The explosions began as soon as the dropships cleared the energy barrier around the Pyramid. Whatever force had assembled themselves there was doing a magnificent job of it, but the persistence of the Arisen force didn't make sense.
They were taking huge losses, even by the standards of a ship that large, but they were still moving into the next phase and trying to send out their dropships to occupy the planet. It was nonsensical. Even if they could vanish at will, they presumably couldn't instantly replace all that they had lost, and they were just throwing away troops at this point.
They had to know that the ships weren't making it to the atmosphere intact, but they weren't slowing their attempts.
This whole thing felt off.
Max blasted his way through the Command Walkers closest to him to get a better view of the battle, but having optical confirmation didn't change what his sensors said. The Arisen were losing ground to the Koleska force, the dropships were losing three-quarters of their numbers, and Max had the majority of the Command Walkers tied up in battle well above and out of the way of the rest of the fight.
But they were playing exactly by the book, as expected, with none of the improvisations that made them such a deadly enemy. This had to be a setup.
One more dispersed blast cleared out the Command Walkers around him, and the rest suddenly vanished, giving Max hope that the Pyramid was seeing sense and was about to vanish.
The Pyramid began to glow with a vicious green light, and Max realized that he was wrong, so very wrong. They weren't going to run. They were testing the defenders before they went to the next stage of their assault.
[Station, take your shields to Maximum. The Pyramid is about to fire a large-scale weapon, and its target is unknown.] Max broadcasted to their allies, then sent a message to Santa Maria to raise all shields and lock the airlocks in preparation for impact.
The power flow moved up the sides of the Pyramid to its point, and the ship suddenly rotated around its centre, turning the point down to the planet and firing.
Max watched as Nico raced out of the way, with her shields glowing from the impact of the weapon as Shattered Pride was thrown clear of the beam, which was aimed at the planetary capital.
The city had shields. It even had defensive fighters and anti-aircraft weapons, but in the split second that the city continued to exist, none of that mattered. The surface of the continent rumbled with a massive earthquake as the Particle Beam hit the city shields, popping them like a soap bubble, and tens of millions died in an instant.
Then the volcanoes on the continent all erupted at once.
Forget the restrictions on their firepower near the planet. If they didn't do anything, there would be no planet left to defend, so Max primed an antimatter round in his Mass Driver, but the Pyramid was suddenly gone, along with all the forces around it.
It hadn't gone far, though. The enormous vessel reappeared above another continent and began to charge its weapons again.
Now that they realized they couldn't win the fight in a conventional manner, they were simply going to kill every major population centre on the surface and call it a job completed.
Mass Driver rounds raced out from both Cleansing Light and Shattered Pride, erupting with fierce antimatter explosions that rocked the Pyramid and sent the glowing dome back to dark as the power was drawn away.
Max stared at his sensor readings with a mixture of annoyance and awe.
[Negative Impact]
The shields around the Pyramid had held against the two Mass Driver rounds, even using enough antimatter to create unstable vortexes in the gases of the nebula, which were only slowly fading.
If that didn't work, they had nothing that would punch through the shields of that ship. They could call on Santa Maria and hope that more of the same would be enough, but the main weapon of the Pyramid was already recharging, and there might not be enough time to get it in position before the next shot, after which it would be a game of tag around the planet's surface to try to stop the destruction.
He had to try, though.
[Nico, get to Santa Maria and unleash hell on that Pyramid.] He ordered while he primed another round and an Orbital Lance strike. This time he would go with nuclear explosions since the area was still too unstable to use another Antimatter round, and he could only hope that it would be enough to delay the shot until Nico could get back.
Shattered Pride was slow to react, but it was heading back to the ship, clearly damaged from the unexpected assault by the Pyramid but functional.
Max fired again, and the glow of the weapon marginally faded as the power was diverted to the shields, but it wasn't enough.
[Everyone, fire everything you have at the Pyramid. We need to divert all its power to the shields before it can fire again.] Max ordered the Koleska troops.
Most of them were too far out of position now to fire, with their line of sight blocked by the planet itself, but they were doing their best to get in position and save their civilian population.
Then, an unexpected saviour arrived to assist them in their moment of need. The troops on the other side of the Anomaly had been monitoring the situation, and they had sent two new pattern Cygnus Destroyers through to assist in the battle. They had only taken a few minutes to arrive after the order was given, and still, they were almost too late.
The Destroyers opened fire with dozens of Nuclear tipped torpedos and a half dozen Orbital Lances, sending ripples through the Pyramid's shields and completely powering down the main weapon.
Unlike Cleansing Light, they had a very short recharge time, and they were almost ready to fire again before Max was, with another volley primed to fire as Nico got Santa Maria away from the Station to begin moving into firing position.
Then the Arisen Army's mighty ship vanished as if it was never there, leaving behind devastation and suffering that covered an entire continent and an ash cloud that would slowly choke out the entire population and send the planet into an ice age if it wasn't mitigated.
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