Star Ocean: Starting from the Abandoned Mining Space Station.

Chapter 339 Pursuit
It took only thirty seconds from the start of the biomass jump engine to the completion of the Zerg fleet's mission.

And it was within thirty seconds.

The entire mechanical star field lost more than 200,000 small and medium-sized ships due to the precise raids by the Zerg biological ships.

The loss of destroyers alone was close to one-third of the entire star field.

But considering that Chen Ming dispatched more than 50,000 cruisers, this number is honestly a bit small.

This was because Chen Ming deliberately arranged some more Zerg cruisers to appear in places where there were no mechanical races, which resulted in some Zerg cruisers missing the target.

Because the Zerg can lock onto the Mechanical race so accurately and on such a large scale, the Mechanical race will definitely suspect the reason behind it.

Chen Ming didn't want the mechanical race to detect his way of tracking these mechanical spaceships through the common feature of these attacked spaceships, which were all attacks on his strongholds.

So he made some extra preparations.

For example, the Zerg itself has the ability to track the Mechanical Race, because the Mechanical Race's nanorobots produce toxic waste when they operate.

This kind of waste can be easily discovered by the Zerg, and they can accurately locate the source of the waste even from a distance of tens of thousands of miles.

That's why Chen Ming let the Zerg track the Mechanicals, and he himself did not interfere with the Zerg cruisers.

He would never allow his psychic power to manifest itself before making sure that all mechanical units were destroyed.

Let the mechanical race think that all this was done by the Zerg themselves.

Although the Mechanical Clan had already learned that Chen Ming had the ability to control the Zerg when he attacked the Mechanical Clan’s stronghold last time.

But this does not affect Chen Ming's current actions.

The closer Chen Ming is to the Zerg, the more likely the Mechanical Race will ignore the role of Chen Ming's psychic power.

Although Chen Ming didn't think that the mechanical race would ignore his psychic powers, if he displayed more Zerg-related abilities, then his mechanical-related abilities would definitely decrease accordingly.

The possibility of the mechanical race becoming aware of the effects of Chen Ming's psychic powers will also be reduced.

At least it will reduce the probability that they will investigate the iron atoms on the bodies of the mechanical people.

Of course, even so, the Mechanical Clan might indeed suspect that only the spaceship that attacked Chen Ming's base was attacked by the Zerg warship, and further suspect that there was something in the base that caused it to be tracked.

But the extra Zerg fleet arranged by Chen Ming should be able to further dispel the Mechanical Clan's idea.

He also arranged for the Zerg fleet to jump to many places where the Mechanical Race did not exist.

Of course, this non-existence is just that he himself doesn’t know whether it exists or not.

In fact, there is a high probability that mechanical people exist in those places.

Because the Mechanical Clan had just launched a carpet search of so many small strongholds of Chen Ming, which meant that they had definitely dispersed a large number of fleets, and the Mechanical Clan could be anywhere.

The additional Zerg will be effective as long as they can come into contact with the Mechanical fleets that are only responsible for reconnaissance but not attacking.

It can even be said that no matter whether the extra Zerg sent out by Chen Ming encountered the mechanical race or not, as long as they jumped over, they would leave traces.

If traces are left behind, the Mechanical Clan's investigation process will be disrupted by these Zerg cruisers that waste resources to jump over and misled in the wrong direction.

This is Chen Ming’s arrangement. I don’t know how much the mechanical people will believe it.

They did not completely believe what they saw, but they also did not completely disbelieve the methods arranged by Chen Ming.

In general.

In order to prevent the mechanical race from discovering the effects of Chen Ming's psychic power too early, the resource exchange ratio of the counter-attack launched by Chen Ming this time was very unfavorable.

The cost and gain are totally out of proportion.

Although tens of thousands of Zerg cruisers use biological jump engines, they have various usage restrictions like ordinary jump engines. Jumping requires resources and maintenance is also required after the jump.

Even if Chen Ming used psychic power to repair it, he could not save the materials.

The resources consumed and the results achieved are completely asymmetrical.

Wars are fought over the exchange ratio of resources.

If the exchange ratio is at a loss, it is not necessarily a profit even if the war is won.

but.

Chen Ming doesn't care or fear wasting resources.

At least we are not afraid of the Zerg's consumption of resources.

The Zerg can devour everything and convert it into nutrients.

And the universe is so big, there are so many planets that can be swallowed up.

So he is able to take the initiative to make such an exchange ratio.

Even if it costs tens of thousands of cruisers to destroy a battleship, he is willing to do it.

Of course, he would not do anything stupid like exchanging hundreds of ships for a cruiser.

But for some things that are not so unprofitable and can still cause damage to the resources of the Mechanical Clan, he can do them without considering the losses.

Therefore, even the few mechanical cruisers that were there just now, after receiving the news that a large number of their own kind had been destroyed, relied on the cover of other ships that did not have time to escape, and successfully jumped to the evacuation spacecraft.

