Chapter 9

Lightning Fervor

Helltanz's notes: I'm less than thrilled with the rewrite of this chapter strictly speaking, and while I think it does need more work that isn't likely to happen in the short or mid term.

Chapter begin

Raiden wasted little time pressing his assault when the Thanagarians refused him. Energy and projectiles ripped through space shooting towards the Thanagarian ships. The large Kite shaped battleships released three-dimensional cross-shaped satellites at the intersect were four ball like devices. The devices worked by creating uneven gravity 'tides' which created zones where hyperspace travel became increasingly hazardous "Gravity well generators deployed, Lord Raiden." Announced a sensor officer.

The Shinto kami nodded, "Launch mobile suits." Ordered the system lord. 'The only dangerous thing about these thing is the metal their ships are made.' He knew from Daedric intelligence all of their technology minus the hyper drive was substandard compared to standard Goa'uld technology from two thousand years ago. He was not quite certain why their hyperdrive was as advanced as it was given their lack of well naquadah, but it hardly mattered.

"Beginning launch sequence." More lights soared from the Raiden's fleet, Mobile Suits which were exiting the hangars. As far as logistics went Raiden's forces had a number of designs in service most of which only had a few common parts, and they each served a slightly different role. Most military's on Earth would consider this something which was a bad idea, but this was the system lord's choice.

"MVF-M11C Murasames take off complete." One of the Fighter Control Officers announced as fighters launched the dorsal hangars. Raiden was testing every possible design he could. Personally he liked the Murasame for the most part, their fighter capacity made them particularly useful, but they were 'light' armor by mobile suit terms as it was coming to be classified, which he didn't so much like.

"ZGMF-1000 ZAKUs away." Stated another officer at a nearby terminal. He'd been initially rather pleased with the Zakus, but now was less so. They were really an update of the old Ginns, and strictly speaking now Raiden wasn't quite so pleased with their performance. True their modular capacity was nice, but Raiden just wasn't as pleased with them as he thought he would have been.

The last of the new series launched, "All Gat-04 Aozoras have launched." A third officer announced, "Phase three Main battle Mobile suits complements have all been launched. In adddition all our Elite Mobile Suit Teams have been deployed as well."The 04 shared the Zaku's capacity for multirole operations through the use of modular attack equipment. He was strictly speaking rather disappointed in the 04 as well. This batch of machines had been a rather bit of let down.

Right now Raiden was more concerned with launching his smaller craft than going toe to toe against the inferior Thanagarian capital ships, "Tsuigara class and Type threes deploy drop capsules. Our goal is to drive the Thangarians from the earth drive them from the cities."

The bottom portions of the green Frigates separated similarly shaped capsules exited from the bottom of the type three Ha'tak, the exception of them being silver, and began to enter the atmosphere over major locations. Locations like Cheyenne Mountain, Area Fifty-One, New York City, LA, Gotham, Metropolis, London, Frankfurt, Berlin, Paris, Hong Kong, Athens, Giza, the Gobi Desert, Beijing, were only among a few where the Capsules descended. Some of these locations were where the Thanagarians were only beginning to move against, or hadn't moved at all towards.

It was a pity, Raiden had considered landing on Giza, but Type 2 and 3 Ha'tak were incompatible with the old landing pads.

"Capsules away my lord." Stated the officer responsible for the flagship's atmospheric tracking sensors.

He nodded, even as another salvo savaged the Thanagarian fleet. In truth the Thanagarian armada was pitiful their anti capital ship weapons were completely useless against Goa'uld shields. It was their fighters which were the dangerous thing, well dangerous to his fleet's own small craft, and to his agenda of driving them offworld with his new weapons.

"Send down some of the Daitenchi, Albion and a few of the new Minerva class vessels to help drop capsule forces." Raiden ordered. "Once they've deployed set course negative thirty degrees bring the dorsal guns to bear."

"It shall be done as you command my lord." One of the Fleet commanders responded as the sublight engines of the flagship powered up, flaring and accelerating the massive vessel and the nose tipped downward.

Turrets and batteries reoriented to hold their bearing on their targets and multiple weapons came to life in a concentrated salvo as the Shinku Rai Tatsu's dorsal mounted weapons fired.

The system lord frowned as he looked over the reports. He had expected the Thanagarians to deploy extensive numbers of fighter craft but this was far beyond his expectations. Still if the Thanagarians believed their primitive fighters would be sufficient they were greatly mistaken. The Shinku Rai Tatsu and its escorts advanced closer pushing through the cold void of space above the Tauri homeworld.

Twin blasts destroyed an approaching Thanagarian ship punching through its hull in two separate sections and causing the vessel to catastrophically explode, even as a group of enemy fighters attempted to come in for an attack run. Truthfully the use KEW ciws guns had probably not been the wisest logistical choice, still they were very effective at swatting both death gliders, and these Thangarian fighters from the sky. The aerofoil profile of the Thanagarian fighters were similar to death glider, which was curious given their apparent lack of Naquadah.

An Izumo class, judging by its color an Orochi model, fired its positron cannons tearing through a carrier, which was likely the home base for the destroyed Thanagarian fighters. It was as the Tauri would say a turkey shoot, or an exceptionally target rich enviroment. The Thanagarian warships stood no much for the multi megaton anti, goa'uld, capital ship weapons, and only the Thanagarian shields prevented tertiary weapons from being devastatingly effective.

Two Izumo, one was a Tsukuyomi the other another Orochi came along side The shinku rai tatsu. The two Izumo classes's space superiority Murasames made quick work of the inferior Thanagarian fighters. As it was the Thangarians could take the losses though, there were thousands, and thousands of them. If Raiden had still been employing death gliders this would have been a fairer fight, at least with regards to fighters.

