Legacy of the Void Fleet

The four fighters arced over the top and dove steeply back into the disoriented Republican formation from above. Wasting not a fraction of a second, Cathy and her detachment opened up with their primary plasma cannons in a synchronized burst.

Overwhelmed by the concentrated fire, the Republican energy barriers flared violently and collapsed. The moment their shields failed, the unarmored hulls beneath were torn apart, exploding into spinning fragments of superheated alloy.

On the opposite flank, Samantha proved just as lethal. She and her wingmen executed an identical high-G inversion, diving right into the rear blind spots of the port-side Republican interceptors.

Having carved clean through the enemy’s flanks, Samantha and Cathy’s strike teams crossed trajectories directly behind the disorganized Republican squadrons, locking the trapped hostiles inside a deadly, overlapping crossfire.

The Republicans were not too slow and quickly realized what Varek’s squad was trying to do. The surviving flanks of two Republican squadrons hastily tried to intercept these slippery humans.

Varek, who kept his eyes on the battlefield every moment, immediately saw this coming. "Bulwarks, take those flanks of the Republican squadron down! Don’t let them interfere with Samantha and Cathy’s group. Scythes, follow me!"

Saying that, he immediately dove down into the battlefield, giving the Republicans no breathing room and no room to maneuver at all.

At the same time, the ten Bulwark-class starfighters split into three groups. One followed Varek and his Scythes, while two other groups, made up of three Bulwarks each, accelerated directly toward Cathy and Samantha’s units.

They began launching heavy attacks on the Republican flanks, who were just maneuvering to target the two groups. Caught off guard, the Republican fighters immediately suffered damage, hastily broke off mid-maneuver, and dodged the incoming onslaught.

"Damn these humans, they ain’t even giving us a chance!" cursed one of the Republican pilots, who had barely survived the barrage. He threw a bitter glare at the human starships punching through an opening to attack their rear.

"Tch, let the rear handle those few human starfighters," another Republican pilot barked as he led his fighter toward the Bulwarks. "Let’s take down the ones coming from the front. It makes no difference whether it’s them or the ones on our rear."

The first Republican pilot grumbled under his breath, but with no other choice, he fell in line behind the flank leader, doing his best to evade the fierce assault launched by the heavy starfighters.

At the same time, the Republican rear was caught off guard by the sudden attack launched by Cathy and the others. The commanders of the two squadrons could only grit their teeth and send a few of their starfighters to chase these humans off their tail for as long as possible.

As time passed under the ferocious, superior assault led by Varek and his Scythes—backed by four Bulwarks providing heavy covering fire—the human squad relentlessly racked up killstreaks.

Meanwhile, the chaos unleashed on both the right and left flanks showed no sign of stopping despite the Republicans’ all-out resistance. Instead, the Republican fighters found themselves at an even steeper disadvantage as the two human flanking units pressed inward, carving a path forward from the rear.

Just like that, the two Republican squadrons were trapped and mercilessly crushed inside a triangular kill zone.

Morale among the Republicans plummeted after the fall of one of their squad leaders, and panic set in as pilots began attempting to flee. Some desperately called for reinforcements while trying to punch an escape route through the perimeter.

One of the sleeker Republican starfighters attempted to slip past the slower Bulwarks with intense evasive maneuvers, only to be struck from afar by a plasma cannon.

Boom! "Ahhhhh—!"

Just like that, every breakout attempt was ruthlessly snuffed out by Varek’s squadron. No matter where the Republicans turned or what tactics they tried, escaping one kill zone only led them straight into another.

"Let’s finish this," Varek said over the comms.

He had already dismantled the bulk of the Republican squadrons. Only a scattered few remained, their spirits completely broken and no longer posing any real threat. There was no need to waste more time picking them off one by one—there were far bigger fish to hunt on this battlefield, and far greater merit points to earn.

"Right flank, left flank, Bulwarks—it’s time to end this!"

The Obsidian Wing Squadron moved as one from three different vectors. Backed by the heavy barrage provided by the Bulwarks on all three fronts, they systematically destroyed the remaining starfighters one by one.

The other Republican squad leader was targeted first, followed by their slow, heavy fighters, and finally the nimble light interceptors. With the Republicans’ numerical superiority—their only real advantage—completely shattered, nothing remained to save them. They took a brutal beating before their starfighters burst into blazing debris, one after another.

Yet, as the saying goes, a cornered beast on the brink of death is far from helpless—it is at its most brutal and dangerous.

Though their spirits were broken, the Republican pilots knew there was no way out after seeing what happened to those who tried to run. Their eyes burned with a deeper, crimson fury, and an uncontrolled bloodlust flared around them as they cast aside all restraint to mount a desperate last stand.

The sudden ferocity was not entirely unexpected, but the sheer intensity of their counterattack caught the Obsidian Squadron off guard. Nearly every human fighter, save for a few, took a severe beating.

The surviving Republicans swarmed in from every possible direction, coordinating with sudden, flawless precision to focus their fire in groups and inflict maximum damage.

The shields of the Obsidian Squadron’s starfighters rippled violently under the concentrated barrage. In an instant, the shield integrity across the left flank, right flank, vanguard, and central units plummeted by thirty percent.

Including previous damage, most of the starfighters’ shields had now dropped below fifty percent.

Though the charge was ferocious and the attacks were brutal and precise, the Republicans were unable to inflict any real hull damage on the Obsidian Squadron—every strike was absorbed by their heavy-duty shield generators.