[]
"Roll it," at Kalis word, Ciel tapped the floating text screen, and for at least five seconds, the screen rolled through dozens of names relating to factions she knew and didn't.
It began to slow down, the text passing over the Locust Horde, Decepticons, and Borg all passed by.
Kali shuddered in relief as many unbeatable foes passed by like the Anti-Spiral and SCP-001 When Day Breaks, came and went.
Eventually, it would stop as it passed on the Confederacy of Independent Systems and away from the Seraphim to land squarely on a foe whom I had no issue with dealing against.
[Vanduul Horde]
"Well, they won't be pleasant to fight, but they most certainly won't be too troublesome to put down either."
'Master, what is this?' the Avenger questioned.
"Our distraction, hold out until the data collection is complete, I'm coming to get all of you out of there." Kali's sight returned to the bridge of the Orion sitting in the command chair, the next thing she did was giving the order for the fleet to jump to Slip-Space, hopefully with the newly upgraded Slip-Space drives, they would enter close to the target planet and not on the edge of the system as the older models did.
Transit time would take under 5 minutes, thanks to how close they were to the target system's location, they had positioned themselves in deep space between solar systems, keeping to the edges of the Turians sensor ranges.
"Archer, delay the incoming responders, everyone else, make some noise, you're free to engage at your discretion." With the order given, Kali saw through the eyes of her Servants, dashing forth outside to keep the Turian ground and air forces away from the temple.
Kali found it hard to keep up with the perception of her Servants, from her point of view, it seemed that they were blurring towards something, then suddenly they performed an attack which caused some form of destruction or a shower of blood before blurring away again.
Thankfully, from the eyes of her Archer, Caster and others, she could see clearly what they were doing, firing magic rays or some other form of projectile at the aliens, causing grievous bodily damage or outright erasing of the target.
Barely 3 minutes or more had passed, and they had already made the responding Turian forces a non-factor, it was beautifully terrifying work.
But from the eyes of her Servants, Kali saw something.
"Archer, look to the skies," heading her command, the fae tilted her head up to the knight sky, and from her enhanced eyes, Kali could make out streaks of light and flashes of what might be explosions.
Then a wailing drone started filling the silence.
From all directions, sirens and bright lights switched on, multiple flying crafts began to rise and zip to the skies above or off to the horizon.
Following it, an alien voice boomed out into the city, Kali could only guess what it was saying, but a good guess was that it was alerting all the Turian inhabitants of the foe they were fighting above their Homeworld.
"Status on the information collection."
'They're done, they say there are only two targets off-world we need to hit,' Kali nodded, feeling greatly satisfied.
"Excellent work, pack up and get to the Prowler, once your out, go ahead and level the building, I'm about to exit FTL, I'll see you all on board soon." The last thing Kali saw before she disconnected from her Servant's sight was streaks of light descending from the night sky.
Her focus returned to the sight out the window, where the swirling abyss of slip-space gave way to the inky blackness of real space with twinkling stars off in the distance.
The ship began rotating down as Palaven came into view, along with a massive clusterfuck of a battle right before Kalis eyes.
From the tactical display, the Turian defence fleet was well over 200, yet the number was both dropping and increasing, from the icons on the board, there were several dreadnoughts, 6 in the mix, dozens of cruisers, and over a hundred frigates and corvettes with more popping in from the Relay or from in-system anchorages and military bases.
The enemy they were facing, the Vanduul Horde, was well over 300 vessels strong, hundreds of small crafts and cruiser variants with the odd battleship equivalent, no what really drew her attention were the 4 Kingships.
Each one was heading off in a different direction, one going to the moon of Palaven, another to the world itself, one away from the planet, and the final one on a direct course to the Mass Relay.
Each had a large escort, and each was going to be a challenge to destroy, but thankfully, they were not staying together; that was an advantage Kali would exploit.
But her first priority was the retrieval of her Servants.
'Master, we have a problem,' Pretender spoke, feeling a bit of dread, Kali dove back into her Servants eyes and through them she spied a burning wreck that was their Prowler.
"What happened!?" she said quickly.
'Those scythe-looking flying things rammed into the ship, we need another way off this world, ' the Ruler said to her.
