Talk:P.A.N.Z.E.R./@comment-24142455-20161020014101/@comment-27404954-20161020165756

-- Polish Border -- 

It appears as if the UAC aircraft would fall back before the CCCP assault, with a steady stream of Longswords falling down and missiles screaming towards Warhound helicopters.

But Soviet pilots reeled in shock when they began seeing their own planes falling out of the sky – hit by the very same missiles they fired at the UAC helicopters. Artfully coordinated by the helicopters’ gunnery officers, the missiles spiraled in graceful loops, each place where they hit destroying yet another Soviet aircraft.

The Soviets soon realized what was happening, and abandoned their missile launches to try and shoot down the helicopters with railguns. However, it was already too late; the Soviet fighters had launched more missiles at the attack helicopter formations than there were Soviet fighters, and even with flares and extremely skilled pilots added into the equation, the sky was blossoming with unsustainable levels of USSR casualties.

Taking advantage of this, the Longswords broke off their false retreat to re-engage under Rapier support, downing even more Soviet planes during the confusion and shock. The Warhound attack helicopters, their job done, retreated safely back to their carriers.

And as for those ships, despite their higher numbers than any of the other fleets so far deployed, were taking heavy losses. But nevertheless, the USSR was surprised by the ships they were engaging, for these were not normal UAC craft. Heavy MAC fire lanced out from underside mounts, splitting capital ships with each shot, and their commanders were far less dependent on formation and consistency than the Soviets were expecting.

The lead ship, an enhanced Divine Punishment, was lost to the fire of the Requiem and the Mirs, but its sister ships retaliated, downing a full ten Mirs with swarms of Archer missiles and MK7-B MAC rounds. A few of the Epitaph-class vessels making up the bulk of the fleet slewed around midair; the Requiem had been brought in far too close to ensure its safety, and it was sheared apart in a firestorm of cooking-off reactors and explosive decompression.

The UAC ships began a fighting retreat to get out of the range of the Scarlet particle cannon network, quickly downing most of the PRK fleet with massed 2040 volleys as they were too spread out to absorb the damage with each other. The remaining MAC charges, on the other hand, went to fighting the Scarlet ships; a volley of half the MACs left in the fleet, along with a massive swarm of Archer missiles and 2040 rounds, tore through the heart of the Scarlet formation, and through the Hyperion’s Bow in the heart of it. The other half of the MACs went towards picking off the important ships around the edges of the main formation.

… And those MACs were answered by more, from directly behind the Scarlet ships in orbit.

Another UAC fleet had exited slipspace among the Prometheus formation, and tore apart the few and weak Prometheus craft from inside, a place they had not been expecting.

And this fleet, the true fleet, meant to annihilate the Soviet fleet response that would be doubtlessly provoked by the initial “bait” fleet, opened fire into the Scarlet formation, crushing it between the anvil of the retreating “bait” fleet and the hammer of the true anti-ship fleet. Taken by surprise, the Scarlet fleet loses far more ships than they were ever expecting, with the precision MAC fire of the UAC warships – instead of indiscriminate spray like what was expected of the UAC – targeting capital ships and capital ships only, splitting them apart at their structurally weakest points to fall to the ground over Russia, crushing their own defenses and men.

And in among this whole milieu was a single UAC warship, the Gloriam Rex, dealing more damage than any enemy ship – at least, after the Hyperion’s Bow, which was currently crushing a small Polish city with its flaming bulk after being shorn apart by heavy MAC fire and its vulnerable core wracked by missile detonation after detonation. Almost casually, the Gloriam Rex turned its fire upon the remaining Mirs, wiping another four out of the sky.

And now that it was among the enemy ships, the fleet activated its mounted x-ray synchrotron weaponry, collapsing any formation that the remaining few CCCP ships could muster as their engines cut out.

And in-atmosphere, that was a death sentence.

Small destroyers crashed in Poland and Russia, unable to restart their engines in time. And the larger capital ships only fell faster. Under the cover of this, the UAC forces opened fire with their MACs and missiles into the falling Soviet ships, ensuring that the few that hadn’t hit the ground were annihilated anyway.

Before the Russians could muster any more craft, the UAC ships entered slipspace, their retreat complete – and the fleet, during said retreat, out of range of the Scarlet warp-attack-capable ship patrol routes. Their job here was done; not only was two million-plus Soviet soldiers and heavy armor was annihilated before it could bloody so much as one gun, but their front into Poland was now impassable by any means.

<p class="MsoNormal">And the Soviet aerospace fleet that was mustered to deal with Caelum’s fleet was now scattered wreckage inside their own country and Poland, not only blocking the USSR from troop movements, but compromising Russian defenses along the border where they crashed – and everywhere else the ships were pulled from.