At this point the T6 Swarm Empresses behind the T6 Twin-Headed Skeleton Dragon Kings went into action too.
The hive-like part at the bottom of each one's belly suddenly burst open, and countless little bees swarmed out.
To call them little bees was no exaggeration at all, for in shape they truly looked very like little bees.
And they were very small, only about the size of a person's head.
And every Swarm Empress whose lower belly burst open gave rise to several million of these little bees.
These little bees gathered together and swarmed toward the T6 Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship.
And they were very fast, like yellow lightning.
The close-in guns on the Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship intercepted only some of them.
Just as everyone watched these little bees about to slam into the star shield, an astonishing scene appeared.
These little bees actually passed straight through layer after layer of star shield!
"They actually got through the star-shield defense!" Zhao Waner's secretary-officer was greatly startled, her face full of disbelief.
Zhao Waner, for her part, narrowed her eyes slightly, looking interested.
These little bees seemed to meet no obstacle at all; they passed straight over these star shields,
and then landed on the hull of the Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship, and at once began attacking the hull.
They drove the stingers on their lower bellies into the hull armor, and then came a string of explosions.
The explosions were not powerful, but the little bees were simply too many, alas.
Once they took aim at a spot, they would throw themselves at it wave after wave and blow themselves up.
At the same time, besides going after the hull armor, these little bees concentrated their attacks on the exposed weapons.
Those gun muzzles were much easier to wreck than the hull armor.
After only a few rounds of explosions, weapons were wrecked and could no longer be used.
This put the Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship in an awkward position.
"Report: several weapon modules are under attack, and the hull armor is under attack too; some areas are about to be breached, and compartments inside the hull are under threat!"
The bad news made the Troll Monarch's expression very unpleasant.
He had meant to use his own super-flagship to win back some of the face he had lost before.
He had never thought things would come to such a pass now.
His own ship had actually been driven into this position.
"Send interstellar marines into those compartments. Once these swarms get into the compartments, find a way to destroy them and keep the compartments safe. If a compartment falls, seal it off at once. Don't let this threat affect the whole starship. As for the swarms outside the starship, send out our interstellar drone swarms and combat mecha corps. Wipe out those swarms as fast as you can!" the Troll Monarch ordered; he already had a very bad feeling now.
"Yes."
A subordinate passed on the Sovereign's order.
Very soon squad after squad of interstellar marines received the order and hurried to the threatened compartments.
"This is the Fortress's Third Marine Company; we've reached compartment MY111." The interstellar marine captain was reporting the situation while gesturing again and again with his hands, giving orders to his company's troops.
Soldiers in individual exoskeleton combat armor poured into this compartment and began setting up a fighting position.
Weapons of every kind were set up.
Three small interstellar mechas that could move about inside a starship could be seen too, carrying several heavy machine guns, set up there and waiting for the fighting to come.
The marine company captain glanced overhead; beyond that ceiling lay the interstellar warship's outermost hull armor.
The hull armor of this interstellar warship averaged about three meters thick.
But those little bees were very clever; they attacked where the hull armor was thinnest, which here was less than one and a half meters thick.
Now a shuddering could be heard from overhead, and, faintly, something like a buzzing.
"Every combat squad, ready for battle." The marine company captain raised a light machine gun in his hands and gave the order on the command channel.
Time passed bit by bit.
Very soon cracks appeared in the ceiling overhead.
As the cracks appeared, everyone's heart leaped into their throat.
Boom.
There was the sound of an explosion, and smoke with it.
No one saw clearly just what was in the explosion.
They only heard the order "Fire!"
And a dense barrage covered that area of the explosion.
"Don't panic; fire in alternation as ordered. Treat the enemy as ordinary interstellar bugs; so long as we give them enough covering fire, these bugs are no threat." The marine company captain held the trigger down hard, and did not forget to keep up everyone's spirits.
The firing went on for a full minute.
"Don't stop!" the marine company captain said loudly.
"Captain, there are cracks in the ceiling on the left too!"
"There are cracks over our heads here too!"
At this point the squad leaders cried out.
The marine company captain looked up at those places; cracks were appearing in more and more of them, and his heart sank somewhat in spite of himself.
"Don't panic; hold your fighting positions. Keep a close eye on those spots!" Even as the marine company captain was speaking,
the cracks in those several places in the ceiling burst open one after another.
Then, naturally, fierce fire was poured into them.
But that meant the strength of fire at each place was weakened a good deal.
And as more and more of these breaches appeared, the fire could hardly keep up; even the planned alternating fire began to show gaps.
That gave those "attackers" an opening.
Several yellow figures appeared.
They were the little bees that had broken in; they aimed their tail stingers at these marine positions and fired.
Then came the explosions!
Boom, boom, boom.
Gunfire, explosions, screams, cries for help: every kind of sound rose and fell.
Very soon all these sounds began to die away.
And in the neighboring compartment, another interstellar marine company had been watching this side all along; when they heard the sounds go wrong,
someone at once pressed the button to close the compartment door.
The heavy door came down.
"No…… save me…… save me……" A soldier covered in blood came running over, but he did not make it in time.
All that could be seen under the gate was a severed arm.
"Seventh Marine Company, ready for battle!" This marine company captain stared gravely at the closed compartment door.
Then he pressed the communication button: "Report, report. The swarm's attack is very fierce; we need support, we need support."
The friendly unit's fight had shown that these swarms were extremely dangerous.
Otherwise the next compartment could not possibly have been broken in so short a time.
