(Now recalibrating the battlespace, please wait......... Hang on tight. Another post will follow this one. 
)
♫ Durga - E.S. Posthumus
Space, Near the Fenrir & Orochi Squadron
All around the massive enemy vessel the fighting broke out, as the Orochi Wing's Mindies tried to disperse and dispatch the relentless peppering of missiles headed their way. Fortunately, it did not endure, and casualties were minimal, however Hayami and Shasse soon found that their aggressive retaliatory gunfire into the trailing end of the Arashi's deployed infantry had caused a few of its Lamia units to be shot down and explode like birds culled from a flock. This however quickly attracted the attention of two whole squads of the swarm that turned around and started burning back towards them. The enemy armors wasted no time brandishing WickedArms GM-02 Energy Beam Rifles as they closed distance, their old yet quite familiar two pronged design belching aetheric fury onto the members of 1st Squad, some of which were still recovering from the previous attack. Their sturdy shields were held up, deflecting some of the gunfire that the recovering Nekos of Orochi threw their way once they realized they were under attack from a new vector.
Hayami could hear Kikyo cry out as she took a purple blast right on her chest plate when she hesitated a moment too long, knocked backwards from the protective formation and leaving a trail of smoke... her panicked breathing over comms the only sign she was still alive, but spiraling out of control. The blue-skinned Fumiko also was gunned down, as the energy fire ripped through one of her arms holding her weapon, sending hemosynth bubbling into space as her Mindy tried to suture the wound and keep her from going into shock.
"Suzuki-shoi!" warned Kurosora-heisho, as she blocked one of the beams with her shoulder, taking the hit for her commanding officer as a already spent missile pod was knocked off its post, sparking heavily.
Nearby, the pilots of Heartbreak commenced the attack on the escorts in earnest. This was not going to be a cakewalk, however, as Akane and Aoi found that the aformentioned Weapon Pods were already beginning to form around the hulls of the 4 Arashis in the Alpha grouping, the first of the discs of light began to discharge rapid transphasic beam in staggered volleys at the Mamushis as they drew closer. This forced evasive actions for much of the squadron, as the Sargas brothers found themselves like many others unable to immediately launch their torpedoes... rushing late to the fight, 'Tinkerbelle' and 'Cookies' found themselves taking a hit to their CFS shields, which were holding for now. Although powerful, the pods were slow and easy targets if fire could be focused correctly... as some of the Irim Gunship's suppressive fire from the distance proved with a bright shattering flash.
Every combatant no matter the location could feel the raw energy building all around the battlespace, as the melee was finally joined by the YSS Shinigami activating its massive Aether Shock Array. A dazzling beam of scalar energy lanced out through the great distance, as space itself opened up and released its energy, cutting into the amalgamated battleships' CFS bubble like a hot knife through butter. The effect was amplified when the 8 Irim Heavy-Gunships of Orochi Squadron added their own Transposition Flux Cannons to the destructive symphony, boring a hole straight through to the piecemeal hull and causing heavy damage to its midsection. The way forward for the armor boarding team was now largely accomplished.... though something
unexpected was about to change that well-laid plan.
The ominous flagship of the salvager kings, despite the smoking purple crater in its belly, continued to power up its fearsome arsenal of Transposition Flux weapons to retaliate upon the foolish members of the Task Force Inquisition that had refused to back down. However, right before firing their powerful energies outwards upon their foes, the aetheric charge building up in the prongs of the bladed arrays began to become unstable. Sensors would detect the cause a split-second before it all came to a head -- the jury-rigged grid of aether reactors had been unable to handle the strain of firing their weapons more than once, and the damage caused by the Sharie had melted a critical piece of the Graxlat's engineering. The flickering become more and more wild, as the core of the battleship codenamed 'Fenrir' where the armor had been pierced started burning white-hot and also visually
rippling. With no real safety systems in place, there was nothing to stop the cascading overload.... as all the Transposition weaponry was instead discharged at once on a single point in space centered on the doomed capital ship.
Time itself seemed to stand still again, a ripple shooting out with a quiver through all those nearby, as the collapsing rift began to form. Space itself folded painfully first, as what amounted to a cosmic scream scrambled all sub-space communication systems and disabled all electronics temporarily in the immediate vicinity. Mindy, Lamia, Mamushi, Irim and Arashi alike were buffeted by this immense pressure... and soon the quintessent dark energy nova broke the silence, Nekovalkyrja forced to watch helplessly in slow-motion as it began to grow outward and explode everything near its epicenter at the atomic level.
Chaos reigned as space-time righted itself at last, as the monstrous ship was completely rent asunder by its own devices. The surviving chunks of old Irim and Nozomis that made up its structure flew outward like giant zesuiaum shrapnel, pulverizing any fighter or armor unlucky enough to lie in their path and sending the others scattering like leaves in the stellar wind. The YSS Orochi flagship, itself barely able to retain helm control, only narrowly missed being struck the hail of shattered weapon arrays, as it's sensor dish was clipped clean off and sparks flying. However the remaining 7 Irim's of Orochi Squadron were not so lucky -- the
Awaji,
Ogi, and
Tsukishi were completely impaled upon the giant indestructible blades of their former contrymen, while the
Iki,
Sado and
Tsushima were hit by multiple sharp fragments and sheared cleanly in two, as the vacuum of space claimed their crews before forcefields could be brought up on emergency power. And so this would be the resting place of the venerable Orochi Squadron, victims of the Reaper's sharp sickle...
The enemy Arashi escorts were not unscathed either, as they were sent reeling out of control towards the YSS Shinigami, their weapons pods temporarily destroyed by the scalar pulses. Some of their Lamia's that stopped to engage the Orochi Wing were disabled or destroyed, but the bulk of them had already made it to the Ninth Legion's battleship intact, albiet thinned out by defensive fire.
....
However, all was not lost yet. In the sudden deadly stillness of the graveyard of fresh debris where the Fenrir once hovered, a handful of courageous souls, through skill (or perhaps luck) managed to escape the darker fate of the others...
(to be continued)
