A Devourer Civilization star port
In a wrecked corridor,
a Devourer fleet soldier just come round from unconsciousness shook his head and got painfully to his feet.
He felt pain from his arm, and looked down at it.
The whole arm was bent.
He remembered that before he blacked out there had suddenly been a violent explosion, and the walls around him had begun to cave in and twist.
And he had been unlucky enough to have his arm struck by a falling heavy object, after which he had passed out.
It seemed his luck was not so bad after all.
He was hurt, but at least he was still alive.
But as things stood, if he did not see to the wound in time, sooner or later he would die of blood loss.
And he also had to find out just what had happened.
Had some department made a mistake and caused an explosion?
Or had some starship gone out of control and crashed into the star port's surface?
For the department he worked in was mainly in charge of the resources the interstellar transports carried here, storing them here for the time being,
then, as needed, supplying them straight to interstellar warships,
or transferring them to interstellar supply ships, which then went to the front to resupply the interstellar warships.
And in the course of it, some careless captains and staff caused accidents here and there through their mistakes.
Only he had never thought such bad luck would fall on him.
He took a few slow steps and made sure he could still move.
He looked around him.
The corridor had partly caved in, but it could still be passed.
Several bodies crushed to death could be seen on the floor.
The lights flickered on and off too; it seemed the wiring had been damaged as well.
"Hello, hello, hello, this is Section B61; there's been an explosion here."
At once he tried to use the star port's communication network to report the incident.
But there was only a busy signal at the other end, no answer at all.
He called several more times, and still there was no answer.
He then tried contacting some acquaintances in his own department, and got no answer from any of them.
Strange. Could this explosion have hit the communication network too?
Or was his own communication device broken?
Puzzled,
he began to stagger forward; since he could reach no one from here, he would have to go and find someone himself.
But as he walked on step by step, toward other sections,
he found more and more that something was wrong.
For this did not look like what an explosion would do.
It looked like…… some kind of attack.
He even saw a great crater that had blasted straight through the walls of at least several sections!
Luckily, his individual space suit still worked normally.
His head was covered by a crystal bubble; this individual space suit could keep him alive in the environment of space for twelve hours.
He stared in horror at the broken walls before him.
These were plainly the marks of a battle.
But how could there be a battle here?
By this point, in truth, he already had a guess in his heart.
But he simply did not want to believe that possibility.
He tried to see through this crater to what was outside, but outside was all black fog; he could not make out at all what was happening out there.
Something seemed to occur to him.
He headed in another direction; his steps quickened in spite of himself now.
Along the way he even fell several times, but each time he forced himself to his feet and walked on.
He longed for an answer to ease the worry and anxiety in his heart.
At last he saw a compartment marking on the wall, and his pupils widened slightly.
Just ahead was the place he meant to reach.
There, likely, he could learn the answer to the worry in his heart.
When he saw that the section door was still more or less whole, he let out a breath.
That meant that, at least, the section beyond very probably had not been damaged.
He went through the section door, and before him lay a corridor with huge floor-to-ceiling windows.
And outside the floor-to-ceiling windows was the view outside the star port.
Usually, on their breaks, a few coworkers would sneak off here to loaf a little, enjoy the interstellar scenery outside, and talk about the dreams they had once had too of adventure in interstellar voyaging.
And now his pupils dilated; he stared in disbelief at the floor-to-ceiling windows covered in spiderweb cracks.
He saw the flames outside, saw the broken wreckage of the star port outside, and saw those unfamiliar interstellar warships too,
and the interstellar torpedoes and interstellar bombs those interstellar warships were firing.
These interstellar torpedoes and interstellar bombs were all landing on this star port.
Boom, boom, boom.
He could even faintly hear the sound of the explosions himself.
The floor under his feet kept shaking.
On the hulls of those attacking interstellar warships was a fleet crest both strange and familiar.
Strange because he had never seen it.
Familiar because he had heard of this dragon crest.
It was the fleet crest of the interstellar fleets of the Owl Dragon Empire's universe, which they were invading this time.
But why would these Owl Dragon interstellar warships appear here?
He did not know the answer.
And perhaps he would never know why.
For he saw several interstellar torpedoes heading straight for where he stood.
……
And the same scene was taking place everywhere across the Devourer Civilization's front-line battlefield base.
And the worst hit of all were beyond doubt the interstellar transports and interstellar supply ships.
For star ports, Soul Altars and the like all had fleets guarding them.
The interstellar transports and interstellar supply ships were not so lucky; and the interstellar transports and interstellar supply ships were numerous too, often needing large interstellar fleets to keep them all safe.
What was more, they had no means of defending themselves.
Often a few interstellar stealth bombers getting among them were enough to destroy a hundred or more interstellar transports or interstellar supply ships,
like wolves among sheep.
Left unchecked, it was nothing but an utter massacre!
And in fact that was just how things stood now.
For it had all happened far too suddenly.
There had been no preparation at all.
Those interstellar stealth bombers had launched surprise attacks from very close to their targets: star ports, Soul Altars, interstellar transports, interstellar supply ships and the like.
Interstellar torpedoes, interstellar bombs and other weapons swarmed in all at once, catching them wholly off guard at the first blow.
Stopping those attacks was hardly possible anymore.
They could only watch helplessly as their own interstellar warships came under attack.
On some battlefields, above all, they did not even notice the attackers at first.
Not until they brought out their seldom-used anti-stealth equipment did they find, on the anti-stealth equipment's radar display, the interstellar warship that had stayed invisible all along, even while it attacked.
It was the most advanced interstellar stealth bomber the Owl Dragon Empire had now!
The T6 Shadow-Phantom-class Medium Interstellar Stealth Bomber!
This was the first time this class of interstellar warship had appeared.
And at its first appearance it presented the Devourer Civilization with a great gift.
