Esdeath's TATSUMI roared across the dirt of the plains at over 800 mph, a mach cone formed around the front. Behind her, waves of sonic boom circles spread out one after another, displacing air and knocking away anything not buried or bolted to the ground. To her left and right were 240 of the most blood thirsty war criminals within the Valkyrian Empire, their jet packs keeping an arrowhead formation with her at the tip. The remaining sixty soldiers flew far ahead to report and harass enemy positions.
Inside the cockpit, Esdeath was the picture of calm as her photographic memory quickly processed any battlefield information sent to her from either her command or her soldiers. There was no point in getting all riled up if it'd give you tunnel vision. Having such negligence in spatial awareness was a rookie mistake. You get so caught up with your objective that the battlefield could change completely to your disadvantage.
"Primal, we've encountered the first layer of enemy forces around Oggaluz's encampment," came the Blooded Primal of the vanguard squadron. " Enemy forces are very thick. AA and heavy, mounted weapons are very numerous. I would recommend you stick with the canyon to avoid these unnecessary obstacles."
"Hmmm.." she brought up a screen on her HUD showing a live-feed video from her squad leader. They were spewing the ash clouds of black fire through the ranks of enemy forces, focusing on fortified positions and heavy weapon emplacements. The Blooded Primal was zipping back and forth through the air, a safety measure in her HUD displaying the levels of G-forces she was being subjected to going from 7Gs to -3Gs with no rhythm. The Orks were doing their damn hardest to hit the Sky Razers but with the flight packs giving her soldiers full 4-Dimensional mobility at quick reacting high speeds, their assortment of bullets, rockets, and grenade fire were having negligible effects on the advanced Valkyrian armor and equipment. Their only rewards were clouds of pyroclasmic ash enveloping them.
She could see Orks that were already subjected to their deaths frozen like a statue as the ash clung and harden to their skin, quickly draining all moisture from their bodies. Many would be justified in believing it to be a Hellish fate since their bodies continued to burn beneath their new ash molds.
"Continue destroying targets of interest to appease our Grand Primal Commander but do not fall behind us. I'll follow your advisement, so focus on the targets closest to the canyon's edges."
The 240 Sky Razers with her broke off into groups of five, each group not far from the other, and took off ahead, accelerating well past 1,000 mph. The distance grew as they kept parallel with the ground while Esdeath followed the downward slope to enter the canyon. Rocks that jutted out as random angles would be a formless blur to any regular person riding TATSUMI.
"Enemy ranks spotted," she thought as the canyon had straighten out and starting in the middle, she could see hundreds of Orks camped out, though right now they were busy constructing several flying barges to possibly attempt some suicidal assault on the ships firing on their species. Well, ships were secondary objectives.
Plasma missiles selected. Firing ADMM.
Sixty missiles launched from the miniature missile silos behind her cockpit. The glowing blue energy missiles banked at normally impossible ninety-degree angles to veer towards the enemies locked on. The Orks were caught by surprise when the barrage of missiles slammed into their ranks or equipment. The explosive damage of the missiles were Thermal in nature, meaning very high temperatures were utilized. Each missile was programmed to search and destroy. The A.I. of TATSUMI guided all of the missiles to where it projected the most effectiveness, spreading showers of blue plasma over hundreds of Orks.
The sap-like fire latched onto any surface in its path, melting rock, ground, metal and flesh alike with equal discrimination.
In the next second, TATSUMI's sound breaking form tore into the ranks of the dead, dying, or confused Orks. The SHEAR blades attached to TATSUMI did their job perfectly as anything touched by them were burned out of existence, bifurcating entire groups of the green fungi monsters. Even if the blades only cut the Orks in half initially, or cut a limb off, the intense fire slow burned them away like the Forerunner's hardlight weapons were infamous for. Since she was going at the speed of a jet, the grounded Orks, no matter how trained or skilled they were, couldn't react to her destruction until after she'd passed. A cruel truth in an unfair galaxy, especially a galaxy of war.
Her TATSUMI tore through both ranks of Orks and unfinished barge ships with minor resistance but the speed of her craft made it negligible. The only problem was trying to keep the camera lenses from getting too much blood on them. She had alternate means of seeing around her but they were more suited for TATSUMI's mech form.
TATSUMI slammed into a pair of Orks limping due to plasma burns on their bodies. In slow motion, the SHEAR blades' convergence point made contact with the back of the first Ork. The five blades effortlessly cut the Ork into five pieces, killing the nerves before they could even send pain signals to the brain while those that got cut weren't even in existence to send signals. The pieces slammed into the actual body of TATSUMI and got thrown aside to slowly burn away. The second Ork merely got bifurcated at the waist by the SHEAR blade on the arm extension on the bike mech's side. The Ork didn't even know it was cut in half until the legs ran out from underneath the top body. While the nerves cut by the blades didn't exist, the rest of them that were slowly burning away did and the Ork died screaming in pain.
