Chapter 120: Our Turn

Inside the Flag Bridge of the USS Gerald R. Ford, Rear Admiral Donovan stood with a cold, detached expression, watching the last traces of shattered glacial ice bob harmlessly against the swells.

The telephone on the tactical console buzzed once. Donovan lifted the receiver to his ear.

"Eagle Actual," Donovan said.

"Admiral," John’s voice came through the secure satellite channel from the underground redoubt. It was steady, devoid of anger or pride. "We monitored the thermal blooms and the atmospheric discharge. The hostile entity has concluded her demonstration."

"She exhausted four separate high-energy attack profiles," Donovan replied. "All intercepted or grounded. Zero damage to fleet assets."

"Then she has forfeited the privilege of probing our perimeter without consequence," John stated flatly. "Rule of engagement delta is in effect. Deliver proportionate kinetic retaliation. Do not strike the Aegis over the city center, and do not target the deity directly. We are not interested in testing her personal regeneration or triggering an unpredictable divine death-throes event. Target the physical platform she stands on, along with the exterior fortifications supporting her position."

"Understood, Supreme Commander," Donovan said. "Disassembling the shelf."

"Proceed, Admiral. Make it decisive."

The line clicked off. Donovan lowered the receiver and turned toward the tactical action officer.

"Signal the strike group. Surface bombardment and precision air interdiction on the Port Solis seawall and exterior cliff works. Clear the breakwater."

"Aye, sir. Firing solutions uploaded to Churchill, Bunker Hill, and Flight Dagger."

On the ancient granite breakwater of Port Solis, Goddess Viona was still trying to steady her ragged breath.

Her golden robes were soaked at the hem by ocean spray, and fine veins of mana exhaustion pulsed behind her temples. For the first time in centuries, the well of power deep inside her chest felt depleted, shallow, and strained.

"L-Lady Viona!" Belis shouted down from the high terrace, his voice thin against the wind. "Please, return inside the Aegis! You have shown them the wrath of the heavens! Return to the sanctuary!"

Viona gritted her teeth, glaring at the distant gray shapes across the blue swells.

"They did not advance," she muttered to herself, her fingers digging into her trembling palms. "They stayed their distance. They are terrified of approaching my domain. Even with their iron tricks, they fear the sacred ground."

She began to turn her back on the water, lifting her silk skirts to step toward the inner gate.

Then, five miles out, the sea flashed orange.

It was not a single muzzle flash.

The cruiser USS Bunker Hill and the destroyer USS Winston S. Churchill had pivoted their hulls, bringing their five-inch/62-caliber Mark 45 naval artillery batteries into a synchronized firing line.

THOOM! THOOM! THOOM!

The sharp, concussive cracks of high-velocity naval artillery traveled across the water, sounding like the rapid tearing of canvas. Seconds later, seventy-pound high-explosive fragmentation shells arrived at nearly three times the speed of sound.

The first shell did not strike the golden dome of the Aegis. It didn’t need to.

Viona was standing outside the barrier’s boundary line, positioned on the outer breakwater to project her spells without interference.

KABOOM!

Fifty feet to Viona’s right, the five-inch shell slammed directly into the solid granite foundation of the seawall.

The impact did not leave a mere scorch mark. The delayed-action base fuse detonated deep inside the stone, vaporizing hundreds of years of ancient imperial masonry. Tons of pulverized rock, black slag, and boiling water erupted into the air.

The kinetic shockwave hit Viona like a solid timber beam.

"Ah!" she gasped as her balance vanished.

The divine entity was thrown violently sideways, tumbling across the wet stone. Her golden tiara came loose, bouncing off the rocks and clattering into the churning sea below.

Before she could push herself up, the artillery barrage found its rhythm.

CRACK-BOOM! BOOM! CRACK-BOOM!

Both automated five-inch guns cycled relentlessly, pumping twenty high-explosive rounds per minute into the narrow finger of stone.

Shells pulverized the breakwater into a jagged ruin. Boulders the size of war wagons were sheared off and thrown into the froth. The shockwaves tore through the air, stripping the air of oxygen and burying Viona in a blinding blizzard of gray dust, stone splinters, and suffocating sulfur smoke.

