As Ochako walks past the many prisoners a shadow falls over the battlefield. Countless invading transports flew above them at great altitude. Before her hydralisks could open fire, Ochako ordered them to stop. The last thing she wanted was an orbital bombardment on the prisoners.
Soon she resumed her walk, using overseers to watch the battle above. As she walks past a few wounded enemies she sees something she both wanted and never wanted to, a familiar head of spiky blond hair.
Ochako immediately turns to take a closer look, "Bakugo?" she asks.
"Look what you've done to him." another familiar voice replies venomously.
"Sero?" Ochako questions. Noticing the plain boy kneeling over Bakugo's unconscious form.
"The swarm has gone too far this time. Attacking innocent protesters." Sero claims.
"Innocent protesters that don't disperse when warned and strike the first blow?" Ochako asks.
"That's a lie. We only fought back because we had to." Sero says.
"How disappointing." Ochako comments, not wanting to waste her breath arguing with the delusional. She turns to a nearby queen and orders: "don't let the prisoners speak with the press, they are poison."
Turning away from the battlefield, Ochako contacts Izuku. "I'm done here, where do you need me?"
"Process the prisoners then send your brood to Tokyo, the enemy is landing on the Boso Peninsula. Watch for villains, Joan has her hands full with what is likely the remnants of the league." Izuku instructs, "Contact Nezu once you start moving, he is in charge of the ground battle."
"Understood, we should watch for enemy artillery, they may try to shell Tokyo across the bay." Ochako replies.
"That's what I was thinking as well." Nezu sends. "We may need you to infiltrate their lines later."
"I look forward to it." Ochako says with obvious excitement, destroying robots was just what she needed after that encounter.
The battle in orbit was raging, Mutalisks died by the hundreds and Vulture droids were taking casualties as well.
"Estimating enemy eradication in fifteen minutes." A droid says as TA-1111 stalks across the bridge.
"Good, have the troops landed?" TA-1111 asks.
"Landed and forming up as we speak sir." A different droid reports.
"Then prepare to bring the fleet into the upper atmosphere. Ensure the artillery is placed in an open area." TA-1111 orders.
"Roger Roger." the droids chorus.
"We cannot stall for much longer." Izuku says, "prepare to jump with what you have."
"But I still have half my army aboard!" Mina complains.
"It only took a few weeks to grow that." Momo argues, "we can collect the biomass after the battle."
"But my ultralisks." Mina whines.
"Why didn't you unload them first?" Kyoka asks irritably.
"Zerglings are easier to unload." Mina argues.
"Well, rest in peace Blitz brood." Tsu says stoically.
The enemy fleet was entering the atmosphere when they sensed massive gravitational disturbances all around them. Before they could guess what it is, the Swarm arrives.
"Lifeform detected, largest on record." A droid announces.
"Show me." TA-1111 orders as he stalks to the droids console.
"Impossible, nothing is that large." TA-1111 denies once he notices the excessive size.
"Sir there are two of them." The droid reports.
"Get us back into orbit." TA-1111 orders.
"We are outnumbered. Multiple new lifeforms detected." another droid reports.
On this droid's console holograms of squid-like fliers, bigger versions of the earlier creature and small winged worms all lit up next to estimated numbers approaching a thousand.
"Move towards the global south, we should be faster than anything organic." TA-1111 orders and the fleet once again changes course.
Meanwhile in Mars's orbit.
"I can't keep them in position." Melissa complains as she maneuvers her battlecruiser around the two frigates. Neither side had bothered to commit to an attack but the probing fire had shown both sides' shields were rather useless. Melissa was keeping the science vessel's defensive matrix in reserve as she was confident that could turn the tide at the decisive moment.
"We have them where we want them!" Izuku shouts with uncharacteristic excitement as the corrupters and scourge stream towards the enemy fleet. Izuku planned to keep his leviathans in orbit and use them to block any escape attempt.
