The second, third, and fourth salvos came and went, intermingling with the crackling beams. Both types of projectiles launched at staggered intervals, turrets firing along a scheduled list.
That way, when it was time for one collection of electrics to enter their cooling phase and exchange their spent focusing agent, another had finished the process and was fresh, ready to resume pummeling falling markers.
When a clump of sonics exhausted their munitions store, they retracted through hatches to replace empty belts with a full load. And as they did, somewhere along the Titan's length, another collection emerged from closed hatches, keeping the pressure coming. Aud were brutalized, most without knowing what hit them over and over, but more fell, and more were falling still. Her still bleeding lip twinged; she was still gnawing. She forced her tongue out, protecting the split skin from further injury.
The updating diagrams showed new developments. The smattering of Aud groups to the south had met and became a single moving mass, covering good ground in their climb. An alarming amount of distance, but it could be explained away by them spurred into a frenzy by the loudness of their emplacements.But they were still a ways off, no matter how fast they blurred up the rocky walls. A more pressing concern loomed over the Nyx Breaker's crew: there was a visual on the northern horde.
"Did we detect traces of blue or purple fur?"
The officer passed along one of the reports. Plugging it into her HUD, she scanned the tunnel with her eyes. The diagram she studied differed in a couple aspects, but the basic structure was similar enough.It wasn't anything out of the ordinary with the scans they performed to detect the presence of high-tier Aud. She didn't understand the principles behind them, but something about how the scans were implemented distorted environmental perception.
As for the scan results, a wide sprawl of color occupied the tunnel's northern end. Before reaching the unobstructed space, the horde funneled through several inverted stalactites growing out of the ground like trident points. Because of that, blank spaces interspersed the colors. Most of it was white. White, orange, and yellow. That was the standard disposition of every group of Aud, barring the rare exception.
Between those colors, small pinpricks of green broke through. Mirroring their increased strength, the representations marking green Aud were strong enough to not eke out existence among the ocean of white, the lakes of orange, and the creeks of yellow, but also pierce through with bright fervor. Her eyes raked along the sprawl, searching for the inevitable, but failing. She willed her lungs to unpetrify, to take in another load of oxygen. The northern horde had no Aud stronger than green. She clapped her officer on the shoulder, absolutely jovial for one short moment. "Continue with the planned diversion of firepower. But lower the distribution from a third to a fourth."He called in the changes, and she went over the diagram before her again, desperate to be sure that she hadn't imagined a void for blue or purple, that there was nothing. Nothing more, anyway. She wasn't disappointed.
Freed, she tasked the HUD with running through further combat scenarios. The falling horde was still their priority. If the incoming southern horde didn't bring an unwelcome surprise, they could continue pummeling the descending Aud with impunity.Warning klaxons blared.
She flinched, whirling back to the tactical diagram above. Grim-faced, she watched the earliest markers connect with the flat ground, and lay still. Then more, the number of impacts moving from single digits to double. In a few more heartbeats, it reached triple, and there were no signs of slowing down.
Most of the bodies were exactly that–bodies. Even if the Aud heading the mad charge into oblivion survived the hail of electrics and sonics, the majority weakened enough that crashing into thick slabs of rock from who knew how high was enough to snip their lifelines. But if a fall was all it took, humanity would never have found itself on the brink. Among the dead, dispersed pockets of survivors reared their heads, once again in control. They growled, obscured by the thuds around them and the roaring emplacements. Like a challenge, they rose in volume until blood-curdling screams rang across the greater tunnel, echoing and returning.Like how the trickle out of the shaft had begun small, these small pockets of survivors scrambled past their dead. Some joined together into larger clumps, others separated and broke apart. But their target was no longer the ground.
Right on cue, a wall of emplacements redirected their sightlines. Angling down from the falling horde, they faced the stragglers on the ground. They whirred, the electrics saturating the focusing agents and the sonics chambering fresh rounds. As fast as could be, the beams reached the targets first, biting and charring. The sonics were quick to follow, pulverizing rock and Aud flesh alike, indiscriminate.The atmosphere had improved. The crew was making them bleed, making them die. It was as if they were paying back the Aud for every life taken. Her lips curled at the irony, then dropped back into place. Three centuries' worth of massacres was too much to recoup in a single skirmish.
The targeting programs had improved their aim. The autonomous intelligences had a near-unlimited supply of live footage to analyze down to the smallest movements worth millimeters and ran trial-and-error simulations in tandem. More Aud turned black, more knocked away like pebbles before a giant's thumb.
But it wasn't enough. For every one Aud killed in the air, three more made it to the ground. For every Aud that died on impact, two more survived. For every one reduced to a brutalized pulp before crossing a kilometer, there was another to take its place. It was pleasing to see so many corpses, but the evident lack of progress gnawed on her thoughts, occupying precious space.The northern horde was close, about to enter their line of fire. The southern Aud weren't far behind. And despite pressuring the falling horde with everything they had and making it bleed, they were ultimately the ones on the back foot, the ones pressured. How deadly of a foe were the Aud, that their presence and might alone were enough?
That was a question for others to ask, hidden safe behind walls far away. But there were plenty she could better spend her time asking, in the command compartment with her engineers, techs, and officer. Such as…
"My threat wasn't clear enough or the echo-room gifts all inside balls of scutumsteel. Either way, I will throw someone from the scanning crew out if I don't get a status on that intensive scan. Could you get to that?"