The New World

[The Corsair]

His powers would only draw attention to their position so he drifted through the enemy formation, shrouding the entire place in fog.
As the others cut ships out of the sky while they scrambled to respond and return fire he caught a glimpse of a truly massive ship. It was easily twice the size of the dreadnoughts and, by the looks of things, was impervious to their powers.
He leaned over and gave Rosie a long, passionate kiss before leaping over the side and flying his own way over onto the topmost deck where he searched for an entrance.

[Man of Steam]

Alex piloted the Raptor in near the Raven, and once he saw it take off, he took it as his cue. He flicked a switch, and the railgun he had previously loaded fired, a shot slamming into the nearest ship, taking it down in a huge explosion.
Seeing that the other ships were beginning to react, he opened up with the machine guns, joining the battle that was quickly growing.

[Mark Peiterson]

-Sean-

The trap was set, they'd drawn away the bigger ships guards, and now in the distance he saw the ships falling and exploding, exactly as the ship that mark was on.
Another shell hit the side to make him aware once again, they had 40 corvettes on their tale to "keep busy " for about another half hour or so.
"let's give 'Em the time they need boys!"Shouted Sean
Just then another volley hit a corvette, it fell down onto a small building and exploded, only 39 to go.

[Augustus Longeye]

Julius sprinted along ships, he would start at the prow and rip great gouts of wood up, or anything else he could safely manipulate. As he made his way across the decks people would shoot at him or try and stab him, but the reflexive armour of the earth was good enough protection. He took one bullet to the ear, managing to take a neat knick out of it, but after that he refocussed on the armour and was fine.
Once he reached the end of a ship he would search for another, before propelling himself across the the next prow, then lather, rinse and repeat. He got through around fifteen before he noticed that the enemy were beginning to turn and form up. It took him a second to realise what they were going to do, and when they did he could react fast enough. They fire on the ship he was on, blowing their own ship out of the sky with him on it. By the time he jumped he was already too far down to reach anything, and as he plummeted to the earth he rearranged he armour to slow his fall somewhat.
When he did land he was unharmed apart from several bruises, but he couldn't get back up to the fight. He was stuck for now.

[Blindwalker]

Reinforcing to the supernaturals was the given command.
Automatic weapons rattled, cannons boomed, people shouted, and the cry of a occasionally hit, poor bird rang out between the ships. The groups of ships had taken a few casualties, but they were still fighting back. There were 40 or so opposing ships left. Hugo's main goal was to take out any infantry or anyone else on the enemy ships.
Hugo fired round after round after round into the men with his new revolver, and his hands hurt so much that he was sure they will fall off sooner or later. He was an enemy marksman, obviously a really bad shot, trying to take a shot at him and anyone else that was coming out of hiding to have a shot. He prepared to take the marksman out. He started a run across the deck, firing blind shots at his target. When the marksman was aiming to shoot, Hugo hid behind cover, or did a quick roll. He recovered, sat up on one knee for a second a fired a killing shot.
Not before his target did. It was a lucky hit. Hugo shouted out when he found out he got hit in the chest. He fell backwards and crashed heavily onto the deck. "HELP!" He shouted out as loud as he could through the blood in his mouth. He felt his blood pumping to his head furiously, his heart smashing against the walls of his chest.
He wondered for a split second where his medic's were, but then remembered that he assigned them to aid the other fallen ally ships. The sky was turning gray... he needed a lot of help. Right now.

[The Corsair]

He could hear other allied ships firing in the distance
who the hell gave them that order? he wondered furiously, this is meant to be covert!
Either way, the ships those with powers were engaging were moving back, leaving about 50 ships for the others, who weren't even meant to be there, to deal with.
As the massive carrier moved away with Falko aboard, he skulked around the empty cargo bays. The munitions stored there were already used up. He planned to clear out the ship and hopefully commandeer it so they could reverse-engineer the technology.

