Faced with a difficult situation, Tara showed her skills.
“Defensive formation!” Tara scanned the battlefield, which wasn’t going well. “Templar! Activate your emergency warping systems. Get to safety as soon as your life is threatened. Too many of our brethren have already fell! Don’t join them.”
The carriers moved slightly and made it certain that they would get an angle to jump away.
Tara gave out a psionic order to her mothership. The crystal inside the mothership glowed just like the tal’darim mothership, but the result was quite different.
Everything in the area holding the tal’darim fleet slowed down. Fighters were at the speed of snails. The carriers were practically stopped. The entire tal’darim fleet was rendered useless for a while.
Tara didn’t think of attacking when the tal’darim were held in place. The time warps couldn’t distinguish between friend or foe, and everything in the range would be slowed down. Both the Daelaam ships and the tal’darim ships would be trapped by the ability. She just hoped to slow down the tal’darim for a while. Even if she couldn’t buy enough time for her protecting subject to escape she could still stall until the effect of the vortex disappears and decrease her disadvantage.
Plus, not all tal’darim were held in place by the time warp. A portion of the fighters that were tangling with the Daelaam fighters were spared, from the time warp at least. However, their fate was even worse. Without support or reinforcements, these light fighters were slaughtered to the last.
“Templar cowards. What can you do without your tricks?” Ma’lash made a vicious comment as he saw his fighters being taken down. Thanks to his astonishing psionic power, Ma’lash himself was able to break free of the mothership’s ability, but there was nothing he could do by himself. What could he do by himself? Jump up and start slashing on the Daelaam ships? He needed to wait, but he knew the longer he waited the less prize he would get after taking over the place.
Meanwhile, as the two protoss fleets were fighting each other in space, a small group of covert ops terran were landing on the planet below in a special ops dropship...
A few minutes passed. The effect of the vortex disappeared and the Daelaam fleet was full again, but the fleet was unable to utilize the effect of the time warp, at least not immediately.
“All units get into superior position.” The Daelaam ships stopped, but the fighters reached a point right outside the effect of the time warp, and then they waited.
When the tal’darim got out of time warp, they were more than surprised to see a sea of enemy ships before them. The tal’darim units were frozen in place, which meant for the tal’darim pilots one second they were a safe distance away from the enemies, and the next second they were right next to a group of enemy fighters whose pilots had their fingers on the trigger. They weren’t prepared for that.
The tal’darim comm was immediately overwhelmed by a wave of surprised voices as the Daelaam unleashed their firepower on the tal’darim with the element of surprise. Since the Daelaam were able to freely position their units without the fear of being retaliated, they had a severe upper hand.
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Two scouts got to the defenseless right side of a destroyer, which never would’ve happened if the tal’darim could fight back. As anti-armored vessels destroyers were supposed to be covered by interceptors and light fighters. Their output was significant, but their defenses weren’t the best. When did the tal’darim ever care about their warriors? As a result, the valuable destroyer fell to a around of anti matter missiles.
The destroyer was just a start. Interceptors were destroyed by interceptors. Phoenixes and scouts were taken down by surprise before they could use their speed. Carriers were being targeted down. Even a mothership suffered several heavy blows from a small squad of daring phoenixes.
Seeing two tal’darim scouts crashing into each other as they tried to dodge the Daelaam fire, Ma’lash’s patience was gone. He had had enough mind bothering things. First the terran battlecruiser, and now this? He had three times the enemy ships, and yet he was being beaten up.
“Unleash all fighters! I want every single in combat! Destroyers, move forward and target enemy capital ships at all cost! Send out warp prisms and board the enemy ships! You!” Ma’lash roared as he pointed to the pilot of the mothership. “Move forward!”
The tal’darim capital ship moved forward, firing its purifying beams at the Daelaam ships in the process. Seeing their Highlord in combat himself, the tal’darim were inspired.
The tal’darim were the best warriors in the galaxy. Their courage and zealotry in battle was not to be undermined. The weak and those without courage couldn’t live long in the brutal world. At first they were just taken by surprise, but now that their Highlord had given them an order, a direction, they were able to fight back
A squad of three tal’darim phoenixes darted through the storm of projectiles with their expert skills. Their target was the Daelaam flagship.
They knew the danger, but they also knew taking down the enemy flagship would be the most glorious thing in a battle. And so they striked.
The phoenixes acted swiftly, firing while moving. They managed to dodge most of the attacks, and those that hit merely caused a ripple on the plasma shield. They got close to the Daelaam mothership and opened fire.
And that was the end of their daring journey. The ion cannons of phoenixes had almost no effect on the mothership’s almost impenetrable plasma shield. The three fighters found themselves at the center of the enemy fleet, and they were obliterated.
The death of three phoenixes were an insignificant part of the battle. In fact, the center of the battle was where the three tal’darim motherships advanced. Motherships were usually used as capital ships, but their strength wasn’t to be undermined. It was shown as the giant capital ships moved forward as if they were taking a walk on a sidewalk rather than pushing forward in a heated battlefield. Most of the attacks from Daelaam interceptors, phoenixes, and scouts were rendered useless. The only things that could do damage were the Daelaam motherships and void rays, but they were focused by tal’darim fighters.
Tara saw the battle wasn’t going well. She had taken the tal’darim by surprise, but there was just so much enemy ships. The Daelaam were outnumbered 3:1. The slight advantage she had was quickly wiped out by the numbers of the tal’darim.
Two of the Daelaam capital ships had already been forced to warp away from the battle. They had taken too much damage, and if they stayed they would die. The templar pilots insisted on remaining and fighting till the end, but Tara was determined. The Golden Armada couldn’t afford to lose another 12 ships.
A tal’darim war prism approached the mothership under the cover of fighters. The fighters attracted the attention of the defenses while the war prism transformed into phasing mode on top of the Daelaam mothership. Fifteen scarlett figures started to solidify in the flagship. They were about to join the battle and tear the ship apart from inside when the warp prism suddenly exploded from pair of anti matter missiles. The war prism was gone, and the warping of the units were cancelled as well due to the lack of force field.
And yet the war prism signaled the imminent victory of the tal’darim.