Two thousand meters above the Acid Swamp.
The thick layers of radiation clouds were brutally torn asunder. Accompanied by the thunderous roar of massive turbofan engines, the Helios Group's vanguard aviation wing arrived at the battlefield. Twelve Valkyrie assault carriers, painted in deep grey camouflage, maintained a standard wedge attack formation. Like a flock of vultures scenting blood, they dipped their noses and dived toward the military base on the ground.
The flight leader, a man named Kyle, was an old hand with twenty years of flying experience. He chewed gum while speaking into the comms channel, his tone relaxed and arrogant: "All units, target confirmed."
"No anti-air radar lock signals detected from the ground."
"The Underhive curs probably don't even have anti-aircraft machine guns. Maintain formation. First volley of rockets: level the perimeter walls."
Kyle had the capital to be confident. On the planet of Forge-7, the Valkyrie was the undisputed sovereign of the skies. This heavy VTOL gunship, besides its terrifying heavy mortars, was equipped with multi-lasers and wing-mounted Hellstrike missiles. Its armor was thick enough to shrug off small-arms fire. In past suppression operations, the mere sound of a Valkyrie engine was enough to send rioters fleeing in panic.
Kyle pulled the control stick. The Valkyrie's massive frame began to tilt, its vector nozzles swiveling downward as it prepared to enter a strafing run. However, he had no idea that directly beneath him, in the base, the armored roof of a hidden underground hangar was sliding open soundlessly.
...
Base Underground Command Room.
Ball sat before the main console, drenched in sweat. Twelve red hostile signals flickered on the screen. Although he now held the lethal weapon Andy had entrusted to him, he was, after all, a technician. Commanding a real war for the first time made his heart pound with nerves.
"Distance five kilometers... Entering optimal interception zone."
Ball took a deep breath, his finger hovering over the red launch button. "Boss Andy said... the enemy's armaments are made of paper... enemy armaments are made of paper..."
"Screw it! If they're made of paper, what am I afraid of?!" Ball finished his self-hypnosis and slammed the button down.
"Raptors, launch!"
...
Ground Hangar.
Fifteen pitch-black, irregular objects the size of washbasins were instantly catapulted into the sky without a single spark or flame.
The Raptor-class combat drones.
They relied on anti-gravity engines. These engines didn't work by ejecting matter backward to gain reaction force; instead, they generated a direct repulsion field that negated their own mass. This meant they had almost zero inertia. Enveloped in an anti-gravity field, the effects of inertia were minimized to the extreme.
Whoosh—!!!
Thirty meters off the ground, the fifteen drones accelerated instantly to hypersonic speeds. Transforming into fifteen streaks of black lightning, they surged vertically toward the Valkyrie squadron two thousand meters above.
...
In the Air.
Kyle's radar warning receiver let out a single beep, then went dark. "What was that?" He glanced at the radar screen in confusion. A few extremely faint blips of noise flashed across the screen; they were moving too fast to be aircraft, appearing more like a system glitch.
"Captain! Below us! Something is coming up from below!" The wingman's voice suddenly turned frantic. "Holy shit, they're too fast! Captain, the fire control radar can't get a lock!"
Before Kyle could even react, the fifteen black shadows had closed the distance. In less than five seconds, the gap between the two forces was reduced to zero.
A Valkyrie flies based on atmospheric aerodynamics. It relies on wings for lift and tail rudders and vector nozzles for direction. When it wants to turn, it must tilt its fuselage and use air resistance to change course—a process that requires time and a necessary turning radius. Furthermore, due to inertia, a Valkyrie cannot stop abruptly, let alone "reverse" at high speed. Once its speed drops below the stall line, this dozens-of-tons block of iron falls like a stone.
The Raptor was different. It was anti-gravity. It didn't need wings, lift, or even much consideration for air resistance.
Thus, from Kyle's perspective, he witnessed a scene that defied all common sense. A Raptor drone charged head-on at Mach 2. Logically, at such speed, it would have to decelerate or climb in advance to attack; otherwise, it would collide.
But the drone didn't. Less than twenty meters from Kyle's cockpit canopy, it stopped dead. There was no deceleration process. It was as if it hit an invisible wall, going from Mach 2 to a dead halt instantly.
Kyle's eyes nearly bulged out of his head. With that kind of G-force, a human pilot's internal organs would have been sprayed out of their mouth! But this was only the beginning.
