Chapter 98: Engine of War.
As Jack Mason watched from his spot on the bridge of the GMF the mighty gun batteries fired off once again.
The Dreadnaught class of ship that had been produced by the science hive truly was an instrument of war and to friend or foe alike it was a terrifying sight to behold.
The absolutely behemoth black arrow-head-shaped ship glided silently through the ink blackness of space and if it wasn't for the electrical blue flashes of both the plasma cannons and railguns unleashing barrages of death in all directions it would be almost impossible to see against the space beyond it.
To the left and right of the GMF Jack could see the five other Dreadnaughts spreading out into a massive arrowhead formation forming a spear to punch through the enemy lines.
But that was one of the many uses that had been hoisted onto these mighty ships metaphoric shoulders.
Yoshi and his hive had wanted to create a ship that was not only capable of punching through blockades but also carrying an army as well as its support into battle wherever it was required at a moment's notice.
The whole ship was essentially a weapon, decked out with more firepower than any four other ship classes in the CMN.
It was both a scalpel and a sledgehammer all in one.
One other thing it was also was a bulwark.
The mighty shields at the front of the ship flared and rippled like lightning bursting across the surface of water as multiple plasma shots impacted them and burst before sending a rainbow of colour dancing across the surface of the invisible barrier.
Despite the Xeno queens being planted in their midst and creating absolute chaos with their psionic screaming, some of the enemy ships had managed to focus themselves enough to begin mounting a defence against the oncoming aggressors.
"Target that carrier, we cannot allow it to reinforce the right flank!" Tik yelled to the gunners and Jack glanced at his sensor display.
One of the large moth-like carriers had broken from its formation and seemed to be acting independently from the rest as they were still suffering the effects of the queen's psionic barrage.
On the display he could see that the carrier's intention was obvious, it was moving to attempt to intercept a group of Raptorian Gesla class torpedo bombers that had been launched from one of their carriers with the intention of striking the formation up close with their high yield plasma torpedos.
The Gesla torpedo bombers were a relatively new class of ship that the Raptorians had developed with the aid of Clan Mason's technical expertise.
The ship itself was only a little bigger than the large singular torpedo which it arrived and was almost shaped the same, more like a missile than a ship.
But the intention of such a ship was clear as day, small meant manoeuvrable, even while carrying a payload nearly as big as it was.
This gave it the ability to easily dodge around incoming anti-fighter fire while making spectacular use of the Raptorians use of pride tactics.
The small ships were arranged into little formations of five or six all made up of a singular pride of Raptorians.
The idea was because a pride lived and breathed together that they instinctively knew how their pride sisters would move and react to specific threats.
This really showed in their tight formation flying with all of the ships clustering close together as they moved only to explode apart as they were engaged before reforming after the threat had been bypassed.
Then once close enough the formation would release their payloads together before turning tail to head back to their mothership for rearming.
Given that at least four of the large Cicada-like heavy cruisers that they'd seen in the insectoid fleet had already fallen victim to the little Raptorian bombers it seemed that the insects had taken notice and were attempting to thwart them.
As he watched, the large fire cannons on the bow of the GMF began to turn to track the massive moth carrier as it spread its large solar-sail wings out to pick up speed and reach its companions.
"We have a firing solution Grand Matriarch!!" one of the gunners yelled.
"Fire!!" Tik eleth roared almost as loud as the mighty guns on the outside of the ship which although silent in the vacuum of space were louder than a dragon that had been kicked in the balls by a dino dozer in atmosphere.
The entire outer hull of the GMF was briefly illuminated by the brilliant blue flash of the arc absorbers from the massive railguns as they fired off together.
The absorbers worked similar to a compensator on a standard ballistic weapon but instead of redirecting explosive gasses out of the path of a projectile which reduced recoil and helped the accuracy of a shot, here it was so that the guns didn't dump a tremendous amount of ellectrical energy out into space, which given how far some of these arcs could reach would be rather risky for any nearby friendly ships.
