Chapter 312
Ytakan Scrublands, Archduchy of Rebirth
Darthar-Asaria trade route
The UDC panicked, trying to retarget their point defence. They failed. And in their failure, ended up countering nothing, as another wave of interceptor missiles rose from the So Much For Subtlety.
This time, they struck the enemy battleship. They were mundane warheads. But they were enough, as the wards protecting the massive vessels came down, already chipped down to minimum strength by the constant barrage of Alexandra's Corsairs and their massive guns.
Just in time for the jetpack marines to board.
The entire capital ship shuddered as breaching charges detonated all over the hull, the marines carving a path through the abomination's flesh into its veins and guts. The vessel itself came to a halt as alchemical bombs stripped the armor off of the engines, and thermite charges went into the unprotected mechanisms, melting key components, and causing the entire assembly to shake itself apart.
But far worse were the marines that were going to other ships. They came by entire squads of ten, carrying no weapons, not even armor.
Instead, with straining chains, they lifted the real null warheads.
Glarvistar's ships shone like a beacon in this, as their own wasp like marines, Marakai self sustaining monsters, if Alexandra wasn't mistaken, leapt to intercept them. They succeeded...in taking out those aimed at his ships.
The others made it. And detonated.
Some of the warheads failed.
Most didn't.
Jetpacks died alongside their golems as the lifeless metal plumetted to the ground, the machines still rebooting as they hit the ground with a final crunch, like tin cans meeting a hydraulic press.
But the damage was done. Across the shaken formation, wards were down. And suddenly the light cruisers were vulnerable, their capital ship dying from a thousand cuts as Alexandra's marines blew their way through its insides, blood gushing from the wounds they had carved into its flesh to enter, sometimes carrying the body of a Marakai or a golem, the torn flesh alight with the flash of gunfire as submachine guns and shotguns spoke within the creature.
The enemy escorts attempted to close. But their coordination was shattered, from both the loss of command ships, and the null warhead disrupting whatever communications they had left.
Suddenly, Glarvistar's squadron turned around, followed by almost half of what remained of the fleet, and began running. The remaining ships were left on their instinctual combat protocols, and died under the hail of her guns, serving as a sacrificial rear guard.
Alexandra turned her attention to the close combat ships, that had been preparing for a pincer attack, and smiled.
They were running as well. Running after having almost reached their goal. Unfortunately for them, their bid to distract her with the main fleet had failed. Because Alexandra had AIs to handle it, trusted lieutenants and officers.
Subtelty and Ghost had unleashed hell on the poor bastards. They had brought the Tetsudos forward, once the enemy wall of battle had switched to pursuit armaments and begun attacking the Raiders, and used them as giant tesla weapons, overriding the safeties to pour energy into the enemy vessels that latched onto them.
Two of those light cruisers would never fly again. But neither would half of the close quarters ships. Especially as those that broke through suddenly found themselves dragged to the ground. The arcane tractor beams she had built to deflect the Hammer of Eternity's missiles finally brought to bear. It took three to bring down a single ship, and they pretty much burned out in the effort, but the enemy didn't know that. The simply saw their ships crash onto the ground and immediately be swarmed with golems ladden with satchel charges, flinging themselves into every hatch and orrifice they could find, while other units blew the engines to kingdom come, pinning the ships to the ground. The failing tentacles and acid cannons took down golem after golem, but even they couldn't hold back the tide.
Silence descended upon the battlefield for a brief instant.
Then it was broken by a surprise yelp, and the crack of an explosion, followed by screams of pain from the enemy infantry.
The main army had advanced a great deal. The Cataphracts had taken a great deal of damage, ragged holes in their formation where the field guns, their line of sight to the ships above stolen, had finished what the howitzers had started. But still they kept pace, grimly shadowing the Jakarls as they lumbered forward, almost untouched.
Alexandra grinned as she saw the imp monsters, their point unit wriggling on the grounds. Others stepped forward...and similarly yelped as a metal object launched into the sky, and exploded into a hail of shrapnel.
Yep, they found the minefield, thought Alexandra.
The enemy army hesitated briefly, as their commanding cores did, but in the end continued forward. Alexandra felt some begrudging respect for the other side. Not knowing how extensive the minefield was, it wouldn't be an easy decision to make.
Not that they had much of a choice anyway. Their fleet was annihilated. Alexandra's own had been shredded in the exchange, most of her Raiders and Tetsudos wrecks or worse, but she still had her Corsairs and the So Much For Subtlety. Which, really, was all she needed. Sacrificing the lighter vessels to save her heaviest hitters. This was their only shot. Especially with Glarvistar doubtlessly getting ready to lay the blame at their feet if they failed.
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The Tishaks drove into the minefield, the blue imps dying in droves as their commanders used them to clear a path the old fashioned way. They couldn't even disperse to limit the area of effect, otherwise they would risk missing some of the explosives buried beneath.
Alexandra's grin got wider as they dove through the minefield, and the lumbering Jakarls entered it, scuttling on their bladed legs. She watched as they got closer, a few mines that were missed detonating in their mist, bypassing their wards and wounding the large creatures.
There was one interesting fact about betty mines most people didn't realize. By jumping into the air they did clear their casing to shower an area with shrapnel, similar to airburst artillery rounds, demultiplying their lethality at the cost of stealth.
But they also made sure the explosion's shockwave wasn't absorbed by the ground...and wouldn't cause sympathetic detonations in other explosives.
She made a gesture, and below her, a sapper golem pressed a detonator twice.
An entire section of the enemy formation vanished, as the buried shells and barrels of ammunition detonated. The front ranks of Jakarls came to a belated stop, as they suddenly found themselves separated by a mountain of bodies from the rest of the army.