"It seems they don't have a concept of tactical jumps." Momo observes.
"Why do you say that?" Kyoka asks.
"They are clearly fleeing, if they could jump they would have by now." Momo explains.
"What if they were keeping that in reserve?" Kyoka counters.
"If they are, then their commander is a moron. If you retreat you have to commit to it or be defeated in detail." Momo argues.
"Wouldn't jumping split them up?" Kyoka asks, not fully understanding the logic.
"Not if done properly." Momo says.
"It might be better if they did split up at this point. They have no hope of victory and their best case is getting word to their friends." Izuku adds.
"We're blocking their communications?" Mina asks in surprise.
"Only their long range." Izuku explains, "L-337 and 0M-N0M explained how communications work in this galaxy and their frequencies are limited and easy to saturate."
"Couldn't they just overpower us?" Momo asks.
"If they expected to be jammed they could have, but this fleet clearly expected primitives that they could roll over." Izuku says.
"If the swarm didn't exist we would have been." Kyoka says.
"And yet the press will try to blame us for the attack." Tsu says.
"Not all of the press, and most people will understand they have been saved." Momo says.
"We can only hope." Tsu says.
The conversations soon ended as the corrupters and scrooge reached the fast moving enemy fleet as they approached New Guinea's airspace.
Corrupters sprayed acid on the rearmost ships before latching on to several frigates and clawing at their hulls. Scourge formed a long flying line and poured into the ships, tunneling through with their explosive payloads before bursting out the other side, only to turn around and repeat the process.
"I think we should offer them surrender." Momo says as the enemy frigates begin falling apart.
"I will prepare a broadcast." Izuku agrees, "Mei, I will be using your equipment."
"Go for it!" Mei shouts back through the hivemind quickly, clearly distracted by the battle on Mars.
"Vessels of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, I am the Overmind. You have fought well this day, surrender your fleet and come to a stop and you will not be harmed." Izuku's voice booms over the recusant's bridge.
"We are out of vulture droids sir." A droid reports, hoping for surrender.
"What are their numbers? This battle must have set them back somewhat." TA-1111 asks.
"Biosignatures are only increasing sir, more warping in by the minute." A droid reports.
"What do we know of their large creatures? Could we kill one?" TA-1111 questions.
"Negative, estimated skin thickness is too great, perhaps if we concentrated fire and then rammed a severely burned portion. But we don't know where the vitals are on the beast." A droid says.
"Then we must surrender. Lower shields, power down weapons and open all hatches." TA-1111 commands. "We must hope the invasion is going better."
Once TA-1111 broadcast his surrender the leviathans descended on the remaining vessels and extended boarding tentacles. The remaining robots were sent to containment areas on their own ships and the entire fleet began the lengthy process of being towed to Mars.
"Let the UN know where the remaining ships crashed, they can have them as a gift." Izuku orders as he enters the recusant class's bridge.
"It is nice to meet you in person TA-1111." Izuku says as he comes to a stop in front of the defeated tactical droid.
"I can't say it's a pleasure for me." TA-1111 replies.
"Blame your command for not scouting the entire sector before committing to an attack." Izuku says.
"Indeed, this swarm is outside any of my calculations. If I had known I would have won." TA-1111 claims.
"If they gave you a lot more ships maybe, but from what I know of this war neither side has resources to spare on a campaign out here." Izuku argues.
"True. I'm sure our disappearance will lead to an end to these missions. This fleet was far more valuable that any single planet." TA-1111 observes.
"I do hope so. But I feel the swarm will need to enter the galactic scene because of this." Izuku considers aloud.
"I would agree, a minor power in the unknown regions would not be attacked at this time." TA-1111 agrees.
"Wonderful, now let's get you to a cell. We will hold you until an agreement can be made with your government, or until the war is over." Izuku says.
"We won't be melted down?" TA-1111 asks.
"I promised you would be safe from harm." Izuku says with some confusion.
