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I FLEE THE FALCON PLANETARY ship at full-fusion reactor speed. I turn to see the Novasphere die in a silent collapse. I mourn for it, perhaps because seeing it die brings back memories of seeing my own Novasphere Morning Star die in agony. The planetary ship explodes in a brilliant, silent ring of chaos. There is no time to mourn any more for its fall.
I join the epic exodus toward objective Alpha.
“Cervantes, is the Hellbringer ready to fire?” I ask.
“Yes, Omnistar Doom.”
“Fire upon my command.”
“It will be done.”
“The target will be the vessel itself. Have it collapse.”
“As you command,” I hear Schrödinger’s voice.
“Omnistar Doom, objective Alpha is three thousand five hundred miles total distance. At your current speed, you will be there in one second. Initiate landing sequence. Counter-pulsation active,” says Hai.
“Alpha objective reached.”
I land among hundreds of thousands of mechs from our four Ronin Legions.
“Katami, prepare intercepting fire against orbital bombardment,” I order.
“Orbital assault initiated. Engaging against the ÆTAS orbital defense vessels,” says Hai.
“Engaging against enemy orbital bombardment,” responds the Katami.
The sky is filled with intercepting fire to avoid the incoming bombing.
“Advance to the Beta objective,” I order.
“Advancing. Incoming rain of destruction!”
Atomic bombs explode in high orbit, intercepted by LaserLance. The atomics that make it to lower orbit are intercepted by the Katami. However, the ÆTAS knows by shooting enough orbital fire it will overwhelm our capacity to Lance or intercept the bombings.
All Torragami fly at maximum fusion reactor speed toward Beta objective.
A thought strikes me. Who is Ferfasser? I see no sapien soldiers rushing to the alpha objective, only my brothers and their soldiers. The Doomsayers aboard the battle cruiser are stationed in defensive position to protect the Purgatory, commanded by Captain Aquila and Cetai both. Could she be Ferfasser? Could Cetai be Ferfasser?
Could he be a super-soldier? Was he cunning enough to steal a super-body of a legion soldier, render its mind sterile, and download himself into it? A soldier would quickly be identified as unfit if he did not know proper decorum or proper behavior, unless Ferfasser performed psychosurgery on a soldier and learned how to talk the talk. He was Godfrey Bubon, so he must know something about proper military behavior.
Who is Ferfasser!?
The spacial battle is causing great destruction among both our forces and the ÆTAS forces, luring the majority of the large destruction upon warring ships in high and low anchorage orbits. LaserLances between large vessels intercept the exchange of large destructive rounds, but at some point, the LaserLance is not enough, and the defensive system is overwhelmed, a catastrophic defensive failure followed by the death of thousands of sapiens manning those large vessels.
Dying large military orbital vessels fall into Ahmurai’s world as the gravity pulls the destroyed warship carcass to land. The resulting explosion is deafening and glorious at the same time, as the blooming explosion of dust ripples through the large four-second light vessel. The majority of the falling vessels never make it to land, as the traveling star around Ahmurai’s vessel evaporates them in space.
“All Doomsayer units manning a mech, assault the pyramid on the location pinned as Beta objective! Katami, go into demolition mode! Bring down their land defenses! Kuze no Tenshi, initiate deployment of all Goliath tanks, and initiate bombardment run by Pterodactyl class bombers! After deployment of the Goliath and Pterodactyl bombers, relocate to objective Beta and deploy all of your Devastar units!”
The invasion of Ahmurai’s vessel is awe-inspiring. More than one hundred thousand mechs move in with everything they have at their disposal. The epic invasion is met by orbital enemy fire.
The nuclear bombardment rips through our ranks. One hundred and more nukes explode in sequence, while Hagedron bombs shred part of our forces to particles.
The onslaught is cataclysmic. A crack appears on the ground as the heavy salvo slaughters the four-second light helicoidal-shaped vessel. The fault ruptures the behemoth in two uneven pieces. I see the innards of the vessel as the large world is broken. I can see at a great distance how slowly the dying vessel’s halves separate enough to see space between them.
