"Report — the Seventh Fleet's defense zone has been broken by the mutated hive-race!"
"Bad news — our C3 wartime resource storage point has been destroyed!"
"Report — the Thirteenth Fleet, sent to support the Seventh Fleet's defense zone, has been intercepted by the mutated hive-race and is at present in a melee."
"As of now, the mutated hive-race have penetrated 30% of our position's depth!"
In Qin Longcheng's bridge command center, dreadful news was coming up from every quarter.
The mutated hive-race were pouring into their line in great numbers; because of that round of fire suppression by the Owl Dragon Legion's interstellar missiles just now, they had been thrown into an outright shambles, and the fleets of the forward area could put up no effective defense at all.
Upon the interstellar holo-table before Qin Longcheng, red zones flashed without cease everywhere one looked — every one of them a signal requesting support.
Qin Longcheng knit his brows.
He had not thought the situation could be so very bad. These 30,000 warships under his command — were they truly so unable to take a blow upon the frontal field?
How could it be so?
It ought not to be so.
Even taking the fire suppression of the Owl Dragon Legion's interstellar missiles into account, matters should not have come to so wretched a pass.
Wait…
Something came to Qin Longcheng of a sudden, and he knew why the state of the field before him differed so far from what he had reckoned on.
Because before this, in truth, he and his legion fleets had had precious little experience of fighting the hive-race at all.
And the combat data he had simulated in his mind had taken the Owl Dragon Legion's combat data and laid it over his own legion fleets.
He and his staff had both supposed that if the Owl Dragon Legion could fight the bugs so, their own legion fleets could do the same.
Of course, Qin Longcheng had taken into account, too, that the Owl Dragon Legion's warship composition far outranked that of the legion fleets under his hand.
And he had, in his own mind, lowered his expectations of these legion fleets of his somewhat: if the Owl Dragon Legion rated 10, then he gave his own legion fleets seven.
But!
Never in his life had he thought that these legion fleets under his hand, dealing with these hive-race swarms upon the field — and merely mutated ones at that — would show, never mind seven, perhaps not even three.
Reality's cruelty far exceeded what he had reckoned on, and that had brought about the present state of things.
Qin Longcheng looked toward the mutated swarm, his gaze complicated. And behind it lay the Owl Dragon Legion, ringed about on every side by mutated hive-race.
That man had no 30,000 warships — he had fewer than 10,000.
And yet he had been able to cut his way here from among mutated hive-race in their tens of millions.
How… how in the world had he done it?
Qin Longcheng asked it of his own heart: could he have done it?
He could not.
"Because the warships the Owl Dragon Legion is fitted with are all highly advanced, and T3-grade interstellar warships to the last hull! The Owl Dragon Legion's experience in dealing with bugs far exceeds our own. Pass my order — amend the original combat plan. Abandon the three forward lines outright; every warship remaining within those three lines is to be pulled back. And at the same time, order the Prince Yan legion fleets forward — whatever it takes, the formation must be steadied!" Qin Longcheng amended the combat plan then and there, and made his tactical answer accordingly.
He paused a moment, and added, "And arrange our hive-race fleets to stand ready to take the field at any moment!"
In Qin Longcheng's original plan, it had been his hive-race fleets that were to destroy the Owl Dragon Legion's fleets.
But now that trump card had, of necessity, to be played.
First of all, the formation had to be steadied.
And the Prince Yan legion fleets — that elite fleet Prince Yan had quietly built up before this, T3-grade interstellar warships to the last hull—
ought to be able to achieve the same effect upon the field as the Owl Dragon Legion.
But what happened next shattered Qin Longcheng's notion utterly.
The Prince Yan legion fleets, by their orders, took charge of the most important position behind the third line, taking on the role of the anchor-pillar that steadies the seas.
But this anchor-pillar, it turned out, held for only three minutes.
For the first three minutes their firepower output did indeed check the momentum of the mutated hive-race's charge.
But the guns of some warships need cooling and recharging, and this meant that the further on the time went, the smaller the power of the firepower output grew.
And in the fourth minute, the mutated hive-race pressed the line forward once more.
"Firepower output! Firepower output! Build a curtain of fire — build a curtain of fire, quickly!" The captain of a T3 interstellar frigate holding the very front slapped the head of the officer in charge of the weapons department, urging him on.
The weapons-department officer cried, "Captain! Our firepower falls far short — there are too many of these bugs! At this rate they will be upon our position in no time! Support! Request the Marshal's support, quickly!"
The captain hesitated a moment; then, looking at the dark, dense swarm charging up opposite, he made out a report all the same and sent it to his own superior.
But this gave rise to a problem.
Namely that this captain's superior was not Qin Longcheng, but the fleet-commander of one of the Prince Yan legion's fleets.
This fleet-commander had received no few support requests from his own subordinates as well; and he reported upward in turn before it reached the Prince Yan legion's commander.
And this Prince Yan legion commander hesitated a while before he reported it to Marshal Qin Longcheng.
A procedure with nothing wrong about it, to all appearances.
But in this reporting up, rank by rank, there arose a waste of time.
And it must be borne in mind that upon a battlefield, time is the chance of battle itself!
And by the hour Qin Longcheng learned that there was trouble on the Prince Yan legion fleets' frontal line—
the mutated swarm had already flung itself upon the interstellar frigates of the Prince Yan legion fleets' first line, striking against their energy shields, wave upon wave.
And it must be borne in mind that the interstellar frigates the Prince Yan legion fleets were fitted with were merely ordinary interstellar frigates, with only a single shield-face.
Though they held the front with what all-round protection they could, between every pair of shields there was a gap.
Which meant that through these gaps between the shields, great numbers of mutated hive-race poured in.
It was for all the world like a great dam upon which a number of breaches have opened, streams of water running out through them.
What followed—
needs no further telling.
From mutated hive-race in twos and threes at the outset, to mutated hive-race in ever greater numbers.
They flung themselves at those interstellar frigates wave upon wave; and after paying a certain cost in casualties, at last one mutated hive-race unit came down upon a frigate's hull, its talons striking at the plating.
But before it could get more than a few blows in, it was blasted apart by the hull's point-defense guns, its green sap spattering across the armor.
Yet in the next second that point-defense gun was set upon by dozens of mutated hive-race; these mutated hive-race creatures would spray out a green corrosive ray, and in the end the point-defense gun was destroyed.
The point-defense guns and the remaining weapon modules upon this interstellar frigate were destroyed one by one.
And some of the mutated hive-race even corroded clean through the warship's armor and got directly inside, opening a bloody hunt within the ship itself.