The plain lit up with gunfire, as the front-most machinegun nests and rifle totting golems opened up at last.
The Jakarls' wards, having already taken a beating from the massive detonation hammering them from behind, shattered under the hail of fire. They tried to charge forward, but there was no momentum, and the ones behind who could have swapped place with them to maintain a barrier of energy were dead.
They were massacred. And the rest of the army trampled in place, as the heavy infantry attempted to navigate the field of craters and stinking offal that was the remnant of their comrades. Despite their bulks, the heavily armored creatures were amazingly agile, getting through it far more quickly than regular infantry would have.
But not quickly enough. By the time they had, the remaining skirmishers, the last of the Tishaks used to clear the minefield, were nothing but a bloody carpet spread on their path.
The charge began. The creatures bellowed, and rushed forward. The centaurs let loose an ululating war cry, and finally let loose the invisible bonds of command that had kept them tied to the infantry, eager to close in with the artillery that had killed so many of their own.
They were met by a hail of gunfire. But the Cataphracts were made of stern, stern stuff, and even when the bullets managed to batter through their incredible tough armor, they simply leapt over the fallen, not even breaking pace.
Cavalry lances were lowered. The swords that would follow were loosened in their scabbards.
And then all hell let loose.
What the other side hadn't realized as they charged was that the field guns had stopped firing.
The centaurs crossed an invisible line, and the field guns opened up again. This time with canister shot.
They fired, one after another, in a carefully choreographed metronome, leaving just enough time for the bodies of the fallen to collapse, to clear the line of fire of the next artillery piece.
It was as if the Cataphracts had run into a brick wall. Before long it became more truth than metaphor, the lance formation forced to break off, veering to the side, their charge broken, a wall of flesh and mangled corpses blocking their way, built by the unrelenting hail of firepower on the other side.
The centaurs tried to move back in, plunge into the flanks...before being repelled by a seemingly impenetrable forcefield, passing within a few meters of the Kaidani Free Companies on both sides, the humans grimly holding their ground, refusing to give in to the attempt to make them break formation, to make them flee.
The Cataphracts wheeled around as they approached the ranks upon ranks of Sarth's infantry, the human army dead silent behind Alexandra's, trying to build back momentum for another charge.
As soon as they were clear of the Kaidanis however, the grenade launchers fired. They walked high explosive and fragmentation rounds up and down the columns, expending their ammo at a ridiculous speed. Among the centaurs some threw down their lances, and began drawing shortbows.
Orders were screamed out, and the Kaidani formation began marching back in lockstep, raising their shields.
The centaurs got the message. They lowered their bows, bitterness clear on their faces, even through their heavy helmets.
They continued on their way, moving to plunge into her frontline. But they were no longer the main threat. By the time they came around, the main clash would have begun.
Alexandra focused on the Jakarls. The monsters rushed forward, dodging around the bodies of those that fell, pushing through a veritable wall of bullets.
And they were making it. Wards failed, some fell, but they were doing it. An infantry frontal charge through machinegun fire.
The Skiras, the UDC's artillery, tried to suppress the machineguns nest. Globes of acid hissed through the air, joining the ones from the handful of feral ships still aloft, though they wouldn't remain so for much longer, the remaining raiders and marines flying away from the dying carcass of the battleship as it crashed between the Kaidani and the rest of the human army.
The spiders did a surprising amount of damage, all things considered. Most of the acid expended itself on wards, but some punched through, acid flowing through firing slits and wrecking the weapons and the golems manning them.
Unfortunately for them, it just gathered Alexandra's attention.
Her howitzers counter-batteried them out of existence in less than thirty seconds.
The golems wielding her new assault rifles opened up on the charging infantry. Then the remaining grenade launchers. And finally the submachineguns. All supported by canister shots from the field guns and a never ending howitzers barrage.
At long last, the infantry neared.
And then her ships opened fire.
With all of the shells and warheads she had used on the enemy fleet, and to lay her various traps, Alexandra was critically short on ammunition. Which is why the barrage of two hundred millimeter shells from the Corsairs was timed to the second.
They carved bloody craters in the front of the enemy formations, slowing them down.
Slowing them for the missiles rising into the sky.
Both sides knew what they contained. Or they should, if they had truly studied all of her battles.
The missiles came back down, and the entirety of the front lines vanished in a wall of flames as burning napalm rained upon the earth.
Alexandra smiled once again.
That smile fell as the enemies refused to run through the fire. And the back ranks of the Jakarls began chanting.
Oh fuck. Was all Alexandra could think.
Waves of power reached out, extinguishing the flames, and their ace now revealed, summoning an impenetrable fog, covering the charging infantry.
She had expected casters. But among the centaurs, not the mass produced monsters. They shouldn't even have been able to cast magic.
But some did, and she snapped out orders.
The smoke blocked out the vision of her golems, even her arcane sensors...but spotters throughout the entire army dropped their weapons, and brought up their rangefinders, and magitech eyes reached out.
The spotters began calling out targets, and the fire resumed. Less accurate, perhaps, but one could do a lot with simple grid coordinates when fighting such large enemies.
Her ballistic missiles began pounding the mages at the back. They were met with lightning bolts, but her weapons jinked all over the skies.
The null warheads reached their targets, and the chanting stopped as the wards collapsed. Though, interestingly, the wall of fog did not. It simply ceased moving forward, yes, but it didn't dissipate.
The Jakarls burst through the mystical cover at the same time as the Corsairs reduced their mages to a greasy stain on the ground.
But they had accomplished their goal.
The Jakarls roared as they collapsed upon her main infantry line, and finally became able to retaliate for all of the horrors that had been visited upon them.