274 Extermination 3

"Solaris, cover!"

"Got it!"

Scanning the desolate countryside Solaris quickly spotted large chunks of seemingly free floating terrain about 2 kilometres ahead of her, hearing about it was one thing, but actually seeing the effect an FTL class gravitational drive had on its surroundings was something else entirely. Deciding that she could look at it with awe later, Solaris first focused on the incoming attacks from the numerous elders held up within the grav drive's area of influence. Powering up her manatech armour, the archangel weaved mana into the ground through her feet as large pillars of compressed rock shot up in front of her, blocking mana crystals and other physical projectiles while a large prism made out of mana crystals defused radiation based attacks before the reached Solaris.

"No attack will get past my defences."

With none of the earlier doubt visible on her face, Solaris displayed a haughty smile as she flawlessly shot down every single attempt at harming her or her allies. 

"Solaris pull back slightly, we're going to use the deflate 50 metres to the rear! Ifrit hit that thing with everything you got!"

With Solaris handling defence, Phillipa started barking out orders as she took shots of opportunity with her rifle while darting around the field to distract from Ifrit which stood behind Solaris and quietly chanted in a long forgotten demon language. 

"Na'sn wagz'on Thoth, ra'wn!" (Patron god of the void Th'oth, sing!)

Completing their chant and paying the toll of mana it required with the help of their manatech armour, Ifrit stepped out from behind Solaris and put forth their arm and pointed it at an elder which was charging their position.

"Goodbye~✿"

It was as if the light around Ifrit was suddenly absorbed by something strange, then a split second later, their spell activated. Seeming to break multiple laws of physics, a mass of absolute nothing instantly reached the charging elder, then it and the area around it was engulfed in what looked to be some sort of event horizon, forever sealing the elder inside.

"That should have gotten their attention proper, we're pulling back!"

"Eh?~ Let me kill a few more~✿"

"Calm down Ifrit, if you stick to the plan you'll get to kill a lot more in a bit."

"Ah, that's right~✿"

"Stay focused, you two!"

While Ifrit got a little bit too bloodthirsty, Solaris managed to bring them back into line with the help of Phillipa's promise of more bloodshed somewhere down the line while she also 

continued constructing shield formations which kept them all safe.

"Yeah, yeah~✿ Bounding now!"

Starting their retreat with Ifrit as the first one, the demon turned away from the elders and started sprinting full speed as Phillipa and Solaris covered, then after covering some 500 metres Ifrit dug in their heels and came to a stop.

"Okay, running now!"

With Ifrit set up to cover their retreat and Solaris still holding, Phillipa was the first one to move as she abandoned her position and started sprinting, coming to a stop a bit past Ifrit before she dug herself in behind cover and quickly sat up to cover for Solaris.

"Move!"

While one person moved two stayed put to cover, a standard military formation which was as old as it was effective. Opening up the distance to the elders and their safe cover, Phillipa's group started dragging out the now irritated elders until they started getting a little too close for comfort.

"Cover!"

"No fucking time! Figure it out!"

Running across a desolated crop field with only a few fox holes made by misguided orbital artillery from former engagements as their only cover, Phillipa, Ifrit and Solaris no longer had time to stop and cover for each other as they continued to retreat with a group of pissed off elders within a kilometre. As Solaris ran past Phillipa almost blindly slinging mana crystals over her shoulder, Phillipa now had the unenviable situation of being the rear guard with no one covering her. Aiming at the closet elder with her rifle, Phillipa identified its core by looking for the minute mana emitted from it as she squeezed the trigger while activating the thermoacoustic cooling script to enable fully automatic fire. Spending the loaded magazine in a split second, Phillipa flicked her rifle as she released the magazine while grasping a spare from her vest with her free hand and immediately inserting a fresh one before checking for extraction failure and once more aiming at the closest elder, this entire process only took a single second as Phillipa continued a slow and steady retreat.

"Cover!"

"Not able!"

"Tch."

Clicking her tongue in slight frustration, Phillipa continued her slow and steady retreat as she continued to terminate or disable incoming elders with a brutal and almost machine like efficiency.

