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Rules of Engagement

by Carmine Prophet

Chapter 21: Chapter 21 All according to plan

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(NES Joan Of Arc)

"Valkyrie squadron launch in five seconds." a sensor officer on board the NES Joan Of Arc says through the mist filled darkness of the bridge. Floating beside her port side in space the NES Odin with her large Crow emblem opens its hangar doors launching her fighters as well. And to her starboard side the ship NES Churchill begins her reverse burn to join the Coalition fleet.

In the hangar bay a fighter taxies into position on the catapult. The design of the fighter is strange compared to many other fighters and on its wings is a whites snowflake on a red circle. Do to it looking like it has been cut in half almost leaving no front fuselage giving it a kind of blunt arrowhead appearance. Blast shields raise themselves from the floor as a fighter Ice blue in color with white stripes taxies the sensor dome flairs to life with blue light.

The wings unfold as missile racks and rocket pods loaded, and with a final clunk, the main autocannon is loaded onto the fighters underside. The pilot inside flashes the lights twice and the Crew chief nods giving her a thumbs up before pointing to the open launch bay and ducking while covering his head. The Pilot gooses the twin engines thankful for the G stimulants, their best friend since childhood is down there and now that he might be alive...

"Charlotte Dunois, la reine de glace de lancement maintenant." she says as her Gungnir slams her into her seat causing strands of her blond hair to fly in front of her dark blue eyes. Her fighter leaps into the inky black and her squadron flys to meet up with the African destroyer fighters. And the legions of other fighters swarming towards the UEC fleet as the NAC and SRA ships begin exchanging raining shots from their railguns with the UEC fleet.

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(Space)

In space the Human Fleet forms C.O.G anti Siege formation twelve. The larger Siege Breakers moving into a kind of Delta wing formation with the Annihilator-class ships Manitoba, and SRA-785433 Hirohito flanking the Siege Destroyer Invincible. The Shaka Zulu flanks Manitoba's port side while the Leathy flanks her Starboard side while two Leathy class siege breakers flank the Hirohito. Ahead of the Siege Breakers is the picket line, acting as a shield but giving the large ships enough room to use their main weapons.

The picket consists of four hammerhead, and four Linebacker cruisers, six OCS frigates, and four SRA assault cruisers. Last but not least the jewels in the picket Line and fresh out of the Fleet yards above Luna are NACS-224499 STYX and NACS-224497 ACHERON. The "Pantheon" as called in the fleet Consisting of the Leathy and her escorts Styx and Acheron who have colected over twenty siege ship kills, has returned. The three NE ships reverse into position taking a point position with the African ships to act as fleet wide anti-missile, Triple-A, and Fighter refueling stations.

"Load Penetrator"

"Rodger that one Penetrator!" an Indian officer says from the main weapons room.

"This is Invincible Actual. Kieve Frigates away." Colonel Aguilar says as two frigates are jettisoned from the holding clamps in the two massive hangar bays and "Fall" into the black of space before engaging their engines and storming forward. Inside of the massive ship a Mechanism similar to a self-loading tank gun swings around and loads shell into the Main Gun's chamber.

"Weapon hot sir." a Chinese weapons officer says.

"Target that ship." Aguilar says his hands folded behind his back, and the entire ship shakes as its main engines are fired to counteract recoil and a massive shell is ejected from the ship as the round launches forward. In space a massive round sails through space ejecting its casing revealing a chunk of a Lankie Siege ships hull shaped into a rod.

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(Element of Magic)

"INCOMING!" A voice comes over the radio drawing most of the elements of harmony's attention as well as the attention of the princesses. Now being shown in the window is a Super Destroyer in the trajectory of the shell fired from the Massive SRA ship. The ship's Shields and anti-missile batteries flair to life to intercept the incoming round. However, the shot breaks up and seemingly disappears from all scanners.

"Fighters engaging in ten seconds." A human helms officer reports. Rarity stands before the tactical screen hands folded behind her back and calmly observes the readouts of both battles.

"What was that? What! on screen! EVASI...." An unknown commander is cut off as something suddenly appears on the sensors and slams into the shields at the bow and tears a hole straight down her centerline. The hull of the Super Destroyer seemingly yields like wet tissue paper to the round before exploding. The information gathered by the ship's explosion is instantly transferred to Rarity's screen.

"Interesting... I wonder? No they can't be... Unless… yes that would make sense. You, is the next phase of my plan ready?" Rarity says a finger absently twirling a stray lock of her mane as she thinks.

"Almost ma'am." One of the human sympathizers loyal to twilight says.

"Excellent." the Unicorn says tracing a finger from one battle group to the masive SRA ship.

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(Fallon)

"There it is!" I hear as I crash through a warehouse launching an HE grenade into a Cockatrice attack chopper blowing it out of the air.

"Take it out!" someone yells to my left and in response SD takes control of the Icarus mount swiveling the unused until now auto-cannon to blow a squad of UEC troops to fine mulch. A blue cone appears on my screen and I see Snafu who had jumped ahead of me coming my way pointing to a nearby rooftop.

"look out there's another one!" I hear and push SD harder in response. I dive and bring SD into a crouch picking up Snafu and using my ATLAS's armored bulk to shield him. SD flashes a plan over the screen and I nod in agreement and send a tight beam message to Snafu who nods as well. Curling my ATLAS's hand into a cup I rear back as Snafu crouches between the fingers.