[Mark Peiterson]

-sean- (yet again)
Seing the man hit and crying out for help , Sean yelled out for covering fire and raced across the deck, hearing Smith firing his gun and generally making the enemy keep their heads down. He dived for the man and huddled next to him, ripping off his own shirt and pressing it against the wound.
"Keep it pressured ok?" he yelled
The man bit his lip and nodded obviously in pain.
"NOW!"
He flung the man on his back and sprinted for the airlock.
He heard bullets flying around him, one hit his leg but oblivious to the pain he ran on.
He dived for cover as an explosion rang out, sheildibg the man from debree with his body. Then finally they rushed inside.
"I need a clean table and whatever medical supplies and stocks you have! Now!"

[Augustus Longeye]

Julius was in a useless situation. He could feel the ships fighting above him, and he could feel lives he should be protecting wink out as people died. He thought for a moment before grinning.
"Aether spirit thing? You're not going to like this, but desperate time and all that..." he reached out with his mind into the ground far far below him... and pulled. There was a crack, a rush of heat and then a section about four meters across began to rise. It pulled more and more earth with it, forming a jagged mountain. It kept rising and rising, finally bringing Julius level with the fight. He figured that from here he was more use, and kicked a section of the mounting out. A perfect circle spun off, cleaving three ships in half before embedding itself in a fourth.
"Anyone who need protection get behind the mountain!" he yelled, and then formed a slight alcove that could be better defended.

[lazarusofartemis]

Kat stared out into the horizon and sighed. Battle was on. Better get ready.

[The Corsair]

It was about 11 30 by the clocks on the ship. He felt the massive carrier he was on move away from the group they had ambushed. He watched out a small window in horror as the group joined another larger group and moved toward the sky dock to re-engage. The ship he was on drifted away from the battle, leaving him in a useless position.
Still, he could still continue with his plan to commandeer the ship. He pressed on in hope of finding the on-board barracks. If he took the ship's military backbone by surprise then he would have little resistance through the rest of the ship.

[Man of Steam]

Alex saw more ships on both sides start to enter the battle, and got a little nervous. So far, nothing bad had happened, but he felt like that was going to change.
"Guys, this battles about to get more intense" he said into one of the communicators.
He continued fighting, but he was slowly making his way back towards the sky docks, so as not to get cut off by enemy reinforcements.

[The Corsair]

-Arch-

The enemy was moving to re-engage and dammit he was heading the counter-attack. He had put him and his men forward for it when Captain Skarssen was planning it. They would plunge deep into the line then split back to create an opening. Their ships sped toward the enemy.

-Tommy-

Damn Arch. He was always being the leading hardcase. He was his friend, sure, but he always ended up in dangerous situations for being his friend. Still, he was confident in his ability to fly and had no intention of letting this situation get the better of him.

-Kevin-

He followed Tommy. They were like brothers. Sadly Kevin was easily the younger brother. He was always looking to Tommy for advice and guidance, though often he would disregard it in the heat of the moment in lieu of reckless actions. His sporadic moments of daring flying generally went well but when the didn't Tommy was always there to save his bacon.

-Falko-

He had found the barracks. After disposing of the men guarding it quietly he looked inside to see thousands of men, all sleeping.
How do I get them all at once?

[Blindwalker]

Hugo screamed at the pain when the bullet was hastily pulled out. A few stitches were put in to sew the wound together, and a patch was put over it. He grabbed a cup of water from a table and swished it in his mouth. Aiming at a bucket, he viciously spat out the red, metallic taste of blood from his mouth into a bucket. He jumped off the table and felt his newly acquired stitches pull and grunted.
Someone told him to sit back down, and he grunted again but reluctantly took a chair.
"Thanks for the save," he said to the man that had practically saved his life. "How 'til I get outta here?"

[Augustus Longeye]

Julius saw that it had turned into a fully fledged fight again. There was little hope of them quickly retreating now, as the rest of the fleet was forming up and attacking. Instead he tried to ease the way. Occasionally someone would shoot at the mountain, but it was a thing of reflex to swallow the bullet and throw it back at the ship. Instead he focussed on the bullets going to other airships and tried to deflect them on their course. After a while he got the hang of the instant reaction and began protecting the majority of the fleet.

