We're Dying, We're Really Dying (2)
Thanks to that, they got hit with the same absurd, unfair bullshit Icarus specialized in, and were forced to taste the "miracle" of their repair times stretching all the way to tomorrow.
But after digging through the gallery wiki tabs, they discovered that even at seventy percent repair — not a full hundred — a ship could still move, even if a single hit would turn it into scrap. So they decided that tomorrow morning, once they hit a comfortable seventy-five percent or so, they would throw every last scrap of caution out the airlock and charge Icarus's base at maximum speed.
They resolved to throw their entire force into an all-out slaughter with no room for surrender.
But the next morning, with those thoughts still burning in their heads—
Three days remained until the defensive fleet that would save Icarus arrived.
No reserves, no half-measures — pure raw-dogging, real-man style. The Kraken and two light carriers unleashed five thousand fighters in a simultaneous multi-directional air raid, and the Unity Clan's desperate thrashing against Icarus's wicked little hands — the ones that just wanted to "gently" caress their pure, untouched capital ships — was turning into a dead-even slugfest.
Of course, "dead even" was generous. Under that overwhelming anti-air formation, Icarus's small and precious fighters were getting shredded at a rate of a hundred per minute. The Unity Clan members started cradling happy little fantasies in their chests: just hold out a little longer, and once the battlecruisers finished repairs, they could hop into a delightful Icarus raid.
But as every last nerve in the clan locked onto "all directions"—
The Kraken's broken teleport attack dropped not fighters this time, but dozens of heavy torpedoes and a whole lot of missiles straight onto the fleet from above.
Naturally, the AIs of the battlecruisers and light carriers sitting at the heart of the formation weren't just sitting around idle. Every large ship worth the name opened up with dozens of 250mm CIWS mounts and anti-air missiles, dumping them by the thousands per second into the intercept net. And while they successfully swatted down the most threatening heavy torpedoes and the bulk of the missiles—
A handful of assault pods mixed in among those missiles slipped through unintercepted and slid cleanly into the battlecruisers with a smooth shwoooooop—
A tiny handful of ground-combat monstrosities punched into the engine rooms of battlecruisers that had been this close to finishing repairs and went absolutely feral, stretching the repair timeline by another full day on the spot. The parties involved looked like their morale was one bad tick away from total collapse.
And since that had been Icarus's exact intention, everyone would have been happier if they'd just folded their invasion plans and pulled back right there—
Unfortunately for Icarus's hopes, the Unity Clan instead lit a fire under their will to tear our boy limb from limb and wreck him completely.
The next day.
And in that stretched-out window of time, they refused to retreat and ground through the repairs with sheer stubbornness. It was honestly weird watching people who'd launched a preemptive invasion suddenly discover grit in the strangest places — but whatever. Before Icarus could land another airstrike, the Unity Clan finished the emergency repairs on their battlecruisers through pure spite, and—
Cooldown issues meant the Kraken's heavy-torpedo teleports came late. Destroyers, heavy destroyers, light cruisers on the outer edge of the formation — even the heavy cruisers — could take damage or not, they didn't care. They dropped the anti-air formation entirely, switched to a breakthrough formation, and started charging straight at Icarus's base.
Watching the whole thing on radar, I realized this was a pure race against the clock now.
Yeah, those bastards are coming in with knives sharpened for real this time.
Of course, time was ultimately on my side, so frankly all I had to do was hold out — but still.
"Jessica, when are our badass pirate bros getting here?"
"Two days remaining, Commander."
They'd been shredded by their own deployment mistakes, then shredded again when the light-carrier fleet tried to flank. Even after two straight days of fighters and teleport bombardment chewing through their ships, they still had at least two hundred fifty vessels left to throw at us—
"...And our ships?"
"Mercenary corps and main force separately?"
"Yeah."
"Mercenary corps has forty-four ships of all types with repairs complete."
"...Hmm."
"Main force is the transport destroyers we dragged over as meat shields from the resource zone, plus the ones we rushed into production for combat power — thirty-five of all types."
...The phrase "all types" cheerfully mixing a tiny, adorable super-massive assault battle carrier in with corvettes was genuinely bizarre, but the bottom line was that we now had to hold for two days with fewer than eighty ships. My head started throbbing on its own.
And since nothing was more stupid than taking seventy-eight ships (assorted) into a frontal brawl against two hundred fifty-plus (even more assorted), I tried to force them to split their forces so we could pick them apart —
"Commander, the enemy isn't taking the bait ships."
"Ah, hell. We're screwed."
Unfortunately, maybe I'd tormented those guys a little too viciously. They weren't biting on the fishing lines anymore — just charging the base in a straight, insane full-speed rush. I emergency-warped the corvette fleet I'd sent out as bait back to base, then, on the off chance it would help, decided to activate the base barrier function I'd checked back in the early days of my possession and turtle up inside it.
But unlike when I'd played the game — when the barrier activated the instant you used it —
"Commander, the base barrier needs about two hours to come online!"
"What."
In the time I hadn't been looking, some patch had dared to slap an "activation time" onto the barrier. On top of that—
"The problem is, looking at the enemy fleet's advance speed, they'll reach the base in under an hour at least."
"..."
More unfair bullshit — no, a heavenly punishment for not double-checking properly. In the end, I had no choice but to grit my teeth and sortie against their fleet to buy time.
Of course I felt that way, and so did everyone else, and so did any wild monsters that happened to be passing by — but this was how every battle you fight just to buy time goes when a frontal fight is realistically impossible.
We'd bought time with fighter airstrikes, finished every repair we could, and used whatever leftover hours we had to slap together corvettes — ships with nothing but a single turret for armament, but destroyer-class bulk and hit points all the same — just to pad the numbers. Even so.
About one hour and ten minutes after we launched. Or rather, subtracting the thirty minutes it took just to get there, from the moment we started the engagement with the Unity Clan—
"Commander, the mercenary corps has been completely annihilated!"
"You've got to be kidding me."
The mercenary corps — forty-four ships ranging from light cruisers down to corvettes — had been subjected to a literal massacre. Twenty minutes into the fight, forty-four ships had become ten, and only the easy-to-dodge escort-class and below were left.
But we couldn't just throw away the mercenaries' sacrificial spirit(?). Against that absolute mountain of a fleet, with only about forty minutes left until the base barrier came online, we refused to retreat and dragged the fight out as stubbornly as we could.
And somehow, we held. Barely.
Then we executed a hasty tactical reverse charge back to base, dropped the barrier, and hit them with a classic "come and get it" —
"You son of a BIIIIITCH!!!!"
"Oh, not a chance."
The opposing players, full of pure rage, screamed through their speakers and hammered our base with every gun they had. But—
"Hahaha, look at it sparkle."
"...Y-yes, it does."
Unless you were talking about a final-tier ship or a gacha-luck "assault battleship," a base barrier that could tank simultaneous fire from seven battlecruisers and dozens of heavy cruisers was no joke. As the shock and terror from moments ago finally settled, our barrier glittered so hard it could have triggered a photosensitive seizure—