Chapter 31: Feint Retreat
Svidana is seeing her fellow valkyrie training with their new equipment from the cybran techs in her flagship ICS Lumini. During that time, Layla decided to visit her to see how she is doing since both armadas are close to each other. She teleported to her flagship teleportation room. "Where is Regent Svidana?" Layla quickly asked one of the teleportation staff. He takes some time to answer while locating his regent. "Regent Svidana is training some of our Valkyries. It is near our military corps assembly point." The teleportation room staff answers. "Should I guide you, Regent Layla?" He asked the red fox, she simply waved it away with a smile and find it herself. Layla takes a long route to see Svidana's forces at the assembly point, it was full of her unit compromises of hover tank technologies including several prototype heavy-duty multi-purpose units. They differ a little from her forces since she mainly uses mobile, fortification, and commando tactics. "Looks like I got a contender in the same field…" She says it to herself smiling while peeking out the view.
As Layla continues sightseeing, she finally sees the regent of the west wielding her lance and shield training one of her units in adaptive combat in the virtual training field. Out of surprise, some of them are shapeshifters, they quickly changed into their forms without shedding their clothes. Instead, it materializes and dematerializes using some of the Cybrans technologies. They tried all sorts of tactics to defeat Svidana. Grinning in interest, Layla decided to watch. She awaits the perfect opportunity to pounce on her. "Is that it; my fellow Valkyries? The Empress put their trust on us to become much stronger and this much you can give to her?" Svidana says it to make her unit more determined as they remain silent. Five of the shapeshifter valkyries begin to flank her right side while the others directly engage her. Svidana simply just slams them off and blocks the oncoming fire from the laser lances of her unit. She was completely aware of her frontal surroundings, the regent directed her lance to counter the flanking shapeshifters as they back away and adopt a different tactic. Out of options, they throw smoke grenades at her and begin a coordinated strike. The Valkyries engaged her one by one as Svidana remains fully focused on countering their moves.
Of all the time she is doing that, Layla joined in with her weapons set materialized directly from her flagship inventory. She light stepped past some of the Valkyries, few of them are surprised by her sudden appearance and low profile stance. Layla appeared in front of Svidana as she is shocked by it and made a feint. Svidana falls for it and thrust her lance forward and angled it down but she disappeared. "Huh?" Svidana says out of confusion. Before she can notice that the red fox hides in front of her shield full in her invisible cloak, Layla shifted near her right leg and sweep her as she falls. Svidana falls hard and all of her Valkyries stand baffled. "Next time, watch your low area coverage too," Layla says to her and opens a palm to get her back on her legs. Svidana accepted it with a smile and stands at her side. "Valks, training over. I see a lot of improvement in your adaptability. Don't forget that." Svidana dismissed them and they saluted in respect before leaving. Layla just smiled away at her unit. "What brings you here Layla?" She asked her. "I think it's about time we punch in their core sectors." The Valkyrie is silenced by Layla's words. She slowly nods, preparing to do her best.
"What's your plan?" Svidana asked again. Layla opened up her communicator bracelet and transferred her next plan to the flagship bridge. "I already sent it, we will start in 25 minutes," Layla says as she left the area and back to her flagship via a nearby teleportation room. Svidana takes it seriously and directly goes to the bridge without a rest. She was warmly greeted by her crew as the Valkyrie makes her way there manually and did not use the teleportation room. "Svidana, welcome back. How were the Valkyrie units training?" Her admiral greeted her, she was focused on the plan Layla sent but notices the presence of the regent. "They are getting stronger, with our current arsenals; the new evolved Valkyries is living up to its name," Svidana answers confidently. "That is good to hear, even though we are the newcomers of the empire; they treated us fairly." Elis returns the conversation while watching the coordinates. "Elis, what sort of plan did Regent Layla send?" Svidana exchanged words with her admiral as she looks at her. The demi-human lupine shortens her summary of the plan and answers her. "Regent Layla's armada is making a trident formation to punch into the enemy core sectors in huge waves, we are striking at the flank we are on right now." The admiral answers while still looking at the command table.
"Elis, let us follow her plan and start right away," Svidana suggested to the admiral and she slowly nods. "All hands to your stations, Alert the rest of the armadas to follow my 1F2 attack plan." The admiral gives the orders in a near hearable tone to her crew, they acknowledge it and responded to the order. Svidana's idle main fleet comes to life including her other fleets on the outer ring of the sectors. All of them followed at a slow speed remaining on the alert inside the enemy sectors. The few mobile spaceship refineries following the main fleet take the opportunity to harvest some of the space clouds, they vacuumed the space clouds and refine them into one of the edible sweet dust desserts full of flavor that the Cybrans love and recycle the other volatile components into usable materials. Svidana sees the mobile refineries move in line abreast formation to harvest the space clouds with a few battleships guarding above them. "Seems like the mobile refineries take the opportunity to harvest the space clouds while on the move." The admiral noted it at her regent as she sees it on the display. After a short time, they returned to their normal position in the fleet and cruised into the unknown territory like a wall of iron that is enough to blockade any sectors.
