On the planet of Blastkold, the planetary governor, Marquis Grung IV of The Darkening Skies Above Blastkold, stares into the night sky above his world. He sips on his fine wine as he lowers his gaze to look across his city, where the mana compression devices aim toward the sky in defiance of the aliens from beyond known space. He can't help but smile in glee at his amazing defenses, and at the thought of the boon the most holy Inquisitor, or possibly even his Majesty himself, will give him when he manages to destroy the humans. He had always prided himself on his home's military might, especially after sending a group of rebels running a century ago, but when he had heard of the aliens, he had increased his defenses just as a precaution, and now it appears the investment is paying off.
A city-wide magical shield, a shield around his palace, thousands of mana compressors, and countless more mundane and magical siege weapons at the ready make his home second only to some of the ancient fortress worlds near the royal system. He looks back up at the sky and remembers the words of the few surviving navy crewmen who sailed their carrack back to the planet. He knows the humans are cowards who will strike when you aren't looking, so he has kept his city on watch for the past week since the navy failed. He once again looks at his streets and sees the lines of marching levied warriors led by his knights on their patrols. He had called every man in his feif to service until the human threat is vanquished.
His avian eyes practically zoom onto the walls miles away, where he can see the torches and braziers burning brightly, denying the humans a single corner of darkness to infiltrate the city. He once more looks to the sky as a few streaks of light from the debris of the devastated warships still trickle into the sky, anymore there are only tiny streaks, most of them burning away in an instant, unlike a few days ago when the majority of the broken vessels slammed into his world below. Thankfully, only a few peasant villages were annihilated in this event; their survivors were granted acceptance into his growing militia, so it was a victory in the end.
He overlooks the sleeping city, the portions of the city where the patrols have gaps, the darkness of the night gives a different vibe, a peaceful and quaint vibe, massively different from the marching soldiers and burning lamps. It's nights like these that allow Marquis Grung to reflect on his office, and in these reflections, he tries to find things he can do that elevate the quality of life for his people within his city. This massive levy and constant patrols are hard on those he couldn't conscript, so when the humans are inevitably vanquished, he decides to lower the taxes for a good few years and mandate a month of celebration. It will damage his coffers, but if his people fight hard enough and defend their homes, it is entirely deserved. In his infinite kindness, he plans to supply the food and wine for the celebration, not from his own stores, of course, but still better than what many of the common folk will ever have in their lifetimes.
His avian eyes, perfected for predation, suddenly notice something strange in the darkness of the sleeping city. It was only for a moment, and if it wasn't for his species' nocturnal predatory instincts, he would've never noticed it. It was the sudden appearance of two dimly lit red slits looking right at him. A shudder runs down the noble's spine as the eerie feeling of being watched fills him, but no matter how he looks through the darkness, he cannot find them again, nor can he find what they are attached to. After a momentary panic, he calms down, believing it to be some random glass of a home or similar reflecting the light from one of the walls in just the perfect way for a second.
There is a sudden hissing sound, and what looks like one of the falling bits of debris flies over his palace. His eyes track the burning object as it hurls through the sky. His eyes are able to distinguish something odd about this object, how rather than some lumpy bits of debris it appears to be a metal cylinder of some manner, and rather than burning like a meteor, it has one end engulfed in streaking fire. He has only a second to figure out it isn't the debris of one of the dead ships in orbit before it seemingly harmlessly bounces off one of the city walls. Then the wall disappears in a pillar of smoke and dust. After a heartbeat, a wave rips through the city, and the sound of the blast shatters windows and topples formations who didn't expect such a violent explosion. Marquis Grung recoils violently as the blast wave rips through the city and the pillar of dust goes higher. Through the smoke, his eyes can see that his 10-meter-thick wall now has a 20-meter-wide hole in it. Without him needing to give any orders, the alarm bells begin ringing, and all the magical lights in the city roar to life, turning night into day. Soldiers rush to the breach expecting the enemy to utilize the shock, but the noble cannot make out anything in the darkness; the breach isn't being exploited.
The anti-warship weapons come to life and scan the sky for any target that may be responsible for this explosion, but none are found. This search for enemies goes on for hours. Marquis Grung scans the city, the walls, the sky for anything, but finds nothing. The city remains eerily silent as all of his men search the walls and the exterior of the city for any intruders. The skywatchers find nothing out of the ordinary in the air above, it's almost like a piece of debris fell from the sky and struck the city, but Marquis Grung knows his shields wouldn't allow any falling manastone to reach the ground, and what hit the wall was absolutely not randomly falling rocks.
