NationStates Jolt Archive

Pride Goeth Before a Fall: The Siege of Iatoni

A large necron fleet, almost eighty ships, arrived at the edge of the first of the two systems occupied by the ADKers in silent glory. It had taken them some time to arrive, as they had been matching pace with something else that had joined their forces. They spread out, forming a wide sphere around an empty space. That space distorted and shifted, to reveal… a dark cloud, hundreds of kilometres across.*

Aboard the flagship, the Reaper of Light: Part the Second several necrontyr, the organic version, in long white flowing robes, which, ((for OOC reference)) they wore plain shirts and trousers underneath, clustered around a large scale hologram of the system, covered in their own, flowing script. It wasn’t that they were needed, but the Reaper had a crew now, a personal preference of the Emperor’s.

“Do the ADKites send a challenge?” asked the first of them, a tallish male,
“No Sir, we await a reaction from their defence forces,” replied the shorter female, not looking up from her threat display for a moment. “They must be pretty defeated after the battles they’ve put themselves through lately.”
“Good, set course for the most populous planet, then see what they do. Send that to our friends too.”

They sped towards the most populous of the ADK worlds, bearing their deadly guest in the centre of their formation. It was, admittedly, no more deadly than an attack by any Imperial capital ship with the appropriate refit, but this shadow weapon was much more amusing, and made for an even more dramatic example than the more conventional exterminatus of a necron warship. Near this object, six large cargo transport vessels followed,

*Deathcloud on loan (http://www.nationstates.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3189913#3189913) from Z’ha’dum (http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/target=display_nation/nation=Z_ha_dum).

Imperial C'tan Fleet, ADK Colony System

Frederick floated out of the bays of the C'tan Fleet, small satellites reaching out with sensors, scanning through space. Gently, the satellites began to accelerate towards the planets far below, and then vanished into the inky darkness of their stealth fields.

Federick would have smiled, had he had a mouth. But he did not. He watched as he moved inward, guiding his fingers, and his eyes towards the inhabited worlds far below.

#tagged...

How delightfully sinister.....tag.

Far away from the system, they watched. No. it watched. It was, of course, intrigued by the ways the C'tan would handle their... loan. It was certainly... Unusual, but it was likely that the C'tan had some twisted sense of humour... And they had to admit, they kinda liked this humour...

Of course, it was a bit sad, for the ADKites had shown some very promising traits... They had even been considered to be a worthwhile... seed, for the future.

However, the ADKites had failed the hopes they had had for them...

And since they were, apparently, weak, they would have to pay the price.



Meanwhile, elsewhere, a (rather small) planet in an uninhabited system, almost beyond the galactic rim, became the first object on which their own loan was tested.

Quite intriguing, it was, as Wierden watched the results. This could be interesting to follow...

As the C'tan fleet moved towards the outermost planet of the Iatoni system, the activity between defense systems became more active. Out of FTL Gates located outside the first minefield, drones streamed forth, thousands of them, built decades ago and kept in good repair, awaiting for the day they would defend this system from invaders. As the drones neared the Necron vessels, they exploded or attempted to collide into them releasing bursts of high-concentrated plasma.

Then out of the FTL Portals, the missile platforms, the laser platforms, and the gravdrones came. Each kind had subdivisons of different sizes and grades, but the laser and missile platforms bore their weapons down on the Necron fleet, attempting to encricle them while the gravdrones grew in number.

The necron ships came on implacably; green cones of light or arcane sapphire pseudo lightning flashing out from them from time to time. They concentrated their fire on a single platform for a second, flashing it into vapour in an instant ((Right…)) then onto another, and another, and another, at a rate of one every two seconds they shot at the platforms, using their superior numbers to destroy the enemy again and again. Lasers and missiles raked across them, accuracy harmed by the arcane sensor jamming systems utilised by the necron vessels.

Something under ten thousand suicide drones attacked the ships in waves, one hundred and twenty five each. The fleet didn’t even bother to fire their main weapons at them… even at one hundred and twenty five drones apiece, it was foolery to think that these could stop them. In some cases, the drones hit, exploding only to scorch the hulls of the necron ships.

In others scything rounds of fire, light masses at c fractional velocities, fired by the thousand, automatic interceptor fire, tore the drones to pieces. In others, drones of their own, large, manouverable and expendable, drowned the ADKite drones with sheer numbers. If this was the best that awaited them, then this would be even more pathetically easy than anticipated.