"Lord Raiden, lady Artemis is requesting to speak to you-" Rei announced Shinku Rai Tatsu over by the subspace communications network controls.

"Can this wait?" Raiden watched as more fighters swarmed pouring plasma onto the shields of his flagship, as the CIWS guns strained to kill them all quickly enough. He was really becoming annoyed at the sheer number of the tiny craft the winged humans had deployed to combat his forces.

The Thanagarians while technologically inferior to the system lord's forces were able to field so many smaller craft they were vastly outnumbering the much smaller number of mobile suits. His squadrons were reporting losses just because of the numbers.
As it stood Raiden's new humanoid war machines while benefiting from much more advanced technology and packing far greater firepower and armor simply were outnumbered by a high margin. The thing was the difference in firepower between fighters wasn't so great as the gulf of devastating power between opposing capital ships.

This of course meant that they would be sustaining losses until the fighters could be thinned significantly by the mobile suits or warships entered the range of their own CIWS batteries.

"She does not believe so my lord." Responded Rei.

"What is it then?" As expected Artemis's report was completely unimportant given the situation. The report in question was not tactically relevant at the moment, but it did involve another of the new mobile suit designs; the Virgo. Raiden regretted minorly snapping at the Hok'tar girl causing to reel back in her chair

"Understood sir."

A blast of positronic energy sliced through five Thanagarian warships. On the other side of the destroyed ships another Shinku Rai Tatsu class battleship. The name Shinku Ame Tatsu translated to mean roughly the dragon of Crimson Rain. The other battleship fired another eight blasts from its other Positron cannons dealing immense damage to another group of Thanagarian capital ships. The secret of thse sustained beams was the use of lasers to clear channels for the postitron particles to travel through.

Raiden's fleet had diverged moving to get underneath their enemies thus giving them the ability to fire their missile directly into the underside of the Thanagarian's hulls with little impediment. With this there were downsides. You couldn't shoot down a laser, and it did make sense the Thanagarians would given their preference for fighters an abundant use of CIWS emplacements.

With that maneuver executed and the damage done Raiden let his varying commanders handle their own decisions. This lead to the Fleet separating into separate taskforces and a number of which were now ascending 'upwards' punching through the mass of Thanagarian ships.

Due to the fact that Raiden had ordered ships to be deployed to the Earth's surface the Thanagarians in orbit did outnumber Raiden's vessels but it did little to effect the battle in their favor because of the technological gap. Nothing in the Thanagarian arsenal could hurt the fleet's shields, and while the swarm of fighters threatened escorts, those same escorts were also the ones best suited to destroying the mass of fighters, because that had been precisely what they'd intended to do.

-scene break-

On Earth the mobile suits had landed. Truthfully on the ground the mobile suits were at a slightly greater disadvantage by an large. In the sky the new Phase three Babi took flight to fufill its mission of providing air support to the forces fighting the Thanagarians. The Babi was largely designed for air to air combat, unlike most of its fellows.

"Sir the Thanagarians that are moving on the Tauri stargate facility." Announced an officer to his god,

He nodded not that the Jaffa could see it, given the officer was presently focused on his own fight, "Understood." He remarked, "Then we should hurry and eliminate them." Raiden watched with pride as mobile suits swarmed the antiquated in design Thanagarian fighters and warships with lethal results. It annoyed him his new superior weapons of war were taking losses

The Thanagarian warships were not lacking in the form of fighter defense. Coupled with their shields, and their own fighter screens Raiden's mobile suits were well occupied indeed.

As it stood though the Thanagarian fighters suffered from lacked any form of significant missile defense making them easy pray to the ZAKUs and Aozoras and even easier prey to the transforming Murasames. This meant there was Much less the Thanagarian's could do against the more powerful mobile suits piloted by the elites who were in charge of individual combat groups.

Still it would be capital ships that would decide this. Not even a thousand years ago would the Thanagarians at their present level have been able to challenge the Goa'uld in a battle in space. It was true indeed in that kind of conflict it was likely Thanagarian fighters would have slaughtered Death Gliders en mass, but that wasn't the case this day.

The advancement of mobile suit technology was not entirely centered on mass production mobile suits, but also of weapons for elite aces. The goa'uld rewarded their elites, Heru-ur afforded specialized, and highly detailed, and customized fighters to his aces as well. For Raiden it was the same with his mobile suit aces.

Speaking of whom a cluster of whom were joining the fray. The group approaching was comprised of a single 3-ZGMF-56, 3-ZGMF-X23S and 3- ZGMF-X24S. Each commander accompanied by new Phase three Taurus. The Taurus like the Murasame was a transforming frame, an innovation Raiden found intriguing. Like the Murasame its downside was its comparatively light armament, though the Taurus was somewhat less fragile than the Murasame, and was better outfitted with option hand weaponry.

The squadrons here on earth had one purpose press the attack on against the Thanagarians. In addition to the cities various strike groups had been dropped to the surface of the Tauri homeworld to attack the Thanagarian construction sites. It was at those sites that the bulk of heavier firepower had been landed, particularly with escorts to get through the shields.

The Tauri Stargate complex was a special exception to this of course. As was their 'area 51' the last thing Raiden wished was an accidental naquadah detonation. The strike team altered its course, "Listen to me, we must attack this group of Thanagarians here massing in the human city of Colorado springs to stop any reinforcements to their forces moving on the Tauri stargate facility." The pilot of the ZGMF-56 announced, before ording the pilot the ZGMF-X24S to handle it. The other pilot grudgingly compiled break off with his squadron of Taurus mobile suits to fly towards the city.

Chapter conclusion

Helltanz's note: Giza and Athens are important Cities to the Goa'uld.