[Mark Peiterson]

-Sean-
"Mate, there ain't nothing to get back into at the moment, where heading back to the skydock, anyways you'll be out for at least a day, and that's if it dosent get infected, I'm no doctor, but you might want to take it easy for a while, ok?" Said Sean.
"Oh" Agknoledged the man," It over already?"
"Far from it, we managed to draw the escorts away and keep them pinned for about an hour, quite good for a few gunships and priviteers, where heading back and the privys are heading for the main battle, we didn't want to lose people, and anylonger and we would have! Get some sleep, it's almost midnight and you'll need the rest."

[The Corsair]

It was then that he noticed that everything was bolted to the deck and the beds, whatever material they were built out of, were copper coated.
He stamped his foot and watched a massive flash of lightning spring out from the spot he hit. Whoever wasn't fried by the initial shock was soon engulfed in a flaming blanket and sheets. He himself collapsed momentarily. After an excruciating 10 or so seconds he managed to get on his feet. It spoke again.
Bold. Well done. I'll keep you going from here.
He moved to the bridge where the night captain would be commanding the vessel. They hadn't had their gunnery crew at the ready and he figured the captain wanted to keep the ship out of combat. Losing a vessel like this would be intensely damaging, so he had literally wiped out almost the whole crew in one blow. He couldn't supress the grin as he hugged the shadows on his way to the command decks.

[The Corsair]

-Arch-

As he barged his way into the enemy lines firing off every manner of gun on his ship he saw a massive carrier pulling away from the confrontation. He rounded up his friends and went full speed towards it. He didn't know how much of a chance they stood of destroying it but he'd at least damage it he figured. The 5 of them flew toward the massive vessel's rear and split off. Tommy and Kevin took the port side, Cliff and Scratch took the starboard side and he went just above it. As he swooped up to skim above the vessel he dropped a massive torpedo, normally used against pirate ships in the Vancouver harbour, which slammed loudly into the rear of the ship. He dropped 2 other torpedoes as he flew over the ships but none managed to hit a sweet spot. Still, the crew now had 3 gaping holes to repair. He reached the middle of the ship and pulled up sharply. He flew in this manner for a few seconds then pulled down at a similar angle, creating a large parabolic turn. This pointed him straight toward where he figured the bridge would be. He fired off one of the weapons he'd been saving. It was an experimental rocket. A short burst of compressed steam fired it off and with that it relied on it's aerodynamic design to keep it headed toward its target. The rocket ripped through the metal and exploded. He flew back to the stern with a giant grin on his face.

-Tommy-

Arch would have of course gone for the biggest thing he could. He was stuck dodging fire, not getting a single decent shot in, while Arch skimmed lazily across the top dropping his big boomers when he felt he was over something good. He hadn't even hit the bridge with his rocket. He could understand how such a structure could be mistaken for a bridge but it looked more like a temple to Tommy when he got a brief glimpse at its interior. The bridge was below it. The enemy was essentially unscathed. That is, unless they were so intensely religious that the loss of the temple thing would leave their morale in tatters.
It wasn't that important a structure clearly as the enemy still fought on merrily. Still, what the hell was that temple thing for?

[Augustus Longeye]

Julius had kept the brunt of bullets from hitting the fleet, but it came at a price. He could feel the earth stiffening under him, becoming less and less malleable. He knew that the second he paused it would all be over; the energy would leave him and he didn't know how bad it would be this time... he didn't know if he'd already gone to far.
Pushing the thought to the back of his mind he saw a flash to his left and raised a hand, just as a ship hit the mountain. In a split second he realised it had rammed him intentionally, and the mountain wasn't strong enough to hold it back. There was a horrible crunch as the stone gave, and Julius pushed against it with all his might, piling stone into every crevice he could.
Eventually it ground to a halt, smoke billowing from it. Julius flexed his fingers and the ship was riddles with needles of stone. He lowered his arms and stood panting, then realised in horror that he had stopped.
"Don't-" he managed, before everything flickered into darkness and he fell. As he did, the mountain collapsed and returned to the flat plain it had been, sending Julius thudding into the ground as well with a sickening crack.
Everything comes at a price... the voice whispered to the winds.