The massive tungsten rounds slammed into the side armour of the moth carrier blowing holes in it and melting the thick chitin-like plastic as they dumped their kinetic energy in the form of heat into it.
The opening salvo while it did damage the massive ship did not stop it, instead, it returned the favour by losing off a series of plasma shots from a series of smaller cannons mounted all along its abdomen armour.
The glowing projectiles while they moved slower than railgun rounds were no less dangerous, infact to anti-kinetic shielding they were more so as the gasses were contained in a magnetically charged sphere.
The result was that when this magnetic ball impacted against something it would break and dump both its electrical energy and the incredibly hot plasma gasses into whatever it hit.
The electrical energy played merry hell with shielding as it was energy-based technology, therefore the drain to maintain the field was far greater than if they had been impacted by kinetic slugs.
Thankfully the science hive had foreseen other cultures using plasma weaponry as well as the Clan and had designed the Dreadnaught's shielding with large-scale capacitors that could bleed off some of this ecess charge and put it to use in recycling their own guns, temporarily speeding up the recharge rate of the capacitors used to fire them.
But unfortunately, this did not prevent the damage done to the shields themselves, it was more of a counterattack rather than an actual defence.
As the blinding flashes of brilliant blue and neon green light rippled across the shielding this effect became very apparent as without hardly any recharge time the railguns fired off again.
Now one thing with using both railgun and plasma-based weaponry like this was the heat buildup.
Contrary to popular belief space is a truly shitty medium to dump heat into, it really sucks at being able to bleed off heat from radiators despite being cold enough as to make a Yautja's nipples hard enough to cut through a spaceship hull.
To prevent this excess heat build-up from becoming bad enough to melt the capacitors and coils the clever Xenos of the science hive had designed a rather primitive but also highly effective method for dumping this heat, they called them case-rads.
Essentially these were radiators that were connected to thermal conductors connected to each of the guns, when the radatiors hit critical temperature they would be simply ejected into space therefore dumping the heat while a fresh one would be instantly slotted into its place by an autoloader.
The reason they had gotten this odd name was that one of the humans who had overseen the tests of the system had commented that they kinda looked like giant shell casings being ejected from an old-school ballistic weapon and so the case rads were born.
"Torpedo barrage, hit them while their armour is weak!" TIk eleth yelled and Jack couldn't help but smile to himself.
Watching his wide like this always made him immensely proud of being the man lucky enough to stand at this woman's side, when she was in Grand Matriarch mode she was truly like a force of nature and it was a true pleasure to watch her mind working.
He took immense pleasure in watching her calculating both her opponent's moves and their stratagems to come up with counter moves as well as to maintain a move advantage over them.
"Gunners load but do not fire the larger guns, harrass them with the smaller guns and see if you can target their own missile ports so that when they begin to fire at the torpedos we can take them out as they leave the tubes, when the torpedos impact fire the larger guns at the weakened sections of the armour!" Tik commanded as she rapidly scrolled through her displays.
All along the port section of the GMF's large wing a series of tubes silently slid open before unleashing huge tubular weapons vertically out of the ship and into space.
The huge Seeker class torpedos rapidly turned on their axis with the use of multiple micro thrusters which sent colourful explosions of gasses exploding out into space before their primary engines ignited and sent the black torpedos speeding off towards the carrier.
Only one second after they were released the black tubes vanished from sight thanks to their shrouded engines making them near invisible to the naked eye against the ink-black sky beyond the windows, infact if it wasn't for the tracking chips relaying their exact positions to the GMF it would be near impossible to locate them.
Now the reason these torpedos were called the Seeker class was not because they sought out their targets relentlessly, no it was due to the way they moved in space.
These torpedos didn't fly like standard torpedos while in space, unlike the vast majority of their counterparts which flew in a formation as they chased their targets down, Seeker class torpedos were erratic as all hell.
