Chương 1288: 1318 - Task Force Aetos II

For a week, the W'Nadack cluster was alight with magic. The dense field of asteroids and demiplanes was awash in warm colors cast by burning arks and bleeding men—pirates hardly made for the most glorious of opponents, but the legions of Leon's Kingdom cut through them with vigor and enthusiasm. For the most part, Alix watched it all from the bridge of Furious Wind, though she allowed her subcommanders to run wild throughout the shattered cluster.

Most of them were veterans of at least Leon's conquests before the Belicenian Games, and some were older than that, having participated in the war with Terris. A few, including Admiral Diomedes, one of the commanders of the conquests of Demetrion and Yun, had even fought against the Sunlit Emperor. In short, they were experienced and skilled. Combined with their overwhelming numerical superiority, the pirates stood no chance at all. Their strongholds were broken and their fleets obliterated.

Some detachments sought out the pirate lairs and blasted them from the Void. Others, perhaps seeking greater rewards or glory, deployed the Void-capable formations within their legions, seizing the strongholds in quick and brutal assaults. These men and women brought back word of strange treasures taken from the pirates—the fruits of their strange, Void-centered way of life. Gold, silver, and other shiny baubles, of course, abounded—nearly all stolen from W'Nadack or other nearby inhabited clusters.

Slaves were found, mining the paltry few seams left in the largest demiplanes of the cluster or tending to Void-adapted creatures that provided the pirates most of their food and clothing. Whelks the size of Alix's head crawled over most of the demiplanes and asteroids, gathering on water-rich comets to reproduce. These snail-like creatures were harvested for the silky filaments they used to anchor themselves to the rocky bits of broken planes, which were woven into silk-like textiles.

Within their translucent opaline shells, they also produced beautiful, clear pearls. Most of the pirates were fed by the byproducts of large squids that floated among the countless billions of rocks choking the cluster. Their fins were rich in magic and were apparently quite filling, though Alix gagged at the thought of eating the squishy, jelly-like creatures.

Aside from the fins, the squids also produced chitin that created a light, yet strong armor that the pirates used for most of their arks, as well as acids that were turned into bombs that did more than scratch some armor plating of Aetos' arks, though had yet to do much serious damage. In all, Alix held some amount of grudging respect for the pirates for adapting to the Void so well, but that didn't stop her from zealously hunting them all down.

By the reckoning of the advisors that Ojolon had lent her, in that first week, Task Force Aetos had eliminated eighty percent of the pirates.

'A good start,' she'd noted. By the eighth day, however, the remaining pirates had gone to ground, disappearing into the tangled mess of colliding stone that might have once been a habitable plane. She'd asked the advisors what happened to reduce this cluster of fifteen planes to such a state, but none of them truly knew. The best theory she heard, at any rate, was that the planes that were used for mining had been so weakened that they'd lost integrity, disintegrating over time.

According to this theory, the demiplanes and asteroids that broke off crashed into the other planes, breaking them, in turn. The theory had some holes, but Alix was satisfied enough with that answer.

As Furious Wind plied the weak magical currents between a pair of city-sized demiplanes with her escorts, Alix felt a magical tremor run through her body—or rather, she felt the ping brush against the hull of Furious Wind, the cloud glass that she was using made it hard to tell where her body ended, and the ark began at times. The ping indicated a communication attempt, which her comms officers immediately answered. Admiral Diomedes had found the remaining pirates, it seemed.

They'd rallied under the strongest remaining pirate captain, who had prepared them for a final stand.

'Good,' Alix thought before ordering several more detachments from the Task Force to converge on Diomedes' position.

'We can end this with just one more battle.'

The pirates' arks were haphazard things held together with grit, hopes, and perhaps a little adhesive, not great awe-inspiring machines that pierced the Void like a ship cutting through water. Still, they were decently armored thanks to the Void squid chitin. Their Lances and acid bombs were weak, but in great enough numbers, they could still do some damage. And the fleet arrayed before Alix was numerous, indeed.

About four hundred corvettes, one hundred frigates, and forty destroyers drifted amidst the slowly-turning rocks, their smaller sizes allowing them to retain some mobility in such confined spaces as this broken cluster. They'd chosen their rally point well, as it prevented Aetos' heavy cruisers, dreadnoughts, and carriers from approaching, but that wasn't going to save them.

"Ulta pilots deployed!" Captain Estevall reported.

"First, Second, and Third Flights have deployed from their carriers!" a comms officer added. Alix smiled. Every carrier bore six Flights of fighters, but in such tight confines, she'd only ordered half to be deployed. Aetos' own corvettes, frigates, destroyers, and light cruisers were maneuvering into position, just about ready to storm this last redoubt and bring peace to the W'Nadack cluster in the name of their King.