A Vanduul Scythe jet rammed her Prowler?
Switching her prespective to all her other servants, it showed her how bad things were becoming on the ground.
Search lights and tracer rounds were already flying up into the night skies, flaming streaks of crashing ships fell to the earth and dozens of alien craft were engaged in brutal dogfights.
The cityscape was being hammered by many explosions, towers were often hit and burst into flames, various Vanduul fighters and bombers made passes on different sections within the city, all while massive Harvester crafts were deployed and were mercilessly tearing into the environment.
Kali was taken aback by the carnage being wrought upon the Turian Homeworld, she could feel her eyes widen and pulse quicken, a dawning sensation of horror sweeping throughout her mind.
At the same time she thought about the best way to get her Servants out of there, away from the destruction she had brought to this world.
From the Servants' perspectives, Kali found a possible way to extract her Servants.
"Lancer, that building with the ruined billboard, that tower will be where I'll get you all out, get to the rooftop, and hold for my arrival if you get there first." Kali broke off the Servant sight once more, turning her focus on the void battle now.
Wasting no time, Kali set her fleet on course towards Palaven, though it seemed that a Kingship heading towards the world was placing itself directly between her team and her fleet.
It didn't matter, she ordered her fleet into attack positions and aligned for vectors on the various Vanduul forces around the target's location.
Before she would get there, she watched the Turians fight tooth and nail against this new alien foe, another monstrous force unbound from Element Zero, a foe that uses energy weapons to bypass their kinetic shields, a race of highly aggressive beings who used ramming as an effective means of offence and used boarding teams frequently.
Credit for where it was due, the Turians were keeping in formation even when the Vanduul hurled themselves into the firing lines.
But it was clear that while the Turinas would gain the numerical advantage as well as the firepower in the lone run, they were, for now, outgunned in said firepower; laser lances and bolts of energy were cutting into the Turians' ships, leaving them diced up in space or riddled with glowing holes that left a fiery mess of a hunk of useless steel.
Some were left drifting when boarding crafts dislodge themselves and blasted off to find another unfortunate foe.
And the Kingship itself was carving a bloody path through the lines.
Massive missile volleys and energy cannon barrages shredded cruiser lines and frigate wolfpacks.
The real kicker was the spinal mount laser that bisected a dreadnought with comical ease.
That thing needed to go.
"All vessels, primary target is the Kingship, spin up MACs to 100% and await my command to fire." With the order given, all vessels within the Black Fleet bore their bows onto the Kingship, which had yet to realise that it had been given a kill order.
As the distance closed, the Turians and Vanduul finally decided to pay attention to the closing in Black Fleet.
The Vanduul sent in many fighter crafts and frigates with some cruisers to intercept, Blades and Maulers were the most numerous, while the Turians only turned a few of their vessels to face Kalis fleet, but did not fire, most of their attention was focused solely on the Vanduul horde wreaking havoc on their Homeworld and in the system.
Fortunately for them, Kali would be fighting by their side this day to eradicate the Vanduul menace.
As she was within optimal firing range, Kali gave a silent command for all her ships to open fire on the Kingship.
From the prow of every ship in the Black Fleet, hundreds of streaks of light raced across the void of space, heading directly for one singular target.
The Kingship, formidable as it was, was not infallible when faced with overwhelming firepower.
Hundreds of rounds traveling at speeds barely a percent of the speed of light slammed into the mighty vessel.
Its shields were shattered nearly instantly from the barrage, and the whole vessel showed gouges appearing for a brief second before it was engulfed in a massive explosion of light that tore the ship apart at the very seams.
When the light died down, the terror of the Kingships shadow was gone, all that was left was an unrecognisable hulk of fiery steel.
The Turian fleet froze briefly at the carnage wrought about, but quickly dashed into action, galvanised by the death of what was in their eyes a super dreadnought that was laid low.
The Vanduul forces close to Palaven turned tail and ran off after the other Kingships, completely abandoning their own forces on the world below to fight to end.
This allowed Kali to detach a squadron of three Paris heavy frigates and a Charon down to the surface of the world to collect her Servants.
