There was none. The Gamma Scorchers had come alone, and that puzzled the native aliens.
Unfortunately for the clueless enemies, the Cybers had waited long enough. Now that the enemy had come close enough, they finally began to unveil their next technological marvel!
"Look at the gun turrets of those warships!" Marvaine shouted. "They are… transforming!"
Transforming was a bit of an exaggerated description. From what Ves could observe, additional reinforcing materials formed around the existing energy weapon cannons, making them look thicker and better protected.
Unknown mechanisms also came into play and altered the functioning of the entire weapon system.
Nobody knew what was going on. Even Ves could not recognize the purpose behind all of these changes.
"They're about to open fire!"
Once the primary and secondary laser cannon batteries completed their metamorphosis, they quickly began to accumulate energy before launching weaker transphasic hyper energy beams at the spatial barriers that protected the phase lords advancing at the front.
"Huh?"
Ves and many other people initially became surprised that the warships fired weaker energy beams than usual, but they soon noticed an unusual sight.
The energy beams did not shut down.
Instead, similar to mining laser arrays, the cannons persisted in their efforts and continued to spit out their beams without any signs of ending.
Ves and Gloriana's eyes gradually widened as they saw that the transformed cannons showed no overt signs of danger or instability!
Although the cannons were obviously straining to maintain this constant damage output, it was amazing to see that none of its active components had overheated or broken down by this time!
"These laser cannons are expressly designed to keep this up for a longer duration!" Ves spoke in realization. "The damage output is insane if they don't get shut down. Look at how the enemy is taking this latest move!"
The phase lords grew disconcerted. While the laser beams that struck their spatial barriers did not produce any dramatic results, the alien leaders still did not like to see their main form of protection getting drained at a constant and unceasing rate.
They tried their best to speed up their forward motion, but their spatial barriers continued to weaken over time, especially when multiple warships directed all of their primary and secondary energy weapon batteries to wear down their energy defenses.
"This is a massive improvement in the field of laser weapons." Ves said. "Persistent energy beam weapons are nothing new, but it has never been done for normal warships at this scale. All of those transphasic hyper laser cannon batteries have overcome one of the biggest problems that plague most directed energy weapons. The new tech enables them to inflict much higher damage in a much shorter time scale."
Normal laser weapons tended to fire their energy beams for a very short interval before immediately shutting in order to prevent overheating and accelerated wear and tear.
The cooldown cycle was often many times longer than the period when the weapon was inflicting actual damage, and that had long been the source of frustration of many people.
Most laser weapon developers eventually accepted this status quo. Trying to lengthen the period when the beam weapon remained active often reduced its longevity at an accelerated rate. The benefits were not worth the costs.
Evidently, the Gamma Scorchers thought differently. Their reinforced laser weapon systems were clearly able to bear the incredible strain of keeping their beam weapons active for almost a full minute!
This had obvious consequences to the native aliens. The phase lords under fire had already begun to consider whether they should retreat.
Then, the Gamma Scorchers made their killer move.
Their warships suddenly switched from targeting all of the phase lords evenly to concentrating all of their firepower to a single point of the spatial barrier of a single greater phase lord!
This sudden concentration of firepower temporarily relieved a lot of phase lords, but happened to cause extreme distress for the single remaining target!