"Legion marines are in their transports!" shouted another comms officer, the cloud glass behind his head glowing with magic while hundreds of runes shot across the console in front of him.

"On your order, Dame Alix!" The comm lotuses filtered through cloud glass gave Diomedes' voice a slightly tinny quality, but Alix still heard him loud and clear. She hesitated to give the order for a moment. In that moment, she felt she understood Leon more than she ever had before.

"I'll be joining the push, but don't wait for me," Alix replied, her voice reaching everyone on Furious Wind's bridge, as well as carried to all her subcommanders through the cloud glass and on-board comm lotuses.

"Watch your fields of fire; we don't want to endanger our own people in this maze. Now, let's finish these bastards off for good!" She could almost hear the shout of support echo throughout the entire fleet. She certainly heard it throughout Furious Wind. She then stood up from the command throne and said to only the bridge crew, "Captain Estevall, this ark is yours until I return. Don't ding the hull, if you please."

"Not a scratch," Estevall responded with a wry smile as she descended from the elevated platform the command throne sat atop. She tuned out the sounds of hectic reports and commands as she made her way down to the ark's main hangar, where her personal retinue already awaited her, as they had whenever Furious Wind had come into contact with the pirates since the operation began. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"Suit up," she commanded, their Ulta suits already out and ready. She smiled confidently at all of them, but spared Perdiccas a slightly longer, lingering look. He was a fine warrior, but all the skill in the world would never banish the tiny current of worry in her heart. As a Tempest Knight, her grandson hadn't experienced true combat yet, as Leon had mostly removed himself from combat during the conquest of Demetrion and Yun. This would be his first true test.

But that one moment of hesitation didn't stop her from pulling herself into her Ulta suit, the twenty-foot-tall behemoth towering several feet above the others. She settled into the seat, strapping herself down as the giant within the suit maneuvered the suit closer to the hangar doors. Once fully strapped down, she pressed her head against the cloud glass, feeling the darkness magic slip into her skull like cold tentacles, connecting her nervous system to the magical currents within the suit.

There was a brief flash of light behind her eyes and a loud blast of static as her senses adjusted to the new inputs. Then, she saw with the 'eyes' and heard with the 'ears' of the suit.

"Status?" she asked Thystia, her suit's resident giant.

"All ready," the giant responded in resonant, vaguely feminine tones. She repeated the question to her retinue, and when they reported the same, she said, "Then let's begin…" Together, she and her two dozen followers launched themselves into the black Void, the dust that filled the space between rocks within this cluster already sticking to their suits like a second skin, dulling the blue and silver paint that covered their armored plates.

Drifting pebbles dinged off their hull every few seconds, but they didn't so much as scratch their suits' exterior. It had taken Alix and her retainers about twenty minutes to launch from the moment Alix left the bridge, and in that time, the tense peace of this final pirate lair had been demolished.

Fire, light, and lightning flashed amidst the black of the Void; jets of glowing, superheated water answered them, while enormous tentacles of smoky darkness lashed out from floating demiplanes around them, slamming into arks as they passed and attempting to intercept blasts from Lances and cannons.

These defensive measures did little to halt the push, however; some damage was being reported, and about two dozen fighters had to be recalled for damage, but the war machines of the Task Force were as a freshly-sharpened blade cutting into a fattened pig; there might as well have been no resistance. Alix watched as the cannons of three destroyers—built to obliterate ground targets in intense bombardments, but used liberally in Void battles, too—focused on the largest of the pirate arks.

Bolts of intense golden lightning shot from the cannons, and in an instant, broke upon the pale chitinous armor of the pirate ark. This armor was stripped away as the pirates were battered aside, their ark sent tumbling toward the closest demiplane. Lancefire peppered the ark, as well as its frigate and corvette escorts. The pirates had no answer to the fighters that swarmed over them, their smaller Lances picking out weak points and hammering the exposed thrusters.

The Ulta suits and marine transports, meanwhile, angled away from the arks and toward the Void fortress glimmering in the dark. In the center of this mess was a U-shaped demiplane, the terraced sides hinting at having once been an open-pit mine or quarry before the plane it was a part of disintegrated. Within this former mine had been built an extensive system of fortifications, all to guard five tall domes.

The dome surfaces were armored in luminous chitin, different from what covered all but a handful of the largest pirate arks, though it didn't seem to be any better at resisting their weapons than the regular chitin. Surrounding this U-shaped demiplane were smaller asteroids and comets, which Alix guessed from the pockmarked surface to have been mined for water and metal by the pirates, with smaller forts and weapon emplacements built within the resulting pits.