She idly watched them zoom down towards the planet before turning her sight onto the tactical display, it showed the other Kingships positions and their accompanying escort fleets.
One of the Kingships halted its advance into the system and turned back around, heading towards Palaven, the one at the moon also turned around to start heading towards them, all while the Kingship at the Mass Relay was still engaging the ever-growing death blob of Turian reinforcements forming up as they exited the Relay.
It seemed the Black Fleet and the battered Turian home defence fleet would be fighting two incoming Kingships on their own once they finished up the fleeing stragglers.
As if both of the two different fleets had given each other a silent agreement, they regrouped and formed up together, readying themselves to face the incoming horde.
Kali idly noted her Servants were just now getting on board her frigate down on the world below and would soon be rocketing back up into space to join her on the Orion.
By the time they made it, Kali was fully concentrating on directing the Black Fleet's movements as the incoming Vanduul had now arrived and sent in a fighter swarm to soften them up.
The Turinas sent out there defensive fighters from both land bases on Palaven and their own ships to meet the swarm head-on alongside Kalis own interceptors.
A small amount of pressure was building up in the back of Kali's mind as the battle continued, the furball the aerospace fighters created was massive yet brief as they broke off to attack and defend their respective ships from enemy bombers.
Kali ordered her ships to fire off volley after volley of Archer Missiles at the smaller targets of the Vanduul fleet while her MAC hit the heavier fleet assets. Supported by the Turians own counterattacks.
A rhythm began to form between the fleets, Kali would use her heavier and more effective MACs to pop the shields of the Vaduul vessels, while the Turians would use their own faster-firing MACs to tear apart the unshielded vessels in quick succession.
They managed to thin the horde out a little bit, but the Vanduul drew close enough to fire off their own munitions, laser lances and energy bolts hit both Turian and Kali's ships with punishing effects, the experimental shields she was fielding on her vessels popped very quickly under sustained fire, and the armour began melting off, but not as quickly as it did against the Covenant.
Still, losses were being incurred, another two Dreadnoughts fell from the Turian side, while many frigates and destroyers were destroyed, even a few Marathons and a her only Vaillant were lost after being subjected to spinal laser mounts on the enemy Kingships.
Kali could feel her mind cooking at directing this battle, her heart was hammering and her breathing hitching a few times as the Orion took fire on several occasions.
She frowned as she saw how her Fleet number decreased to the 70 mark, she was not pleased by this loss rate, yet every kill she inflicted donated a large chunk of XP into the System.
Already, she received System alerts long ago that she had once again levelled up to a higher level, where she could get more upgrade options.
Once this whole conflict was over, she was going to be very busy filling out the fleet again and retrofitting it, because these losses were unacceptable.
Thankfully, though, help had arrived, appearing on the flanks of the Vanduul fleet, hundreds of new Turian contacts exited from FTL with numerous Dreadnoughts leading the way.
The hierarchy wasn't fucking around, it seemed, they began concentrating their fire on the two Kingships before them, pouring in everything the Turian arsenal had available on these alien aggressors, and Kali was happy to return it as well.
And after 13 minutes of agonising combat, the Vanduul fleet was finally torn asunder with both Kingships going critical and taking out anything near them in a colossal explosion, as was the standard practice amongst their kind, when they lose, then they'll do their best to take their killers with them.
Once the last alien invader was destroyed or fled into the dark reaches of space, it was only then and there that Kali checked to see if her Slip-space drives were ready for another jump, and thankfully, they were.
Ignoring the barrage of alien messages being sent her way, Kali ordered the fleet to FTL as soon as possible, and once the tears in reality appeared, there was nothing stopping Black Fleet from leaving the space of the Turian home system.
Once they were within the 11th dimension, Kali finally leaned back into her seat, breathing heavily, sweating from the forehead, and feeling a horrid headache finally making itself known.
Exhaustion crept in, and dizziness began to make the world spin.
She closed her eyes, trying to shake it off, but it did not help.
Opening them again, she saw her Berserker, Nightingale, close to her with a hand on her forehead.
Kali saw her mouth moving, but couldn't make out the words, all she felt was the all-consuming desire for sleep.
And she was powerless to ignore this feeling.
[]