The traveling star in roto-translatory motion whizzes above us. I gasp as I see the giant rushing toward a piece of the shattered Ahmurai vessel. I brace.
Chaos ensues. The vessels’ shield, which once protected it from the rotating star’s radiant beaming power, is vaporized as the dying vessel is hit by the rushing star. The blinding force of the blow sends a scorching force of hell to the now unprotected land. One thousand different segments of land are instantly exposed to the barbarism of the vacuum.
The universe appears to be on fire. The havoc is breathtaking, as the temperature soars, and all military gear is rendered dysfunctional by the onslaught of electromagnetic radiation, blasted from radio to gamma rays in a deadly dose for a war machine designed to sustain a high degree of electromagnetic energy, but nothing compared to a dying star at this distance. Millions die as the star meets its death.
The ensuing explosion terminates many more millions of lives in a blink of an eye. It consumes a whole half of the vessel as the dying star consumes the torn half of Ahmurai’s vessel. Unfortunately, the half without the pyramid.
After a lethal dose of radiation, I awaken to the sound of dying comrades via the Doomsayer vox. My Torragami’s systems are partially fried. After several seconds of free falling, crash landing, and rolling on the furnace that Ahmurai’s vessel has become, the Torragami OS blinks to life. The furnace is quickly quenched by the land being suddenly exposed to the hostility of a vacuum. And then, seconds later, the searing surface of the vessel is rendered sterile by the deep freezing temperatures of space. The star is gone, replaced by the embers of destruction as a two-light second large slice of land is consumed in total destruction.
What a pain. I am in so much pain. I must have run out of psychonarcotics. I am still Torragami, fused with the mech’s neurological system. As I lay on the ground, staring into empty space, I see the result of human havoc. The four-second light large helicoidal vessel is a tomb. A thousand segments of life-teeming landscapes, from ice lands to large prairies have been laid to waste, and with it, amazing lifeforms. I realize that I’m floating. The vessel’s gravitational field must have shifted with its destruction. I move with the nozzle-jets and look around me, to find the graveyard of torn mechs and floating shredded pilots around me, floating in space in silent, deep frozen mourning. And yet, the destruction rages on!
“To war! All-out war! Slay them all!” I hear Thesna’s words as the Edelweiss OS recovers. Other Torragami from our Rebel Legions travel at maximum speed to the pyramid. I join the assault.
Above in low orbital anchorage around Ahmurai’s torn vessel, the rebel fleets are being devoured by consuming fire from the ÆTAS high orbital anchored Dreadnaughts. The free-floating Homo iluminatus are tearing through the rebels as they board small and large defensive vessels alike. Their sacrifice allows us to get close enough to the pyramid.
“Brother! You must join us in the chaos! The killing spree is raging into an ultra-kill!” yells Thesna. “Abbys is dead, brother. Slain by the orbital bombardment. But Furogata is alive and enjoying the massacre. Join us! At this rate, I think I will last another minute before we are completely overrun. Come and eat death in this last feast of destruction!”
“Yes, indeed, brother! Come and die with your rebel rats!” says a voice I recognize. The face appears beside his message, “There are no boundaries now. Our systems are so hacked and intertwined that we might as well keep our comms open at all times between enemies and friends,” says Alastar Magna Ayala of the Chaos, Xanxai’s replacement when he was decapitated by Omnistar Magna’s Torragami.
“I will have vengeance,” says Trokar.
“Not before I have my own slice of that cockroach,” says Mortimer.
“On my way, save me the spoils,” I say to both my allies. It is sad to have lost Abbys, but he has died in an honorable way, in this magnanimous battle of the ages as the destiny of humanity and the universe is defined. This is what a galactic scale civil war looks like. And the result is death. Necrosis. This is a hell of a Necro Day.
I finally make out the Pyramid at the flat end of the vessel. Or what is left of it.