Chen Ming didn't want to let it go either.

They can't escape.

Because at this moment, all the Zerg cruisers that had jumped over showed signs of being covered by Chen Ming's psychic energy fluctuations at the same time after they destroyed the Mechanical fleet.

This is not Chen Ming, whose mental strength has not yet recovered sufficiently, calling on psychic energy, but the Zerg borrowing Chen Ming's psychic energy.

By utilizing the psychic connection between Chen Ming and the Queen, the individual Zerg consciousnesses in the Zerg psychic hive network can also dispatch Chen Ming's psychic energy to a certain extent.

This requires the consumption of the individual Zerg's own mental strength and a large amount of energy. The efficiency of using psychic energy is also low, and the effect of the adjusted psychic energy is not great.

It is just the most basic of the many abilities Chen Ming possesses now.

repair.

Having this spiritual power is enough.

A few minutes is enough to restore a biomass jump engine that needs maintenance to its original state.

The Zerg fleet will be able to follow the Mechanical's jump traces and catch up with them immediately.

However, before the jump, Chen Ming had to first confirm the purpose of the Zerg fleet on the other side of the jump wave by letting go of several mechanical cruisers.

At this time, Chen Ming unexpectedly discovered that the destination of the spaceships that had just escaped was located in the mechanical star field closer to the border.

And at that location, there just happened to be the mechanical psychic-biological conversion device of the mechanical race, which Chen Ming had learned through the information of the mechanical clan.

In a place like this, there must be the defense power of the mechanical race.

And the fact that the mechanical cruiser deliberately went to that place also indicated that it was likely a trap.

But Chen Ming has nothing to worry about now.

The Zerg fleet unified the time and launched a jump together again.

After a few seconds of jump, the Zerg fleet appeared in the galaxy where Chen Ming already knew the situation by heart.

However, there is a little more information here than what Chen Ming knows.

There was a new mechanical mothership docked in the orbit of the planet where Chen Ming's target was.

And following the mothership were about 5,000 mechanical cruisers, tens of thousands of destroyers, and about 30,000 escorts.

The mechanical race deployed their troops here, waiting for the arrival of the Zerg fleet.

Even though there was a battleship parked there, Chen Ming did not feel the slightest fear or worry.

He did not withdraw the fleet.

Because for the Zerg fleet, the only real enemy is that one battleship, and the rest are just food for the dead.

Don't look at the capital ships, just look at the lower-level ships.

The number of Zerg cruisers on Chen Ming's side is already more than the combined number of the mechanical cruisers, destroyers, and escorts.

There is no way the capital ship can protect those lower-level spacecraft.

The combined shield it possesses is used to resist attacks from main weapons of the same level, not to resist weapons from lower-level spacecraft.

Although it can resist these attacks by changing the frequency of the combo, it is usually used to reduce combat losses unless the battle has entered the endgame.

Otherwise, the battleship would never do that.

Because if it really gave so many cruisers a layer of connected shields that could withstand attacks from ships of the same level, then the shield of this battleship would be forced to withstand the terrifying concentrated fire of 50,000 cruisers at the same time.

Therefore, what the Mechanical Mothership will do next is to destroy the Zerg warships as quickly as possible.

No matter how efficient the battleships' attack was, it was impossible to eliminate all 50,000 cruisers in a short period of time.

This is an opportunity.

As long as these lower-level spaceships are gone, the battleship will sooner or later be defeated by the concentrated fire of the Zerg fleet.

Chen Ming can also use the organizational structure of the Zerg unit to mark the battleship, and even use the afterglow core to control the mothership.

This is a capital ship.

Chen Ming absolutely cannot miss the opportunity to obtain it directly.

The battle is about to break out.

Chen Ming immediately ordered the Zerg fleet to disperse its dense formation after the jump to avoid being hit by the mechanical weapons.

At the same time, Chen Ming's attention was immediately focused on the spine cannon of the mechanical clan's mothership.

The mothership has three spine cannons in total.

The center one is of an older design, with a laser-ridged turret that fires pure high-intensity lasers.

It looks ordinary, but it does have the power of a main weapon.

The ridge guns on the left and right sides of the spacecraft have new gun heads.

It was the kind of main-class weapon with live ammunition that He Gu had shown Chen Ming before.

However, live ammunition weapons have a big problem in actual combat.

It is a kind of mass nothingness effect that exists in this world.

The closer an object's speed is to the speed of light, the lower its mass.

Therefore, when the live ammunition speed of live ammunition weapons exceeds a limit, the closer it is to the speed of light, the lower the mass will be, and of course the power will be lower.

When developing and testing live-fire weapons, a suitable speed must be selected so that the ratio of speed to mass reaches the highest value under the formula of this effect, so that the application of live-fire weapons can be realized.