No sooner had they left the ship's shield bubble than the torpedos split up and began to fly in erratic patterns making it incredibly hard for anti-torpedo weaponry to bring them down as trying to predict which path they were going to take was damn near impossible, then add on top of that they could release countermeasures like chaff to fuck with radar it made them an absolute nightmare to counteract.
This complex flight pattern was thanks to a simple A.I. that the freed Weyland Yutani synthetics that were working with the science hive had developed under the supervision of queen Citrus, its whole purpose was to outthink targeting systems while still being able to deliver its payload right where it was supposed to.
Well, the results spoke for themselves because even as the small anti-torpedo guns on the hull of the Moth carrier opened up not only were they being systematically targeted by the GMF's gunners but the torpedos were dancing about like Remal Rainbowscale on crack.
But on top of these improvements, the Seeker class torpedos also had one final trick up their tubular sleeves.
You see these torpedos were developed with the express intention of taking on capital ships kinda like heavy cruisers or even carriers, so to that effect, they had a rather nasty surprise hidden in their munitions.
As soon as the torpedos drew close enough to the ship to be effective they detonated.
This unleased the Seeker's most lethal surprise, a dual munition system.
The first part was a high-yield condensed plasma missile which moved at incredible speed, this headed directly at its target but that wasn't the worst part for said target, the worst part followed in its wake in the form of a cloud of directed tungsten shrapnel made up of a million high-speed flechettes.
The purpose of these flechettes was not only to confuse the targeting systems of anti-torpedo weaponry but to devastate any armour they collided with, think of them like micro-meteors travelling at absolutely insane speeds in a cloud form which was unavoidable at the range that they were released.
The result was absolute devastation for anything caught inside it.
No sooner had the Seekers begun to detonate than the Moth-carrier was peppered with explosions as both the Plasma missiles impacted the hull burrowing deep before detonating and filling the wound channel with superheated gasses.
This set off a series of secondary explosions within the ship as the plasma ignited various sources and this was then made a thousand times worse by the cloud of high-speed flechettes slamming into the ship tearing through its armour like wet toilet paper.
The massive ship began to flounder under the impacts from the Seeker torpedos and Tik was already on this outcome, "Fire!!" she yelled.
The larger guns that had been held in reserve waiting silently for their Grand matriarch's command now sprung to life.
Belching plasma arcs out of their compensators they sent spinning slugs the size of a Yautja speeding towards the floundering carrier which had begun to look like a burning pepper pot thanks to the plethora of holes in its carapace, but the impact of these shells truly sealed the deal.
From deep inside the moth carrier there was a tremendous explosion as what had to be the primary drive core detonated, it turned the entire ship into a cloud of organic and inorganic shrapnel that sped off in every direction and was framed by a glowing green and blue cloud of gas that ignited into a huge ball of light that hung like a miniature sun before burning away to nothingness in the blink of an eye.
Now here's where another of the Seeker's little tricks kicked in.
Upon detecting that the primary target had been destroyed, any remaining munitions that had not yet deployed their two-stage system would divert towards the nearest hostile ship without friendlies in the near vicinity.
The result was devastating to close moving formations of ships because if the hyperspeed plasma munition didn't get them then the cloud of tungsten flechettes soon would.
It also had the side effect of causing any ships that saw the effect of the torpedos on ships further ahead of them in formation to attempt to break off to avoid the death cloud which they would now know to be heading their way.
This made them easy pickings for surgical strike targeting by eagle-eyed alliance gunners to open up on.
To the starboard side of the GMF Jack saw something interesting happening. One of the Raptorian torpedo frigates that was tasked with escorting their strike carriers had moved into position to gain a firing solution on a group of Cicada heavy cruisers that were steaming to try and intercept the group.
As he watched, a series of muted flames belched from the side of the small rectangular ship indicating it was firing off a full salvo at the oncoming cruisers, what he wasn't expecting was the torpedos to pretty much vanish from sensors only to be replaced with what appeared to be Wasp fighters.
That's when it clicked, these were the new Mimic class torpedos that the Raptorian command prides had been so excited to field test.
