Snippet #2788665

As the missiles came out from the strange countermeasure that had been deployed against them, each on-board targeting AI recognized the friendlies before them.

Each warhead turned end over end, and once again began to sail back towards the formation of enemy ships, their rear plasmic pulse drives engaging, each Tricobalt warhead was once again on course, careening towards the group of ships, while a handful of them moved to the formation of Kalinger drones, to detonate their lethal payload, and tear a hole into the fabric of space, drawing everything around the eddies into the abyss.

"Keep up the pressure!" Commander Soban called out.

"Bring us two seven three carom one nine two!" She shouted, grasping her chair as the Aschen ship banked hard to the right.

The Turbodisruptor batteries of the Ifriit opened fire as the Unglauss turned to deploy it's own missiles. A withering salvo of several hundred brilliant turbodisruptor bolts fired from about a dozen batteries mounted on the upper decks of the Ifrit, just in time for EVE to report that the Ifriit's sensors picked up several drop pods. A testament to the fidelity of the Wide-spectrum scanners of the Fast-Attack cruiser.

"Execute tactical jump." Clea ordered.

Almost a split second before the missiles impacted the Ifriit, she winked out of existence with a flash of light, and reappeared roughly thirty kilometers away from the formation of ships, firing it's weapon batteries in all directions, five fields of fire erupted fourth from the Ifriit, as each 'Ship' be it real or fake, was targeted for a withering barrage from danger-close range.

Immediately below the entering drop pods, and positioned precisely to interrupt their trajectories, a Reverence II winked into existence from seemingly nowhere. The Reverence II 'Far Sight Lost'

Admiral Ceres Genna was the first to arrive on station, stone faced, and watching the display, she brought up targeting data as her hand gracefully manipulated the display.

Dorsal weapon batteries swiveled to life, acquiring each drop pod as it descended, using high-fidelity visual targeting systems, and wide-spectrum targeting data that detected even the slightest anomaly, they confirmed positive weapons lock, and began to open fire, sending precisely calculated turbodisruptor bolts sailing up towards the descending landers.

"Admiral, I've calculated landing trajectories, and I've notified the local Provincial Militia, as well as the Imperial Defense Garrison to be on station." EVE Chimed in

The Reverence II began to open fire, sending up a thick soup of flak, and turbodisruptor fire at the descending drop pods, if they were going to make it to the surface, they were going to take losses in doing so.

Of course they weren't going to reach the surface, the positioning of the Far Sight Lost ensured as much. The Pods would either have to make a serious course correction, or collide with the Reverence II below them.

The AI Banks of the Lidar Grid opted to choose option C, defending itself from the assault, and maintaining the Lidar grid itself. The AI Systems on the planet were networked to the wider Computational grid of the entire Aschen Empire, which meant the resources of Billions of AI banks scattered throughout the Empire were directed to redouble on the assault. It was a minor annoyance, but the redoubling left the drones vulnerable to the intruder program that slipped in from the last Aschen counter-assault.

The Intruder program was specifically designed to infiltrate, and subjugate computer defenses, as well as avoid detection. One by one the drones would start to either behave erratically, or be forced to direct it's assault on their fellow drones, propagating the intruder program through the network.

The curious thing was the Aschen ships were jumping, even though the Planck field was active, however, EVE was sending commands to the watchtower immediately prior to jump, which meant a brief split-second shut-down of the field to facilitate the jumping of the Aschen ships.