TATSUMI caught a natural ramp in the ground and gained some air time, flying over the Orklings while the taller ones ended up losing their heads to either the blades or being smashed by the bike itself. The bike launched another sixty plasma missiles from its twin ADMM launchers. The missiles went straight up and banked out in all horizontal directions. Their spread sent the now more aware Orks who'd yet to be affected by Esdeath's assault taking cover where they could, weapons clutched tightly in their hands in preparation to fight back when the explosions cleared.
Unfortunately for them, they were not aware of what kind of warheads the missiles were packing. They found that a rain of shrapnel made of plasma was very painful and ignored traditional covers. With their shrapnel spread and the explosive yields, the missiles saturated a large amount of the canyon's opposite end.
In three more seconds, Esdeath cleared the ranks of the ravaged Ork camp and the canyon itself. Using geographical images from the ships above, TATSUMI's A.I. calculated the path through the canyon's twists and turns to take away the effort needed on his mother's part to navigate it. Now she could just focus on killing the green maggot sacks.
You handled that group very well, TATSUMI. Are you enjoying yourself?Esdeath thought like a concerned mother. The interface gel lit up in a low blue light around her body.
"Yes, Mother. Those piles of walking fungi were easy. They wouldn't have even heard me had we not shot them with missiles. Did you see the way I rammed that one Ork and sliced him into five pieces!? It was really fun, but I got nasty Ork blood on me. You're not mad, are you?"
One could not mistake the sincerity of its voice and the worry in it. It was almost heart-touching; it was if you were the kind who loved talks of mutilation. The way Esdeath cooed marked her as one of those types.
That's alright, my big boy. Getting dirty in war is inevitable. Mommy will personally wash and polish your body after this is done. You've done such a good job for Mommy and her people.
A childish giggle filled the cockpit as the mother/son duo from the bottom of Hell traded compliments with each other as the bike neared the end of the canyon's length. Pass that was nothing but wide, leveled plains crawling with Ork battalions and weapon emplacements. As they exited the canyon, the rest of the Sky Razers formed up on their flanks, creating a large 'V' formation. All aerial soldiers were still accounted for, though a few had dents and scorch marks.
"I've reviewed the combat footage of every Sky Razer so far, Mother, along with our own and using satellite imagery to follow our trail, I estimate enemy casualties to be around 5,230...-ish. Is that a good start?"
Esdeath sighed in disappointment which was heard by the A.I. who began freaking out. "It seems that no matter how many battles we fight, how many simulations we run, and how many upgrades and enhancements I give my soldiers, we can never beat my kill count record of 8,432 within the first ten minutes of battle using conventional weaponry and not my ice abilities."
You could practically picture the tears of failure running down her eyes.
"Main maggot sack camp ten miles away. Scans show numbers exceeding half a million. There are dozens of battlements between us and them along this plain, Mother."
"Sky Razers, reduce cruising speed to 300 mph. A bomber wing is overhead. They'll clear out their targets ahead of our pace. Link your radars up with mine as I link up with the bombers to disseminate the danger zones. We avoid those areas. We could wait for them to finish but I'm feeling extra daring today."
"Order confirmed, Primal," her subordinates replied.
The formation tightened as they slowed their speed down, moving from a large, V into a more compared arrowhead grouping. They looked like a swarm of metal insects zipping across the plains. Even the dust seemed to swirl around to get out of the way of the shock force.
"Sky Razers, first battlement two miles away. Bombs have been dropped. Pay attention to your radar. Upload feed streaming now."
True enough, in the visor HUDs of all the Sky Razers, their topographical radars that were zoomed onto their area were five red, circular splotches covering much of the green areas infested with red and yellow dots, them being enemy vehicles and infantry respectively. The dots were nearly evenly spaced from each other. The group maneuvered themselves to align with a gap in the estimated blast radius of the explosions.
"Impact in three… two… one.."
Esdeath saw the downward propelling smart bombs for a second before they exploded about two hundred feet above the ground about a mile away from them. The explosions were liken to small grade nuclear warheads exploding. The bright lights of the miniature blue suns were polarized by the Sky Razers' visors before they even formed. Four massive blue fireballs melted thousands of Orks and their defensive equipment like cheese in a fire. Orks within 500 meters of the explosions were internally fried by the heat waves microseconds before their bodies were shattered into ashes by the following shockwaves which carried around enough force to knock any Ork within half a mile off their feet. Vehicles were sent tumbling away, water sources evaporated into steam, and the sound ruptured the ear drums of any within a mile.
