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.
