Chitong paid the man's arrogant manner no mind and cut the comm outright. Then she looked to Adjutant Fang Xiuli beside her. "Give the order — the fleet's warships are to flee, each on its own."
"Yes." Adjutant Fang Xiuli cast one unbearable glance at Commander Chitong, then began relaying the Commander's order for each warship to break out and flee on its own. But the answers that came back were that no one was willing to grovel for a stolen life — they would sooner die here in battle at Commander Chitong's side!
Watching those replies come in, one by one, a trace of feeling showed beneath Commander Chitong's crimson eyes. Nor did she wish to see her subordinates buried here… she had promised them a better life…
"Forgive me — I misspoke." Commander Chitong closed her eyes, forcing down the emotion within her.
"Report — the ship radar shows the energy signal of a T3 warship appearing at the outer edge of the battlefield!" a crew member suddenly reported.
"Another T3 warship come? By the look of it, those fellows truly mean not to let us go this time. In that case — then we go down with them, fish dead and net broken!" Commander Chitong said resolutely.
"No… it doesn't seem to be their warship… By the information registered in our ship database, it seems… it seems to be the T3 warship that handed the interstellar transports over to us at the North Wind Star Region border back then!" the crew member said in surprise.
At the crew member's words, that blue-and-white warship surfaced in Commander Chitong's mind. The Owl Dragon System… Could it be that man, appearing here? How could that be — they'd cooperated no more than twice; how could that man risk coming to find her.
"Report! That newly appeared T3 warship is launching an attack on the enemy warships at the outer edge!" the crew member reported, elated.
"Bring up the deep-space telescope image for me at once!" Commander Chitong could no longer keep her composure; at once she brought up the detailed image.
Against the pitch-black backdrop of the cosmos, one could see a scene of battle in the distance. A blue-and-white warship, at tremendous speed, was tearing open the enemy fleet's line of formation; and mid-charge, the main guns and secondary guns mounted on the ship kept firing without cease, annihilating those T2 warships one after another. Its point-defense guns, meanwhile, greeted the T1 warships without the least ceremony. Faced with the enemy warships' counterattack, the blue-and-white warship showed not a shade of fear — with its star shield it warded off the stronger assaults, and the weaker attacks it simply took on the hull outright, leaving no more than a few scratches upon it.
After that, one could see a hatch open in the belly of the blue-and-white warship's hull, and one inverted interstellar drone after another dropped out, spread its wings, and then charged into the attack on the enemy warships all around. As T3-grade interstellar drones, when facing the T1 warships they swarmed down and, without the slightest ceremony, wiped them out. Against the T2 warships it took a little more time, true, but that was no hard matter either.
Before long, this blue-and-white warship actually charged, so grandly and openly, right up before the Bloody Mary Mercenary Company — and then, with one dashing turn, planted itself crosswise between the enemy warships and the Bloody Mary Mercenary Company.
"Report — we've received a message on the public channel, sent by that newly arrived T3 warship," the crew member reported, and brought the message up, relaying it to Commander Chitong.
You'd dare lay a hand on my cargo? Got a death wish?
A lone warship, charging into a pack of enemies — and now sending out a line as brash as this. One who didn't know would take it for a whole interstellar fleet.
T3 Flame Lion King-class Heavy Interstellar Battlecruiser · bridge.
"The hell — who do you think you are! This ship of mine is a standard-issue Empire-military T3 battlecruiser. And a wild-bred battlecruiser like you, popped up from who-knows-where, dares to bluster at me here?" Scarface was seething. On the spot he gave the order: "Bow cannon, main guns, secondary guns — train them all on this cursed warship. Launch our interstellar drones. I'll just see for myself how many pounds this wild-bred battlecruiser really weighs."
From the outside vantage, one could see all the weapons on this crimson, lion-patterned T3 Flame Lion King now trained upon that blue-and-white T3 battlecruiser opposite. At the same time, two ports opened along the top of its hull, ejecting one crimson interstellar drone after another — some 50 in number. And so, in that moment, the two T3 battlecruisers squared off against each other.
The T3 Flame Lion King's weapons fired first. Its laser secondary guns, its electromagnetic main gun, and its cluster-laser bow cannon all came down upon the frontal star shield of the T3 battlecruiser opposite. In this pitch-black cosmos, a dazzling radiance burst forth. And at the same time, those interstellar drones began to close in.
T3 Blizzard-class Light Interstellar Battlecruiser · bridge.
Zhao Chen sat in the captain's chair, watching, bored past all interest, the crimson T3 battlecruiser opposite. Once, on a mission, he'd even seen this T3 warship's sister ship — the T3 Flame Lion-class Medium Interstellar Battlecruiser — inside an Empire-military star-fortress. The T3 Flame Lion King before him now was a heavily modified version of the T3 Flame Lion, chasing after a heavier weapons fit: the original main weapon, a 2,200mm-bore medium railgun, had been swapped out for a single cluster-laser bow cannon, turning the hull into a heavy warship. But set against his own T3 Blizzard, it was still not worth a mention.
"One-on-one? Now, wherever did you scrape up the nerve for that?" Zhao Chen curled his lip in disdain. "Execute standard combat mode."
In the present situation, Zhao Chen couldn't even be bothered to issue commands, and simply had them run standard combat mode. The enemy fleet had but one T3 warship, 50 T2 warships, and 50 T1 warships. Combat power of this grade wasn't even worth a look before the T3 Blizzard.
The T3 Blizzard, executing standard combat mode, began training its main guns and secondary guns on the T3 Flame Lion King opposite. At the same time, the Blizzard interstellar drones went up to meet the enemy's interstellar drones. With the two sides' numbers even, the battle had only just been joined —
when an unexpected sight appeared: the blue-and-white side's interstellar drones were, in wholly one-sided fashion, steamrolling the red side's interstellar drones. It was for all the world like grown men bullying little children. Nearly every few seconds a red interstellar drone was annihilated. The blue-and-white interstellar drones, by contrast, fought with room to spare; and where one took damage, it simply withdrew from the fight and returned to the "hangar" for repairs. In a battle of this grade, to have even one scrapped would have been a kind of "insult" to them.
Meanwhile, the T3 Blizzard's bow cannon had finished charging as well. Its blue cluster-laser fired out. Whether by design or not, the blue cluster-laser had aimed precisely along the attack path of the enemy bow cannon's cluster-laser. One blue, one red, the two cluster-lasers collided together there in the cosmos.