Ravens of Eternity

309 Liberating Force, Pt Internment Camp Xandall-Feig, Great House Grevatia

The vast plantation was nestled quietly in the middle of a massive mountain range, and was far from view from civilization. The planet itself was far from House Grevatia’s center of power, and few ever looked its way.

Those who knew of it in the first place numbered only in the dozens.

The plantation itself was rather expansive, and filled up nearly the entire hidden valley. There, multiple crops were being grown all over.

In the very center of the plantation was a compound that was split in two and surrounded by reinforced security walls. And on those walls were heavily armed and armored guards, who patrolled all along the top.

There were also guard towers dispersed along the walls, which were all manned with lightly armored snipers and riflemen. On top of the guard houses were large quad-barrel turrets whose repeater rounds could easily tear people apart.

The eastern half of the compound appeared to be an administrative building surrounded by a number of ancillary buildings, such as a barracks, clinic, refectory, energy production, and so on.

It was the western half that was a bit more problematic.

All that existed there were a half dozen dormitories, with each one being barebones and just barely passable as living quarters. The dormitories’ beds were practically squeezed together for maximum space, and their shower area was communal.

.....

They most certainly didn’t have their own private spaces to eat.

But the dorms were currently empty – the two hundred or so occupants were instead out at the plantation’s fields. There, the captives slaved over the land and the crops, all while under the thumb of their guards.

As their hands dug at the soil, plantation guards cruised up and down the rows of crops on top of gravity platforms. They were often grouped in teams of four – two human guards, and two humanoid drone guards. No matter what, they were all well armed and armored and exuded their dominance over their captives.

One of the captives stumbled around as he walked over to the next crop. His mind swam as his body fought off a viral infection. He was shivering from the many aches and pains he felt, which was greatly amplified by his body’s general lack of energy.

He stumbled over a root, fell face first into the dirt, and groaned from the pain of the fall.

A platform hovered over shortly after, and one of the guards posted on it hopped down angrily.

“Get up!” he yelled at the man.

The sick captive attempted to push himself up off the ground, but his arms buckled from underneath him, and he fell face first onto the ground a second time.

The guard, now incensed, stomped over to the captive and unhooked his baton from his belt. Then he swung it down, across the captive’s back with a CRACK. The captive cried out as blinding pain swept across his body.

“If you don’t get up,” screamed the guard, “you’re gonna stay down there!”

But of course, the captive didn’t move. Even if he wanted to move, he couldn’t. He didn’t even have the energy to shield himself. And so, the guard swung down again. This time with more ferocity and brutality than before.

And then again.

His baton came down on the captive’s head multiple times, and each time it did, it made a thicker, wetter sound from the impact. The guard struck him over and over, as though he was filled with an inhuman rage. As though he couldn’t stop hitting the prisoner.

To the captives who were watching the gruesome display of violence, it seemed he would never stop.

He finally finished after two dozen vicious strikes and stepped back. The guard panted heavily from exertion, then casually wiped the blood off his baton. As he hopped back onto the gravity platform, his teammate addressed the other captives around them.

“Let this be a lesson,” he said. “If you refuse to be productive with your hands, then we’re forced to use your blood to fertilize the soil...”

As he spoke, dread fell over all of the captives. They watched one of their own get beaten to death, as his blood soaked the dirt. But it wasn’t the first time, not by a long shot.

Some grit their teeth at the senseless violence of it all. They wondered what the hell the point of it all was – why their lives were less valuable than whatever plants they helped cultivate.

“Now get the hell back to it!” the guard screamed.

The captives immediately jumped in alarm, and returned to tending their crops. This time with more urgency in their step, despite the deep aches in their hearts. Many dreamed desperately for a reversal in fortune.

Little did they know that their wish was about to come true.

Just as the guard platform restarted its patrol, four bright red beams came down from the sky. They converged on one of the many tower turrets, and slagged its armor with incredible ease. The intense heat punched through its softed mechanisms, then drilled into the guard house just below.

The guards inside were instantly immolated, and their bodies quickly disintegrated into ash. They barely had the time to scream. Then the beams began to travel down one of the walls towards the next guard tower, and slagged everything along the way.

Any guards and drones caught in their path were also annihilated by the intense heat of the beams.

While the guards scrambled around, and a klaxon rang on the eastern side of the base, the tower turrets all turned towards the sky and began to pepper it with their repeater fire.