[Mark Peiterson]

A terrifying thud rolled through the air, then the shockwave hit, spasms of pain erupted along marks body, as he was ungracefully unwaken from his sleep, his mouth moved to screem in pain, but no sound came out, or mabie no sound was heard through is ears, around him lay the remnants of the supercarrier, the one that had so nearly ended his life. His arms bent aquwardly to push himself up, inside his coat something rattled, a crystal, one he was sure he had given to Sean...
Sean
The word echoed inside of him, was he ok? Did he and the team make it to safety? So many questions so little answers. Just then another huge crash filled the air, as his head twisted he saw a giant mountain collapse in on itself, and thurther beyond ships battled over the sky, with what was left of his energy, he began to walk towards the mountains ruins...

As if he was being drawn there...

[YetAnotherMatt]

Gebbert had stumbled back to his cabin aboard the Osprey which now seemed to be a permanent feature of the Hammer's bay. Collapsing into his bed, his earpiece squawked to the desk where he had thrown it. The running narrative of the battle went unheeded by the unconscious Gebbert.

"Wolverine reports enemy scout group retreating."

"The Dallas just went up! Repeat, we just lost the Dallas!"

"This is Skate. Requesting reinforcements on far left. Heavy damage to weapons. They're trying to encircle us."

"We were expecting a re-engagement, but not this quickly. What's our overall status."

"We're just holding Captain. Further analysis soon."

"It won't be soon enough. Where is Lieutenant Lyrren?"

"Inbound to the bridge Captain," Lyrren cut into the conversation. "I was talking to sky-dock crew about the Implacable. There is no chance of her being combat ready for another month."

Lieutenant Charles Lyrren, the Hammer's executive officer, burst into a jog. His footsteps rang off the decking, and he twisted to avoid a NCO wheeling a trolley of cannon rounds. He burst onto the bridge, tossing a salute to Captain Skarssen, who returned it with a definite sense of fatigue. "Sir, situation?"

"They've re-engaged. Pressing us hard along the line, and we will not have enough reserves to stem every breakthrough."

"They took a beating earlier too sir. Do you think we can outlast them?"

"No, It seems like there are as many of them as ever."

"Sensors, how many enemy contacts are we tracking."

There was a slight pause as the control center took stock. "Tracking 243 radar contacts, making an estimate of 280 hostiles."

"That's more than they started with! That just can't be possible. We must have knocked out at least 50 or more in the first engagement."

"Sir, sir! I think you need to see these." The interrupter was a petty officer carrying a sheaf of papers. "Their reinforcements came from aboard those carriers."

"Not possible, not that many."

"Sir look at this. The Heron took these images of an enemy carrier in the lull in the fighting. The battle damage here shows that all four of these photos are of the same bay."

"And..?" Captain Skarssen was less than thrilled with the interruption.

"Each time there is a cruiser leaving the bay. But structural differences show that these are four different cruisers, each leaving from the same bay."

"How many cruisers can this bay fit?"

"We thought they were just all leaving via the same exit, but we got a picture straight into the bay when they turned." He held out another photo. "As you can see, the bay is self-contained, and would barely fit the one cruiser, let alone four."

"How far apart were the first four photos taken?"

"About twenty minutes each, ranging from the start of the lull, to about three quarters through it."

"Conclusions, gentlemen?"

Lyrren spoke up. "If I didn't know better, I'd say that it looks like they are building the cruisers in the bays. But that's impossible, you can't build a cruiser in a month in a full dock, let alone in twenty minutes in a cramped repair bay." He felt the edge of panic in his own voice.

"And yet we seem to be dealing with the impossible here. It appears only marginally stranger than a man who can shoot lightning, doesn't it?" Somehow, Skarssen was still collected.

