviving impacts to allow for advanced degradation of the enemy hulls to initiate complete structural collapse, and a secondary margin to generate substantial enough collapse to generate casualties in the Cybran fleet's numbers.
The courses of the four assaulting A.I.M.s adjusted accordingly, not overtly holding back from close range engagment, but there was the hint of a stall in their attack. The timing between events was superb, however, the wide-band, instantaneously communication between the mechs operating on the lower frequencies, the bursts of binary communication virtually ghosts amidst the static.
RPG