"It's quiet…" The admiral says her opinion. She turns her attention to the multiple flagship sensor capabilities. "Too quiet…" Svidana says her piece of concern and continues. "Any information on this sector's opposing fleet?" She says to the admiral, the demi-human answers based on the information gathered beforehand. "Ten small fleets, seven having their pride of the fleet in it that is defending the overlapping sectors near Regent Layla's position and another three retreated here have been dismantled by our fleet." Elis pointed out the location of their last known position. The part of the sector is riddled with radiation waves after a past burst of events in the sector. "Let us not take any risk going into that area and place our two fleets guarding the edge of the sector." Svidana then takes a different approach to the situation and decided for the rest of the fleets to take autonomous orders from their admirals while slowly tightening the noose of the territory.
Back at Layla's flagship the ICS Quantum, her main fleets are forcing the enemy fleets to halt their counterattacks. Hearing the chatter of the intercepted communication, Layla finally acknowledges that they have given up and started to slowly fall back. The red fox sees why; it was Svidana's support fleets joining the ranks and filling the empty gaps of the space. "Hah! We have the initiative, keep pressing forward!" The excited Layla soon sees the unexpected. "My lady! They are using the approaching transport ships to obstruct our line of fire." Her admiral alerted her of the situation. With quick thinking using the tactics she had learned before, she gives the order. "Use the guided weapons and attack them, ignore the transport ships and pass them. Keep the interceptor drone squadrons on standby." The radar signature is riddled with distress beacons from the transport ships. ICS Quantum com lit up with Svidana holographic image appearing in it. "Layla, leave the transport ships to me. They have civilians in it escaping the conflict zone." Hearing that from Svidana, Layla nods in compliance. The com display shuts down including the intercepted communications from the enemy and directed to her fleets. "All fleets under my command, begin phase 2!" Layla shouted the order.
Layla's fleets pushed the scattered transport ships into the neatly lined formation using their gravity well tech from their ships as they passed them in 2/3rd speed. Still chasing the fleeing enemy fleet, a strong high velocity railgun salvo shot straight at their fleet in precision. The power alone is enough to thwart their advance. "1st shield at 30 percent!" With the alert from her bridge crew, she reacted fast and bulked her shields at the bow. That is an unfortunate mistake as a few unknown ships begin de-cloaking flanking their massive fleets in a pincer maneuver. "Fleet 8 to 13 is retaliating against the enemy ambush. We lost some of our frigates to the flanking enemies." General Rokosovsky that is observing the fleet's movements warned Layla. The pride of the enemy fleet flagship appeared on their radar after they de-cloak, it is the same size as their flagship compared to the other small warships they are chasing down. After a moment of silence, the second railgun salvo landed on their advancing main fleet and the retreating ship makes a sharp U-turn behind the enemy flagship.
Layla decided to retaliate back with massive coordinated ranked fire targeting the flagship. The ship shifted at the last second at the right of her focused barrage in her eyes. This surprised the Cybran fleets. "Are my eyes playing tricks on me?" The general says out of surprise with the bridge crew whispering. Even Layla is shocked by what she just saw. "Material shift technology…and high impact railguns that can damage our warships shields…" Layla in her thoughts assesses the situation. "All advancing fleets, retreat slowly while exchanging fire and prepare to warp at sector 12. Let them win this round…" Holding back her ploys, her fleets obediently followed the order even though some of them are not satisfied with the outcome. She contacted all of her admirals in her armada.
"My lady, why are we retreating? We can win if we overwhelm them." One of the Admiral freely speaks out as the others nod. Layla collects her words to say to them; this makes the Admirals remain in the silence seeing her reaction as she covers her mouth while thinking of something. "That enemy flagship is unique…" Layla finally answers. "A few more shots from the railguns can damage our ships or even destroy it even if we go full-on shields. Even I cannot even use my power to read their movements that is also intriguing." She gives a short answer. The General decided to enter the conversation. "And the ability to shift like that, their stealth technology is also a question since we cannot detect the other four fleets' presence on our long-range radar and not like the other enemy warships." He speaks out to the Admirals while crossing his arm. "Layla, what happened?" Svidana arrived after being worried about Layla's fleet sudden retreat and catches a glance of her.
