The sky tore open, a minor wormhole high in the atmosphere momentarily ripped wide by Ritual and Elemental will.
It was right above the Great Wall, and so it naturally set off all sorts of alarms as the first Skyships came through.
Naturally the great and proud vessels plowed forward with arrogant confidence and power, magical vessels of great power and pride that had kept those aboard safe through numerous encounters. They looked at the massive Wall below them with both a level of interest at the size of such a structure, and absolute confidence that relying on such land-bound structures was completely useless against an aerial fleet, and only to be expected of primitives.
Then they hit the Stillflight Fields.
The troops on the Great Wall watched them hit the Skywards that prevented magical flight and monstrous creatures from flying over them, and immediately start dropping rapidly towards the ground.
“ATTENTION INTRUDING AIRFLEET. YOU ARE ENTERING BRIGHTMOOR AIRSPACE WITHOUT WARNING AND WILL BE GROUNDED IF YOU INTRUDE UPON US. KEEP YOUR DISTANCE OR FALL FROM THE SKY!” an attentive Skald in Catleya’s favorite Class, suitably equipped for war, announced to the sky as the air fleet continued to pour from the wormhole above, and then promptly run into the Skywards and begin a frantic fall from the sky they couldn’t recover from.
He repeated it constantly and firmly, but most of the intruders, particularly those in the larger ships, didn’t take it to heart and didn’t notice the consequences in time after coming through the turbulence of the wormhole. In the end, only some of the smaller ships of the fleet managed to notice the threat, paid attention to the words warning them off, and managed to turn urgently aside before running into the Wards, thus managing to keep their position in the skies.
The commanders on the walls sent news up the Marklinks urgently, asking for instructions as ship after ship crashed heavily to the ground. Their levitation effects broke most of the normal velocity, so it was little more than a crash from twenty or thirty feet up… but that was more than enough impact on the stony ground to shatter keels, bounce around everything inside the ship, split open hulls, and generally make certain those ships weren’t going to get back into the air anytime soon, especially inside the Skywards.
Of course, there were plenty of creatures in the deadly undergrowth on the other side of the open ground that was kept meticulously clear by the guns on the Great Wall. They watched the incoming fleet arrive, fall down out of the sky, and they paid particular attention to the figures that bounced out of them or were floating slowly down from the sky on Life Rings, like little meals from heaven being dropped upon them.
Very abruptly, there were a lot of swift, powerful, and dangerous creatures erupting out of those jungles towards the meals raining down from above.
Skald Brennigan instantly changed his warnings as the dangers of Swahib made themselves known. “Congratulations, intruding air forces! You have managed to gain the interest of the beasts of Swahib, who are now coming to eat you! You had better start fighting for your lives, because you aren’t going to have them long if they reach you!”
Before the ships even reached the ground, the first spells were flashing out to take their toll of the charging monstrosities. The fact so many of said monstrosities didn’t die, at least compared to the numbers oncoming, was not very heartening, however.
Walls of Fire and Stone and Ice erupted up on the ground, trying to slow the tides, hold them back, direct them into narrower lanes where Area of Effect spells could take a higher toll. Sometimes it worked, most of the times the creatures slammed right through them, regardless of the pain, or went over them with speed and alacrity, undeterred by the display of magic.
Colonel Kostos Winklebean, a hyn of long experience on the border here, gave the order. “Bring the guns to bear! Mobilize the armor and mecha teams! Artillery into positions, and spotters start the calling! I see five Alphas even now, and I want them dead before I go looking closer! Light them up, boys!”
His voice carried over coms clearly, and the guns on the wall opened up with carefully directed fire.
The edge of the Skywards was a full mile away, the edge of the forest a klik beyond that, meaning the creatures of Swahib had a lot of open ground to charge across to reach the crashing ships inside the Skywards.
“Railgunners, I’m seeing winged movement going for altitude on those ships up high. See that the big ones at least don’t make it there.” Long-barreled weapon mounts about to open up on ground targets hastily lifted their aim towards the distant black spots winging their way up towards the smaller ships above, the ones only a hundred meters or less in length, and obviously not all prepared for what was rising towards them to eat them.
They couldn’t flee, because the Skyward was on one side, and the creatures were coming from all directions on the other.
On the other hand, they made excellent bait and started a large bout of target practice from the anti-air guns on the Walls. Most flyers wouldn’t get airborne within a mile of the open ground and Wall for fear of being picked off by a passing sniper, but the intruding fleet was big, obvious, pinned in place, and not maneuverable.
Colonel Winklebean just sighed as he watched the airborne ships, and gestured for Skald Brennigan to project his words. “Attention, airbound elements of the intruding fleet! Gather up and line your ships nose to stern along the Skyward! You have inbound aerial elements coming to board and eat you alive! You need to be able to cover one another with magic and missile fire to survive! Get into position before the hostiles reach you!”
