"You say you beat death?" said Boldness, changing tack suddenly. "I don't think you did. I think that you're its slaves. I think that it frightens you, that extinction frightens you, that you're so desperate to avoid it that you live every moment of your lives in fear. You can observe the monsters moving in the deep and can't pull your eyes away. For every entity that dies before you, you can justify saying that you are still here, that we outlasted those people, what is right matters less than who is left. You are terrified that someone might look down at the grave of your civilization and say the same thing. It is a very... organic motivation. Very quaint!"

She leaned to the side, smiling brightly. "I'm not like that. I know what the meaning of life is: to kill the Furnace Knight. That's what's at the ticking center of [i]my [/i]biology, and I could hang alongside the Skies if I saw that come to pass. So from my perspective, all that fear over survival just seems so... stressful. You'll have that itch inside you scratching away for as long as time remains. Even if you ascend to the greatest heights of glory and power, surpass the Lazerblasters, render the galaxy your toy, you will still not feel safe or satisfied. The Crimson Goddess will still be there always, whispering: is there a threat outside of this context still? So you will build higher and higher trying to get ahead of threats that only exist in your imagination, conjuring ever greater nightmares while existing in constant terror that your nightmares are not awful enough. As long as that survival impulse is there in your biological cores then it will be your torment because no matter what you do you can never truly prove the negative of your own death."

She closed her brilliant owl eyes for a moment and let out a calm breath. But when she opens her eyes again there is the gleam you're increasingly coming to associate with obsession.

"The Furnace Knight has a meaning too: galactic conquest. The dedication of new stars and systems to the Skies. Once the last star in the heavens falls before him then he can finally stop, and not before. In a practical sense, I think he's doomed to just as much suffering as you are because his goal is just as unobtainable. But were he to achieve it, he would be free from fear at last."

*

The Azura fighters continue ahead at full speed directly into the path of the warheads. For many long seconds they continue, seemingly unaware of the missiles hurtling towards them - and then, too late, they begin evasive action. The ability of the ships to change direction while not losing speed is unreal - an Azura fightercraft can go from full speed forwards to full speed backwards in less than a second, apparently without inflicting any sort of G-forces on the pilots inside. Their maneuvers, though, go from graceful to panicked when the guided Aotrs missiles adjust speed and angle to track them. Some of the ships start opening weapons ports, long black curse spikes emerging from those smooth spherical surfaces. When they do their speed and maneuverability drops substantially, making their attempts to jink even more doomed.

One of the missiles strikes an Azura plasma torpedo as its disoriented fighter escort abandons it. It detonates spectacularly, erupting into a massive cascade of burning plasma fire. A few moments later another missile closed into range with one of the Azura fighters. The curse spike flickered, glowed -

And, with the firing of the ELectromagnetic Flux a lot of Azura decision making finally starts to make sense.

Every radar, every scanner, every rangefinder, every sensor, either goes dark or goes wild. The sky is full of heat signatures. Space is comprised entirely of lead and uranium. Radio blasts out endless, pointless static. Magical scanners shut down. Even external visual cameras simply go black. It's the most comprehensive, overwhelming jamming attack possible. It attacks every spectrum at once, and the range is enormous. The entire planetary hemisphere is rendered into a vast data null-zone. A cloaking field as an explosion. The only things that function is outright visual data from the mark one eyeglows of Aotrs pilots, including visual telescoping effects. 

And what that visual data will show, to anyone watching now or later: Every missile is snapped out of the sky by brilliant bolts of electricity fired from the Azura curse spikes. The interception rate is perfect; one notable ship shoots down five individual warheads in five seconds.

The only thing that prevents this from becoming an immediate operational catastrophe is the Azura failure to follow through. Their pilots were as unfamiliar with Aotrs technology as the reverse, and they misinterpreted the Aotrs missiles as something their weapons would be unprepared to deal with. A lack of centralized Azura command-and-control makes the realization of this fact slow to disseminate, resulting in a fragmented offensive action - some of the Azura ships advance aggressively while the others are still rallying. 

The ships that do close the distance then turn this same weapon on the Aotrs fighter craft to dramatic effect. The range of the ELF weapon is short, but once it is reached the tracking and accuracy is perfect. A direct strike will burn out every computer system on board, often via dramatic explosions. Further, the power drain effect will stun or incapacitate the pilot and flatten any batteries aboard the ship. The first wave of Azura fighters leave derelict, lifeless vessels in their wake, and the second wave executes the paralyzed ships by guiding their detached torpedo munitions directly into them. 

But, if any of the Aotrs pilots has the skill or inclination to engage in a dogfight, they'll find their coldbeams to be satisfyingly effective against Azura armour. Likewise, while the spheres are eye-wateringly maneuverable, they have lower top speeds than Aotrs craft, especially in combat mode.