So far, as far as Chen Ming knows, the only high-speed live-ammunition weapon is the large-scale Gauss cannon.

The main weapons of the battleship are truly unprecedented.

The mechanical race was the first to be created.

But that’s fine too.

At least this mothership does not have the other type of psychic ridged cannon that Chen Ming learned about from He Gu, nor does it have the only one Destroyer that Chen Ming himself knew about. This is good news.

Many things would be much easier if the enemy didn't have psychic powers.

Like now.

The Zerg fleet at the edge of the galaxy had already dispersed and charged towards the Mechanical fleet with the thought of certain death.

The distance between the two sides had not yet shortened to the range of the Zerg weapons, but had already entered the range of the Mechanical Mothership. The two spine cannons on the left and right of the Mothership were all lit up with a surge of energy.

The arc at the muzzle began to flash violently.

But at this moment, no live ammunition was fired. Instead, the gun bow was undergoing some structural changes in the electric arc.

However, the mechanical clan soon completed the structural adjustment of the gun bow.

The moment the arc began to flash again, countless threaded steel needle-like warheads were accelerated to the limit of the mass void effect and shot towards the Zerg fleet like an impenetrable rainstorm.

Although these steel needle bullets are about three meters long and nearly forty centimeters in diameter, they are not small in size.

But in the darkness of space, the Zerg have no effective means of detecting this high-speed warhead that has no thermal energy response.

You can only rely on luck to avoid it.

But if it just touched a little bit, the terrifying speed carried by the warhead would tear apart the Zerg cruiser's shell, taking away large pieces of tissue and flesh.

Even the jet-black shell that had been strengthened once again couldn't block it at all.

And if these steel needle warheads hit directly, the Zerg warship will be completely penetrated.

The terrifying kinetic energy and spiraling warhead will completely tear apart all biological tissues inside the Zerg cruiser.

These warheads can even penetrate a warship and then continue to penetrate the next one with the remaining force.

Even its 1,200-meter body length could not stop this terrifyingly powerful live ammunition warhead.

Chen Ming frowned after seeing this situation.

It was not because of the damage suffered by the Zerg fleet. As long as the critical structures were not damaged or it was hit directly, those injuries could be quickly recovered with the supply of a large amount of energy crystals.

The reason he frowned was that the power of this weapon seemed to be more than that.

Being able to destroy a cruiser with a single shot can be considered a qualified main force weapon.

But it can be seen from the changes in the structure of the gun bow during the flashing of the arc just now.

This ridged cannon bow apparently has another pattern.

Chen Ming used the visual information brought back by the Zerg's biological compound eyes to continuously analyze the structure of the muzzle of the ridge cannon.

It was found that the design of the structure itself is relatively simple. It is a deformable nested structure that combines two weapons with similar properties, and the weapons can rely on each other.

One of the structures is like the current one, which fires a large number of steel needles at the speed limit.

It is somewhat similar to a weapon called Storm Needle that Chen Ming once knew about, but it is more powerful.

The other weapon structure seems to be able to launch a super-large live ammunition with a diameter of more than 100 meters.

Fires large, solid rounds similar to a Gauss Cannon.

The diameter of the Gauss cannon's shells seems to be about twenty meters.

Now, the volume of this artillery shell with a diameter of 125 meters has increased times, and its mass has probably increased by the same amount or even more.

A live round of this size has been accelerated to its limit, and its power...

Chen Ming didn't dare to think about it.

But the hit rate of this thing should be very problematic.

It means fighting against battleships of the same level, or launching attacks on some fixed targets.

This thing is not very useful against a cruiser sea.

That's why the Mechanical Mothership would switch the form of its weapons and transform into firing needles before the battle officially begins.

Chen Ming had a feeling.

This gun head actually combines the Storm Needle and Gauss Cannon together.

Then the size of the weapon was simply enlarged, and after supplying a huge amount of energy, a powerful and powerful effect was achieved.

After all, both the Gauss Cannon and the Storm Needle are large-scale live-ammunition weapons with their own application environments. There is no problem in developing more advanced weapons based on them.

There is really no problem in using it, the effect is there.

Chen Ming can even be said to have experienced it personally.

But this type of live-ammunition weapon still has its limitations, in space combat, especially in ultra-long-range combat at the battleship level, which is enough to cross more than half a galaxy.

The accuracy of live-fire weapons is a difficult problem to solve.

At least the Spine Peak Cannon that the Mechanical Clan has just taken out is still not as efficient as the Energy Spine Peak Cannon that was activated in the center of the mothership after the Mechanical Clan tested the live ammunition cannon.

I saw a red laser beam converge on the bow of the mothership's center gun and shoot out.

As long as the red laser beam sweeps across, the high-temperature energy will destroy everything it touches.

Countless Zerg cruisers were cut, burned, destroyed, and disappeared like snowflakes.

