296 Retaking body 4A 3

""Yes, ma'am!""

Spearheading the assault on Delta-14, Ifrit, Solaris and Lux together with a detachment of Hornet close air support platforms and some drones were about to charge the fortress.

"Defenses ready."

Surrounded by countless artificial wings and spell formations, Solaris' entire body shone in a holy light showed her complete mastery over mana. Ifrit, on the other hand, appeared to be in a state close to being destroyed by the countless spells they constantly maintained at a ready state within their body, steadily chanting across multiple dead tongues to remain in control of their destructive powers.

"Ready, or more like I can't hold onto all these spells for much longer."

"Okay, here we go… Move out!"

Locking their feet to the Hornet's landing skies, Lux, Ifrit and Solaris set off towards fortification Delta-14. Keeping close to the ground as it moved around back streets and alleys, the Hornet wove its way through the half destroyed cityscape which suddenly cleared up to a massive open plaza, in the distance was a gigantic pyramid like structure that rose well over 10 kilometres into the sky.

"That's Delta-14, the dry dock is directly below it. This is where it gets rough! Solaris!"

"Roger! Phalanx!"

Creating a tight nit formation of shields and defensive spell formations not only around herself, Lux and Ifrit, but also around the countless Hornet's that was following them information, Solaris created the most intricate defensive formation she had ever made as a swarm of Viper cruise missiles pass right overhead, spreading out wide as they discarded their secondary boosters and accelerated to supersonic speeds.

"Here they come Solaris!"

Spotting countless flashes from the fortress, Lux gave Solaris a two seconds warning as Solaris' formations were suddenly pelted with 520 mill anti personal railgun canister shots.

"The next salvo will be armour pricing! Ifrit, shut them down before they get to fire again!"

Having survived the first salvo of shots the fleet of Hornets dumped most of their anti tank missiles towards the fortress before spreading out, ready to take casualties with the next salvo, luckily Ifrit wasn't going to allow the Emergence to just keep firing at them until they died.

"A'lthz!" (Dark lighting!)

"Fuck! There's no way I can block those without reducing the size of the defensives quite a bit!"

With Solaris being unable to block the anti gravity armour pricing while covering such a wide area, the only way they would live long enough to get close to the fortress would be to deal with the railguns before they could deal with them.

"A'lthz!"

With Ifrit letting loose another bolt of pitch black lightning just before the swarm of Viper cruise missiles which had made their way past the point defence detonated, the fortress was covered in a healthy variation of explosions which heavily scared its facade, even turning large sections of armour plating molten.

"Good job Ifrit, we're charging all the way to the base of the fortress just like this!"

Having mostly disabled one side of Delta-14's defences, the way had been cleared, or so it looked to Lux at that moment. Looking confidently ahead, Lux's smile froze as she noticed something emerging from the dry dock just in front of the fortress proper.

"!!! SH- INCOMING!"

Only noticing what was going on, Lux just managed to warn Solaris, giving the angel just enough time to fortify the shielding of their own craft before it was hit hard by something.

(What just happened?)

Feeling quite faint as she was suddenly weightless, the last thing Solaris saw before blacking out was the blue sky above her.

-

"S…. Laris…. Wa…. Up…."

(.... What is that?)

Fighting a foggy mind, Solaris desperately attempted to regain control of her mind as a familiar voice broke through the void she had suddenly found herself in.

"SOLARIS! Wake up!"

Regaining the bare semblance of consciousness, all Solaris felt was pain as her entire body irked. Forcing her eyes open, Solaris found her sight covered in blood, wiping her eyes clear she found Lux on top of her, shouting over the loud ringing tone which overpowered almost everything else Solaris could hear.

"This isn't the time to be sleeping! Wake up!"

"... What's going on?"

"The Emergence hid a destroyer down in the drydock, but forget about that! We need to move!"

