"This is the first real action for that T6 Divine-Wing Empress-class Super-Heavy Carrier Starship too." Secretary-Officer Lilith, beside him, was likewise watching that T6 Divine-Wing Empress-class Super-Heavy Carrier Starship.
"It's been about ten minutes. Is there no abnormal spatial fluctuation inside this 'ink'?" Zhao Chen asked with concern.
Each time reinforcements of the Pitch-Black Legion fleet came through, the space here would give a shudder.
Zhao Chen and the rest could predict it half a minute ahead.
"None. By the look of it, though this 'ink space' is delivering more warships each time, the interval has grown as well," Secretary-Officer Lilith, beside him, said by way of analysis.
Zhao Chen let out a small breath of relief.
That, naturally, was the best case.
Otherwise, if a million pitch-black interstellar warships came pouring in every ten minutes, the pressure on every battlefield would rise sharply.
That would not be simply ten times the difficulty.
It would be dozens of times the difficulty.
And as time went on, the real difference in difficulty might even come to a hundredfold and more.
That too was why Zhao Chen was so worried over it.
"Tell the research departments: in the time we have, find a way to investigate what technology this 'ink' really is. It can cross the barrier of the universe and deliver warships into our universe. We must understand this technology. And even, might we perhaps use it to build a cosmic space channel of our own, to go out to the outer domain beyond the universe?" Zhao Chen said gravely.
Zhao Chen had by no means forgotten that out in the outer domain the Mechanical Race was still fighting hard.
The Mechanical Race was buying them time.
Zhao Chen was naturally not going to play the ostrich; he would find ways to build up his own military strength, all so that one day he could take over from the Mechanical Race,
and even sound the war cry of the counterattack.
By this time the Owl Dragon Empire's First Legion Fleet Group's decapitation plan had already taken shape.
Under the covering charge of interstellar fighters and interstellar drones,
a lane had already been torn open, driving straight at the enemy's target, the quasi-T7 pitch-black interstellar warship.
First great swarms of interstellar drones tore open a gap.
Then the interstellar fighters, stronger in fighting power, filled in behind and held the lane open.
And these interstellar fighters commonly took one of two fighting states.
One was the highly mobile state of an interstellar fighter.
The other was to transform into mecha mode, with mobility greatly lowered but with far stronger firepower,
so that for a short time the intensity of its fire was even no less than a T5-grade interstellar destroyer's; the only gap was perhaps in ammunition load,
which is to say, in staying power.
"This T6 Divine-Wing Empress-class Super-Heavy Carrier Starship really is very fine. I rather look forward to what it would look like if Marshal Su Lan commanded a whole Queen of the Starry Sky ace fleet group in an interstellar air battle." Secretary-Officer Lilith called up this carrier starship's data,
ran her eye over it, and sighed in admiration from the heart.
【Divine-Wing Empress-class Super-Heavy Carrier Starship[1]
Ship type: super-heavy carrier starship
Technology grade: T6
Hull armor strength: 360,000 units – 380,000 units
Star-shield energy value: 100 million units
Cruising speed: 800 star-knots
Warp engine: grade-nine warp engine
Length: 1,008 kilometers
Mass: 1.2 billion tons
Complement of posts: 50 million
Starship weapons:
Fire Empress · Type I conventional interstellar fighter: 10 million carried
Fire Empress · Type II heavy interstellar fighter: 1 million carried
Fire Empress · Type III transformable dual-purpose interstellar fighter: 100,000 carried
Fire Empress · Type IV heavy interstellar stealth bomber: 1 million carried
Ice Empress · interstellar combat drone: 500 million carried
Royal Maid · Type I electronic-jamming interstellar stealth drone: 200,000 carried
Royal Maid · Type II interstellar reconnaissance craft: 1 million carried
Royal Maid · Type III interstellar stealth reconnaissance craft: 100,000 carried
20,000 heavy fully-automatic high-density close-in guns
1,000-cell missile silos (storing 1 million defensive interstellar missiles of all types)】
Zhao Chen ran his eye over it.
The fighters and drones this T6 Divine-Wing Empress-class Super-Heavy Carrier Starship carried fell chiefly into three series.
One was the Fire Empress series: the crewed interstellar fighters.
Another was the Ice Empress series: the uncrewed interstellar drones.
