Though the T3 Imperial-class Heavy Interstellar Battleship's bow cannon had already entered the waiting stage of recharging —
Do not forget: this was, after all, an interstellar battleship! It had by no means only the one weapon module of the bow cannon.
Six 5,600mm-bore heavy electromagnetic cannon main guns, 68 quad-mount heavy pulse-laser rapid-fire cannons, 300 fully automatic medium-density point-defense guns — the whole of the starship weapon system. It let this T3 Imperial possess, even, the ability to go toe-to-toe head-on with a conventional interstellar fleet. Though it had but a single star shield of comparatively large area, its hull armor employed the most top-tier of materials technologies, second only to the T3 Triceratops-class Interstellar Heavy Assault Frigate's! One can well imagine what sort of scene it was when so heavy-armored, heavy-gunned an interstellar warship charged up before your face.
Though its sailing speed wasn't fast, its steady, even-paced course of advance met with very nearly no obstruction whatsoever. Because everything that blocked its path was, one and all, crushed to bits. Even a shield-bearing T3 interstellar warship — once it entered within the T3 Imperial's firing range — would be locked as a target by the many main guns or rapid-fire cannons. In that situation, the one thing that enemy ship could pray for was that its sailing speed and its hull armor might let it swiftly flee this zone of death. As for those T1 interstellar warships, a single shell from a point-defense gun was all it took to grind these tiny crawling ants to powder and dust.
Of course, awaiting them, besides, were the T3 Blizzard-class Light Interstellar Battlecruisers that circled about the T3 Imperial-class Heavy Interstellar Battleship, hunting for targets.
The coordination of these two classes of interstellar battleship directly led to the enemy formation — composed of tens of thousands of interstellar warships — a breach being torn straight open in it. The vast interstellar-fleet formation was, for all the world as though by a keen sword, cleft in two.
At the same time, the T3 Phoenix-class Heavy Carrier Starship deployed a vast swarm of interstellar fighters and a swarm of interstellar drones. These interstellar aerial units began, at swift speed, to charge toward the enemy fleet. The first targets locked on were, of course, those interstellar fighters and interstellar drones of the enemy fleet — but, alas, the disparity between the two was simply too great. The enemy fleet hadn't a single T3 carrier starship; it had only a few dozen T2 carrier starships, and the T2 interstellar fighters and T2 interstellar drones they were fitted with. It was precisely under a disparity of this kind that the T3 Phoenix-class interstellar fighters and the T3 Black Phoenix-class medium interstellar drones utterly steamrollered these opponents, reducing them to little fireballs, flaring and gone in the blink of an eye amid the cosmos. This interstellar air-battle, from its very start, let Zhao Chen's side thoroughly seize interstellar air-superiority!
Beyond this, the T3 Fire Phoenix-class Heavy Interstellar Stealth Bombers, too, began one by one to unfold bombing-style attacks against some of the T2 interstellar warships — and the T3-grade interstellar bombs a few T3 Fire Phoenix stealth bombers were equipped with could directly blast the hull armor of a single T2 interstellar warship to smithereens.
"This battle…" Medusa couldn't hold back from stepping a few paces toward the battlefield-broadcast image before her, an excitement she couldn't hide within her gaze. Never had she imagined that an interstellar fleet of under 100 ships could, of all things, press down upon 60,000 interstellar warships and give them a sound beating… no, wrong — now there were fewer than 40,000 interstellar warships left.
"This is the vast disparity in starship quality, and the gap in the caliber of the combat personnel. This interstellar fleet from the Lion King System — its combat caliber and command structure are not even inferior to the regular armies of several of the Galactic Alliance's empires." Red Rose commented, over on the far side of the video window at her side. Being a merchant, she'd traveled south and north, and had seen the elite fleets of the various empires. But the combat caliber displayed by this interstellar fleet before her, small in number, was one Red Rose had never seen before. It was for all the world like a plain-looking wooden sword that, kept unsheathed, showed no glint of its edge — but which, once drawn and swung at the enemy, would turn heaven and earth their colors and dim the very stars, displaying an edge beyond all imagining!
The snake-woman Qingman, off to one side, had already gone speechless with envy; she had real combat experience commanding T3 Blizzards. She had tasted the free-flowing exhilaration of holding such "divine weapons and keen blades" in her grasp. That was a feeling she could never in all her life forget. Having driven interstellar warships of this grade, other interstellar warships were, in the snake-woman Qingman's eyes, already worth not a copper. And now that T3 interstellar battleship had, all the more, become an existence she yearned for still more keenly. If the T3 Blizzard was already this excellent, then how would this class of T3 interstellar battleship be? The answer to that went without saying.
"Quick, look! It's that batch of T3 interstellar frigates going into action." Red Rose's gaze came to rest upon the T3 interstellar frigates that had taken the initiative to sortie. Ordinarily an interstellar frigate rarely attacked of its own initiative on the interstellar battlefield; it chiefly shouldered auxiliary-combat and formation-protection tasks. But at this moment —
Very plainly, these hundred T3 interstellar frigates — the combat task they were carrying out was to conduct a strangling operation upon those enemy fleets that had, a moment ago, been split off by the T3 interstellar battleships and the T3 Blizzards!
A task that looked simple — but in fact, this was, for the interstellar warships themselves, no small test. For, after all, as the common saying goes so well: even a cornered rabbit will bite. The more so for these desperadoes with no thought for their own lives. Truly hound them to a dead end, and they'd all the same do some crazed things.
Soon enough, this very scene was staged.
The hundred T3 Triceratops arrayed themselves into a three-dimensional "single-file long-snake formation," and began to clear out the area of the Starlight faction's interstellar fleet. As for why it was the Starlight faction's interstellar fleet? That was, perhaps, because Zhao Chen liked to "prey on the familiar."
These hundred T3 Triceratops formed an exceedingly terrifying "strangulation formation." First, the T3 Triceratops was itself fitted with 200 T3-grade six-mount 600mm-bore heavy point-defense energy cannons. Though in single-shot power they were no match for the weapon systems of the T3 Imperial-class and the T3 Blizzard-class, they were, however you cut it, still T3-grade. And, moreover, the density of their attack was quite terrifying, directly forming a firepower net that cleared clean away all the enemy ships along its route. It was for all the world like a floor-sweeping robot: with its motive power turned full on, the "rubbish" in the direction of its course was, one and all, swept to its death. This was a naked, unabashed "strangulation and slaughter."
It wasn't that the Starlight faction's interstellar fleet had never thought of resisting; some of their interstellar warships had even attempted to conduct a grapple-and-board operation directly against this class of T3 interstellar frigate. But this was, without fail, an exceedingly foolish decision. Because they discovered that when their own interstellar warships rammed into that class of T3 interstellar frigate opposite — never mind breaking open the hull armor, they couldn't even leave upon it a scratch exceeding five centimeters in depth. This being so, what talk could there be of a grapple-and-board battle?
And what they didn't know was that this class of T3 Triceratops — setting aside for the moment the advanced nature of its hull-armor technology — the thickness of the hull's external armor alone reached an astonishing near five meters!