Chapter 177 - The Hammer of Eternity

Chapter 177

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

City of Rebirth, Outer defensive line

Alexandra winced as the retreating group of tanks vanished. Clearly the freaking Old World constructs had never heard of overkill, as a hundred plasma bombs detonated simultaneously, instantly vaporizing every tank and turning the sandy ground into glass.

The strike crafts powered onwards, their cloud of drones in tow…and Alexandra suddenly realized that the constructs probably had no idea what overkill was.

Because they had failed to use enough of it.

Starvak rose from the blasted landscape, his axes flying around him like hornets, obliterating whatever they touched, and a squadron of strike crafts banked to meet him, trying to peel him away from the platforms he was rampaging through. A few blasts of plasma convinced him he had better targets, and he flung himself at the aircraft.

Meanwhile the main strike descended on the town…

And completely ignored the town's defenses. Or rather, they did fire on it, but only a passing, surface bombardment.

Alexandra smirked.

Called it.

The strike crafts closed in on her surface fortress, running the gauntlet of her 'air defences', effectively just her old field guns…And suddenly altered heading as the Dusk Blade rose from the other side of the mesa, and opened fire.

Most of the shells missed. Were they conventional shells, it would have been enough.

But they weren't. They were not simple explosive shells, but intricately carved warheads with mana crystals as their core, a more advanced version of the enchanted ballista bolts used by the Alberta.

Lightning arced from the projectiles, and shields flared and died from the overload.

And the main guns of the battleship spoke.

Three massive beams of energy lanced through the skies, and two strike crafts came apart. The last one somehow dodged at the last second…right into a barrage of conventional shells from the fortress.

Clearly, the enemy decided that between field guns with poor tracking and a capital ship equipped with beam weaponry, there was no comparison in terms of priority target, and the strikecrafts swarmed the dark elf vessel. The weapons platforms were slower to adapt, clearly having had some trade offs in their propulsion. They could move fast, but their maneuverability was poor.

They screamed over the fortress, unloading their weapons over it as they tried to come about for another pass, blasting whatever came into their sights as they came.

Field guns exploded, firing and observation bunkers were reduced to rubble…but no ammunition depot was hit, and any hit was strictly contained, thanks to Seraph's considerable upgrades.

The squadron of strike craft melted away before the Dusk Blade's artillery. Superior technology or not, they could not hold against a vessel several thousand times their tonnage. Still, they weakened the ship's wards…which flew apart as the weapons platforms finally finished their lumbering turn, and came in for another pass.

Armor plates bent or were simply punched through, and the capital ship shuddered as its side was shredded by the incoming ordonnance. The platforms didn't have it entirely their own way of course, the battleship's lightning shells reaped a rich harvest, but it wasn't enough.

The platforms began once again their ponderous turn…

And the swarm came apart as hundreds of missiles erupted from the fortress, followed by dozens of power beams.

Shields, already weakened by the lightning attacks, came down as missiles rammed them, and dozens of weapons platforms came crashing down. Those that remained were easy target for the beams. To their credit, some of the platforms managed to dodge, but many either simply no longer had the maneuverability required thanks to their decayed systems, or had never been made to dodge to begin with.

Explosions filled the skies, and debris began to rain down as drone after drone was destroyed.

The enemy seemed to reassess their priorities once more, and the weapons platforms modified their headings once again. This time they came to a screeching halt and flipped in mid air, some outright failing and crashing down from the stress this imposed on their already worn systems. Clearly reasoning that agility was no longer a valid defense, now that the field guns weren't the main threat, they stopped and opened fire, forming a wall of firepower.

It wasn't a battle the fortress could win. Fortified and dug in or no, primitive missiles and beam weaponry were no match for railguns and plasma cannons, however decayed they may be.

But it didn't need to. It just needed to hold their attention long enough.

Long enough for Sonya, team Crystalline's sorceress, to finish her incantation.

The air trembled, and space began to warp as gravity went insane.

The kinesys cyclone spell sprang to life, and weapons platforms were thrown like toys, some outright ripped apart by the conflicting gravity all that tugged them in all directions.

The platforms went to emergency acceleration, trying to escape the onslaught…right into the waiting arms of the rest of team Crystalline.

Caught between the mythril adventurers, the recovering Dusk Blade and the fortress, they didn't stand a chance.

The weapons platforms were uncomprimisingly designed as skirmishers. Hit and run, single attack pass. Made to do a sneak attack, and then disappear to try again another day. In the right hands, they were devastating, a supreme tool of attrition warfare. But in the hands of a poor tactician, one that did not understand them, or against an enemy one had underestimated…they were sacrificial pawns, at best.

And this time, both were true.

The weapons platforms accelerated even further, some exploding from the strain pushed onto their drives, attempting to ram the fortresss and team Crystalline both in one last suicidal hurrah.

They failed.

Suddenly there was silence, broken only by the occasional crackle of burning debris.

Hundreds of adventurers laid dead on the ground, alongside thousands of Alexandra's golems, as well as dozens of her spider tanks.

But the attack was over. Starvak had obliterated the crafts sent after him, and then proceeded to finish off the remaining tanks. There was nothing left.

