At least not in high orbit. But in middle orbit there were large ‘sails’ of mobile dampening field emitters stretched out across the jumpline. Some 149 of them that the 220 mile wide tier 2 Hadarak hit and ripped through, then it stuck on the upper part of the planetary dampening field, which finished fully negating its momentum with little effort. Once it stopped there lances came up from the surface and down from the Sentinels, burning holes into the Hadarak through conventional means as well as Essence.
The Essence ones did the most damage, punching through to its core within seconds as the Hadarak couldn’t move as the dampening fields had augments that pinned it in place, but as it quickly died it released all its internal minions, pumping clouds of the living ships out as the Sentinels and planetary defense weaponry began picking them off rapidly, for none were able to get through the planetary shields that the Warden had not been able to get to.
Before that cleanup was over the second Warden arrived, with the ‘sails’ having barely recharged at all. They slowed it down a little, but the tier 1 Warden got further than the first did, penetrating deep into the dampening shields before it was stopped and skewered very near the dead one that was being lifted further into orbit by several Sentinels with grapple beams so the dampening shields didn’t have to hold it aloft.
They didn’t even have time to start moving the tier 1 when another tier 2 came slamming through, overloading the dampening field and hitting the planetary defense shield so hard the Hadarak visibly deformed, with the front of its egg-shaped body crumpling before the shield finally broke, then the massive 189 mile wide mass hit the surface and crushed two cities along with their weaponry, shield generators, and dampening emitters.
It also punched down into the crust, creating a huge impact crater that spawned instantaneous volcanoes around the perimeter as the 5 mile thick crust fought to keep the far larger Hadarak aloft, with it half sinking into the magma below before the latent momentum finally was negated.
C’fad cringed when he saw the damage to the planet, but he knew it was inconsequential compared to what was coming. The system defense fleet had kept the other Hadarak occupied, but there was still one more Warden coming in a minute and 32 seconds. And the sails, dampening field, and planetary shield were all down or at low power.
Which meant it was going to ram at nearly full speed.
“All cities take flight now!” he ordered planetwide, hoping this wasn’t going to be necessary, but fearing otherwise.
The seconds ticked by, during which he watched the volcanoes continue to spew lava out so high it tickled the underside of the reforming planetary defense shield supported by other cities extending their portions to cover those that were now toast. And though he didn’t order it, three of the Sentinel stations moved into the approach corridor, hoping to absorb some of the impact speed.
One of them disappeared in the blink of an eye, but the computers logged the collision and the speed reduction it equated. It slowed down the ramming Hadarak by 7%, but the 243 mile wide mass could not be easily stopped, and it punched down through the sails, dampening field, and planetary shield as if they were not even there.
Then it hit the surface and pushed through the planetary crust like a rock dropping into a pond of water.
C’fad didn’t breathe for a moment, hoping it was that simple, but he knew there would be a reaction from the planet…and he wasn’t wrong. A sub-surface ripple belatedly formed, causing a land tsunami as the hard rock covered with dirt and trees and cities suddenly became visibly liquid and spread outward as a huge amount of bright red magma shot out the impact zone at such bounceback speed that it easily reached orbit and kept going, rising up past the Sentinel stations and achieving escape velocity, meaning it was going so fast gravity would not be able to pull it back down again.
That didn’t concern C’fad, it was the surface. The ripple wasn’t slowing, moving across thousands of miles in a matter of minutes, and when it hit his cities it didn’t spare them. The surrounding infrastructure was crushed as the diamond-shaped city cores desperately tried to rise up fast enough to avoid the land wave.
Most made it, but he saw two get hit by the crests, bouncing the cities upward. One kept rising, but another broke apart and fell back down, landing in the chunks of crust that were moving around randomly in the backwash as magma began shooting up at random spots.
C’fad mentally linked into the system and found the nearest vessels and ordered them down to the site, hoping to pull some people out of that mess as he began to get reports from other cities that had just made it up before the wave hit that not everyone had been evacuated in time. Some had been in the surrounding infrastructure and could not make it back.
The Oso’lon smacked his tail onto the floor multiple times as he cursed himself. He hadn’t expected that much depletion of his defenses, otherwise he would have ordered more cities to evacuate. He’d calculated the shields to hold up through the third impact, but they hadn’t. Why?
As he organized the rescue ships and watched the land wave continue across a third