This had to nasty effect of utterly ruining any sort of defense the Ork could put up in time for the enclosing Sky Razers. Their flyers suffered brief turbulence due to their proximity but their skills and technology allowed them to maintain control of their bodies in the 4-Dimensional battlefield of mid-air. They moved past the craters and melted surroundings a few seconds later, a brief "WARNING" icon in the bottom-left hand corner of their HUDs flashing due to the ambient heat left over from the explosions. They were out of the heat zones in just seconds so the danger wasn't really there.
They left the area just in time for another set of bombs to explode a few miles away, a pair of PR-99 bombs detonating a thousand feet in the air. The anti-infantry carpet bombs did their jobs well as they exploded with the force of ninety-nine tons of TNT. Their blasts alone would have leveled entire city blocks but was more contained to be more destructive with their selected targets. The blast waves also did the job of dispersing millions of bits of plasma to fall onto the land below not unlike a sudden Summer rain shower.
It should not be left unsaid just how destructive these bombs were. The blast and heat waves of the explosions themselves leveled any standing structures whether they were natural or man-made. The pressure crushed and pulverized fleshy bodies and mechanical contraptions, the sudden suction of air underneath the explosions to fuel their fires was strong enough to pull organs out from the mouths of any Ork unfortunate enough to not be killed instantly, and finally the entire land was coated with blue plasma heated to 3,500 Kelvin melted everything it touched.
As the TATSUMI flew across, it looked like a sea of blue plasma just feet beneath her. Esdeath's wake was left with two large waves of the plasma being kicked up by her speed. The next structures were three miles away and as Esdeath watched, they were destroyed by a quintuple of massive explosions from the Type-33 squadron's BB-188s. 188 tons of explosives for each bomb were enough to momentarily disrupt the Sky Razers' progress due to the shockwaves nearly throwing them from the air like debris in a hurricane. A massive wall of dust following it raced towards them a hundreds of miles per hour.
Like clockwork, the Sky Razers flew high to avoid the wall of dust and debris due to not being nearly as armored as TATSUMI. The bike accelerated unflinchingly, disappearing into the clouds. Esdeath's vision was filled with a few alerts given the environmental danger but the threat level was still low enough to ignore them. When she reached ground zero, she briefly left the ground as it was cratered beneath her for over a hundred meters deep and several hundred wide. With the dust everywhere, it simply looked like she was jumping a dark, bottomless hole in the earth. With her speed, she was able to clear more then half of the crater before gravity was reasserting its hold over the heavy bike.
Given her speed, her descent wasn't vertical by any means yet was getting close to it by the time she eventually hit the opposite side of the crater. The impact was enough to briefly overcome the anti-grav propulsion's ability to levitate TATSUMI but the bike was built to operate under enormous punishment and it merely scratched the paint. The moment was over though as they kicked back in again and the TATSUMI was back at its former cruising speed within seconds as if it hadn't just tanked an impact that would have severely hampered or incapacitated most armored vehicles of Tier 3 or lower (Tier 4-10). While TATSUMI's design was that of Tier 2—bordering Tier 3—, the materials making it were Tier 0 by even Forerunner standards. Crashing at high velocities was a walk in the park.
She exited the crater by flying off the make-shift ramp that was the lip of the incline. Looking through the still prevailing dust cloud, she could see through the thermal imaging the next few explosions far off that denoted the end of the Type-33s' current bombing run. There would be no more reason for her group to slow down now. As she progressed, her airborne cadre of murderers and sadists of flesh and Life Armament biologies reformed their ranks back to the V-formation, maintaining altitudes around sixty feet.
Seconds later, remains of the Orks from the bombing came into blurry view. Like previous bombings, the scene was a living painting of one of the nine circles of Hell as smoldering and melting remains of Ork parts were littered as far as the eye could see under the blanket of blue plasma. They briefly passed the epicenter where the ground was impressed and slightly covered in burning plasma with any bodies of Orks long since crumbled to dust by the heat and blast waves. Droplets of plasma still remained in the eye, falling slowly to the earth like flakes of snow.
It was quite a beautiful picture in Esdeath's mind.
Perhaps I should show this footage and petition the name for these PR-99s as… "Doom Seeders". Yes, a great explosion that spreads the seeds of a burning death upon the land. Quite poetic if I do say so myself.