Apparently, these things had been in development before the Draconis and Scalathor invasion of their homeworld and had been shelved due to that being a ground war with Clan Mason assuming protection duty over their skies until they were able to hand it back to the Raptorian military.
Now since they had very much understood that future conflicts would be taking place far and wide from their beloved homeworld the project had been injected with new fervor.
These torpedos worked similarly to a predator found on their homeworld that could alter its appearance to become pretty much anything it saw, it would then wait for its prey to wander close enough to it before it struck without warning and it seemed that these torpedos had taken these skills and put them to use.
As they headed towards the unsuspecting cruisers even the GMF's incredible sensors could not tell them apart from the real Wasp fighters that they had already seen buzzing around the spaceway.
It was only when they were too close for the cruisers to really do anything about them that the torpedos pulled back their masks and sped towards them with the vigour of a fanatic.
The surprise worked like a charm as the cruisers instantly saw the torpedos and scrambled to attempt to outmanoeuvre them while giving their anti-torpedo guns a firing solution on the fast-moving projectiles, but it was already way too late for that.
Unlike the Clan Mason Seeker class torpedos, these were designed more like a sabot, with an armour-piercing core being deployed upon impact which would bore its way deep into the ship it hit.
Once deep enough a delayed charge inside of the solid round would then detonate, fragmenting the sabot and sending deadly shrapnel tearing out in every direction from its point of rest.
While on its own it would not be enough to kill a ship the size of one of these Cicada cruisers, multiple hits would do the job just nicely and in a matter of moments three of the large cruisers were either destroyed or put completely out of the fight.
As Jack watched, the one cruiser which hadn't been blown to smithereens by its own drive core detonating was left adrift bleeding thick fluids into space.
The other two remaining cruisers from the battle formation seemed to show no interest in the fate of their comrades, instead choosing to steam headlong towards the Raptorians, opening up with heavy, long-range plasma cannons as they did.
The Raptorians did their best to avoid the incoming fire and to prematurely detonate the condensed plasma shot with CWIS fire but they could not avoid them all and the small torpedo boat was struck by multiple hits.
The plasma overloaded the ship's shields after only three direct hits leaving the hull exposed to the remaining inbound shots.
As these bright green balls of death impacted the hull they instantly slagged the metal turning it to a white-hot paste in the blink of an eye which sagged inwards as it melted into the ship like it was made of candle wax.
Before being put permanently out of commission the torpedo boat was able to fire off another salvo of Mimic torpedos at the cruisers but then a series of small explosions from the areas around the impacts caused the lights on the ship to flicker out indicating a total loss of power.
"Get a search and rescue team to this ship immediately!!" Jack Mason yelled tapping the torpedo boat's IFF on his battle display and he could already hear the orders being given for a Saviour S team to be launched.
The Saviour S teams were made up of four Saviour combat engineers who specialised in ship interior combat while being able to field repair just about anything they got their hands on, as well as four Battle Angels who despite being there in a medicinal capacity were more than capable of fighting in the cramped interiors of starship corridors.
The closest Dreadnaught which happened to be the Queen's Sword dispatched two of these teams and Jack could see their small high-speed intercept craft burning towards the crippled torpedo boat with incredible haste.
It also seemed that both the Queen's Sword and the Raptorian strike carriers had taken personal umbrage with the loss of their torpedo boat as all of them opened up on the heavy cruisers with their railguns in order to cover the rescue teams.
The fight was not bloodless for the Clan and its allies however, despite the queens efforts to cripple their communications the insects were putting up a hell of a lot of resistance and all around the battle group Jack could see ship IFF indicators blinking out as they took losses.
But each marker that blinked out only fueled both Jack and Tik's determination and rage, it drove them forward in their determination to punch through the enemy lines and to reach the Velon home world.
And finally, they succeeded.