"YOUR MINE HUMAN!" A booming voice comes from my right, taking the momentary stop in firing I literally throw Snafu at the roof. The EVA thrusters built into his HellDiver armor flair to life lifting him the extra foot to land safely on the roof. I then clamp my rifle to my back before turning to face a new threat.

A dragon paroles into me attempting to Tear off the cockpit hatch. Taking a page from Miiora's book I Use SD's claws to clamp into the ground. Before use the momentum to swivel SD's torso and the big green Bastard into a concrete structure. Then unclamping my Right leg I bring it into the Dragons groin before drawing the Dragon Knife and stabbing it in the stomach. It roars fire into my cockpit as I bring my free fist into the dragon's snout with a left hook before bringing my right around and stab it in the neck with an audible crunch as I sever the spine killing it.

"My mate... YOU SCUM!" I hear and turn to see what looks like a female dragon breathing fire at me. However she gets a rude surprise when she is finished, because when the fire sciences lower my now detached rifle and fire an ALAPHE (Anti-Lankie Armor Piercing High Explosive) into her chest. There is a small geyser of blood as the round pierces her armor and chest before exploding turning her to large falling chunks of meat.

"Bitch." I say retrieving my knife.

"Marlene. Sector clear."

"Iceman. sector clear."

'Copy that, stand by for ATLAS fall.'

The Teranchala Hawk or (cazador) drop ships fall from the sky kicking their engines on at the last second and open their dropping fifteen ATLAS's. Before long there is a rather sizable LZ available and the concentrated fire from multiple ATLASs', avengers, and various dropships have done considerable damage to the Shield Generator. As the Ninth exit their drop ship and I give Miiora a thumbs up I can't help but feel like this was too easy.

"Incoming from the west, two of them at two-six-ninety-seven two kilometers." There is a sound like a waterfall.

"Fuck me." I say as I look in the direction noted and my heart sinks as a pair of UEC Cruisers emerge on the horizon.

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"Phase one is complete."

"Excellent, let's move onto phase two." Rarity says fixing a golden necklace around her neck.

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(Charlotte)

In space Charlotte banks her Gungnir inverted before goosing the engine to her relative down. The pegasus fighter streaks passed her and she backflips her fighter blowing the UEC fighter to scrap before continuing on her original heading. To her starboard side, she watches a battle group of six UEC cruisers and two cruisers surge forward in close formation. They continue to close formation until their shields overlap into one large bubble around the group. And instead of disengaging to battle the African frigate fighters that are about to reach their first picket line they stay in formation and push towards the Invincible.

"All ships this is colonel Aguilar message from Invincible, stand by, Three rounds, AP, two bursts, Firing for effect."

The ship then fires her correcting thrusters and lets off the first burst of armor piercing slugs. However much to her horror the first burst do nothing and the second salvo has the same effect. This means only one thing they are adapting to our playbook, she smirks at this thinking "well it's time to turn a new page". The battle group begins firing everything it has at the Invincible. By the end the salvo from the UEC battle group counts over one thousand missiles.

three hundred of the missiles are promptly swatted out of the air by the Joan Of Arc, Odin, and Churchill. Another three hundred are shot down by the NAC Linebackers before they too have to cease firing for risk of hitting their own ships. three hundred and fifty antiship missiles enter the point defense range of the Invincibles escorts and her own point defense systems. The result is like someone disturbing a swarm of angry fireflies.

Because tracers from point defense guns and thrusters from interceptor missiles light the air around the seven ships as the missiles are swatted out of space. Only thirteen of the missiles reach their target and twelve of them result in basically cosmetic damage on the massive ships nine-meter thick hull armor. However the thirteenth slams home in one of the ship's hangar bays resulting in that section of the hull bulging out before exploding.

"This is fleet General Karnavian. Raise our black flags. Alert, Invincible firing one round, Fire Plasma." The CO of the Invincible says , his officer's voice is low and full of anger. As this message is received she and the Frigate fighter her squadron is escorting shoots up to avoid what is happening next.

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(Elememnt of magic)

"What are they.... GET THOSE FOOLS BACK HERE!" Rarity begins seeing what is unfolding on the tactical screen unhooking from the apparatus.

"Commander Bolo get back here! NOW!" Captain Polar orders.

"Negative. The Human behemoth is Wounded, We will finish it.

"You fool, your overlapping shields will not take a direct hit from..." Rarity is cut off as the large Human ship's begin charging their weapons. The heat sinks extend on the two smaller behemoths as expected, however on the larger one heatsinks begin extending along the framing of the cutout. However these huge heatsinks instantly go white with heat as lightning begins funneling towards a glowing mass in base of the cutout.

"We are in range RAKE THE....." As the ship is within five hundred miles of the battle group the foolish commander is cut off. The windows dim and zoom out to protect their eyes as blinding flash of blue as a cone of translucent gas as bright as Celestia's sun erupts from the weapon. They literally watch the eight ships be disintegrated in silence by the heat of the cone of gas.

However this is not the end as the five ships sharing SRA and NAC marking and sharing a design with both the Annihilator and Leathy fire their main weapons. Their terrible and huge slugs blast through destroyer hulls completely ignoring shields. To punctuate the event a ping is heard as the audio synthesizers make a sound like an artillery shell being ejected as a massive glowing shell is ejected by the massive ship and floats off into space leaking radiation. Seeing this Rarity smirks folding her hands back behind her back.

“Captain, signal the fleet to engage.”

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"Attention all Coalition ships we must give the Africans enough time to get ground side, Engage."

Next Chapter: Chapter 22 Assault Estimated time remaining: 13 Hours, 31 Minutes
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Rules of Engagement

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