"Lady Viona!" Lord Justin shrieked from the high cliffs, grabbing the battlements in horror. "The seawall is collapsing!"

Viona scrambled on her hands and knees across the trembling stone, her divine grace completely shattered. Her bare hands were scraped and bloody from the sharp granite edges, her silk gown ripped and covered in black grime. She wasn’t flying; she wasn’t casting. Pure, unadorned mortal terror took over her nervous system.

She crawled frantically toward the faint, shimmering boundary of the Aegis, barely ten yards away.

BOOM!

A five-inch shell struck the breakwater ten feet behind her trailing boots. The overpressure threw her forward through the air.

Viona crossed the invisible threshold, crashing heavily onto the paved stone ramp inside the golden dome just as the outer third of the breakwater gave way completely, collapsing into the ocean in a massive avalanche of foam and sunken rock.

She lay on her stomach, coughing violently, spitting granite dust and bile onto the pavement.

"She is inside! Close the gate! Seal the transit aperture!" priests screamed from the inner courtyard.

The golden ward solidified into a seamless, impenetrable wall of blinding divine light.

Inside the bubble, the artillery shells could no longer touch her. Three five-inch rounds struck the golden dome directly over the harbor mouth, detonating harmlessly against the glowing runes in flashes of orange fire and dissipating shockwaves.

Viona rolled onto her back, her chest heaving, clutching her bruised ribs. A wild, desperate laugh escaped her lips.

"I am inside..." she gasped, blood trickling from her nose. "You cannot reach me! You cannot pierce the Aegis!"

The Americans had no intention of hitting the dome again.

High above the clouds, Flight Dagger—four F/A-18F Super Hornets carrying full air-to-ground strike suites—swept over the coastline, banking hard around the northern edge of the golden barrier.

"Dagger Lead, targets acquired," the flight leader spoke into his mask. "Exterior trench lines, cliffside ballista batteries, and observation towers. Cleared for precision delivery."

"Copy, Lead. Pick them apart."

The jets leveled off at fifteen thousand feet, entirely beyond the reach of imperial archers or catapults, perfectly positioned outside the Aegis’s northern curved edge.

Underneath their wings, pylons released dozens of AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapons and CBU-100 cluster bombs.

The ordnance glided down toward the high coastal cliffs overlooking Port Solis. These were the very earthen ramparts where fifty thousand imperial legionnaires had spent three months digging trenches, laying timber palisades, and mounting massive anti-dragon ballistas under Ayanokoji’s calculated plans.

The weapons struck the unshielded ridgeline with terrifying precision.

KER-THUMP! KER-THUMP! KER-THUMP!

Hundreds of cluster submunitions carpeted the trenches.

The earth along the cliff face simply disintegrated. The heavy timber palisades were shredded into matchsticks, and the massive five-hundred-pound ballistas were flipped through the air like plastic toys. The concussive blasts ripped through the earthen trenches, collapsing the underground bunkers and burying entire cohorts of heavy infantry beneath tons of falling topsoil.

Paladins in enchanted plate armor were hurled off the sheer three-hundred-foot cliffs, their bodies tumbling down into the rocks and surf below.

"Run! Run to the capital road!" soldiers cried, throwing down their shields and enchanted spears.

The imperial vanguard, which had stood proud and unbroken for ninety days, disintegrated into a stampede of screaming men running blindly away from the ocean, abandoning their fortified positions within three minutes.

On the ruined harbor ramp, Viona watched through the golden glass of her barrier as the entire exterior ridge of the fortress was sheared away by explosions.

The proud bastions were gone. The grand breakwater was a jagged stump beneath the water. The fifty thousand men who were supposed to hold the line were running for their lives, their banners trampled into the burning dirt.

The fleet had not lost a single man. They had not even adjusted their anchor lines.

With less than five minutes of casual, disciplined gunfire, the Americans had stripped away the outer shell of her fortress, broken her seawall, and left her shivering in the dirt behind her glowing cage.