"Orders, sir?"

"Lyrren, you are now in charge of co-ordination. Find me a plan to deal with these reinforcements."

"Petty Officer ... Ryan," Skarssen read off the man's name-tape. "Go to Bay Nine and get their opinion on this."

"Sir!" Both men saluted and left.

[The Corsair]

His journey to the deck took him every which way. It was infinitely frustrating and time-consuming.

It was on one of these ridiculously numerous dead-end ways that he came across something beyond strange. A full construction sight lay in one of the bays and at it's centre a half-finished cruiser sat with sparks of welding and bangs of rivets surrounding it. He watched for about 5 minutes as it became almost flight-ready. In a few more minutes, it had lifted off and floated menacingly out of the bay. His guess was that it was a damaged cruiser that was being repaired, but no the jungle of automatic limbs shuffled around and placed and welded and reinforced a full new frame in only a few more minutes. They were making more ships!

He had a choice, it seemed. He could destroy as many of these as he could to make the battle less impossible for his comrades outside or he could capture the bridge and alter the bays to make ships for their cause. The issue with the latter was that while he was capturing the bridge another bunch of ships would have entered the fray against the American side. The issue with the former was that they couldn't make any of these ships for themselves and, seeing as the enemy had ships that could make ships, having such a construction bay would be tremendously helpful and would begin to even the odds by a little.

He turned back to take the bridge.

---

After a good 20 minutes more of infuriating searching he found the bridge. He stood, frozen. He knew that behind this door lay essentially the most dangerous men on this ship. They could be more of those gross mouthless horrors like the one he saw in San Francisco, the could be similarly supernatural like him, they could be angels...
The last thought almost turned him away from the door.
He bit his lip until it bled profusely and launched a massive kick into the metal door that both knocked it down and sent a massive bolt arcing to the controls. It flashed over the buttons and dials and levers and fried two of the three men standing at them. Two men who had been standing at a display intensely similar in functionality to Gebberts turned toward him. He launched a quick bolt at one who promptly fell in a paralysed state (though his guess was that he wasn't dead) and ran at the other while he swung his hand forward to send a second bolt toward the other man, only this man made a lazy sweeping gesture with his hand and deflected the bolt.
It was then that he realised who he was sprinting towards. He stopped suddenly. It was Berkley.

[YetAnotherMatt]

Lieutenant Lyrren strode down towards the command centre. He opened it and stepped inside.
"Gentlemen," he began "we have received reports of the source of the enemy reinforcements-"

A shy looking technician cut him off with a short cough. "We know sir. The captain um... the captain left his earpiece turned on during your conversation."

Lyrren paused to consider this information. "Very well. I need ideas then."

"Anybody?" He stared into the sea of blank faces.

---

Inside bay nine, Gebbert was woken by the sound of voices. He blearily stood up and peered outside. A petty officer was talking animatedly to the crew chief.

"So the problem we have is where the parts are coming from, and how many they might have."

"Parts of what?" Gebbert was amazed at the clarity of his own voice.

"Cruisers." Seeing Gebbert's expression of bemusement, Petty Officer Ryan explained the situation from the beginning.

"And with those cruisers there, we can't get close enough to the carriers to prevent them from making more" he finished. "and the trick we pulled with the Implacable would only work once."

"Even if it would, we are NOT using that manoeuvre again, Mr. Ryan."

"Mr. Freidhelm?"

"It isn't up for debate."

"I wasn't arguing with you. You think you are the only person affected by this?! My Brother was a Lieutenant on the Gambier Bay."

Ryan spun on his heel and stormed out of the bay, leaving the intelligence photos on the desk.

---
Nearby...

"Sir, we are now about an hour and a half out."

"Good. How long till Howes is on station?"

"20 minutes."