She passed by the dead and dying with nothing but appreciation towards the overkill. She found enjoyment in the simplistic nature of how the Valkyrians waged planetary invasions. Obtaining orbital supremacy was a top priority must, followed by aerial superiority. However, while most species the Valkyrian has met would send massive armies of soldiers and vehicles to fight for control of the planet's important facilities and cities, Yggdra Love's war policy was much different. If she was aggravated enough to go this far than she wouldn't care about collateral damage. In rare cases like this, she'd save time and lives by just using massive bombing campaigns to level everything in sight and for even more specific cases, sending an elite squad to assassinate the chain of command of the enemies during the chaos of the genocidal bombing. It was quick, brutal and efficient. The untold numbers of V.I. drones could sift through the wreckage to salvage anything.
Scenes like what Esdeath was passing were happening all over the current planet. Orks who were used to fighting Eldar, Humans, and Necrons had prepared defenses and fortifications to await the coming Valkyrian armies but their enemy was not like those of this galaxy. They didn't care about honor in war. War was a tool for them to grow more powerful. An inefficient tool was a useless tool, thus an inefficient war doctrine was a useless war doctrine. While the Valkyrians loved a good fight, they still followed their Primals and Queen without question and either of them told them to bomb a planet's surface to rubble, they'd put aside their personal desire and follow the command. Those Orks who were expecting a ground war merely heard and sometimes saw massive bombs fall on them from the upper atmospheres before their lives ended in blue plasma.
The only ones exempt from these bombings were groups of Orks numbering in the low thousands and less as they could be quickly killed or captured by what Valkyrian troops were deployed. The much more massive groups were too much of a bother and so were exterminated. While this made it seem as if not many Orks would be spared the bombings, they were spread all over the continents and would eventually number in the tens of millions out of the billions on the planet. It'd still be one of the best hauls for the Valkyrian in recent memory.
"Mother, main maggot-sack camp coming up in four miles. ETA at current speed is 41 seconds."
Esdeath mentally did the math. 300 mph equals 5 miles per minute; 5 miles divided by sixty seconds means 0.083333 miles per second. They would make good time. She could see the large walls ahead, covered in jagged metal spikes and littered with holes for gunners. The walls from this distance had small dots scurrying around the top but she could see the hundreds of Orks, Nobs and Gretchlings moving about. There were several large machine-gun turrets aiming towards her group as well, each one painted red to make its munitions more powerful due to their belief that red makes bigger explosions.
TATSUMI, launch a full salvo of ADMM missiles to clear us a path through the wall, then fire the singularity cannon through the new entrance, set distance for 900 meters. Have that second salvo fire at what we miss.
"YES MOTHER!!"
Sixty missiles screamed overhead, targeting a single section of the wall while a second volley were being prepared. At the same time, the front of the bike split apart as the singularity cannon extended to its full length. Black matter was energized and contained within its vessel as the launcher was aimed where the missiles were heading from its fixed mount. The missiles impacted like boulders in an avalanche, shaking the entire structure and knocking nearby Orks off the feet while the area of impact went from solids to soliquids in a second. The explosions blew hundreds of Orks away while turning those closer to the blasts into fuel for the fires caused by the plasma. The first ten missile had blew away the outside of the wall while the rest followed and gutted its insides. When it was finished, there was a twenty meter wide gap glowing blue in the wall, plenty wide enough for TATSUMI. On the other side, she could see thousands of Orks recovering from the surprisingly powerful explosions.
Esdeath fired the singularity cannon and the familiar sphere of unstable energy ripped through the air like a cannonball at 4,500 ft per second. The sphere traveled about five hundred meters before the energy reached passed critical mass and became a gravitational well due to its density. Several hundred Orks of various kind didn't even have a chance to run as their bodies, along with everything else within several hundred meters was pulled apart at the atomic level. Space and time was stretched and distorted, leaving none to be spared within its event horizon. Entire platoons of Orks and whole buildings were stretched and torn asunder. Finally, the black hole lost its stability and the energy within it exploded out, sending a shockwave that crushed bones and stones and steel alike. The ring-like wave ripped through these various objects of solid matter like a power sword through guts, weakening as it progressed due to the sheer density of enemy combatants.
Where the black hole had been was now just a crater hundreds of meters wide and deep, perfect in its symmetry and rounded shape. The Orks who survived due to the singularity flying past behind them were then blown to burning bits as sixty more ADMM missiles created a path to the crater. The massive transforming bike flew past a second later, ignoring any survivors or dying grunts or taunts. That's because TATSUMI was headed towards bigger fish. A few miles away near the center of the camp was where the strongest of the psychic WAAAGH! signatures had originated from. Between them were tens of thousands of Orks all raged up and itching for a good fight, wielding a plethora of absurd and impossible weapons to the simple spiked club.
