The void burned with twin suns, their violent light spilling across the eastern horizon, casting jagged shadows over the battlefield below. For a brief moment, the chaos of war was laid bare before me a shifting, churning mass of fire and steel, where machines, clones, and drones clashed in a relentless struggle for dominance.
I let my mind sink into the rhythm of battle, processing the layers of carnage unfolding across multiple fronts.
On the ground, an armoured column of APCs was obliterated in a synchronized strike. My Hexapods rained down concentrated plasma fire, their multijointed legs bracing against the recoil as they shredded enemy armour.
Before they could reposition, low-flying enemy drones streaked in from the horizon, launching a wave of missiles. The detonation sequence was rapid fire and concussive shockwaves swallowing my Hexapods in a brutal chain reaction.
Nearby, a group of clones made a desperate stand, their formation breaking apart as my heavies pushed through a breach carved open by a group of fallen Striders. My assault drones swarmed forward, using the wreckage of the downed striders as cover, weaving between mangled corpses and broken barriers to close the distance.
Overhead, the Mosquito drones engaged in a furious aerial war, turning the sky into a maelstrom of motion and destruction. It was a battle of sheer numbers, each swarm adapting, countering, overwhelming, retreating. For a fraction of a second, I took it all in, memorizing the patterns, calculating efficiency, and adjusting strategies in real-time.
But part of my mind remained fixated on the twin suns burning in the void.
Another ship, another crew that had chosen annihilation over capture. It was a pattern now, any vessel faced with the certainty of falling into my hands picked self-destruction.
I exhaled slowly. A bullet to the brain would have sufficed. They could have at least left the ship intact.
As the radioactive infernos raged, I tracked the last surviving enemy vessel, its engines flaring at maximum burn as it fled west, desperate to escape the fate of its fallen comrades.
My intelligence sub-mind projected an immediate response, twelve remaining enemy assault ships had begun a rapid burn toward my position, their movements tightening into a defensive formation. They were linking their defences into a denser network, trying to intercept my attack before it reached them.
My missiles were already closing in. Three hundred and sixty Star Lance missiles streaked through the void, each one locked onto its target. Twenty-eight of my ships adjusted their trajectories, moving to intercept, pushing their engines to the limit to close the distance before the enemy could reinforce their defences.
On the encrypted comms, I intercepted frantic orders. The Xaldrin’s Wake, the true prize, was preparing to retreat, its massive cargo holds rapidly filling with Nullite.
Around it, their troop transports scrambled to complete their loading sequence, while three enemy assault ships moved into a defensive stance shielding the behemoth.
The battlefield transformed into a storm of high-speed calculations. Seconds stretched into eternity.
The enemy counterattack came in full force. A massive barrage of missiles erupted from their formation, each warhead angling toward my ships in a carefully coordinated web of destruction. At the same time, their laser defences ignited, beams of concentrated energy slicing through the void, forming a near-impenetrable lattice of light and death.
I felt the strain immediately.
For the second time since this war had begun, I felt the edges of my mind pressing against their limits. The sheer complexity of the engagement overwhelmed my mind and the war sub-mind as we worked at maximum capacity, directing hundreds of thousands of units across multiple fronts, while we struggled to compensate for the increasing chaos.
The war sub-mind buckled under the calculations. The sheer scale of the engagement pressed against my limits the need to control my ships, direct the drones, and manipulate the battle in real-time, it was beyond anything I had encountered before.
But I could not allow hesitation.
I forced myself deeper into the calculations, redirecting my missiles in real-time. Weaving, breaking, bluffing, every movement had to be unpredictable, every adjustment calculated to avoid the lattice of defensive fire while still closing the distance to strike.
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Their lasers cut through. Fifty-six warheads were lost.
The remaining missiles split into chaotic, erratic trajectories, confusing enemy targeting systems.
The enemy missile swarm closed in.
I adjusted again, angling my ships to disrupt their spread, launching countermeasures while my ships danced through the firestorm. The entire void became a three-dimensional chessboard of death, where a single miscalculation meant destruction.
I had no choice but to push harder.
The battlefield was evolving beyond anything I had ever fought before.
The war sub-mind processed enemy movements in real-time, using the etheric plane to project models in my mind.
Their strategy was clear, to create a dense, interlocking shield of counter-missiles and laser fire, turning the void into a lethal web of interception.
Three hundred and eleven Star Lance missiles continued surging forward, with unpredictable flight patterns to disrupt enemy targeting solutions.
The sheer complexity of their shifting defensive network forced me to dedicate more processing power than ever adjusting each warhead in real time, micro-corrections made in fractions of a second.
I focused my attack on the seven most dangerous ships, the ones with the highest kill ratios. Their defences were tight, their movements more coordinated.
Three hundred and elven became two hundred and sixty-six as I lost more Star lance missiles
The enemy adjusted their strategy. Missile fire shifted, prioritizing my warships as they entered range. They weren’t taking any risks. After seeing their ships erupt into fireballs from earlier boarding actions, they had abandoned any thoughts of close-quarters combat.
Hundreds of counter-missiles streaked outward, detonating in overlapping patterns, unleashing expanding clouds of high-velocity shrapnel.
My fleet surged forward, splitting up, engines flaring as they adjusted vectors to dodge incoming fire. Laser lances and missile strikes carved into my ships, leaving them burning and bleeding. The expanding debris field made things worse, micro fragments ripped into hulls, breaching compartments, killing or wounding my boarding parties.
I lost eleven ships before I saw an opening.
With their formation and their defensive grid stretched, I pushed my remaining missiles forward.
Two hundred and sixty-six became two hundred and one before they broke through.
Direct impacts. Plasma and acidic compounds detonated across enemy hulls, melting armour, shattering weapon platforms, and crippling main thrusters.
The seven priority ships took the worst of it, hulking forms gutted, venting atmosphere, their crews scrambling in panic. The remaining five, however, had intercepted every last missile, emerging nearly untouched.
The enemy was in disarray. Their fleet was fractured, no longer executing coordinated orders. Individual captains panicked, each prioritizing their survival over the war effort.
My ships broke through the initial confusion, forced into brutal close-quarters combat. Bone dart launchers spat streams of hyper-accelerated acidic and plasma projectiles.
The enemy retaliated rail guns thundered, their hypersonic slugs tearing through the void with devastating force, while plasma lances seared the darkness, leaving behind superheated trails of ionized gas. My warships, already battered from the missile exchange, were forced to weave, dodge, and retaliate in a desperate bid to maintain offensive pressure.
The battle became a test of reflexes and strategy, a deadly game where even the smallest miscalculation meant instant obliteration.
I lost the first ship instantly.
A concentrated barrage of rail gun fire pierced the forward plating, each slug ripping through the hull like paper, breaching compartment after compartment before the vessel detonated in a silent explosion, its plasma core rupturing.
The second ship tried to evade, but plasma fire found its mark, cutting across the dorsal side and melting armour into slag. It rolled uncontrollably, engines sputtering as fire consumed its internals. A final rail gun round punched through its plasma core, and the warship vanished in a blinding flash.