[Augustus Longeye]

Barum was furiously piloting the Raven. He'd been on another ship when Julius ran off without telling him, and as the Raven drifted past without a pilot Barum had thought Julius had finally done something stupid enough to get himself killed. He'd requested the ship he was on slow enough that he could swing over onto the Raven, then taken control of it and spun it about. It was only a few moment later that he noticed Julius was alive and metaphorically kicking when a mountain sprouted from the earth. Knowing that he was alive, Barum faced the ship at the enemy fleet and engaged.
Using the ships targeting systems all he really had to do was pick a ship and not get shot at himself, and the Raven was surprisingly quick to react. he managed to take out a ship through nothing more than light artillery and dodging, but he knew that it wouldn't last forever.
As he spun about he saw a flicker to his left and noticed what looked like a glider. It dropped something on the deck of the Raven, and Barum watched in horror as it smocked. He leapt forward, diving over the rail and bashing levels and buttons as he did. He grabbed the item and threw it with fevered strength off the ship, and after a second hear an explosion. It wasn't a big one, something that small couldn't hold much explosive, but still it was enough that it could have set of a reaction on the Raven.
He ran back onto the bridge, careful not to hit things this time, and saw with horror the guns were jammed. He'd hit levers for reloading and firing, and there were rather worryingly red lights blinking at him. He grabbed the talking thing Gebbert had installed and fiddeled with it for a moment, before a blast of noise hit him.
"Hello?" he shouted into it.
"Who is this? This line is off limits!"
"Barum!"
"Who?!"
"Julius aid!"
"Who's Juliuis?!?"
"Earth guy! Mountain? Him!"
"OH! Why didn't you say so, what do you want? We're busy here! And stop shouting, I can hear you!"
"Look out for the people with wings, they're dropping explosives!" HE said at a normal tone this time.
"Really? Thanks for that. I'll pass it on!" and the line went dead again.
Barum nodded to himself and turned the ship about, he was useless here and he needed to get somewhere where his guns could be repaired.

[The Corsair]

Out of the corner of his eye he could see the distant battle. Their enemy had a new trick for every engagement it seemed. There were Soldiers with glider-like wings attached to their backs that dropped bombs. It seemed like a fairly crude tactic in his mind but he was mainly just thankful it wasn't some swarm of angels. They must have the angels kept apart from the air force... he though briefly.

More important, however, was the presence of the very much alive Berkley. Though the Commodore's departure last time had been odd and seemingly final he had held a feeling that the man had somehow lived. Disturbingly, he was correct.

He wanted to talk, to question, but he wanted to launch himself into combat with the man-thing just as much. His indecision produced a startling and frustrating result. He threw a punch, which Berkley dodged with a slightly confused look on his face, while yelling "What the hell happened to you?!" It made him feel more like he was interrogating a potentially unfaithful spouse than trying to save the USA.

"Some of us take your aetheric parlor tricks to the grand stage young boy." was the disastrously cryptic and insulting response he got. If shooting lightning was a parlor trick then why weren't there goddamn Martians on broadway? Berkley had turned into creamy smoke which was honestly less-than-damaging in a fight. Even so, how the hell would Berkley even have powers?

Berkley launched his own punch at Falko. He felt brave and angry so darted his own hand out to catch the fist and send harsh electrical pain down Berkley's nerves. He was successful in some ways. In fact he achieved everything he aimed to in the counter-attack, it was just a shame he hadn't also aimed to actually hurt Berkley as he may have been successful at doing so if he had added it to his objectives. The arcs of lightning stopped at about his wrist as the rest of the arm became the same smoky substance before snapping back into being a real limb again. Berkley appeared to feel no concrete pain at this despite the scorch marks now spiderwebbing their way across his hand.

How do I hurt something that doesn't have nerves if it chooses? he thought, already in a half-defeated state of mind.
That was when he remembered his little flying trick in Texas.

[Man of Steam]

Alex looked out over the battlefield. What had started as a raid had ended up being a major conflict. The enemies newest weapon, he saw, was gliders with explosives. He had already been able to shoot one down, the explosives it was carrying igniting and taking out the two gliders next to it. His ship had been hit by it, and the starboard engine had a plume of dark smoke rising from it. This battle had to be over soon, or there was a chance it would end badly for them, he though.