The GMF was the first ship to unch its way through the insectoid blockade with the other Dreadnaughts lined up on their flanks like a mighty spearhead punching a hole through the armour of the massive insectoid fleet.
"All Seeker, Hunter, Dark Angel, Star Stalker Prides and Royal Sword packs to your deployment vehicles! Prepare to hot drop on my order, this is going to be a hot drop as the space is not yet clear above the planet, you have your orders and I expect you to carry them out, may the Goddess of the Eternal Hunt and the Great Tree watch over and shield each and every one of you, I'll see you on the hunting grounds!" Jack Mason yelled into the fleet-wide comms, it was time to drop the hammer.
Tik eleth growled as Jack stroked her face lovingly before leaning in to kiss her.
"I know I'll see you on the field of the hunt where you belong soon my love," he said softly.
"You can bet your sweet ooman arse on it my heart's star, once these bugs have been swatted I will be where I belong, at your side," she growled and with that Jack turned and headed for the launch bay.
The hanger bay was in absolute chaos as he and Seeker One arrived on the deck.
People of all races and sections were scrambling in every direction getting themselves loaded into their drop vehicles ready for deployment.
Alongside them armoured vehicles were also being loaded into their drop ships as the Clan knew that this was not going to be a war won on the merits of foot soldiers alone, so this was going to be the first time its newly established armoured division was going to see combat and Jack could already see that they were chomping at the bit raring to go.
The Clan's armoured corps was made up almost completely of Saviours as being the largest and most diverse core in the Clan's military it only made sense for them to take up this new role, Sela eleth had even dubbed the new corps, the Hammers.
Jack couldn't help but smile as he watched one of the Clan's brand new Titan class main battle tanks being loaded into its drop crate which would be fitted to the underside of a rapid decent drop ship, which kinda looked like a cutaway ship with little more than a cockpit, frame and four massive engines making up the body of the ship.
The Titans were all-terrain vehicles which used a far more powerful version of the Raptorian electromagnetic coil system to move, this caused them to float a few feet above the ground and allowed them to move effortlessly over even the worst type of terrain like that which they would find in the Velon deserts of Sand home.
"Time to ride the express elevator to hell once again boss?" Liam's slightly muffled voice said from his right and he turned to see his second in command pointing at the drop pods which were standing open and waiting in their launch tubes.
"Would you have it any other way?" Jack said to him with a grin.
"I guess not but I know my pack would," he said and Jack laughed out loud.
"Now that's where your wives and mine differ, if my wife had her way she'd be crammed in my pod with me," Jack said making Liam snort a laugh into his helmet as the team headed towards their pods.
"If your wife had her way not only would she be in there with you but there be a whole lot less armour involved," Liam shot back making Jack snort a laugh this time.
"You're not wrong," he said pressing the panel on the side of the pod to authorise himself as the user and to make its heavily armoured canopy open up.
As he climbed into the pod he happened to glance across the hanger bay and he saw one of the Raptorian Star Stalker prides which had been transferred over here specifically for this drop and he smiled as he watched them orientating themselves around the specially designed pods that were made to hold up to six Raptorians, he couldn't wait to see what they made of this way of jumping into the heat of battle.
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Vessra and her pride sisters wandered around the diamond-shaped pod looking at it with interest and perhaps a little anxiety.
They had seen the vids of both the Seekers and Hunters of Clan Mason using these things to hot deploy into battle but this was going to be the first time a Raptorian of the Star Stalkers was going to do it and after their performance with the relays the command pride has chosen their pride to be among the first to make planetfall, a great honour indeed.
As Vessa looked up from the pod she saw a group of Seekers opposite them in the hanger bay, their deep blue armour shining a deep rich blue under the fierce lighting of the hanger and she couldn't help but find herself smiling.
Much like the Guardian of Males himself, these guys were legends back on the homeworld for their exploits during the surface war for the liberation of Raptoria. Vessa had watched the vids of how they pulled off truly incredible feats of both courage and bravery to liberate Scalathor strongholds and to deliver captive males into the waiting arms of loving prides who would protect them back in the underground cities.
