The Approaching Storm (2)
Looking on the bright side, his sacrificial spirit(?) had bought the rest of their capital ships a full day of protection. And so the members of the Walpurgis Alliance Clan, channeling the most extreme positive thinking imaginable, decided to press the assault even harder.
Of course, the clan leader who'd been on the receiving end of that beating was left crying tears of blood over how thoroughly the universe had singled him out for unfair treatment.
But less than five minutes later…
> [Mint Choco Meeting Room]
With the cooldown reset as the day turned over, yet another player's capital ships got reduced to scrap. And so the clan leader who'd been suffering alone was granted a miracle: his tears of blood turned into ordinary tears, now that he no longer had to bear the unfairness by himself.
We'd opened with the teleport systems of two Krakens, dumping the full missile barrage of the fleet — Hresvelgr included — and successfully turning two players' fleets into floating junk heaps. But…
"…Do I really have to do this five hundred more times?"
"Precisely five hundred and twenty-three, sir."
"KRAAAAAAH."
There was no room to savor the victory when the enemy simply had too many bodies. The one silver lining was that those five hundred players weren't all crashing in at once.
"Commander, new fleets are pushing in from the front!"
"Respond immediately."
Maybe it was because this was a coalition of at least fifty separate clans, but some of them — whether they wanted the glory all to themselves or just couldn't help it — would simply yolo-rush the fortress head-on.
Even those types only did it early on, though, before the enemy had massed near the base in any real numbers. After I'd smashed through about three clans of roughly ten players each, the rest got spooked and stopped charging in so freely. And once the remaining clans — what I assumed was the main force — started arriving one after another, they settled into a proper encirclement outside the range of our defensive batteries.
From where I was sitting, it was enough to make my blood run dry.
And once they'd locked down that encirclement… how do I put this. It's hard to sum up in a single phrase, but if I had to force it: given the massive gap in the number of "commanders" between us, they were running a pure rotation war — cycling their players to maximize each individual's command ability and slowly grind down my fleet.
The problem was that if I sortied the garrison fleet against that style of fighting, those ships — with no buffs of any kind — would just get unilaterally shredded. But if I didn't sortie the garrison fleet? Then the player fleets, each riding multi-layered buffs from their own supers, would simply close in and start dismantling Avalon Fortress's defensive systems one by one, or smash the fleet I'd deployed outside the fortress.
Like it or not, my only real option was to throw the garrison fleet at them — the one that at least regenerated on its own given enough time — and use it as a meat shield.
Of course, that situation didn't last long either.
"How's Kraken Unit Two? Still docked in the fortress berthing facilities?"
"Yes, sir. You said it was still too weak to sortie."
"Let's try one more teleport strike with it."
Another swarm of big, beautiful strategic missiles and heavy torpedoes came pouring down on the fleets that had been trying to run their rotation war. Five of their battlecruisers went down without even getting a main-gun shot off, and the players who'd been lining up for the wheel fight scrambled into a hasty backstep retreat.
At the same time, inside the Walpurgis Alliance Clan…
> [This Is the Mint Choco Meeting Room]
Watching one of the clans that had charged in carelessly take effectively irrecoverable damage, the alliance members were left reeling at just how much stronger Icarus's forces were than expected.
Though strictly speaking, it wasn't so much terror at Icarus's power as it was something else entirely.
Ah, shit. If I charge in first, it's just my fleet that gets blown up.
…A boundless, creeping selfishness was raising its head. Players who'd spent months building their elite fleets had no interest in watching those ships explode, so they all just eyed each other and quietly shelved any thoughts of going first.
And if that had been the end of it, fine. But no.
Come on, is nobody gonna jump first?
Guess it's a staring contest.
There's this one asshole I can't stand — what if I egg him into going first?
A few of the more mischievous types were even treating this as a golden opportunity for a perfectly legal purge(???).
And while the alliance clan members were busy playing chicken with each other…
"Commander, the enemy fleets are still pouring harassment fire from long range."
"Tsk."
Watching them hold the encirclement with iron discipline and do nothing but lob missiles and torpedoes from extreme range — utterly unbothered about burning pure time — I felt a quiet unease settle over me.
It wasn't that the strategy itself was particularly threatening. Unlike when I'd first laid siege to this place, the fortress's defensive systems weren't just sitting there staring blankly while missiles came in. And with my fleet still very much intact under my command…
"All ships, including Hresvelgr — commence anti-air operations."
"Haha! Firing nothing but missiles from that far out? What a waste of ammunition!"
…they immediately started swatting down the countless missiles and torpedoes streaking toward the fortress. Granted, among the enemy fleets picked up on graviton radar, there were no missile factories — arsenal ships like Hresvelgr — but the sheer volume of missiles and torpedoes being sprayed by five hundred-odd players, representing roughly four hundred thousand points' worth of ships, was nothing to sneeze at.
A few shots, sometimes a few dozen, inevitably punched through the interception net and scored hits on the fortress or the ships. But short of a destroyer or smaller, no cruiser-class vessel or larger — and certainly not the fortress's defensive batteries or armor plating — was going to take meaningful damage from a handful of relatively tiny missiles (relatively tiny meaning several meters long, mind you).
So on that front, I, the rest of the supers, and the mercenary corps commanders were all more or less unbothered.
That said, it wasn't as if the damage wasn't accumulating at all. As I'd already noted, those damned missiles and torpedoes were coming from five hundred fleets — a truly insane volume of fire. Even with the fortress and fleet's various anti-air systems intercepting 99.9% of it, that remaining 0.1% was still enough to make the smaller ships go up like fireworks.
"This is looking bad."
"What do you mean, Commander?"
I let out a low groan of frustration as I took stock of the situation, and Jessica shot me a puzzled look as she asked. I pointed out that the enemy's approach was literally melting time — and that this suggested some very worrying possibilities for me.
"The fact that they're not even thinking about a rear ambush, just sitting at extreme range and slowly chewing us down like this."
"Yes."
"It could be a message to me that there's nobody left to hit them from behind — or a flex that they've already locked down the surrounding area."
"…Ah."
The problem was that we had no way of knowing whether that was true. And true or not, sitting still meant getting diligently chewed apart with no other options. Whatever they were thinking, I turned the problem over and over, searching for a way out of this situation.
And a short while later, as I took a sip of the coffee Jessica had brought me, the caffeine hit my brain and a fact I'd completely forgotten flashed through my mind.