The plasma bombs and platforms were just diversons while the real power of the defense grid was brought to bear. While the Necron fleet was busy eradicating the plasma bombs and platforms, the gravdrones activated sending crushing gravity into the surronding the area, it increased as time went by, the pressure building up....

More platforms and plasma bombs came out of the FTL portals, and something knew out of the Khristian arsenal. Platforms armed with gravitonic torpedos now entered the fray, but all these new weapons would wait until the gravdrones were crushed by their own emissons and then destroy anything that was left of the Necron fleet.

Mercifully, the gravdrones were the ones that had been shot at, and thus, with only a few dozen left, their effects were barely noticed by the ships, wich continued onward unabated.

((This be an elaborate ignore. ADK now claims to have over double the population he claimed to before when I asked him about this before OOC, and thus, as far I'm concerned, I'm going to wank his nation out of my little universe. Interpret as you will.))

The fleet broke through the remaining ADKite defences with ease, slicing ships and defences apart with casual ease as they came. The shadow cloud fell upon the world, even as it attempted to evacuate in vain, pouring across its upper atmosphere like treacle poured onto a soccer ball, encircling it as thousands upon thousands of missile carrying nodes spread out in a vast web. In each missile was more than the firepower of the United States, of one version of Earth's history, and two thousand of them readied for launch against the ADKites.

They extended their offer of surrender, only to have it quickly rebuffed by a rendition of a patriotic Kristatatan song. The great web of missiles began firing at the surface, shooting down at great speed, slamming into the ground, some detonating on impact, blasting craters twenty miles deep, some burrowing several miles into the crust, detonating and causing mass change of entire geographical regions as they became unstable, slipping into oceans.

Joshua Smart looked up into the sky as it darkened, confused. This wasn't an eclipse, and it certainly wasn't night. It was as though a great dust cloud had covered the sky, which wasn't far from the truth. He felt a massive earthquake, as though god, or perhaps Quin Izumi, had stamped nearby. He was shaken from his feet, and crashed to the ground, cutting his face on the hard ground.

Mercifully, perhaps, for him, he had been far from the blast, just outside a small village, hundreds of miles from the nearest of the great explosions. He lost consciousness, and remained like that for some time, he didn't know how long - having not been conscious of course. The entire area looked like someone had scooped it up, tipped it into a bucket, shook it toughly, and dropped it back down. He could hear some woman in the distance just wailing the great leader's name over and over again, cursing him for letting this happen perhaps, or maybe begging him to save her.

Somehow, the air felt heavy in his lungs - dust - he thought, thinking of nuclear winter. The darkness was still there, blacker than night. He saw someone near by, a young woman, burnt, her body littered with cuts, her clothes torn and ragged. She stared about blindly, the fireball had taken her eyesight. Another shambling figure, littered with cuts, pieces of broken glass saturating its shattered body, moved out of a building, only to collapse. 'Blood loss,' the part of his brain that could still stand the horror thought.

He wandered across the field, lit by innumerate small fires, away from the blast - or where he thought it had come from. He ran across a stream of people, and accosted them as to where they were coming from. One of them stopped, expression blank, and pointed towards where the blast had been. He asked where they were going.

She pointed in the opposite direction.

What was worse was that they walked next to a perfectly useable road. Nearby he saw a child, he couldn't tell which gender, tending to the corpse of its mother, trying to get her dead lips to drink from a cup of dust it had found.

The wails and sobs eventually just became an obscene monotony, and mercifully for Joshua, it was soon about to end. In orbit, just above the shadow cloud, Mephet’ran despaired. He accepted that this had to be done. He would have liked, preferred to conquer and subjugate them, these ADKites, but it simply couldn’t be done. They were fanatics to a man. No, they had to die, for the greater good.

He had shut their sufferings out of his mind, but they still weighed heavy on his conscience – this annoying thing he’d developed. He thought about ordering another bombardment, even though most of the fleet was busy destroying everything else in the system, but suddenly another idea occurred to him. He could do it to the scant hundreds of thousands remaining, just.

With a jarring snap, Joshua was suddenly transported to a very convincing replica of the Elysian Fields. He died of his painless wounds a few hours later, smiling in happy, ignorant, bliss. In the next system they attacked, Mephet’ran did this before the populace was even aware of what was happening. So passed Abu-Dhabi Kristatata.

OOC: You asked me how many colonists there were.... and I told you... the people who fled from Earth don't count as colonists.... But as this still stands... this thread is effectively ignored.