"I'm burning through ammunition fast here! Need cover!"

"20 seconds!"

"Finally!"

With the ground in front of her quickly shrinking, she switched her rifle over to one hand as she grabbed a secondary weapon, a particular shorted semi automatic 8 gauge shotgun loaded with special purpose slugs.

"Taste this!"

Aiming at an abnormal elder which was blinking in and out through existence towards her, Phillipa shot a slug which hit the elder dead on right as it emerged from its short range teleportation.

At first, nothing happened, but after a second the metal slugs true potential as a marker emitting a particular stream of detectable, individually unique gravitational waves travelling at the speed of light in all directions.

[TARGET ACQUIRED, PULSING.]

For a split second all the weeds and failed crops around the elder stood up straight as gravity no longer affected that area of space time, but alas, nothing last forever as the L-CDT456 Hermies in high orbit currently on the other side of the planet locked on to its target and used its offensive gravitational drive several magnitudes more powerful than anything else seen in this dimension reduced the elder to subatomic particles.

Nothing could survive something with that magnitude of energy, not even an immortal elder.

With no time to revel in the destruction she had just unleashed, Phillipa used the opportunity she had just created to once more open up the distance as Ifrit and Solaris finally got in position to cover her.

"How long do we have to keep this shit up!?"

"Don't know, ask Dax!"

[Keep it up, I'm seeing movement at the stronghold which seems like they're moving in the direction we want.]

Flawlessly interjecting in their conversation, Dax stunned Solaris who hadn't realized that he had kept tabs on them ever since they started the operation.

[Oh, and you're looking good Solaris~]

"I didn't ask for that kind of input!"

[Then don���t ask me, I'm busy too.]

"Okay, but you're going to hear for this later, you hear!"

Channelling the frustration she held towards Dax into her spells, Solaris continued to shield her allies while Phillipa and Ifrit kept the elders at a safe distance.

With a demons offence, an archangels defence united together under the strategic guidance of a qiton, there was nothing the elders could do but play right into their hands as they continued to extend out from safety after Phillipa, Ifrit and Solaris. Meanwhile, Dax, Alice and Lux prepared for their assault as they observed the distraction team's progress.

"Now?"

"Nope, we need space to make sure they're not able to reorganize before we're on the ground."

When Dax told Solaris he was busy that was partially true, of course, he was keeping a careful eye on the distraction group and delaying hostile reinforcements with orbital artillery and unmanned CAS, but also instructing Alice on the operation and answering any questions she held. The reason he did that was that Alice showed a surprising amount of aptitude in that field, it was not entirely out of the question that she could end up with her own dedicated group within the 125th like Lux. 

"Then how are we doing the insertion?"

"Fast and hard, we're doing individual drops with suicide burns, then roll into either formation beta 7 or delta 9."

With a slight far off look in his eyes, Dax still answered Alice seriously right as multiple conditions for the advance in the operation were fulfilled. While Alice didn't notice the slight change in Dax's aura, Lux who had fought along with him for multiple lifetimes quickly recognized what was happening and started her final preparations.

"Okay, but wh-"

"Right now, prepare for drop."

With very little warning Dax got up from his seat and hooked the back of his manatech armour onto a guard rail inside the CAS-14 assault transport. Lux likewise followed suit as she also put on her Reaper mask to hide her excited and outright bloodthirsty smile, with Alice being the last one to hook in as she wasn't that familiar with the contraption.

"Ready for drop?"

"Ready."

"I'm also ready I guess, but what exactly are we doing?"

"Dropping out the plane of course."

With a teasing smile on his face, Dax took that exact opportunity to explain the particular deployment method to Alice for the first time. Of course, this wasn't because he wanted to be mean to Alice, but experience told him that people were more open to the idea of falling out of a spaceplane when they had no choice in the matter.

[IMI CONFIRMS, DEPLOYING TROOPS.]

"Eh?"

Letting out a slightly unintelligent sound, the floor beneath Alice's feet suddenly retracted as she became weightless, dropping out the bottom of the CAS-14 assault transport together with a reentry package and her sword attached to the back of her manatech armour.