Alix accelerated as the Ulta suits made first contact with these outer defensive lines on all sides. She didn't want to miss any of the fighting now that she was out in the thick of it. A pirate ark, however, decided to slow her and her retinue down by exploding just as they were passing within several miles of it. Her Ulta suit shuddered as a wave of destructive magic passed over it.

She came out unharmed, Ulta suits having been reinforced more than well enough to take the runoff from such a distant explosion, but the asteroids around her weren't, and were flung about, crashing into each other and shattering into clouds of dust and small, fast-moving rocks that crashed into her suit. Despite the thousands of tiny blows, however, she pushed through, letting loose with a couple golden bolts to help herself cut through any further obstacles.

By the time she and her retainers reached the front lines, more than half of the fortress' outer defenses had fallen, leaving just the fortifications around the five domes to surmount. These fortifications were serious, with dozens of Lances and bomb-launchers spread across the roofs of towers and bastions, but the marines had already seen the problem with this defensive style: the firing arcs were high and unable to target those assaulting 'by land'.

Alix doubted the pirates had ever considered such a thing possible, but the marines proved it was as they spilled from their transports onto the barren surface of the demiplane. Gravity was wonky and little more than a suggestion on such a small and unusually-shaped demiplane, but the marines, sealed in their Void-capable armor, were specifically trained for Void operations and adapted quickly. With MALL and Ulta suit support—Alix and her retinue joining in—they made their push.

An explosion drew Alix's attention; she'd almost ignored it, mistaking it for the same explosion that claimed another pirate ark. However, a glance indicated otherwise: a mine, encased in stone and filled with explosives and squid acid, had been detonated as a unit of marines passed. For a moment, chaos reigned amidst that column, several of the marines falling as air was ripped through tiny holes in their armor. Healers ran forward to seal these breaches, but four marines had already gone limp.

"Watch for traps." The order came dispassionately, almost cold, but emotion would be saved for later, and the legions trained professionals, not emotionally volatile savages. They had a job to do, and a few mines weren't going to stop them. Paying more attention to the rocky terrain revealed more mines, which Ulta suits were able to destroy from a distance before the marines approached, but a few were missed, and a dozen more marines became casualties.

This, as before, did not stop the advance of hundreds of their brothers and sisters. But even then, the lines slowed as mines were encountered and disposed of, allowing Alix and her retinue to surge forward and lead the largest marine column toward the fortress. As they drew near, the pirates did their best to stop them, many of them wearing chitinous armor that sealed them from the Void. With magic, steel, and liberal Lance fire from Ulta suits and MALLs, these pirates melted away before them.

The defensive Lances did their best to lower their barrels to shoot at them, but to little effect; the acid bomb launchers had more luck, but again, Ulta suits and MALLs cleaned them up. The fighting was quick and brutal. Most of the pirates had, Alix suspected, taken to the arks, leaving the fortress only lightly garrisoned. Her assumption was proven wrong when, as the fortress' defenses burned, she led the marines in pushing into the domes through any opening they could find.

Within, they found slaves and pirates both, all surrendering. Some of the latter were openly wearing armor as if to announce their status, but as the marines took control of the situation, they found many more pirates hiding amongst the slaves, attempting to pass themselves off as something they weren't. It seemed like the battle was just about finished, with those within the fortress laying down any remaining arms they had and the pirate arks either burning or themselves surrendering.

Alix almost let down her guard, a smile coming to her face as she strode amidst small fields and fisheries within the domes, little slices of nature kept safe from the ravages of the Void by the dome above. And then, an explosion tore through the air and almost hit the ceiling. The inner surface cracked but barely held. A particularly strong pirate radiating a ninth-tier aura appeared from within one of the smaller houses in the dome, clearly determined not to give himself up.

Judging by his strength, beautiful armor, and deadly weapon, Alix assumed him to be someone extremely high up in the pirates' ranks, if not their leader. This assumption was reinforced when a dozen other strong pirates joined him from the house, ready to spend their lives proudly resisting. Alix's smile grew as she stepped out of her Ulta suit and drew her sword. She intended to deal with these pirates personally…

What passed for the capitol of W'Nadack had been built atop a great mountain, acting as a shining beacon of civilization for all on the plane to see. Within the great structure, the Congress of the People met, made up of city-state-ruling Archoi, each one elected by the aristocrats of their home region. Most of these great men were present as Alix landed, surrounded by hundreds of other high officers and strong warriors.

The way from the great capital city up to the capitol building was a long stairway, said to be ten thousand steps. In full view of the plane's ruling elite, including High Archos Ojolon, Alix hurled the head of that ninth-tier pirate down the stairs. Beside her, her retainers and high officers did likewise, throwing the heads of the strongest pirates they had down the stairs. The gruesome sight was effective in its messaging.

Ojolon, as well as all the other Archoi, bowed to a portrait of Leon, and the planar cluster joined his Kingdom.