Eventually clearing after a few minutes, Ridge's mouth dropped slightly in surprise. The slugs had indeed caused some damage to this organic shield, but it had surprisingly held up strong enough to prevent the ship underneath it from being completely obliterated.
Before he could react, small openings began to appear all over the surface of the shield, and Ridge quickly shouted out, Brace yourself!"
Cannons shaped like organisms sprouted from those holes and began firing out a red plasma-like substance that shot out fast towards the ship.
The ship shook heavily, and red alerts hit the screens of the pilots, indicating damage. Ridge, steadying himself, immediately shouted out, "Free fire! Target those cannons, and give me the damage report to the ship as soon as possible."
"Yes, sir!" Voices replied, shouting.
Ridge walked back to his seat to ensure he didn't fall over, and began accessing the data of the ship once again. A few seconds were all it took for the data to be compiled on the damage, and he saw quickly that no cannons were affected; however, the hull's integrity had fallen further from its repaired state. Luckily, there were no breaches. Letting out a sigh of relief, he continued looking at constantly updating screens.
The booming of the cannons returned after a few seconds' delay, and this time they didn't stop, merely letting their own explosive rounds clear the accumulated smoke.
Using a small scanner on the ship, Ridge saw that there were approximately fifteen of these organic weapons firing back. Although spread sporadically, if they could target just a few in quick succession, they should theoretically be able to open up the shielding that's preventing them from really doing damage that matters.
"Aim our cannons at theirs, in this area," he highlighted a small map of the enemy structure with his finger, marking the spots on the holographic screen in front of him, and then sent it out to the coordinator, who cleaned it up to make it much more concise and clearer to understand before he also sent it out towards the automatic system controlling the cannons.
"How long can our ship tank these hits?" Ridge asked aloud. Caroline, overhearing him, answered quickly, Considering the last volley's damage, we should be fine for another three or four attacks. Luckily, those guns don't seem too accurate, so we can just raise our height and their sporadic hits will do a lot less, not to mention plasma on any weapon will lose its damage potential the further away the target is, so we have the advantage with our slugs."
Nodding to the pilots, they began to raise the ship further up into the air, and Ridge continued to monitor the situation.
The ship, now rising into the air, continued to position its own cannons at a lower angle and continued firing, because they were essentially large-scale kinetic weapons; when fighting within a planet and not in open space, their effectiveness is multiplied.
On the ground, the plasma cannons from the fungus enemies continued to fire, but as the ship got raised further and further, the damage they were able to inflict, as predicted, began to become negligible. To the benefit of the H.C. Heart, the thinking power of the enemy commander, if they had one, seemed to be somewhat dull, and so they took advantage by continuing to fire cannons even with no apparent damage being visible to those on the bridge.
On the other hand, with the constant bombardment of the explosive slugs raining down from the sky, a piece of the shielding completely broke apart, and five cannons were destroyed. Naturally, the opening was immediately exploited, and the ship redirected all guns to fire through that opening, effectively hitting the ship beneath. The organic shielding had also been regenerating slowly to close the gap, but Ridge noticed quite quickly that as the crashed ship took more damage from the explosives, it became slower and slower, until finally, after twenty minutes of continuous bombardment, it completely lost its color and collapsed.
"Hold fire," He ordered, "and bring up the best imaging you can get to see what happened."
"Imaging sent now," one of the crew responded quickly. Thanking them, Ridge had it displayed on the window of the bridge.
The others who weren't piloting the ship also gathered around and watched it closely. The wrecked Federation ship became nothing more than grey rubble, and only part of the ship was now intact, though this time they were covered in a brownish dead matter instead of the colorful fungi-like matter Ridge and his group saw a couple of days ago. Moving the screen to zoom in where he could, the images also revealed that there were still some small struggling figures within the wreckage, likely "survivors" of the bombardment.
"Bring the ship down, and have the soldiers prepare; we're going down there now to finish the job. Yahya is in charge in the sky once I'm on the ground with the others," Ridge ordered before turning around and walking out of the bridge and down into the armory to equip his suit.
George quickly followed behind. The message had already been spread out, and so by the time they both got to the armory, there were already soldiers gearing up and grabbing the rifles as well as the swords.
"Commander, the ship has been lowered to a suitable elevation for deployment; ground forces are ready to be dropped from the elevator on your word," Caroline reported from the bridge.
Hearing the beeping of his comms and Caroline's voice, Ridge moved over with the rest of the soldiers that hadn't made it to the elevator, and after checking himself over one more time, he clicked his comms, "Ready, drop us down."
After a few seconds elapsed, the comms came back online, and her voice rang out, "Copy that, activating elevator now."
With a slight shudder, the bottom of the ship opened for the elevator, and the group of soldiers began to be lowered. The wind was slightly rough, but nothing they couldn't stand.
Ridge squinted his eyes to scan the environment and saw movement in the wreckage.
"Movement at twelve o'clock; clear it out as soon as we get down," He ordered.
A chorus of "Yes, sir" sounded out, and after a few minutes they were close enough to the ground to jump from the elevator.
Grunts sounded out, and the soldiers moved towards the wreckage. The dust was picked up and thrown around by the heavy wind. Flames cracked and popped as they passed by. A couple of men had found a crawling zombie and, using their boots, simply smashed the head into the ground.
"Spread out, keep within helping distance though; don't want to get ambushed here without help," Ridge said as he also smashed one of the zombies snarling at him from the ground with his flamethrower.
Nearing one of the pieces of the ship that was somewhat intact, he saw only empty, dark rooms, when suddenly snarling sounds rushed towards him. "On me!" he shouted before retreating a few steps back.
Plasma rounds blasted past him and hit some of the zombies rushing out. At the same time that this was happening, sounds behind them exposed that their right flank was also under attack.
The snarling zombies rushed towards them with a surprising ferocity. It almost felt like the bombardment didn't do much damage. They rushed out in threes, then fives, until eventually some of the soldiers who had rushed over to help had become slightly overwhelmed. Luckily, the others had also come over.
"Commander! Our right flank is under heavy attack," A voice sounded out over the comms channel.
Hearing this, Ridge continued firing his flamethrower before taking a look. Indeed, it was true. There was a group of soldiers being pushed back by human-shaped zombies. Though unlike the infected, these seemed almost entirely made of whatever material this fungi stuff was.
"Keep retreating backwards; we'll join up our two groups and create a defensive formation with some of the debris to help fight these things off," Ridge shouted out over comms.
"Affirmative," the soldier replied.
More and more soldiers also joined in the fight after being spread out, taking care of some of the crawling zombies with the dust and debris. The group of soldiers numbered around eighteen in total. Obviously, within the base there were more soldiers, just not enough guns. To be ambushed like this was unfortunate, but not the end for them here. The two groups weren't far from each other in the first place, and so finally, after a few minutes of fighting and cutting down the charging zombies, they regrouped and began to form something of a defensive formation that ensured they wouldn't get surrounded.
Initially, the zombies attacking Ridge's group were the infected crew members of the Silver Wright Battleship, but as they got killed off, the group charging towards them had slowly become the fully human-shaped fungus that the other group led by George was fighting. They must have multiplied somehow, though he wasn't very sure how.
These thoughts were better saved for the scientists back at base; Ridge reloaded his canister for his flamethrower and continued firing it, refocusing his attention.