That seemed to have a hesitant effect. At the very least, they stopped rising and falling in place like idiots and hesitantly backed themselves up against the Skyward, which none of the incoming creatures would be able to keep flying within, either.
The truly proper formation was a step formation, hull to hull, with the higher ships covering the ones below them with increasing amounts of firepower, so that the lowest ships that were hit the most also had the highest amount of spell support. Then you put your best marines there and told them to have fun with the slaughter as they endured the most boarding attempts.
“If you’ve nets or other impediments to flying monsters get them up at all speed! We can’t shoot them all down for you!” Brennigan added for good measure. “Poor fucking bastards,” he muttered down to the Colonel, who was standing on the battlements, watching the action calmly, his Helm’s Heavens-Up Display showing him the battlefield.
There were a lot of violent energies being thrown out and up across the distance, the whoomp of the guns going off sending loads of high explosives on the way.
With disciplined motions, the first wave of Armor-wearers hopped off the battlements, their attached jetwings roaring to life and blasting them toward the fighting three-quarters of a mile away. The packs would disengage when they hit the ground so as not to impede the fighting, leaving only tactical jets to enhance jumps and motion as the Armarines did their task.
Slower and more ponderously, the first of the thirty-foot Mecha advanced up the long ramps for them, each one matched with two hovertanks that would likely be far more useful on the field of combat, especially when the Mechas attracted so much more attention.
Long flashes of silver threads reached out into the distance, spit distant flying forms, and started a monstrous form of precipitation as their targets Burned vivic. They wouldn’t feed the unnatural plant life, and would remove the biomass from the equation.
Sergeant Constenza’s heavy beamer was speaking before she even hit the ground, her winged jetpack unclipping and taking its weight with it. Her Armor’s servos hummed, she checked the force shield, found it at full power, and started shooting at everything on the ground that wasn’t human, which was most everything.
At least the intruders aren’t stupid enough to start shooting at us, she thought, putting down some wooden tangle of limbs that had a name as her AI ID’d it and promptly wiped it away for her next target.
Lots of cellulouse creatures in this batch, which were nicely vulnerable to plasma, but she had to pump two microflechette shotgun rounds into some six-legged cat-thing the size of an elephant and using distortion magic to hide its location, aiming by motion sensor instead of visually to reduce its fanged maw to sprays of green blood and brains, while jumping away from the tentacles lashing out from it.
Covering fire came from her squad-mates as she saw a rumbler racing towards one of the ships, a demolition beast which was incensed by any kind of non-natural structure and wanted only to smash them all to kindling. Scores of them died raging mindlessly against the Wall every year, none of them ever managing to reach it before they were full of holes or blown to bloody pulp.
It charged into the side of the intruding skyship through a gap in the hull, stressed timbers exploding apart into splinters as it smashed inside and drew screams from what sounded very much like non-combatants within.
The tauroid thing’s two stubby arms were raised to reap havoc when four plasma beams converged and blew it apart, leaving its corpse stuck in the opening and starting to Burn vivic, blocking the interior from anything else that had similar ideas.
Tracer fire slid over and past her, into the thick lines of incoming hostiles, and made said lines much thinner. With higher elevations, the Mechas striding this way at speed focused on the more dangerous targets and employed more missile fire they could paint and unleash on, while the tanks used heavy repeater turrets for volleys of fire and twinned cannons for anything that resisted the energy pulses from the repeaters.
“Hell hounds to the east,” came the open call, a warning since so many of their weapons were heat reliant. She spared a glance for the HUD and the painted opponents, and saw two Mecha units paint themselves blue as the Artificers manning them changed the energy types of their shoulder-mounts. Heavy and now-icy tracer fire that would freeze a man solid if it hit began to punch out into the burning Hounds coming their way, making sure they wouldn’t be a problem for anyone.
Jonesy, her AI, was manning her own shoulder-mount, basically a finishing shot and close-quarters point defense in case something managed to grab her. That wasn’t likely, as now the troop carriers were coming in behind, the infantry aboard them spreading out between and behind the downed airships, setting up walls of fire that were slicing through anything the Armarines and heavy equipment weren’t catching.
Most of the magic-Casting was now focused on top of the ships and anything that managed to clamber up onto or inside them, trying to get to the crews there.
“This is Colonel Kostos Winklebean of the Brightmoor Southern Wall, to all intruding forces. You may have noticed that you are being attacked by the lifeforms of the continent you were flying over.
“Your positions are unsustainable and we cannot defend it for perpetuity. Those upon the ground, prepare to abandon ship and be evacuated beyond the Wall. Captains of those ships, you will first evacuate any non-combat personnel, then any essentials you feel should be removed from your ships, then your crews and yourselves. Hovercarriers are inbound and will be arriving in approximately ten minutes to begin the removal of personnel.
“Sky elements of the intruding fleet, air support is incoming and will be on your positions shortly. They should arrive shortly after the incoming aerial forces reach you, so hold firm until they do.”