Music: http://www.onmvoice.com/play/6274
Just when it looked as if the battle at the Cathedral was hopeless, two fighter jets launched from the starport and opened fire on the Symbiot Wasp fighters, forcing them to break off their attack and take evasive action. The garrison fighters engaged the Wasps in an aerial dogfight, intercepting their assault and preventing them from targeting the Cathedral's defenses.
All ten fighters swarmed chaotically about in the night sky, twisting and looping, chasing and evading, and firing at each other's tails aggressively. The garrison fighters coordinated their maneuvers, flying together and arcing apart, luring the Wasps in separate directions and disrupting their formation. Strafing and rolling out of their enemies' lines of fire, the two jets circled back around toward each other, leading the Wasps on their tails into intersecting paths and forcing them to evade their own allies' shots.
The jets' joint tactics confused and disoriented the Wasps' maneuvering more and more until within a minute of the dogfight, the jets shot down one of the Wasps, sending its flaming carcass crashing to the ground outside the Cathedral's walls. The ground troops cheered as they watched the Symbiot craft plummet and burn, boosting their morale in the ongoing ground battle.
After another minute, weaving and crisscrossing through the air, the two jets alternated their fire on another of the Wasps until it too plunged to the ground in a blazing heap. The troops shouted again and fought their foes with renewed vigor.
With two Wasps downed and six remaining, the Symbiot fighters re-coordinated their assault - two focusing pursuit on the jets, and the other four resuming their attack on the Cathedral's guns. Straining to intercept the Wasps attacking the Cathedral while simultaneously evading those chasing their tails, the two fighter jets began to become overwhelmed. The Symbiots stopped falling for the same tricks and began countering the jets' maneuvers, swooping from side to side and switching targets when the jets tried to lead them into their own lines of fire.
Music: http://www.onmvoice.com/play/6285
Meanwhile, on the ground, the battle took a sudden turn for the worse. The first drop-ship deployed a huge, ferocious, multi-limbed monstrosity that looked like a cross between a gigantic arachnoid and a thick-shelled scorpion, bristling with spines, writhing tentacles, and a massive stinger-tipped tail. It thudded to the ground with a hissing, screeching roar and began snaring the troops with its pincers and tentacles, and devouring them whole with its multi-jawed mouths.
Within minutes, the ground troops were so overwhelmed fending off the monstrous beast that the remaining Symbiot paratroopers finally broke through to the Cathedral and began pouring into its smashed windows in hordes. The gunners were still occupied trying to shoot down the Wasp fighters and nearby drop-ship, and keep the other drop-ship from breaching their perimeter. Overhead the jets desperately dodged the Wasps on their tails while trying to divert the others from blasting the Cathedral's remaining turrets.
Within another few minutes, the strained efforts of both fighter jets to disrupt the Wasps' assault on the Cathedral while outnumbered and outgunned, had become daunting enough that the Wasps finally succeeded in shooting one of them down. Without its wing-man's support the other maneuvered more and more desperately, valiantly stalling the Symbiots' assault for almost a full minute longer before the Wasps' shots finally hit it and sent it crashing down in a burst of flames.
Music: http://www.onmvoice.com/play/6289
Having annihilated their opposition, the six Wasps recommenced their assault - but just then, the Cathedral's canopy opened and
The Valkyrie, Claudius' assault lander, rose out of the fortress at long last. The ship took the Symbiot fighters by surprise, chasing them down as it circled above the Cathedral at high speed. As they saw the General's flagship coming to their aid, the Brother Battle began singing an ancient Demoleyan war-chant while they fought, galvanizing their ranks with emboldened faith.
Targeting one of the Wasps as it rocketed through the air, the Brother Battle flagship opened fire with its plasma canons and blew the Symbiot craft to bits, its charred husk plummeting down outside the Cathedral. Then the ship pursued another of the fighters, doggedly chasing its tail and blasting it until its burning corpse crashed down near the other's.
The remaining four Wasps broke off their attack on the Cathedral and began concentrating their fire on Claudius' ship.
The Valkyrie took evasive action, outmaneuvering the Wasps and blasting the first Symbiot drop-ship with repeated plasma bolts, which even its thick, reflective carapace could not sustain. Its fume-jets destroyed and gaseous air-sacks decimated, the hulking beast-ship began to lose its elevation, its nose tipping downward uncontrollably as its massive bulk descended upon the huge arachnoid monster below and crushed it beneath its smoldering wreckage. The troops cheered victoriously as they rushed to finish off the pinned monstrosity.
The four remaining Symbiot Wasp fighters tightened their pursuit of Claudius' ship, flanking the craft on all sides at close range and concentrating fire on its energy shields. Lifting up, the ship led the fighters away from the Cathedral and began heading toward the starport. But the Wasps swarmed around the ship at point-blank range, coordinating their attacks and maneuvers to block off the path to the starport, and began herding the craft farther and farther upward toward the heavens. The Symbiot fighters chased and herded the vessel doggedly as it tried to shake them off its tail, unable to go anywhere but up...and up...and up...
Eventually the specks of
The Valkyrie and the Wasps were so distant that they'd be exiting Stigmata's atmosphere soon. Zooming in at maximum magnification with her macrobinoculars, Lieutenant Eduardo could scarcely make out several other specks in the night sky flying toward Claudius' fleeing vessel...