Now here she and her pride were, ready to drop into battle alongside these heroes and to fight for a people that she had never heard of until the Clan made them aware of what had happened to Beledon and it had been all over the news vids back home.
"Get your head out of your tail hole Vessa! The eyes of not only Clan Mason but all of Raptoria are on us! We cannot afford to fuck this up, so chin up, chest out and let's show people what the Star Stalkers are really made of!" Cemmil scolded causing Vessa to snap back to reality, she quickly nodded before stowing her weapons in the lock box next to her seat in the pod.
There was a bit of a static hiss in her armour's helmet as the comms system lit up as she closed her visor and indicated to the fleet net that she was now ready.
Her armour ran through a series of system checks on both the power systems as well as the assistive systems, while also checking her defensive systems.
The HUD popped up in her visor and down in the bottom right there was a little picture of a Raptorian with both of her arms held out to the sides and her tail off to the left, around it was a large green circle which indicated the armour's kinetic shielding.
Green was good, it meant that the system was functioning properly and was fully charged, any damage to a system would show up by turning the section amber before turning red if critical damage was sustained.
Inside of that green shielding circle was a broken circle made up of dots, this was the cloaking indicator and while it was inactive like this the dots were white, once she activated either her cloak or the chameleon skin it would light up green just like the shield that it would replace to save power.
Once the armour had completed its checks it synced her vitals and comm systems up to the fleet battle net which would tie her comms into the network that all of the alliance were using while routing her vital signs to the Battle Angels monitoring network as while the Raptorians and the Serpentinus would indeed have their own medics on the ground, the Clan Mason Battle Angel network was just far more sophisticated and rapid in relaying medical data to the relevant people.
"Alright people you know the score here, you've all been briefed by your respective commanders so I won't have to go over the miniature of this but to reiterate, we are going to be hot-dropping into hostile territory, we will start our flight before the shield is even dropped so if there is a failure for whatever reason you will have little time to adapt so I will need every single one of you on the ball here, but that's why you are here in the first place, you are the best of the best and for that reason, I expect the best from each and every one of you, a whole species is counting on us to get this done and to get it done right so may the Goddess of the Hunt guide you and the Great Tree shield you, I'll see you on the field of the hunt below, Grand Patriarch out," Jack Mason said over the comms.
A huge war roar was unleashed across the hanger bay in place of a cheer and even Vessa and her pride got in on it, raising their armoured fists to the ceiling like every one of their multitude of allies.
Vessa quickly climbed into her assigned seat in her pride's pod and all around her, her sisters did the same.
Once they were all inside and strapped in behind the locking bars that came down from above and at hip level from below, the pod canopies began to lower.
Once each of the petal-like canopies locked itself into place with a dull metallic thud there was a hiss which indicated an airtight atmospheric seal had been achieved.
"Star Stalker one one to command our pride is ready for drop," Cemmil said into the fleet comms.
"Roger that Star Stalker one one, prepare for loading and good luck down there, may the Goddess bless your hunt, command out," a distinctly human voice replied over the comms.
"Think we'll meet any pretty human boys down there?" Vessa said over the pride's private channel mostly to diffuse the tension and nerves she knew all of her pride sisters would be feeling right now and she heard a few of her sisters chuckling in the comms.
"Stop thinking with your crotch and start thinking with your head Vessa!" Cemmil chided though Vessa heard the lack of conviction in her sister's voice.
"Hey all I'm saying is it seemed to work for Surface Stalker Vippy and her pride, I mean look, they managed to snag the Guardian of Males right off the surface of our own world right in the heat of a war, so why not our pride in a war for another world?" Vessa shot back as a large clawed arm descended from the ceiling of the hanger and lifted the pod up to load it into the firing chute.
"I think we should aim bigger, show this alliance what Star Stalkers can really do, I think we should go for a Belledon or a Yautja, or maybe even see if we can snag ourselves one of the local boys," Taska said.