After a long time of looking all of his most trusted men report no signs of the enemy, many of them blaming the explosion on just falling debris, even after Marquis Grung had very harshly stated that what hit the wall was some sort of weapon, or at least some sort of attack rather than the entirely normal falling of debris in space, but all his men would just shake their heads when they thought he couldn't see them. He didn't have the time or patience to punish them because of the looming threat, but he wrote down all of their names for later.
The night passes and no threats are found, most of the city's military force is consolidated around the breach as earth mages slowly mend it...
The next afternoon, Marquis Grung is tired beyond belief, having not slept a lick the night before and having a bunch of required work to do during the day, he is very happy to finally get some sleep. His best knights were posted all through his palace. He lies in his bed after cleaning his beak and talons for the night, and as he feels sleep pull at him, there is a loud crash that echoes through his palace. He leaps to his feet, bangs on the crawlspace attached to his room where an emaciated wretch lives. It's a sore sight, but Marquis Grung has always kept the little thing around as his armorer. A slave, yes, but in his mind, he likes to think of the deformed thing like part of his family... as a pet.
As his slave finishes tightening his armor, the sounds of combat are loudly echoing through the halls, but no alarm bells ring, and the fighting is strangely quiet. He had been told by some of the Shipmasters before they were annihilated by the humans, they all reported humans do not fight quietly. It is described as they utilize weapons that sound like thunder but can penetrate any standard armor and many weaker forms of magical armor. That's what seemingly makes them dangerous, and there is no sound of thunder. It just sounds like the clash of metal, a surprisingly relaxing sound for the veteran noble.
He steps into the hall, expecting to see some uppity minor nobles or maybe some of those remaining sympathetic to the rebels that Grung hadn't executed during his quelling. His two best knights stand ready at the door, their ornamental armor slightly glowing with magical power as they prepare for battle. Marquis Grung asks for a report, but neither knows what is going on, and they especially don't know why there are no alarm bells. As they march down the hall, swords drawn and ready, they reach a crossroad and a huge knight flies across the way, slamming against a far wall with a horrific slam and a fountainous splatter of blood. Another knight comes running around the corner, slipping on the tile floor, sending sparks flying as they try to run from the unseen adversary like a coward. Grung gets ready to vaporize the coward, but a monstrous armored hulk leaps onto them, and with a blinding motion, uses some wrist-mounted blades to remove the head from the knight, his magical armor bypassed easily due to the accurate strike on the weak point that is the neck.
The armored being looks at the three new arrivals with a pair of dull, glowing, red slits where the eyeholes of its helmet should be. Marquis Grung has never seen what one of the reported human monsters looks like, but very quickly, he figures out this is one of them. A mix of the dull, earthy colors of the armor and the distinct lack of a discernible mana signature are his tells. His knights push forward, killing lightning and flame arcing from their swords as they attempt to rush the few meters to the target. Three more of the human monsters walk around the corner where the first one had come from. Their fists and wrist blades dripping various colors of blood, one dropped the crumpled remains of a knight's helmet from its hand. The one before the group growls out from a hidden mouth in a deep and alien voice,
"Do not engage. Surrender peacefully, and no harm will come to you."
The knights, being chivalrous, continue their attack only for a dismissive backhand from the human monster, sending one of them into the wall with the crunch of shattering bone, his armor protecting him from any penetration, but not from the impact, liquefying him inside his own suit. The second knight manages to land a blow to the neck of the human monster, a massive burst of electrical energy coming from the sword, making it hot enough to go through most magical steel like it is butter. Marquis Grung smiles, thinking his men will be the first to kill a human, but when his eyes adjust after the flash, he finds the human monster perfectly fine, the only sign of his knight's attack being some slightly scorched paint on the high gorget of the beings armor, and a slight scratch on the brow of the barcinet styled helmet. In the split second of the attacking swinging the monster headbutted the flat of the blade, forcing the blade down into the thick armor of the gorget rather than the much softer neck joint, and in that same second, the attacking knight's arm had been wrenched free from his body, sword clattering to the ground.