And last, the Royal Maid series: interstellar fighters and interstellar drone swarms for battlefield support.
These three series made up the whole fighting power of this T6 Divine-Wing Empress-class Super-Heavy Carrier Starship.
A single carrier starship like this could be the equal of a small fleet made up of T5-grade warships.
And under the cover of the T6 Divine-Wing Empress-class Super-Heavy Carrier Starship,
the decapitation squad's warships charged in small battle formations one after another.
This time it was the T6 Lord-of-Thunder-class Heavy Interstellar Destroyers covering the T6 Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruisers.
Besides that, the T6 Wrath-of-Heaven-Goddess-class Interstellar Heavy-Artillery Ships and T6 Seraph-Ballista-class Interstellar Long-Range Hunter-Killer Ships to the rear would give covering fire support at long range.
That quasi-T7 pitch-black interstellar warship naturally discovered this threat as well,
and poured more of its fire in this direction.
Owl Dragon warships were destroyed one after another in the course of the charge.
Zhao Chen watched with his own eyes as three T6 Lord-of-Thunder-class Heavy Interstellar Destroyers were destroyed.
It made him frown slightly.
This was the gap between generations of warships.
It was also the advantage the Owl Dragon legion fleets had held before when facing other interstellar powers.
A more advanced, stronger warship could commonly fight the many with the few on the battlefield and win the greater advantage.
Only now Zhao Chen's enemy had a more advanced warship:
the quasi-T7 pitch-black interstellar warship.
Zhao Chen said nothing and went on watching the scene.
Very soon
the decapitation squad had pressed its attack within a certain range.
At that moment those ten T6 Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruisers at once went to full power and drove their speed to the limit.
They broke out of the battle formation of T6 Lord-of-Thunder-class Heavy Interstellar Destroyers that had been covering them,
and shot out like ten long spears.
On differing courses they circled that quasi-T7 pitch-black interstellar warship,
and the weapons fitted on their hulls now fired at full as well.
This T6 Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruiser was like the interstellar cruisers of the past in pursuing speed:
while under way, many of its weapons could be drawn back into the hull,
and in battle these weapons could be brought out,
such as its multi-mount main guns and secondary guns, one after another,
and its interstellar torpedo ports, and weapon mounts, black-mouthed like honeycomb coal briquettes.
This T6 Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruiser had taken up certain technologies from other warships,
which to some degree made up the light interstellar cruiser's shortcoming in firepower.
【Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruiser
Ship type: light interstellar cruiser
Technology grade: T6
Hull armor strength: 660,000 units – 820,000 units
Star-shield energy value: 20 million units
Cruising speed: 3,600 star-knots
Top speed: 5,600 star-knots
Warp engine: grade-nine warp engine
Length: 38 kilometers
Mass: 16 million tons
Complement of posts: 150,000
Starship weapons: 188 six-barrel rapid-fire electromagnetic main guns
880 light twelve-mount rapid-fire pulse cannon
100 torpedo launchers (storing 10,000 interstellar torpedoes)
500 interstellar bomb launchers (storing 100,000 interstellar high-explosive bombs)
Special capabilities or equipment:
Secondary spatial fold engine (capable of short-range spatial folding)】
In the fire of one round from one weapon, the T6 Wind Sprite might perhaps fall short even of the T6 Lord-of-Thunder.
But if it came to the intensity of fire within a short time,
then the T6 Wind Sprite was without question among the very first.
Its guiding principle was: where the power falls short, make it up in numbers.
The main and secondary guns it carried were all of the multi-mount rapid-fire kind, and at need could even be run on overload, which was to say, their rate of fire raised further still.
At this moment those ten T6 Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruisers could be seen, on the strength of their swift speed, circling round about that quasi-T7 pitch-black interstellar warship,
firing without pause with main and secondary weapons, laying a thick barrage upon the target's body.
At the same time, in pursuit of greater firepower,
this T6 Wind Sprite had given up every close-in gun outright within its limited hull space.
Its reasoning was this:
among warships of the same grade, and even among interstellar fighters and interstellar drones,
none could catch up with its speed.
So long as it wished, it could shake off any enemy entirely.
Naturally, then, there was no need to fear being taken by surprise at close quarters,
and so short-ranged close-in guns were of no great use.