"I think we should go for one of the Xeno boys, I'd like me one of those Battle Angel boys, they look cute as hell in their pink and white armour, mmmm i like me a boy who knows how to soothe a girl's aches and pains, just think of it, we'd be coming home after a hard battle and he'd be waiting there for us all smooth and smiling, wearing a where's Jex look on his handsome face, wearing nothing but an apron..." Jex said her voice trailing off as her sisters chuckled into the comms.
"By the Great Tree! You're all bloody hopeless, I mean seriously, here we are about to head into the biggest battle our species has ever been involved in and all you lot can think about is pillaging Clan Mason of its bloody males!" Cemmil snorted loudly in annoyance.
"Oh come on miss high and mighty, like we haven't caught you trying to impress the Clan boys at the embacies training grounds, don't think we all missed you trying to show off for the human boys with all that tail curling you were doing, you were strapping so much weight to that thing that we all thought you were gonna sink into the bloody floor," Jex shot back causing her sisters to all giggle loudly.
"T-T-Thats totally irrelevent! That was training and it was just some harmless showboating and flirting!" Cemmil protested and Vessa could positively hear her sister's feathers ruffling in embarrassment through the pod.
"Exactly, if we should have learned anything from the Clan and from the war it is that some things don't care where you are or what's going on around you, if it's your time it's your time and those things are love and death, they find you regardless of where you hide," Taska said.
"Yeah I mean look at the Guardian of Males, he gets snatched off the surface of our planet, carted down to the Command Pride, and then taken into the city where he runs off and kills a bloody Mimic of all things saving a bunch of males before allowing himself to get swept off his feet by one of our Surface Stalker prides, they threw down the gauntlet to all hot blooded Raptorian girls with that one, they said look what we can do, a hot alien warrior male comes to our shores to fight with us, he does a better job of protecting our boys than we do and we still managed to win him over, that is a challenge I will not allow to pass us up, the honour of our pride is on the line!" Jex said.
"You're all fucking hopeless I swear to the Great Tree!' Cemmil said her voice going sulky.
"Ten seconds to drop, brace yourselves!!" the Grand Patriarch's voice called into the comms and instantly Vessa's pride fell silent as each and every one of them counted those eternity-like seconds down in their heads.
Just like that, they were no longer inside of the mighty Dreadnaught but instead in the silent void of space accelerating away from it.
Directly below them was the planet, still shrouded by its brilliant green shielding, all around them were other drop pods like their own, though most of them were the smaller variants used by the Seekers and the Hunters.
Above them, the drop ships that held the vehicles and bulk of their fighting equipment and that which they would need to secure a base site were beginning to launch out of the hanger bays all over the mighty ship which hung like a silent monolith in the space above the planet.
As they sped towards the shield Vessa took deep breaths and listened to her own breathing and pounding heart as both seemed to echo around both her helmet and her skull, she was praying to the Great Tree that their handiwork on the relays was going to work, otherwise, this would be the shortest battle in history, more like the battle of a bug against a car windshield.
Right on cue the GMF and the other Dreadnaughts opened fire with their mighty plasma cannons sending high-speed balls of brilliant blue death speeding right past them towards the shield to weaken it.
The balls impacted the green barrier sending ripples spilling across its surface like someone was skipping stones across one of the ponds in the recreation zone, then just as the relays began to adjust to focus all of their power into the affected section the charges detonated.
Just like a perfect pride all of the charges went off in perfect symmetry, with no delay between the blasts, simply all blew at once sending the energy that the relays had been building right back across the grid like a massive feedback pulse.
The result was spectacular like someone had simply flicked off a light switch a whole hexagonal section of the massive shield simply blinked out of existence as the field collapsed.
"Right on the money! Excellent work all, now let's go!!' The Grand Patriarch yelled into the comms and instantly Vessa felt a lurch as their pod accelerated towards the hole like a bullet heading for the end of a gun barrel, now it was time for this fight to truly begin.