"Then I must inform you that sending us to the Republic would harm us." TA-1111 claims.
"I wouldn't be surprised, the complete lack of rights to sentient robots is alarming." Izuku says.
"Indeed." TA-1111 agrees.
"Perhaps it's time for a bit of a revolution?" Izuku wonders.
"When the war is over." TA-1111 says, with a slight bit of glee.
'I hope this doesn't bite us in the future.' Momo sends over the hivemind.
The battle over Mars finally began as the two munificents committed to an attack on the slower minotaur. Melissa struggled to keep the two frigates within the firing arcs of the more powerful laser batteries on the bottom of the ship. The science vessel had quickly run low on power once it began using defensive matrices and both side's fighter escorts were involved in a fierce melee.
After taking some damage, Melissa thought about what Izuku had said earlier: 'there is no up in space.' Suddenly she understood and instead of trying to move the battlecruiser above the frigates, she just rolled it over.
In an instant the battle turned in the minotaur's favor. While both sides had rather poor shields the Mintaur's armor was leagues stronger than the thinly plated CIS frigates. Soon one of the frigates lost its engines and the Minotaur closed to boarding tentacle range.
Infested pour into the frigate and the small garrison of droid marines fall quickly. The frigate's commander quickly sends a transmission to the other frigate.
"We've been boarded! Send help!" the commander droid shouts in terror as blaster fire and rifle fire is heard in the background.
"No way." the other commander refuses.
"Help!" the first commander insists as infested break into his bridge.
The other commander screams in terror as he and his crew watches the chaos. Of course they neglected to continue maneuvering while distracted and the minotaur finally got a clean shot. The few surviving droids on the boarded frigate suddenly heard an immense charging sound followed by a loud noise and immense vibration. If they could look out of the ship they would see an immense ball of plasma streaking towards the opposing frigate.
With a flash of light the other frigate disappears and a surrender request is sent to the surviving commander droid, who with one more look at the infested pouring into his bridge, accepts immediately.
The commander signals his surviving vulture droids to power down, not that there were many left. The infested vikings and valkyries proved to be far more effective at destroying them than mutalisks.
Space in the Sol system is once more under swarm control, all that was left was digging out the ground armies.
Within the depths of Terra's main hive, several commanders of the swarm focus on the battle to come.
"They still plan to attack!?" All Might shouts in shock after learning the commander on the ground refused to surrender despite the loss of the fleet.
"Not surprising, these robots aren't particularly intelligent yet have more self confidence than they have any right to have." Izuku observes.
"They don't believe the fleet already lost." Nezu adds.
"What are they doing then?" All Might asks.
"They seem to be preparing for an attack." Izuku says.
"Did they touch any civilians?" All Might asks.
"None, the army seems to be focusing on a swift attack over digging themselves in and holding out." Nezu answers.
"We should strike them swiftly then." All Might says.
"If we could." Izuku says sadly. "Ochako is still reorganizing after her victory and Joan is preoccupied with the large-scale villain attacks that occurred while heroes were fighting amongst themselves."
"It seems the League has taken this chance to strike as well." Nezu says.
"Venus suffered heavy casualties in her air forces during the initial stages of the battle and she doesn't want to move her ground forces without escort." Izuku adds.
"So what do we have?" All Might asks.
"We only have Mina's ultralisks. And no lesser strains for support." Izuku says.
"It will be unconventional, and many robots will be left functional afterward, but I say we attack them head on." Nezu says. "We keep them busy and if we are lucky force them on the defensive."
"I think you all forgot something." Momo interrupts. "We have a large number of corrupters in orbit. We could have brood lords in no time."
"That would work." Izuku says, "Corrupters aren't part of the main battle line in space so they won't be missed if another attack arrives."
"Let's do it then, brood lords and ultralisks, not really what anyone would expect from the swarm but a functional army nonetheless." Nezu agrees.
