The Almighty Ring

“Fire the second round! We need to destroy them before they destroy us!” Halsey cried, panicking when he saw the bleep on the sonar. That bleep was the Chinese underwater vessel deep in the sea. He dared not to make a move besides attacking.

“Yes, sir!”

The command was relayed to every ship. The 3rd and 7th Fleet immediately prepared their missiles again. In less than 30 seconds, all missiles were loaded into their silos and were shot towards the Chinese.

As soon as the missiles were in the air, the radar monitor picked up something odd.

“Sir! We have detected unidentified objects flying towards us at Mach 4 speed!” cried the operator.

“Can’t you tell what is it?”

“I can’t… Judging from the sizes and flying patterns, they look like birds. However, their speed is just… too fast…” cried the operator, sweating with fear.

“They must be the new China stealth fighters! Deploy our birds! Get them out in the air as fast as possible!” Halsey ordered. Even though Z9 Special Assault Team had just destroyed all the American fighters, the 3rd and 7th Fleet still had a few fighter jets left. Right then, all the backup fighter jets were fueled and sent to the flight deck and into the air.

“Z9 to commander center. Enemies in the air have been detected. Requesting permission to engage,” said Z9-001 unit.

“Permission granted. You are to terminate all threats in the air!” said Qin Tian, granting permission to Z9-001. After Qin Tian placed down the phone, an eerie smile curved from ear to ear. The man was happy that his name would now be recorded in history.

“Z9 S.A.T proceeding to terminate targets in the air,” said Z9-001, with eyes glowing deep crimson red.

The Androids retracted their arms and brought out a pair of particle beam cannons and begun to charge their attacks whilst aiming for the fighter jets that were taking off.

“Jesus! What are they?!”

“Bloody hell! That ain’t human I’d tell ya!”

…

With eyes that glowed red and a pair of cannons as their arms, the fighter jet pilots were slightly frightened by what they saw.

“Destroy them!”

“Deploying machine guns!”

“Break formations! Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, switch attack plan to seek and destroy! I repeat, seek and destroy!”

The American pilots were well trained in aerial combat back in their country and were proficient enough to change their formations on the fly perfectly.

“Prioritizing enemies with the highest threat.”

Z9-001 switched its battle plan to match with the sudden change of the enemies flight formation.

The first few shots missed their targets but as soon as the Android made some adjustments, they began to chase the fighter jets closely. Although fighter jets were powerful aerial combat machines, they were still second to the Androids. With the Anti-Gravity engine powering their flight-packs, Androids possessed the best agility in the air. Additionally, their cannons fired out compressed beam projectiles that flew at near light speed.

BOOM! BOOM!

In 30 seconds, every fighter jet in the air were shot down. Those elite pilots were killed almost in the next fraction of a second when the Androids pulled the trigger. The beam attack vaporized the entire cockpit before the pilots could even pull the ejector seats.

“Threat neutralized,” Z9-001 reported.

The entire aerial combat had only lasted 31 seconds to be exact. All the fighter jets were shot down while the Androids had only suffered 5 casualties. They were unable to shoot down all the fighter jets in time. A few of them managed to fire a few missiles into the air and shot down 5 of the Androids that did not manage to charge their weapons in time.

“Aerial threat eliminated. Proceeding with nautical threat elimination,” said Z9-001.

At that moment, exactly half of the entire S.A.T went back to the aircraft carriers to start their escort mission while the other half went ahead and flew towards the American Naval fleet! Z9-001’s mission was to destroy the American ships, intercepting the fighter jets was only secondary since they had appeared out of the blue.

As soon as the pack of Androids reached closer to the American ships, Z9-001 charged his weapon. All those that were able to see the hovering Android were frozen with fear. They knew that those floating demons were responsible for taking down all the fighter jets that had just been in the air for less than a minute. Their hearts sank when Z9-001 pointed his weapon and aimed at the deck of the ships.

“Fire at will.”

The calm sea was turned into an inferno of flames when ship after ship exploded in the most spectacular manner. No ships, big or small, were able to escape from death. They were large ships and even had trouble evading icebergs if they appeared within 500 meters from them. How could they evade attacks coming from hovering death machines in the air?

More than 30 large vessels were destroyed. Out of the the entire fleet, two ships were carrying nuclear missiles. Unfortunately, one of them was attacked. The attack had triggered the nuclear fission in the missiles, abruptly exploding with a large mushroom cloud.

“Attack! Lay down everything we’ve got!” cried Halsey when he saw the huge cloud of explosion far away from the fleet that was just destroyed. He had no idea what were those things but at the very least, he knew that they were the enemy and must be destroyed.

Anti-Air Artillery guns were fired at the Z9 Android S.A.T. However, the Androids could still dodge the bullets that were fired, no matter what speed the AAA guns were firing at. As soon as the AAA was manned and used, those ships that were carrying those weapons were instantly targeted by the entire Android team.

With a single round, the first ship that had fired their AAA was sunk. The rest of the other ships followed closely after.

“Sir! We need to turn this ship around and escape! If this goes on, the entire fleet will be destroyed!” cried the vice-commander. Halsey was not listening. He was stunned. The things that were happening was a nightmare to a navy officer. They were facing an enemy that could not be stopped with anything they had thrown at them. It was a reality that Halsey wished was just an illusion.

“Sir! Wake up!” the vice-commander roared and proceeded to slap Halsey’s shoulder.

“Ah.”

“Sir! We need to pull back! We have already lost too many ships! If we want to preserve the 3rd and 7th Fleet, we need to pull back every available asset we have!”

“URGH! You’re right! Give the retreat order! We are getting out of here!”

Halsey was out of options. Even though he had fired the retreat flare into the sky, there was no saving the other ships. Him turning his ship around was akin to abandoning the other ships that were too far ahead. Right then, every ship was rendered useless as they were completely undefended.

“Order the subs to attack with everything they have. At the very least, I want to see one ship sinking to the bottom of the sea!” cried Halsey, making one last attempt to attack. He would not retreat without a fight as that would be shameful!

Beam particle weapons are ineffective against enemies that are underwater. The beams that were fired would be greatly weakened and might not even reach the sea level where the submarines were at. At this point, the 3rd and 7th fleet’s submarine team were the only attack force capable of attacking the Chinese Naval fleet without being destroyed by the flying demons!