"Sky Razers, tear them all apart. Create a wall around me when I engage Oggaluz," Esdeath ordered. With SHEAR blades deployed, TATSUMI cut swaths through the ranks of Orks.
The Orks were both excited and confused. They were used to fighting enemies they could hit; enemies that would fight them on a somewhat level playing field, technological differences not withstanding. Just how were they suppose to fight against a massive, armored bike moving far faster than any buggy they had and cut through through anything with its blades? By the time it got near them, there were either dead or ignored due to its speed. This was a new challenge! But a really hard one to figure out...
Majority's attention was soon taken by the hundreds of flying aliens who were following the bike. Maybe they could give them a good fight? They got their answers when the flyers started firing streams of black smoke at the ground below them. The Orks could hear the yells of pain of other Orks caught in the smoke and many figured it smart to avoid it, diving for cover or just running out of the predicted paths of smoke. When the flyers passed and the smoke settled-strange smoke that stuck to skin and burned really hot!—they were glad to have taken shelter since all the Orks caught in it were cool looking black statues now. Some who were alive tried to move still but as one Ork found before dying, his legs broke like shattered glass with the effort.
TATSUMI and Esdeath weren't able to identify Oggaluz because of the amount of Ork blood covering the cameras. There were measures to keep it clean, obviously, but like windshield wipers in a rainstorm, any blood burned off was replaced with more blood just as quickly. It was about as effect as windshield wipers underwater. However, Esdeath knew she was close. She could feel it in her psyche. It seems it was time to come out and say hello. The EM field around TATSUMI was almost useless at this point and she didn't activate the built-in AT Fields for some reason. The close proximity and volume of fire from all directions made diverting the enemy fire moot. She could feel the thumps of bullet and grenade fire on TATSUMI's hull. It sounded like rain drops on a tin roof. TATSUMI's energy shields would simply drain unnecessary energy. She knew he was tough—she'd built him herself to withstand much stronger shelling. Trusting in his durability, she'd rather him focus on enemy extermination.
"TATSUMI, Mommy's going out for a walk. Take care of any pests she doesn't kill."
"Yes, Mommy."
The synaptic gel receded from Esdeath's body until it was pooled back into unseen compartments for safe storage. The top of the coffin cockpit opened up, letting in the sunlight but its passenger was out quick enough for the shell to close again. Esdeath's body flew through the air for several dozen meters before she finally landed on a lone metal object suitable enough to stand on. In a dizzying array of blue lights, three pairs of disconnected wings held in place by some type of constraint field appeared behind her.
The wings were side-by-side-by-side on both sides, each looking identical as flat-ish, angular sword sheaths about five feet in length from calf height to just above Esdeath's head. There were three distinct sections: two large, royal blue-colored armor pieces laid over both ends of a white-colored inner section that split them as well as protruded from the inside of the armor-like carapaces like folded blades with a single, large protrusion near the top of the inside pointing at Esdeath's back. All six wings were covered in matching patterns of glowing red geometric lines that seemed to resonate with similar lines appearing on Esdeath's armor.
Her appearance caused a brief lapse in fire but she soon became the focus of their blood lust. She shivered in pleasure from being the subject of such murderous intent and as the gunfire came towards her, she merely stood as it was all destroyed by a rainbow-colored wall of energy that seemed to have square shaped ripples expanding from the hundreds of points of impacts along its briefly visible surface.
The AT field was the pinnacle of Valkyrian energy shielding that Frigga had developed millennia ago and has since been constantly improving and perfecting it. It did not deflect incoming projectiles, but utterly destroyed them upon impact. It was a projection field of anti-matter held together by a combination of technologies originating from Valkyrian to Forerunner and even scattered tidbits of Precursor. The field was capable of shape manipulation, changing from a simple wall to a sphere at the user's free will. It could even be utilized as a weapon with the appropriate manipulation, such as protruding to spear an incoming vehicle, creating layers of shielding that'll expand to throw back enemies (as if that wouldn't annihilate them on an atomic scale but you never know) for about fifty meters or use that same method to crush enemies underneath the anti-matter shield plates or even bisecting someone/thing at close enough range.
Due to the sheer complexity of the design, as well as the rarity of materials needed to physically create stable AT field generators, they are only found on capital ships and high-ranking personnel, such as Royals and Grand Primal Commander. It took Esdeath twenty years of carefully planned logistics and backdoor trading to obtain just enough materials to make her own. The materials were as valuable to the Valkyrian research divisions as Nethicite would be to any species who can actually supply power to such a construction material.