Far above – 2500 meters to be exact – the Spirit of Amelia faced down at the ground and annihilated tower after tower. At the same time, she wove between the streams of repeater slugs. Not that it mattered too much – their caliber and power was simply insufficient to penetrate her armor.

Still, Azrael did her best to stay out of the line of fire. She found it best not to tempt fate in the first place.

As she maneuvered around and tore apart the base’s defenses, the other Ravens descended down at top speed in their mecha. They too wove around and avoided whatever fire came their way. And they too fired back with their own.

Xylo’s Phantom opened fire first with her sniper cannon, just as they fell past the 2000 meter mark. Her slug smashed into a turret almost instantaneously and tore apart its insides. It punched through to the guard house underneath it, and dismembered the guards posted inside.

It was so powerful that it punched all the way through the semi-hollow tower, and cratered the titacrete foundation below.

Lucifer’s Mantis fired soon after Xylo, right as they passed the 1500 meter mark. Ze had transformed hir morphic weapon into a sniper rifle, charged it up all the way, then fired a three-round sniper burst at yet another tower.

Hir slugs punched through the turret at hypersonic speeds and slagged everything along their path. The sheer thermal energies they left behind caused its inner mechanisms to sag and soften very briefly, and very slightly moved everything just out of alignment.

They punched through to the guard house beneath, impacted on the floor, and began to slag it. The guards inside burst into flame from the sheer heat that the slugs radiated outward. They ran screaming in pain and panic, but only for a few moments.

The heat was simply so intense that the whole thing began to sag down, even as the guards inside burned to death.

From 500 meters on down, Freya fired a heavy slug from her CoilSpear into the central administrative building. It punched through the top and caused the building to collapse in on itself. The slug itself struck the ground underneath, which caused a tremor all around the compound itself.

Then, she landed right on top of the admin building, and absolutely demolished it from the middle inwards. The rest of the building collapsed completely, and fell in pieces all around her. Most of the officers inside were annihilated by her vicious assault.

The rest languished as their crushed bodies slowly and painfully gave up on life.

While Freya destroyed the main administrative office, Kali followed suit and emptied her two machine pistols into the barracks below. Though her weapons didn’t have the same kinetic oomph, they did tear through the relatively weak armor.

She riddled the entire building with her bullets, then landed right on top of it as well. The force of her landing cause the entire building to cave in and collapse. Every guard that was inside the barracks were also brutally crushed to death from the impact. Most quickly, some slowly.

But the results were the same.

Xylo and Lucifer landed down as well and joined in on the fun. Lucifer morphed hir rifle into a standard assault-style, and fired charged bursts at the guards posted up in the remaining guard towers. Hir slugs tore through the relatively thin armor, and slagged everything inside.

And although the guards and drones attempted to fire at them with their small arms, they couldn’t do much. Their weapons were simply ineffective against mecha, and their bullets bounced off harmlessly.

They could do nothing as the Ravens tore them all apart.

While the four of them annihilated the guards and their buildings, Raijin hovered gently over the energy production buildings. She focused her EWar pod right on them, then battered them with unceasing waves of disruptive ionic energy.

She flooded every component with variable waves and completely overwhelmed their circuits with refined energy. Their internal temperature rose higher and higher as energies poured into them, far beyond their capacity.

It was only a matter of seconds before the battery banks exploded from the excess overcharge. Their enclosures tore apart as the internal power cells burst open. Sparks flew in every direction as power waned throughout the plantation.

Once all the energy was completely spent, everything shut down completely. All lights flickered before they finally winked out. The turrets stopped firing altogether, while gravity platforms fell to the ground. A few guards on those platforms were thrown off, and tumbled around the dirt. Their drone partners, now lacking a central source of energy, fell down where they stood, useless.

Freya’s voice then boomed out her Varulv’s sonic emitters, which echoed across the vast, and now-silent plantation.

“This illegal internment camp is hereby shut down,” she declared. “All base personnel are to surrender immediately or be destroyed. All prisoners and captives are now free to leave with us.”

Many of the cowering captives looked up into the sky and watched as both the Spirit of Amelia and the Accursed Bootlegger lowered down onto the crops. Some immediately fell to their knees and wept at the promise of freedom.

Others dropped everything they were holding and ran wholesale for the two ships.

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