The same thing kept happening in the several other compartments that had been breached.
It was as though several cracks had appeared in a great dam, and the cracks were widening bit by bit.
The compartments inside the Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship were under these threats.
Outside the hull, the scene was plainer still.
Because of the Troll Monarch's order,
at several places on the fortress ship huge hatches opened one after another; they were like cargo holds, each of them very large.
Inside were interstellar combat mecha squads drawn up in neat ranks.
At the same time, interstellar drone swarms by the tens of thousands came swarming out too.
Unlike the interstellar drone swarms of the Owl Dragon Legion's carrier starships,
the interstellar drone swarms here on the Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship mainly carried out close-in defense duties.
As these interstellar drone swarms appeared, they began locking onto the little bees that were wrecking the weapon barrels on the hull's surface, and destroying those little bees one by one.
The little bees naturally noticed these enemies too, and split off a part of their number to deal with these interstellar drone swarms.
At the same time they split off another part to deal with those interstellar combat mechas.
Those interstellar combat mechas drew up in combat formation squad by squad, forming a fighting position on the fortress ship's surface, and wiped out the little bees around them with all their fire.
The little bees in turn formed one charging formation after another, launching suicide attacks on these interstellar combat mechas.
Once they closed the distance, they fired their stingers off, which struck the surface of those interstellar combat mechas and exploded.
As the fighting went on, interstellar combat mecha after interstellar combat mecha went down.
And swarm after swarm of little bees was wiped out too.
At this moment the hull surface of the Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship was like a grassland where a few sparks had been dropped.
People tried to put them out, but somehow could not stamp them out, though they had not turned into a prairie fire either.
The losses caused were not very great, but they had no small effect on the Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship's fighting.
Mainly on the psychological level.
For if your super-flagship had actually come to fighting a defensive battle on its own hull, didn't that mean your super-flagship was no great thing after all?
"Little Bug's little bees are something, aren't they!" The Hive Princess's proud voice sounded at this moment.
"Little Bug, these little bees of yours can ignore star shields?" Zhao Waner seized on the key point.
The fighting power of these little bees was in truth not great; one alone was only about equal to a T4-grade interstellar fighter, and their only effective attack was that "tail-sting missile."
But the "tail-sting missile" was single-use; once it was used, the little bee had no fighting power left.
One could say that, were it not for their advantage in numbers and their ability to ignore star shields, this combat unit type would truly be not worth much.
For if they could not ignore star shields, dense close-in guns could wipe these little bees out quickly outside the star shield!
"Yes. Brother and I worked these little bees out together. First we looked into how star shields work now. We found that a star shield in fact doesn't stop everything coming from outside; for instance, there's some fine dust in the universe, and when that dust hits a star shield it isn't affected at all. That means a star shield's blocking has a lower limit, and that lower limit depends on how strong the other thing is. And the little bee I researched and bred has, first, a natural camouflage ability that lets it lower its own strength very far, lower even than the signal strength of a T1-grade interstellar warship! That way the star shield won't block them." When the Hive Princess had giggled her way through its strengths,
she pouted and said, "But it has a lot of weaknesses too. First, one alone is extremely weak in a fight; it's a single-use combat creature. Then, its life is very short; once it's released it can fight for only thirty minutes before it dies, its life energy all used up. And if it has to fly too far, that fighting time gets much shorter too. So the Swarm Empress has to be brought as close to the target as it can before these little bees are released. It's still a bit of a bother to use. This is the first time it's been used in real fighting, that's why it's worked so well now. Brother said that once the enemy is on guard against it, this weapon will be much less effective. I'll find a way to improve it later."
Hearing the Hive Princess set out its strengths and weaknesses herself,
Zhao Waner nodded in agreement.
The strengths were plain, and so were the weaknesses.
But for now, at least, this little-bee tactic had turned in a perfect score in this super-flagship duel!
"Reporting, Marshal: the gift packages in every position are all set out. They start in ten seconds," the secretary-officer reported to Zhao Waner at this point.
Zhao Waner nodded, then looked at the Hive Princess. "Little Bug, you heard. In ten seconds those things will start. Starting takes ten minutes. Within these ten minutes we'll pull out first. After that you must pull out as fast as you can too, as required!"
The Hive Princess nodded hard. "Little Bug understands."
Then she pouted and muttered, "Ten minutes…… maybe that's not enough to take down that big bad guy over there."
Zhao Waner could not help laughing; the Hive Princess really was still thinking of eating the super-flagship opposite all by herself.
Zhao Waner turned her eyes away to the five newly opened video windows beside her.
In these five video windows five interstellar stealth reconnaissance ships could be seen, hovering quietly there; the hatches in their bellies were slowly closing.
And below each was a giant red-gold egg, five in all!
For the Owl Dragon Empire's high command this was beyond doubt a very familiar thing.
For before this, in the campaign against Order's undead, they had used this great weapon once,
and buried a whole star system with it!
That's right!
It was the great weapon Zhao Chen had kept hidden all along: the "T6 Supernova Ultimate Bomb"!
And its whole sequence of use took ten minutes; in those ten minutes a series of fissions went on inside it, finally exploding to form a small, brief supernova.
It had been used before against Order's undead.
Because Order's undead had no intelligence, there had been nothing to worry about in using it.
But the enemy this time was different.
So an arrangement was needed.
For from the moment a T6 Supernova Ultimate Bomb was started, it would appear "before the eyes" of everyone.
The T6 Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship · the bridge
"Warning! Warning! Extremely strong energy-ripple reaction detected!"