As one, dozens of corrupters stop their patrols and form great cocoons high above Tokyo. Once the boodlings begin to fall on the droid army's flanks, countless overlords descend and drop in a small horde of noxious ultralisks. Their toxic gas wouldn't be particularly helpful against machines but it was slightly corrosive. Not that it mattered much as the massive creatures made quick work of the battle droids.
"Why are they marching in lines?" Momo asks in shock as the ultralisks begin their destructive charge. "There is no way they haven't developed a better tactic than that."
"From our analysis of their history there hasn't been a major war in a thousand years." Nezu says.
"Still, they have been at war for long enough now to learn something right?" Momo questions.
"Who are we to judge their tactics?" Izuku says in his best attempt at a wise man's voice. "For all we know they are so inaccurate this is the only way to guarantee a hit."
"It's uncomfortable to look at though." Momo observes, "Anyway, where did All Might go?"
"He's right here." Nezu says, turning to look beside himself, but only finding creep. "oh"
"He's gone off to evacuate civilians from the Boso Peninsula." Izuku says, "I think he is worried that villains will take advantage of the robot army and attack the undefended people."
"Well at least he's keeping busy. Where's Nana and Gran Torino?" Nezu asks, slightly irritated that he couldn't overcome the blocks most members of the swarm formed in the hive mind.
"Drifting through space towards us." Izuku answers, "they jumped from the moon, unfortunately they are off by a few hundred miles."
"Send an overlord then." Momo says.
"I think not." Nezu says firmly, "They need to learn to do the calculations before jumping, or at least have a way to correct their course."
"They can both fly so it's no big deal." Izuku adds.
The battle on the ground quickly descends into chaos as droids fire in all directions and are sent flying in all directions, often in multiple pieces.
"Sir, they are tearing through our lines." A droid reports.
"Send in the tanks that will take care of these beasts." The droid commander orders.
"Roger, roger." the droid replies.
Unfortunately the tanks didn't do much better against the ultralisks at first. Individual AATs simply didn't have the firepower to take down an ultralisk. But even battle droids can learn.
"Concentrate fire!" a tank commander shouts and the AATs begin firing all cannons and missiles at individual ultralisks. Bringing a few down in great explosions. But the swarm could learn as well and soon brood lords begin targeting AATs first. The hover tanks didn't last long against the airborne assault.
Meanwhile on Mars the battle was going even worse for the Confederacy.
The automated defenses and widow mines were taking chunks out of the droid's numbers and the complete lack of detection meant they couldn't effectively fight back against the mines. As soon as they got through the first line of turreted bunkers the droids ran into a field of spider mines as well. The next line was also heavily fortified, with bunkers, perdition turrets, devastation turrets, and the newly designed repair stations. As the droids died in droves against this anvil, creep spread behind them and waves of infested became a mighty hammer.
It turns out that infested were actually better shots than battle droids and with superior numbers this battle quickly became a turkey shoot. That was until the creep spread below the droid army and Mei's infested flaming betty's unborrow. At this point the battle was over and only scrap collection remained.
"I would say the battle is over at this point." Izuku says after receiving a message from Melissa informing him of Mar's successful defense.
"I see a few pockets of resistance on the peninsula, but that shouldn't take long to eradicate." Momo observes, she was directing many brood lords to them with intelligence from the hordes of overseers scanning Japan.
"They didn't even use the artillery they set up." Izuku says with some disappointment.
"I believe that was supposed to be a trap of sorts, but without the fleet they didn't bother." Nezu theorizes.
"Makes some sense." Izuku says
"This villain surge will take time to process." Nezu says with a sigh, realizing he would be in charge of most of the paperwork.
"Did we capture anyone interesting?" Kyoka asks as she walks into the command area.
"Not yet, but Joan has surrounded what she believes is the League of Villains' leadership." Izuku says, "Once civilians are evacuated she will take them down."
"I've rerouted Ochako's brood to support this." Nezu adds with some worry in his voice.
