Star Force 82 Hradeiti (SF82) (Star Force Origin Series) by Aer-ki Jyr

He held his weapon secured until they all got into the open, then together they shot dual heavy lachars at the turret, hitting it with 12 red beams within the first second and blowing armor plates off like it’d been hit with a shotgun. The second salvo silenced the weapon, but the tanks didn’t stop there. They blasted it until the turret was visibly junk, then they pulled back into the cover of the dunes before a cruiser could take a shot at them and moved on further through the sandy canyons looking for their next opportunity for a sniping attack further away from the brawl that was attracting all of the lizard cruisers, the rest of which were abandoning their positions on the other side of the city and flying directly over it to come down on the Hradeiti warships.
          
             By the time Bra’shom’s battleship pushed its way through the tip of a sand dune in order to stay below the firing ceiling of the anti-orbital gun the fight was already old and with multiple ships from both sides laying broken on the sand. The bigger cleansing beams his flagship carried leapt out immediately, drilling two pale white daggers into the side of an already damaged lizard cruiser and cutting a swath through it as one popped out the far side and tattooed one of the city buildings beyond.
           A giant pink beam passed within 20 meters of the top of the battleship, missing it and streaking off into the distance behind the fleet as the big gun tried to get a glancing shot in. Fortunately it wasn’t as big of a gun as the ones he’d seen in action in the past, and wasn’t situated on top of a huge tower. This one was lower to the ground with several buildings actually interfering with its lowest firing lines. Depress as it could, the battleship was still under its firing line and Bra’shom was glad his crew were holding to that navigational mark meticulously.
           Seeing all the devastation and ongoing carnage playing out before him, the Scionate figured they had the lizard cruisers beat. They were getting hit hard in the process, but they had numbers and the city defense turrets weren’t adding a lot to the fight. It looked like this is where the lizards were planning to make their last stand, and…
           Suddenly Bra’shom saw one of the lizard cruisers dart forward, digging into the sand to the left of his battleship but he knew it wasn’t a crash course. The ship got hit by several lachars while the cleansing beam gunners were focusing on a pair of cruisers ahead that were pounding away at the forward shields. That let it get through all the way underneath the bigger ship, wedging itself between hull and sand and breaching the battleship’s shields with the contact.
           The phaser beams now started hitting armor from the pair in front even as one of the cruisers lost half its weaponry as a cleansing beam cut a critical power conduit. Bra’shom wasn’t worried about those ships, but he was scared as hell to have that cruiser underneath them. If it had a self-destruct it could…
           Suddenly the battleship began to gain altitude, and before Bra’shom could order full thrust down the cruiser pushed it up enough that another thick pink beam leapt out from the city and punched straight into the forward hull, burning through the armor there in a flash and cutting a tunnel half the length of the ship that blew out with the vaporized material into the surrounding decks.
           The bridge was about 30 meters away from the beam trace, which was too close. The whole leftside wall exploded and Bra’shom got slammed in the rear as it blew him and the rest of the bridge crew to the far was in a load of shrapnel and heat that killed them all within a matter of seconds.
          
             Commander Tyree was standing on the bridge of another battleship a couple kilometers to the south of the flagship when he saw it rise up above the combat ceiling and get