The channel was flooded with bloodthirsty cheering from the Tindrel camp as blinding explosions erupted from the two disabled battleships. They had waged war like this on their planet and in space ever since they reached it, so it must be nice to validate its continued effectiveness.

The planetoid ship came under fire from several directions. Its large shield generators absorbed most of the hits, though one torpedo found a gap in the front as energy was directed towards the more vulnerable spindle off the back. It burst through and crashed into the side of the rocky face, tearing a small simulated slab off into space.

Barely slowing down, the Tindrel capital ship narrowly missed a cluster of hefty asteroids and sheared off and away from the engagement. It would turn in a wide circle for another ramming run if possible. Point defence lasers on its stern fended off numerous munitions as it departed.

This left the comparatively weaker Tindrel vessels to fight without their carrier vessel alongside the Rothians and Humans. However, the imminent threat of another devastating charge on the flank by the planetoid had proved a powerful distraction in previous engagements. They made short work of the support vessels which hadn't retreated, then most of their ships attempted to get to cover afforded by the asteroid field. Their ships excelled in short range combat, but their shields wouldn’t hold up in a protracted long range engagement.

Despite a snarl-up between the helical Outreman formation and the chaotic and rapidly spreading Tindrel fleet, the closest remaining enemy battleship wasn’t able to take advantage of this troop confusion. The OSC heavy cruiser Valkyrie pulled up alongside the hostile ship while deploying a swarm of countermeasure drones between the ships. While still manoeuvring, the enemy battleship fired a massive broadside which would have likely disabled several small vessels behind. The Valkyrie’s counter measures intercepted roughly 40% of the munitions before they hit its shields, though the heavy cruiser still took a battering. The Valkyrie’s shipboard AI was able to simulate a violent shaking motion in some parts of the interior, for the purposes of realism.

Moments later, the Valkyrie returned the broadside, before re-engaging its thrusters and dropping down underneath the enemy battleship to avoid another salvo while its shields recovered. Two plucky frigates above the enemy also jostled to find a firing position for their main guns before releasing jets of energy through space towards the ship.

[hr]
“The locals call that stuff the Morgrawal. Say it's all one entity.” Masgard pointed to the massive root system covering Psi-Helios. He hadn’t been far from Dr Lang since they’d boarded the Rothian vessel, though he kept a relatively low profile and seemed to be working on other things most of the time.

“How do you know that?” Freyr asked.

“We do our research. The natives are so entwined with it that they refer to themselves as the Morgrawalai.”

The sophisticated net of scans being unfurled by the Magnificent Horizon was gradually peeling back layers of the planet. Freyr observed that the obvious ‘Morgrawalai’ population centres were varied. There were some that appeared to be inside the large trunks of the tree, some underground and some in the circular clearings near lakes that the Morgrawal had left.