There is almost no ability to resist.

But the snow falling in this galaxy now is not just a light snow, but a blizzard big enough to cover the entire world.

After adapting to the combat style of the mechanical race, Chen Ming began to command and dispatch the Zerg cruisers to perform instantaneous short-distance jumps in order to avoid the attacks of the mothership.

After losing thousands of cruisers in just a few minutes.

The Zerg fleet finally got close enough to launch an attack.

At this moment, the mechanical cruisers were also approaching from the edge of the battle line.

Want to cooperate with the mothership to suppress the Zerg fleet.

And just at the moment when both sides entered their respective shooting range.

Around the formation of the mechanical fleet, and even within the formation, there were large numbers of surging jump waves.

Judging from the scale of this jump wave, there are at least 100,000 cruisers approaching here behind.

That was the new batch of biological warships that Chen Ming had just asked the Queen of Insects to prepare.

After the Queen of Insects had her first experience, her efficiency in subsequent manufacturing of biological warships became even more terrifying.

This number is enough to completely overwhelm the mechanical race.

The mechanical race cannot just stand there and wait to die.

They also want to activate their jump engines to make short jumps within the galaxy to avoid having their formation disrupted.

But the surging jump waves at their current location have hindered the activation of the mechanical race's jump engine to a certain extent.

In just a dozen seconds, a brand new Zerg fleet appeared in the galaxy.

The battle situation became completely chaotic.

Although melee is acceptable to the Zerg and Mechanical races who have hive thinking.

But the Zerg's ship facilities are equipped with a large number of missile weapons and biological fighters.

The role these two can play in a melee is much greater than that of the mechanical race.

Moreover, when one side in the melee has completely crushed the other side, the melee becomes a one-sided massacre.

Although the orbital defense industrial facilities on the planet behind the mechanical race and the ground orbital defense industrial facilities can also launch attacks on the Zerg.

And the firepower of one planet did cause serious damage to the Zerg fleet.

But this did not affect the complete destruction of the Mechanical Fleet in just one encounter.

Only one battleship was left that barely maintained its all-round shield and was not directly destroyed.

But if it had hesitated just a little longer, the result would have been the same.

Unfortunately, the mechanical mothership did not hesitate.

The moment the Zerg fleet completed its jump, it knew that the situation was beyond redemption.

Even in the melee, a large number of Zerg cruisers were destroyed.

But even the concentrated fire of the remaining 130,000 cruisers is definitely not something that a single battleship can withstand.

Even if many cruisers are unable to attack battleships because their firing range is blocked, the result will not change.

Quantitative change has caused qualitative change.

It has completely given up active attacks and has put all its energy systems into passive defense weapons and shields.

At the moment it was about to encounter concentrated fire.

It successfully activated the jump drive.

Evacuated from here.

Chen Ming won a great victory in this battle.

He was not in a hurry to chase the Mechanical Clan's battleship.

After all, the Mechanical Clan definitely has more than one battleship, although it is not yet clear why the Mechanical Clan does not have other battleships to provide support.

But Chen Ming could not deny the possibility that there were other battleships in the place where the mothership had just escaped.

It's already very good to have achieved results.

Not to mention... Chen Ming had just ordered the crazy insects to scatter some of their body tissues or blood on the mothership.

There is no need to pay attention to the mothership for the time being.

Chen Ming now has another thing to do.

His gaze gradually turned to the planet that was still using orbital defense facilities to attack Chen Ming's fleet.

Although the mechanical mothership has retreated, their support may arrive at any time.

Chen Ming must act quickly and seize the mechanical psychic biological transformation facility.

130,000 cruisers is already an exaggerated number in a naval war.

The same is true even when facing the firepower of a planet.

Although the level of cruiser weapons is far from that of battleships even if they are fired upon together.

But when attacking a planet, it is enough to break through their defenses.

Although the planet in front of Chen Ming is extremely valued by the mechanical race, it has a large number of orbital defense facilities distributed throughout the planet's orbit and even on the surface.

Relying on extremely dense and powerful firepower, the first two waves of Zerg fleets that were closer to the planet were repelled.

But the Zerg's biological warships seemed endless, and they continued to attack the defense lines of the orbital defense facilities.

In the process of countless machines and equipment being destroyed, countless Zerg were also killed.

But the number of Zerg can be made up at any time, but the defense facilities of the Mechanical Race are really like one less, one less.

Soon, the planet's defense line was breached in the direction where the Zerg fleet was most concentrated.

A gap appeared in the orbital defense facility's firepower network.

Several Zerg cruisers forced their way through the gap and crashed to the ground like meteorites.

These cruisers did not slow down at all during the fall and died instantly at the moment of impact.

But the Zerg inside these cruisers dug a road leading deep underground under the corpses of the Zerg cruisers.

(End of this chapter)