Then a terrible, bone shaking horn washed over Rebirth.

*****

The AI core did not understand the concept of cursing. But had it, then it would surely have done so.

The second wave, supposed to pave the way and crush its enemies, had been shredded. Trapped between the airship they had failed to kill, the enemy's elite, and the fortress. By trying to take them all out at once, splitting up or retargeting they encountered a new threat, they had ended up destroying none.

The core hummed as it calculated. Arcane circuitry straining under the age and damage it had suffered.

Then there was only one solution then. Use its primary asset to eliminate the threat. It had wanted to try and neutralized the primary heavy hitters before engaging the Hammer of Eternity, but there was no longer any choice. It needed to attack, and to attack now. Before they recovered and regrouped from the attack.

The Hammer of Eternity shuddered forward once more, the landships forming up around it as its horn blared its defiance to the universe.

Time for one last push.

*****

"It seems the big guns are here at last. About time that carrier reared its ugly head." Said Allya as she looked at the horizon, waiting as another horn blared, even closer this time. Close enough that they would be here any minute.

Alexandra nodded as she ordered her 'special' unit to move out. The enemy had clearly been waiting outside of weapons range, to see what the results where of its main attack wave, and had finally decided to use its landships to finish the job. Problem was, they clearly weren't any manner of 'quick', and they'd been waiting for almost half an hour, with the ever louder horn screaming every few minutes.

Special ports opened in the mesa fortress, and her spec ops unit moved out. They were something of a slap dash assortment, effectively incredibly expensive flying boxes covered in stealth coating, packed with praetorian guards. Remarkably quick, but with absolutely zero armor or combat capabilities outside of a ramp.

If this was the final showdown, then the enemy was going to try to throw everything at them. And she was ready to bet that when that happened, everyone would focus on the big guns, like the carrier.

And no one would notice the support ship that had to be accompanying the group, if only to store and transfer the ammo for the APCs' autocannons.

Which meant that if she was careful enough, she could raid it. And grab its databanks, and maybe even a functional fabricator.

And if push came to shove, and everything came crashing down…well, she'd have some of her most elite inside one of the enemy landships. She was sure she could sabotage the reactor, if it came down to it.

"Ah! There it is!"

Alexandra looked at the horizon, and her face went white as the baroness brought her binoculars up.

"That's no carrier." Said Alexandra.

Allya looked to her side in confusion as she heard the utter horror in the dungeon core's voice, and she looked into her binoculars.

The baroness' heart nearly stopped as the massive thing, like a gigantic mechanical turtle with cannons poking out of its shell, came into focus, with its name painted in bright, white paint on its damaged hull, the inscription somehow having stood the test of time.

The Hammer of Eternity, pride of Mjolnir-class of super heavy siege walker of the Sagitarius Empire, came to a halt, and brought its main guns to bear.

Containment fields spun up. Helium-3 pellets were carefully emplaced. And the ignition lasers fired.

The fusion gun roared to life.

And three kilotons' worth of incadescent death flew towards Rebirth.

*****

Dozens of sensors orbiting the planet activated. Platforms pinged their owners, and the Citadel of the flame shifted. It didn't move, such mundanity was beneath the Gods, it was just…there one second and somewhere else the next. Planetcracker cannons tracked their targets and hyperfield projectors spun up.

But none fired.

Not yet.

After all, this was a test.

Now to see if the rats came scurrying out of the shadows.

*****

The AI core took a moment to analyze the results of its first attack.

Its main gun couldn't fire at full power anymore, unfortunately. Time and enemy fire had taken its toll, and its current output was only a pitiful shadow of what the weapon could have done. It had, after all, once swatted God puppet spaceships out of the skies of Alcheryos.

But it was potent enough. The enemy's annoyingly resilient mesa fortress was no more. Just a ruin of magma and glass. Unfortunately it had also absorbed most of the blast, with the other surrounding mesas doing the rest. The outer defenses were essentially intact.

No matter. It had time, and the firepower to put it to good use.

Which was when every sensor it had went off. Three separate alerts.

The enemy was sortying. The automated forces, the humans, everyone, with the ambush troops in the lead.

Then there was…something. Stealthed vehicle of some kind. High tech, but going around, and-

The AI's thoughts came to a screeching halt as the last alert went from high to absolute priority, and something leapt towards the Hammer of Eternity.

ALERT ALERT ALERT. ARCHON DETECTED.

*****

Well, shit. Thought Alexandra as she took in the damage.

She'd expected to face some serious firepower. And truth be told she hadn't banked anything on her fortress surviving this fight.

But she hadn't expected to be fucking nuked. What the actual fuck ?!? That was a fusion gun, a weapon made to threaten starships ! Shit, given the size it was probably a surface to void gun ! Why the hell had the God of Fire's people not destroyed it and-

And for that matter, why wasn't that walker trying to take them out instead of her ?

Her train of thoughts came to a crashing halt as something rose from the battlefield, and all of the enemies, the main walker and what appeared to be five landbound ships, turned to face it.

And that 'thing' was the guild master.