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The monster drops the arm, grabs the knight by his head, and attempts to drive its wrist blades through the chest of the knight, but as impressively sharp and strong as those blades may have been, they squeal loudly and create sparks against the enchanted metal, but don't penetrate. The Monster seems to sigh deeply and simply rotates its giant arm rapidly, wringing the neck of the knight like a small game animal. Then, without any respect or care, it drops the dead knight's corpse onto the ground where it lies there limply. It then speaks again,
"Surrender now."
Marquis Grung is not the kind of person to ever surrender; death before dishonor is his biggest motto. He raises his blade and prepares a spell with his other hand, he will bury them all in his palace. Marquis Grung feels a sudden impact against his casting arm along with the sound of a heavily muffled thudding noise. He looks at the human monsters in confusion for a second, time seeming to slow somewhat. One of the ones at the end of the hall has a small object in their hand, a long tube similar to the kind he had described to him by the navy, but it's much smaller than the ones described. He looks up at his casting hand and realizes he might currently be in shock. A long metal spike had been driven through his forearm. His magical armor is at its thickest on the chest, his arms being relatively weaker due to his arms being needed to fight, but the armor technically stopped the spike as it didn't punch out of his armor on the other side of his arm.
He looks back over to the monsters, dropping his arm as the sound of blood hitting the expensive tile fills the silence. There is a second dull thud, and Marquis Grung drops onto his face as his leg is knocked out from under him at the ankle. The spike didn't make it all the way through the greaves, but its weight and speed were enough to trip him. On the ground, in shock from the slowly growing pain, Marquis Grung attempts to drive his own blade through his neck to avoid capture, but his thick gorget blocks his blade, and he doesn't have the mental faculties to imbue his blade with magic to make it through the manasteel. He thinks to himself about how this is the cost of being an apex predator; he isn't meant to be hurt ever, and his body knows this. He is the predator; nothing should hurt him, so shock came quickly, but it wears off even quicker. Just long enough to get the kill, or to get away, but now it betrays him against these foes. A heavy metal boot irreparably bends his sword with a stomp, and the spike is pulled from his arm, and the wound is filled by the monster using an odd metal can that makes a loud hiss, and the wound appears to be filled with rapidly growing packing material. The monsters bind his arms behind him, and they strap him to the back of one of the monsters as Marquis Grung sits there in a drunken-like state due to the massive cocktail of hormones inside his body, attempting to keep him from feeling pain. A strange band of some sort it put around his beak and tightened so he could no longer speak, and the monsters began moving through his halls with amazing speed, each stride feeling more like a long bound or jump rather than just running.
At the speeds the monsters move, Marquis Grung can only barely make out the carnage they left in their wake as they moved through his palace. Judging by the locations of the deceased knights, it is clear many of them were killed before they had time to react, and at the speeds they are moving through the halls now, Marquis Grung can see why. To his suprise none of his men were seemingly killed by that strange spike-throwing weapon the humans used to incapacitate him, most appear to be crushed or stabbed, but as they move toward a second group of the monsters he can see something similar to the drawings he's seen of the thundering weapons, but the long tubes on the front seem fatter and longer than described. A knight from elsewhere in the palace arrives around a corner, only for one of the correctly armed metal monsters to fire the thundering weapon, but instead of an air-quaking boom, it's a loud crack that, for some reason, doesn't echo and reverberate through the halls. It's still deafeningly loud at close, but appears to only be localized as if they had somehow suppressed the sound of thunder. The knight stumbles back holding his chest as some odd objects hit the walls on either side of the barrel of the weapon. When the knight moves his hand, Marquis Grung can see a tiny hole in the armor, much smaller in diameter than the hole at the end of the human weapon. The knight collapses with the horrible sound of lungs filling with fluid and goes silent.
The Monsters seemingly stand around doing nothing for a while before one gently knocks on a wall, and one of the hidden slave corridors opens up, and waiting inside is the favored one of Marquis Grung. The deformed thing stares at its master and gives a rude gesture to the still groggy bird, and the human monsters are forced to crouch low in order to fit inside the hidden passages. They follow their traitorous guide through winding passages, more slaves being passed by who all seemingly cheer on the human monsters. Eventually, they are let out on top of the palace on a flattened part of the roof where two more of the monsters are waiting, surrounded by dead lookouts and bells cut from their rope. The slaves close the door behind them and the towering monsters of metal all seemingly stand around silently for a while, they rarely move, only to look at one another, suddenly more slave passages open and more marines arrive, after the next few hours there is a total of forty marines standing on the roof. Now, outside Marquis Grung begins feeling much more lucid for some reason. He can't understand why, as his arm still hurts badly, but his bindings make it impossible to do anything despite the lucidity. From the passages, the slaves roll multiple metal cylinders, which the monsters collect and set upright, ready for something.