The area of that module had been given over to other weapons equipment:
namely interstellar torpedoes and interstellar bombs, of greater power within close attack range.
The interstellar torpedo was of middle-to-short range and had a drive of its own, so that it could accelerate, with a higher rate of accuracy,
but in power it fell short of the interstellar bomb.
The interstellar bomb had no drive whatever, and relied wholly on the catapulting at launch to carry it to the appointed place, where it then burst.
Its power was greater.
So the two complemented each other.
First the former was used to destroy with precision all of an enemy ship's close-in gun turrets and defensive weapons.
Then interstellar bombs were flung thick and fast, bursting all around the enemy's hull to do the greatest damage.
Joined with the rapid fire of the main and secondary guns, this combination of weapons
brought the mobile fighting power of this T6 Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruiser to a peak.
Now,
those ten T6 Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruisers were relying on just this fighting system to bomb the target, the quasi-T7 pitch-black interstellar warship, without let.
The interstellar bombs flung out burst violently once they came close against the quasi-T7 pitch-black interstellar warship's hull.
Their power was quite terrifying.
For these bombs carried nothing else superfluous; they were weapons that existed for bursting and for nothing more.
In the course of it the quasi-T7 pitch-black interstellar warship tried to strike back as well.
One T6 Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruiser was unlucky enough to be locked on by the quasi-T7 pitch-black interstellar warship, with near two-thirds of its main firepower all locked on this one T6 Wind Sprite.
It dodged and evaded without pause on the strength of its speed,
but in the end, once its star-shield was spent, this T6 Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruiser was struck in the hull.
Then its speed fell off, and pitch-black interstellar warships coming up in support got entangled with it, and at last it fell.
It was the first T6 Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruiser ever to fall.
And more and more pitch-black interstellar warships were gathering around in support of that quasi-T7 pitch-black interstellar warship.
It was plain the other side was by no means without intelligence, and had a command system of a kind.
This decapitation plan went on for ten-odd minutes.
In the end, a T6 Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruiser whose star-shield was spent chose to risk death and rammed the quasi-T7 pitch-black interstellar warship head-on.
The hull of that T6 Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruiser went up in sympathetic detonation after detonation,
and at last that quasi-T7 pitch-black interstellar warship fell still, and its shattered hull began to turn to black vapor and dissolve without pause.
"The Owl Dragon Empire's First Legion Fleet Group reports that the enemy's quasi-T7 pitch-black interstellar warship has been destroyed!" Lilith reported beside him.
Zhao Chen did not smile.
He was not very satisfied with such a result.
In this decapitation plan,
to destroy this quasi-T7 pitch-black interstellar warship,
the Owl Dragon Empire's First Legion Fleet Group had lost two T6 Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruisers and eight T6 Lord-of-Thunder-class Heavy Interstellar Destroyers,
as well as a number of T5-grade warships, and interstellar fighters and interstellar drone swarms.
True, it had also bought losses among some of the enemy's other T6 and T5 pitch-black interstellar warships.
But in Zhao Chen's eyes, this result
was ten T6 ships traded for one of the enemy's quasi-T7s.
Zhao Chen was very dissatisfied with this answer sheet.
Though he knew it was the best result Marshal Shen Bing could have managed.
Even had any other marshal commanded such a fight, without the help of those several T6 flagships there would in the main have been no great room for improvement.
Now, however, the eight T6 Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruisers remaining had been cut off from the T6 Lord-of-Thunder-class Heavy Interstellar Destroyers behind and the other ships charged with covering them.
It even seemed the latter had already given up these T6 Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruisers caught deep in the enemy's camp,
and had already begun to withdraw, giving up the lane they had laid down before.
But just as those eight T6 Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruisers were on the point of being ringed round by the enemy's tens of thousands of pitch-black interstellar warships,
those T6 Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruisers became flashes of blue light and vanished outright from where they stood.
Then they appeared at the rear of the Owl Dragon Empire's First Legion Fleet Group,
the eight T6 Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruisers hovering there safe and sound.
This was one of the functions of the T6 Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruiser:
within a certain time, and within a certain range, it could make a spatial fold.
By it, whether in a surprise attack or in withdrawal,
the T6 Wind Sprite-class Light Interstellar Cruiser was light and free as a true sprite.