Having been reminded of what was going on, Solaris' mind rapidly sharpened as she healed her injured body, sitting up straight to find herself in a crater made by a Hornet which had crashed.

"Where's Ifrit?"

"They're shielding us, but that's not going to hold for that much longer! We need to move!"

Looking ahead to find out exactly what was going on, Solaris found Ifrit standing alone against a 1 and a half kilometre long destroyer which had emerged from the drydock below the fortress, their impressive array of composite shield formations deteriorating by the second as it continued to be pelted by the Emergence destroyer. Raising to her feet, Solaris broke into a run before joining Ifrit and adding her own defences to their cover, the angel and demon pair succeeded in establishing a sound defence, sound as in their shields decayed as fast as the pair generated them.

"There's no way we can move while maintaining these defences!"

"Agreed! A slight break in concentration will kill us!"

With both Solaris and Ifrit unable to move under the destroyer's maintained fire, Lux quickly scanned her surroundings while reaching out to the IMI network as she formulated a plan of attack, finding that they had very little chance of surviving unless Lux alone somehow dealt with the destroyer.

"Shit, give me a second!"

Activating the mana generator and interface installed in her Kali XMRA suit, Lux's pair of extra cybernetic arms on her back merged into a single tail which moved down to the end of her spine before the entire world disappeared from Lux's eyes, her entire being focusing on the sole task of creating an attack which would be able of neutralizing the hostile destroyer which hovered in the air about 2 kilometres in front of her.

(Come on Lux, you got this! Think!)

Focusing her attention on the hostile destroyer, Lux scanned it for any possible weak point, perhaps she could detonate its magazine- no was only armed with railguns, so there was no need for it to have propellant of any kind! In that case, she needed to silence the guns, perhaps a lightning spell could fry the ship's fire control system? No, there's no way she could produce a lightning bolt strong enough to do that, Lux wasn't that talented at creating spells.

(Shit! THINK!)

Pouring over every possible solution to her current situation at light speed, Lux eventually reached one desperate solution, but she couldn't pull off something like it herself.

"Solaris, Ifrit! Can either of you stop the destroyer from moving!? It only needs to be for a split second!"

"Impossible! I have no spells able to stop something that large!"

"I might be able to do it, but I'll have to stop supporting our defences to cast, we'll be exposed!"

With Solaris unable to do what Lux asked for and Ifrit not so sure they could pull it off, a slightly nervous and unsure looking smile formed on Lux's face.

"Do it Ifrit, if this doesn't work we have no chance anyway!"

"Okay, but don't come complaining to me if this doesn't work!"

Stretching out a single arm towards the destroyer as they stopped maintaining the defences, Ifrit rapidly wove together a rune formation in the air in front of them, taking only a couple of seconds to complete it, the shield protecting them all from the destroyers relentless barrage was already starting to fail.

"Tho'th Lg'teq!"

As Ifrit closed their open hand something strange happened to the destroyer, it was like all the shadows around it suddenly came alive, stretching out and wrapping around the ship to stop it completely from moving, but even a split second after it was created, the spell was already failing.

"Lux NOW!"

"GOT IT! FREEZE!"

Screaming her heart out as she overloaded her mana generator, Lux stomped down her foot and cracked the stone in front of her before it immediately turned molten as if an active volcano had suddenly formed, then the destroyer stopped shooting, hovering in the air only for a few seconds before Ifrit's spell broke, then the destroyer fell down and crashed.

".... What did you just do?"

Looking at the now silent destroyer with awe, Solaris turned to Lux for an explanation.

"I transferred all the heat inside its fusion drive to the ground right below me before cooling the drive down to 1 kelvin above absolute zero, preventing any further fusion to take place inside the drive.."

"... You what?"

Also not quite sure as to what had just happened, Ifrit also looked at Lux with wonder.

"I froze the destroyers powerplant solid, unable to restart the fusion cycle, the ship immediately burned through its meagre stores of power and shut down."