In the next second, the stationary drone suddenly slid twenty meters to the right, flashing directly into Kyle's lateral blind spot!
A right-angle maneuver! This was the sheer dominance of the anti-gravity engine. By simply changing the direction of the repulsion field, it could change direction instantly at any speed. To a Valkyrie still bound by gravity and aerodynamics, this mobility was nothing short of sorcery.
"He's on my flank! He's on my flank!" Kyle yanked the control stick frantically, trying to force the cumbersome Valkyrie to turn. But the aircraft's hydraulic rudders were too slow, and the fuselage's inertia was too great. By the time his nose swung around, the drone was already behind his tail.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
The Raptor drone opened fire. Its twin-linked bolt autocannons spat tongues of flame. This caliber of bolt shell wasn't designed to pierce heavy armor; instead, several shells were fired with pinpoint precision into the massive turbofan intakes of the Valkyrie.
BOOM—!!! BOOM—!!!
The bolt shells detonated inside the engines. Delicate turbine blades were shattered, and the fragments swept through the entire engine nacelle in high-speed rotation. The Valkyrie's left engine instantly coughed a plume of black smoke before erupting into a fireball. Deprived of power, the Valkyrie began to spiral violently, plummeting toward the ground.
But that was only the first one! Fifteen Raptors wove through the clumsy Valkyrie squadron like butterflies through a thicket! They didn't need to dogfight; they only needed to fire, "teleport" via sudden shifts, and fire again!
"Damn it! Damn it! What kind of monsters are these?!"
The remaining pilots tried to scatter, attempting to return fire with autocannons and lasers. But their turret traverse speeds couldn't keep up with the Raptor's displacement! Often, by the time the muzzle turned, the target was already overhead.
"Drown them in missiles!" a pilot screamed in despair, slamming the missile launch button. Several Hellstrike missiles streaked out with flaming tails. But instead of hitting the drones, the proximity was so close that the missiles caught their own wingmen in the blast.
...
"No, we can't play with them anymore!" In the underground command room, Ball watched the chaotic mess of enemy planes on the radar anxiously. "These drones are expensive; don't break them for me!"
"Full salvo, fire!" Ball issued the finishing command.
The Raptors circling in the air simultaneously released their belly racks. Whoosh—!!! Instantly, ten micro-shaped-charge armor-piercing missiles were fired. These missiles, as if they had eyes of their own, latched onto the wing roots of every remaining Valkyrie—specifically targeting the main structural spars.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
A series of small fireballs erupted in the sky. While the explosions weren't massive, the effect was horrific. The struggling Valkyries saw their wings snap off cleanly, as if severed by an invisible giant sword. Without the lift of their wings, the heavy fuselages instantly became scrap metal.
The remaining eight Valkyries lost flight capability at the same time. They tumbled and spun, plunging toward the Acid Swamp with desperate shrieks.
Splash! Splash! Splash!
Colossal plumes of water splashed dozens of meters high. Acid surged into the cockpits. Even if a pilot survived the crash, they would be dissolved by the strong acid within minutes.
Three minutes. From engagement to total annihilation, it took only three minutes. Helios's proud vanguard aviation wing hadn't even managed a decent counterattack. Just like that, they were gone.
...
"Is... is it over?"
Realizing the fact that the enemy formation had been wiped out, Ball felt his throat go dry and his mind go blank. According to his expectations, this should have been a bitter struggle. He had mentally prepared to lose more than half of the drones and even to engage in a desperate last stand with ground AA guns if the air battle failed.
After all, those were Valkyries! But now? What had he done? He had pressed two buttons: one for "Launch" and one for "Fire." And then the battle was over??
The extreme sense of unreality left Ball not with the joy of victory, but with a deep sense of absurdity and fear.
...
Meanwhile, dozens of kilometers away, inside the command vehicle of the Helios main force.
Zeman was holding a cup of coffee, preparing to enjoy an aerial slaughter of the Underhive curs. Suddenly, the static noise in the comms channel cut out completely. Immediately after, every friendly signal on the radar went black.
Clatter.
The coffee cup hit the floor, spilling brown liquid everywhere. Zeman's weathered face wore an expression as if he had seen a ghost.
"Where... where are my planes?" Zeman lunged toward the radar in a daze, his voice filled with disbelief.
"My entire squadron—twelve Valkyries?! They were right there just a second ago! Such a huge group of planes! How can they just be gone?!"