Blizzard Zero · the bridge.
"Report — the swarm on the front line has begun withdrawing, one wave after another; they mean to come for us," a bridge crewman reported.
"Pay it no mind; keep sailing at full speed!" At this moment Charlotte was working the ship's helm herself — every angle of the course, every line of the track, all under her own control.
This was, ordinarily, the work of a dedicated bridge helmsman.
But today, after years, General Charlotte took the helm once more!
For she knew well the danger of this operation; one slip — struck by a Hive Mothership's bio-plasma cannon, or caught by the pursuing swarm — and the price would be death.
The route and the track of the sailing she had reckoned over, in her own mind, 1,000 times.
"The main body of the swarm needs a little more time to fall back on us," Charlotte murmured, her eyes searching the interstellar holo-table as though hunting for a target.
Right now Blizzard Zero could dodge and slip away so cleverly, on the one hand because of its astonishing speed, and on the other because the T1 flying-hive-race and T2 sting-snakes left to guard the Hive Motherships were very few — too few to form an effective ring around Blizzard Zero.
But once the main body of the swarm, engaged with the imperial fleet and the T2 Queen Bee-class Heavy Carrier Starship, came falling back, the threat to Blizzard Zero would climb enormously.
Time slipped by, moment by moment.
"Report — the T2 heavy 1200mm Devil-Croc cannon has finished its reset; ready to fire!" the crewman on the weapon system reported.
In truth there was no need to report it; these figures had long since been branded into Charlotte's mind.
And at this moment, as chance would have it, Blizzard Zero's bow was pointed straight at the position of a T2 Hive Mothership.
That T2 Hive Mothership, perhaps sensing the danger, began withdrawing without cease, firing its plasma cannon at Blizzard Zero all the while — but there was no hitting this high-speed ship at all.
Charlotte fixed her eyes on the aiming reticle.
She had only the one shot!
Not to kill the T2 Hive Mothership in a single shot, but at the least to cripple it.
The swarm was controlled by the Hive Motherships; though destroying a Hive Mothership wouldn't kill the swarm outright, it would send the swarm's combat strength plummeting.
Like an army that had lost its head — a mass of dragons with none to lead.
"Now — fire!" Charlotte barked.
From the muzzle of the T2 heavy 1200mm Devil-Croc cannon, a shell tore out along a comet-like track at tremendous speed, and at the last struck the flank of that T2 Hive Mothership's belly.
BOOM.
A huge explosion overturned that T2 Hive Mothership, fully a kilometer in bulk; chunk after chunk of torn flesh drifted through the cosmos.
And in the wake of this blast, a second, still greater explosion tore through the T2 Hive Mothership's belly — this one splitting the Hive Mothership clean in two, and pronouncing its end here in the deeps of space.
Commander Chu Xuan and the female adjutant, witnessing it all, were dumbfounded.
Earlier, crippling one Hive Mothership had cost them an ambush — and even so they'd been unable to destroy it outright on the spot.
Yet this ship, on the strength of a single shot, had sent one to its end.
And that earlier T2 Hive Mothership — plainly, that too had been a single-shot kill.
"This… this one shot… killed a T2 Hive Mothership… could this be a T3 ship?" the female adjutant said in disbelief.
Commander Chu Xuan, for her part, quickly grasped the reason of it. "It struck the organ where the Hive Mothership stores its bio-plasma elements. That's the equivalent of our ships' ammunition magazine, or the engine. Hit it, and you get an effect like a secondary detonation — power multiplied several, even several dozen, times over!"
"But two shots in a row, both landing home… is that even possible?" the female adjutant doubted.
Commander Chu Xuan kept her eyes on the Blizzard Zero in the image, already tearing off again at high speed. "It isn't a question of possible or not possible — it's that this ship simply did it!"
10 minutes; two T2 Hive Motherships destroyed — this was already reckoned quite a fine result.
"Report — better than half of the enemy's swarm-forces have withdrawn; the swarm-forces that remain can no longer break through our firewall," a crewman reported.
Commander Chu Xuan couldn't help but marvel. "It's madness — a battle plan mad as anything. And yet… it truly has achieved the strategic aim of buying time; at this rate we can stall another hour and more. Two hours, even, would be no trouble!"
The female adjutant, at this, was left speechless; thinking back on her earlier words mocking the two ships, she truly felt as though her own face were being slapped.
"But whether this Blizzard Zero can now withdraw safely — that's the question," Commander Chu Xuan said, worried.
At this moment, having destroyed two T2 Hive Motherships, Blizzard Zero had begun to pull out.
But how could the swarm, its nest all but robbed clean, suffer this chief culprit to flee? Wave upon wave of swarm, like a black whirlwind, began closing a ring around this interstellar warship.
Its numbers were dozens of times what they'd been at the start.
As though a great black hand were reaching to seize a little mosquito and crush it dead.
"Report — by the ship system's reckoning, sailing on our present heading, our chance of breaking out is only 16%!" a crewman reported, a touch of nerves in his voice.
Charlotte closed her eyes; in this moment it was as though she'd returned to her days with the beast-folk resistance army — the enemy many and herself few, the enemy strong and herself weak.
But every time, she'd turned the whole thing around.
"Come about!" Charlotte suddenly ordered.
This order took the bridge crew wholly by surprise.
Blizzard Zero's line of retreat had been toward the far side of the main battlefield; to come about now meant heading straight for the main battlefield.
To turn back now — wasn't that walking into the net?
But Charlotte's word, aboard this ship, was law!
Blizzard Zero, nimble as anything, wheeled straight around.
"Full speed ahead!" Charlotte said gravely.
After the brief turn-about, Blizzard Zero's speed climbed once more to 100 star-knots.
At this Charlotte summoned up a virtual control interface, keyed in a string of numbers, and said, "Release the engine limiter — keep accelerating!"
Release the engine limiter?
The crewman on the helm froze, then said worriedly, "If we release the engine limiter and keep accelerating, the strain on the engine will be far too great!"
"That's an order! Keep accelerating for me!" Charlotte said, her gaze fixed.
"Yes — releasing the engine limiter; ship continuing to accelerate. Speed 103… speed 106… speed 110…"
The speed set on every ship's engine was, in fact, not its peak speed but its optimal speed — meaning that at this speed the engine's service life ran best; exceed it, and various sailing problems would crop up, along with a great shortening of the engine's life.
And so every ship's engine carried a limiter-lock; only the captain or deputy captain held the code to release it.
"Report — the engine is beginning to overload!"
"Report — the power system is beginning to run past capacity!"
"Report — speed's up to 120 now!"
The hearts of every crewman on the whole bridge drew taut.
And this sudden turn of Blizzard Zero's, together with the abrupt surge in speed, left the swarm that had been closing in from all sides, for a moment, wholly unable to react; in an instant they were flung far behind.
As the old saying went, the most dangerous place is the safest.
The battlefield now split into two parts: one, the imperial fleet's main battlefield; the other, the swarm-forces pulled back to ring Blizzard Zero in.
Under ordinary circumstances, everyone would assume Blizzard Zero would flee in the opposite direction, so the swarm had begun laying its ring early in that quarter.
Which meant the swarm in the direction of the main battlefield was, of all things, the thinnest!
But as ill luck would have it, here too there was a T2 Hive Mothership and a small knot of swarm — sitting, of all places, squarely on the path Blizzard Zero had to take!
"Report — speed's too high! We can't make a wide turn now!" a crewman reported tensely.
Charlotte suddenly laughed — the first time she'd laughed so freely since coming to Zhao Chen's side.
"Then we won't go around them! Full power — ram them for me!"