On the T2 Queen Bee-class Heavy Carrier's side of the battlefield, the T3 Specter-class Medium Interstellar Destroyer had already been destroyed, and a great many T2 warships crippled. Add that the T2 Queen Bee had a star shield of its own, and a great swarm of T2 Baby Bee-class Light Interstellar Drones to guard it, and even without the escort of the T2 Black Rhino-class Interstellar Heavy Assault Frigates, it could perfectly well protect itself and the T2 Lion King-class Heavy Interstellar Missile Ship at its back.
And so, at the wolf-girl Baixue's order, the 10 T2 Black Rhinos, long since waiting, once more bared their great black horns. Ship by ship the T2 Black Rhinos, as though juiced up on stimulants, barreled straight at the enemy ships opposite. That headlong, all-charging manner caught the Fire Salamander fleet entirely off guard!
One Fire Salamander T2 interstellar battlecruiser even gaped foolishly at the horn-tipped T2 frigate charging straight at it. Since when did a frigate dare ram a battlecruiser? It might have taken a few interstellar missiles from that missile ship earlier, but was it truly a case of a tiger fallen to the flatlands, bullied by dogs? What a joke. It still had the dignity of a battlecruiser. A mere frigate…
A few minutes later, this battlecruiser was rammed square in the flank by a T2 Black Rhino — its hull keel-structure so badly wrecked that it broke clean in two and fell, destroyed!
The entry of the 10 T2 Black Rhinos plunged the battle into utter chaos. Against that terrifying hull armor, the T1 warships simply couldn't make a dent. The few T2 warships that tried to hold the line for a stroke or two had, at the same time, to endure wave after wave of drone harassment.
"Damn it, where are our interstellar drones!" One Fire Salamander captain, harried by several drones, was beside himself with rage. But there was nothing to be done. The 10 unreasonable T2 frigates barging and charging every which way had thrown their formation into disorder, only making the drones' harassment easier still.
As for means of dealing with interstellar drones — apart from frigates' defensive interception, there was answering a man in his own coin: using drones to fight drones! They too had a carrier, one called the T2 Sea Wolf-class Medium Carrier. They too had interstellar fighters and drones! But when he went looking for his fleet's carrier, all he could see was a carrier being ganged up on by a mob of drones. That T2 Sea Wolf-class Medium Carrier's drones and fighters had no chance whatsoever to launch and fight back; its deck and hangar were under ceaseless attack. Several T2 Hornet-class Heavy Interstellar Drones had even made a few bombing runs on it. Interstellar air superiority was already wholly in the grip of the enemy's drones!
A steamrolling! A sheer, utter steamrolling.
At the same time, like some invincible warship, the T3 Blizzard-class Light Interstellar Battlecruiser arrived too — and that was a naked bloodbath of the battlefield. Ordinary T1 warships couldn't withstand the attentions of a few of its close-in guns. The slightly stronger T2 warships had their hull armor easily shredded by its main and secondary guns.
The Fire Salamander chieftain, racing in at full speed, watched all this unfold — and his blood was no longer merely dripping; it was gushing. In a battle of less than half an hour, how had it come to look like this? The same warships, ship for ship — why was the enemy's T3 warship so ferocious, the enemy's T2 carrier crushing his own carrier, the enemy's T2 frigates riding right up in his T2 battlecruisers' faces and wailing on them point-blank? To say nothing of that T2 Lion King-class Heavy Interstellar Missile Ship with its terrifying firepower!
This was a nightmare! An absolute nightmare!
"Stop!" the chieftain suddenly cried out.
The Fire Salamander adjutant beside him stared, dumbfounded, at his chieftain.
"Retreat." The chieftain slumped into his captain's chair, soul-lost, his bloodshot eyes fixed on those gray warships in the display, aching truly to tear them apart and grind them to dust.
"Eh? Retreat? Chieftain, our Fourth Fleet and Eighth Fleet are still locked in the fight over there!" the adjutant asked in astonishment.
The chieftain seized his adjutant by the throat. "I damn well said retreat — didn't you hear me!"
As things stood, fighting on might yet leave a chance of victory, but his ships would most likely be impossible to keep whole — and above all, the command ship he sat aboard would be in danger of falling too. The enemy might very well fight him to a mutually destroyed finish; the terror of that T3 warship was plain for all to see. This Fire Salamander chieftain had no wish to gamble, and so he chose to retreat.
The adjutant gulped and hurriedly relayed his chieftain's order. The Fire Salamander First and Seventh Fleets, on the verge of rushing to the rescue, at once wheeled about and retreated. And among the Fire Salamander Fourth and Eighth Fleets — still grinding it out, waiting for the chieftain's fleet to relieve them — it was the T2 warships that first received the order to withdraw.
Someone might ask: why did only the T2 warships receive the retreat order? Because those Fire Salamander T1 warships got the order only some minutes later. By then, the T2 warships had already begun to withdraw. Which left these T1 warships, willing or not, as the rearguard cannon fodder.
Seeing this, the Owl Dragon Fleet gave no reckless chase; it merely destroyed the T1 Fire Salamander ships left trailing behind, and at the same time broadcast to these T1 ships on the open channel:
Shut down your engines and surrender!
No few Fire Salamander T1 warships chose, in the end, to surrender. The Owl Dragon Fleet paid these T1 ships no further mind, leaving them stranded where they were, and kept a set distance as it "pursued" the routed Fire Salamander fleet. In truth, it was driving them off. Charlotte's aim was to drive these Fire Salamander fleets out of the FY System. She chased them all the way until the Fire Salamander fleet was about to enter the no-combat zone around the FY System's star gate, and only then stopped.
FY System Star Gate Control Room
On the star gate's radar system, a batch of warship signals was detected. The gate manager perked up at once and looked over, muttering, "Could it be the Fire Salamander fleet? The battle's over so soon?"
But he soon found his notion mistaken. These were indeed Fire Salamander warships — but the situation looked somehow off. Ship after ship, with no formation to speak of, for all the world like people being hunted down, fleeing for their lives. And a great many of the ships had taken hits, battered and bedraggled.
"The Fire Salamander fleet — defeated?" The gate manager gaped, unable to believe it.
He recalled those dozen-odd gray warships that had appeared here behind the Fire Salamander fleet. Could this be the work of those warships? But a mere dozen-odd warships — how could they possibly take on over 1,000?
Looking more closely, the gate manager saw that the Fire Salamander fleet, over 1,500 warships strong just a few hours ago, had now lost close to half its number!
What in the world had happened?