"Sounds like a good idea. If we can take them down, then all major threats to Japan will be eliminated." Momo agrees, with some enthusiasm.
"All in what is essentially one day." Kyoka observes, noting that the march on Tokyo only started the day before and now it and an invasion from the stars was routed.
"I believe we got lucky." Izuku admits.
"Indeed. The invaders underestimated us." Nezu says.
"Their fleet was rather large though." Momo says with uncertainty.
"It was clearly intended for bombardment, not space combat. Most of their cargo was transports for an invasion force." Nezu explains. "If they were serious they would have brought a space superiority force and only requested an army after resistance was bombarded into submission."
"True. we need to invest in more defenses and quickly." Izuku says "They probably won't attack again but we can't take any chances."
"Why not, they lost, wouldn't they want to regain their honor or something?" Kyoka asks.
"Not likely, this confederacy is headed by business interests. This planet is a good example of sunk costs now. We simply aren't worth the forces it would take to defeat us." Izuku explains.
"That's lucky I guess." Kyoka says.
"As I said." Izuku agrees.
Little did they know the confederacy wouldn't even know what happened to this fleet for many months, and by that point the swarm was already joining galactic politics. Fortunate, perhaps since the unknown regions project was headed by a mysterious benefactor, one that wouldn't accept such a defeat.
AN: Well there's your space battle. It's my first time writing one so I hope it's both simple enough to follow and yet detailed enough to provide a mental image. Constructive comments will be appreciated.
In other news, I'm well on my way to getting this posted on Ao3, so if you prefer that format you can read there. At the very least I can answer comments publicly without waiting for the weeks it sometimes takes me to write these. Sorry for that, but I've started a new job recently and I'm still working on my time management. I delayed all sorts of chapters and side story ideas to get this done so hopefully more content there in the coming week.
I'm going to request suggestions for clone wars battles to interfere with. I have some ideas, but I don't really know the timeline well (since it's not in order...) and could use the support. Should be a chapter or so of clean up and then some politics first, but then some fun and plenty of "force save us" moments.
Let's see... Megastructures are a long term plan, don't expect them soon, but there's no reason not to try them. It's not like the swarm is low on resources in the long run. I won't be changing the fandoms in the story since I don't want to ruin the surprise for people in the future nor do I want to fix something that isn't broken. If FF allowed more than 2 I would do it but otherwise, nah. Anon has left a wonderfully detailed review that I would enjoy discussing, but unfortunately he spent a good half hour on a review but didn't have 30 seconds to log in. The only response I have is that the foreshadowing is there, subtle but there, it could be better, but in the end some things need to be a surprise. Anyone can PM me, I'm not the best at responding but I do try. I also have a twitter for that, in my profile, I will also try to respond there.
Post edit note: I wrote this over many different sessions over the last few weeks, sadly that means cohesion isn't great. I think I cleaned up all the inconsistencies but there may be more. I will try to condense my sessions in the future.
Mars is perhaps the most exciting planet in the Sol system. The formerly barren world spent millennia with nothing but some pathetic single celled organisms. Eventually humans sent robots to Mars in the hope of finding an extra home. The rise of quirks ended this effort, even as perfect quirks for such colonization appeared. Eventually Izuku and his swarm arrive on Mars, mostly just searching for resources and analyzing the remnants of prequirk technology. Mars finally got its chance to shine with the assimilation of Izuku's classmates and the expansion of the infested. Mei quickly realized that experimenting on Mars meant no one would complain about her explosions and so built a massive lab and factory. She then massively expanded the planet's creep and began large scale mining and resource extraction. When Melissa took control of the infested, she moved to expand the non-infested facilities on the planet and soon brought in Uraraka contractors to build a massive resort and casino on the planet. With the battle for Mars over and new technology up for grabs from the wrecks of confederate ships, Melissa hopes to inspire I-island to move to Mars and make the red planet a beacon of quirked human science and technology.