In the distance, Marquis Grung can hear the sound of a high-pitched whining sound getting closer and louder, which slowly gains a roar under the high-pitched sound. From the opposite side of the walls from where most of the guards are stationed, multiple human ships pass over the city and hover near the top of the palace, then explosions begin ripping through the breach of the wall from somewhere far in the distance. Still, no alarms ring, and the anti-ship weapons remain silent and cold. The ship's lower ramps, which allow for all of the monsters to load the hollow cylinders and climb aboard themselves, Marquis Grung was still attached.
The ships rise away as the city lights up, the defenses still silent, and the ramp closes, blocking Marquis Grung's View of his beloved home and its defenses left entirely outclassed by nothing but a group of 30 enemy soldiers...
Rear Admiral Hollander POV
I watch the map as the dropships begin returning home from their mission, and the Army dropships embark the artillery crews and their guns for exfiltration as well. Despite all of the weapons crews of the anti-ship weapons being dead, there is always a chance that a replacement crew is brought back in, and then the situation could become dangerous. I can't help but chuckle at how insane this plan was, but I send my compliments to my brother, the marine commanders, and Josef. As it turns out, Josef was really important for this mission.
We had deployed the marines via drop pods following the debris of a dead ship. The landing zone wasn't checked at all. Then, during dusk, while the guards on the walls changed, the marines managed to get inside the city undetected by anyone left alive. For days leading up to this mission, we also deployed tons of tiny drones, and we managed to get a hold of the palace's slaves with one of the drones, and with a short conversation, we managed to get them to help us for free because they hated their master. The marines brought Joseph's gift into the palace.
Being a bioscientist, Josef is a very capable man. He managed to figure out, by definitely not testing on prisoners, a specific formula for a numbing gas that is a modified version of modern dental laughing gas, which causes intense sleepiness. Seven marines were sent into the palace to deploy the gas and commit the capture, while the rest of the marines systematically took out the gunners of the anti-ship weapons. Luckily for us, they live in their positions and do not have replacements for weeks or months, so their corpses were not discovered for a while. The destruction of the wall wasn't a distraction from the marines' deployment and executions, instead, it was a consolidation of enemy forces so that they could not reinforce the palace if the alarm was somehow raised.
The mission started by releasing the gas in small quantities throughout the day and was fully released when the attack started. It reduced the reaction time of the knights meaning the marines could largely use melee to kill them to avoid making too much sound, but they were all equipped with a ghost rifle which is one of the M2s the marines use with an integral suppressor which greatly dampens the sound of the gunshot, but they were used sparringly. They were also equipped with APDS rounds rather than normal shot because we have found the armor their knights use can sometimes resist, or outright be immune to standard 50 caliber. We also had a special micro-railgun made for the noble we targeted. It fires a 1 lb metal spike at 900ft/s, which is similar to a 50 caliber round. It was mostly to just knock him over and incapacitate him because we know noble armor can handle 25mm rounds, at least to the breastplate. Lucky for us, this noble is a fencer utilizing lightweight swords, so his arms were lightly armored so he could quickly strike, meaning the disabling shot worked wonders. The weapon was really made to concuss him, but since he didn't wear a helmet for some reason, the marines didn't dome him.
Overall, I'd say the operation was an absolute success, but I will have the marine who let himself take a sword strike be reprimanded for not being careful. We did the math based on the thermal signature of that sword when it struck. If it had hit his neck joint, he would've lost his head, even as marines can be, their heads are still important. We also now have data to show that the marine chest armor technically cannot stop a sword like that. A weapon that hot and at that speed and weight can easily get into the inner workings of the marine powered armor, but thankfully, his quick reaction allowed him to turn the strike into a glancing blow, and it slid off of his gorget with only the blunt side making contact. His helmet will need a repair as it was less than 3 millimeters from breaking the seal of his helmet from where he headbutted the blade.
I'm glad I have this information despite the danger of getting it. Now... It's time for Shariah to break this noble's will so that we may find out friend the Inquisitor...