"It seems like we found ourselves a worthy tactician to fight. They anticipated our attacks very precisely even though they don't have any sort of intel on us." Layla speaks to Svidana and Rokosovsky. "Admirals, remain on guard near the sector entrances. I will come up with another plan. Right now, we must not bite more than we can chew." Saying those words to the admirals, they nod of the order before cutting the com to assess their warship loss. The red fox contacted the other regents and tell them to meet at her flagship. Layla explained everything to Svidana while they wait in the operations room that was emptied. "Layla, we're here," Ilya says to her as she entered the room with Lenora in tow. "I hear you have setbacks." Without filtering her words, she says it directly to Layla's face. "Okay, I felt those words." Layla sits near the command table. The hasty scan of the enemy flagship popped out of the projector. This caught the attention of the other two regents. One detail sticks out the most since the manufacturer's name is displayed on the hull of the ship. "Favian industries…Never heard of that." Ilya speaks out. "The size of this ship is nearly the same as our mass-produced titan class battleship." Lena fills in her point of view as Svidana nods at her. "I want to capture this ship." Layla is met with a brief silence with Lena flicking her tail. "Okay, but why?" Ilya responded.
"This exact ship is the one that nearly breaks my fleets shield system, it also can phase nearby," Layla explained and showed the footage of the battle. Their reaction is the same as hers during her battle. "It also has superior cloaking technologies than ours. The Cybran Corp is busy mass-producing other technologies that they neglected some breakthroughs of our sensory techs for our spaceships and they are also working on some phase shift technologies." She continues her words after a short drink. "Should we call the Emperor and Empress for assistance?" Svidana suggested. "No, this is supposed to be a present for them. Let's keep this between us until we got our hand on that ship. We can't rely upon every time for them to help us." Layla disagrees with a strong reason. "That is true." Lena acknowledges it as she inspects the displayed warship. "There are also multiple weapon ports by the looks of it and enclosed hangars." Lenora's keen eyes spotted the silhouette details. "A battle carrier of some sort?" She ended her analysis with a question. "Probably yes" Layla answers. "The bigger question is how are we going to assault it if they can phase shift like that?" Ilya takes on the bigger picture. Svidana suddenly remembers how they battled the abyss creatures on land before with Layla's forces. "Layla, this phase shift looks the same as how the abyss creatures pops in and out," Svidana says at her to make Layla remember. "Yes it does, there must be a way to obstruct that ability." Layla sits down as she speaks of it.
"Radiation; that can mess up a lot of things. Luckily some of our ship class are resistant to it." Ilya fill in the blanks with her knowledge from what they learned at the academy. "Speaking of radiation, there is a place filled with radiation waves. They are well aware of the area though." Svidana opened another holographic image of the nearby anomaly. "Maybe we can pull the ship into the radiation wave and assault the ship. Our force warp weapon can operate at long range and lock into a ship the same size as ours, but we must have their exact position for it to work depending on their range." Lenora speaks her part while showing up her flagship weapon at them. "When did you manage to fit that weapon? Last time I know that you don't have them?" Ilya questions Lenora with a surprised face. "The Draconian researcher that is staying at my capital planet invented it, I decided to put it on my flagship for test runs. It worked so far." Lenora answers. Ilya sighs out of disbelief. "Gosh, foxes are a cunning bunch." She says that at her as both foxes chuckle. "Okay, I will give you my micro space probe for scouting that warship. It is small enough to remain undetected even if the cloaking failed." Ilya gives out one of her new techs.
"This time, why don't we use our flagships to assault that ship?" Svidana suggested the opinion, and all of them agreed to do it. "I noticed that our technologies begin to become unbalanced in some parts." In her conclusion, Layla says to the other regents. "Yes, me too. We need to inform the emperor and empress of this later after the successful capture of the ship." Ilya also noticed it after the Cybran Corp prioritized some terastructural buildings, Lagrange gate, and expanded the observation station range further into other galaxies. "Seems like we got ourselves a small heist to do." Layla put up a smile while saying that to the other regents as they shortly laugh.
With further careful planning, they lay out every plan they have including the capture of the tactician inside the ship with reserve tactics for backup. This continued further for a few hours before all of them decided to take a short rest inside the ICE Quantum. Ilya decided to take a short nap after staying awake for 2 weeks in the guest room and Layla accompanied by Lenora ate at her usual eating place. Svidana, on the other hand, observes how different Layla's forces' training regime is and takes a few notes about them. After all of them rested and fully prepared, they departed back to their flagships to start the planned actions.