In a stretch of space with nothing in it, three black beams appeared as if out of thin air, and struck straight at an interstellar transport carrying a grade-six Soul Altar.
Because it carried a grade-six Soul Altar, its security was naturally of the highest grade.
First there was a ring of interstellar escorts on the outside, forming a defensive force field that guarded the T6 interstellar transport in the middle around the clock.
At the same time this T6 interstellar transport had raised its own star shield, wrapped around its hull.
Besides that, around the grade-six Soul Altar set on the half-open cargo deck was a defensive force field too,
set up especially for it.
So for this grade-six Soul Altar, the defensive force fields alone came to a full three layers.
That showed how important it was.
And those three black beams now struck the outermost defensive force field, the one the interstellar escorts had formed.
After a brief pause, in under ten seconds, the defensive force field formed by the interstellar escorts was pierced.
Next, naturally, came the interstellar transport's defensive shield.
And this layer was soon shattered too.
Now only the last defensive shield, around the grade-six Soul Altar itself, was left.
Once this last shield was pierced, the Soul Altar would be utterly unable to fight back, and would be wrecked in an instant!
"Quick! Quick! Intercept those attacks!" The Troll Monarch had noticed this scene too.
This grade-six Soul Altar had been prepared for this very attack.
The grade-four and grade-five Soul Altars wrecked before he could shrug off.
But the grade-six Soul Altar was very important to them!
But things went against their wishes.
Very soon the Troll Monarch watched with his own eyes as that T6 interstellar transport, together with that grade-six Soul Altar, was destroyed!
Nothing was left but a ball of exploding fire.
"Who…… just who did this!" The Troll Monarch was beside himself with rage.
"I…… I may know." The subordinate NCO beside him said, trembling, "Before this we had a piece of intelligence. The Owl Dragon Empire may have a T6-grade interstellar stealth bomber. And going by how their earlier T5 Netherworld-Wolf-King-class Medium Interstellar Stealth Bomber could attack while invisible for short periods, we inferred that a T6-grade interstellar stealth bomber might be able to stay invisible for long periods and fight at the same time. But because this interstellar warship had never appeared on a battlefield before, there was no intelligence on it. So just what this interstellar warship is really like, we had no way of knowing."
Hearing his subordinate's report, the Troll Monarch's face was very cold, with no color to be seen in it.
He spoke low, like a devil from the abyss: "I don't care now what happened. I have only one demand. Every Owl Dragon Empire interstellar warship that has appeared here, not one…… not a single one is to get away! Wipe them all out here!"
"Yes…… yes!" the subordinate answered at once.
And on the other side,
Zhao Waner, having watched one of her combat tasks completed in full with her own eyes, let out a long breath herself.
This was the T6 interstellar stealth bomber her own brother had prepared for her, after all; its performance really was very good,
above all this extra bow gun.
Now she understood what it felt like when Xue Xiaoxiao had always crowed that interstellar battleships were the strongest.
The T6 Shadow-Phantom-class Medium Interstellar Stealth Bomber!
Zhao Waner's own ship was the first of the class.
And in the Shadow Hunter ace fleet group, thirty of this T6 interstellar warship were in active service.
Had time not been short, there would have been more of this interstellar warship.
And now these T6 Shadow-Phantom-class Medium Interstellar Stealth Bombers were carrying out their own main combat tasks on every small battlefield.
Through the bridge viewport, Zhao Waner watched the bow gun at the bow slowly close.
She thought back to the brief specification of this interstellar warship she had seen when she took delivery of it.
【Shadow-Phantom-class Medium Interstellar Stealth Bomber
Ship type: interstellar stealth bomber
Technology grade: T6
Hull armor strength: 1 million units – 1.2 million units
Star-shield energy value: 36 million units
Cruising speed: 1,800 star-knots
Warp engine: grade-9 warp engine
Length: 20 kilometers
Mass: 10 million tons
Complement of posts: 2,000
Starship weapons: 1 Shadow-class dark-matter heavy pulse bow gun
500,000 heavy short-range high-explosive stealth torpedoes
20,000 short-range heavy anti-ship missiles
20,000 short-range heavy cluster bombs
3,000 optical-mimicry missiles
3,000 electromagnetic-jamming missiles
3,000 thermal-jamming missiles
3,000 smoke-jamming missiles
Special performance: Phantom Concealment Core (can remain concealed at all times)】
Besides some ordinary specifications raised from T5 to T6,
it had two extra features.
The first was permanent concealment.
Unless the enemy had the kind of anti-stealth equipment that covered a whole map, and could lock onto this interstellar warship's position by anti-stealth radar.
Or else when the starship's energy fell below 30%, this feature could not be used.
And enemy attacks that kept certain of the starship's key modules from working normally would also make this feature fail.
The other extra feature
was the "1 Shadow-class dark-matter heavy pulse bow gun."
Before this, the Owl Dragon line's interstellar stealth bombers had stressed lightning warfare, so they had not been fitted with bow-gun weapons of this kind.
They usually used interstellar torpedoes, interstellar bombs, interstellar missiles and other weapons that fired fast and hit startlingly hard.
But this bow gun was different. First, using it did not affect the concealment feature itself in the least.
And it could be charged in advance without revealing its position right up until it fired.
And its power was on a par with the bow gun of a T6-grade interstellar battleship.
Its one drawback was that it was rather apt to reveal its position when it fired.
But there was no help for that.
There was no such thing in this world as a perfect interstellar warship.
And this feature was very practical for attacking something like a Soul Altar behind layer upon layer of defenses.
Ordinary weapons alone could hardly break the energy shields and destroy a Soul Altar in a short time.
But this bow gun could.
It was this that had let Zhao Waner accomplish her objective of destroying that grade-six Soul Altar!