From cannon fodder to sweeping across thousands of stars.

Chapter 474: Fortress vs. Fortress

While Duke Duke and Duke William had no choice but to continue the frontal attack, Duke Hastings and Duke Artesia also entered the battle stage.

Since both Gospel and Tranquility celestial fortresses have not upgraded their liquid metal armor, Duke Hastings will naturally not use such an extremely risky tactic like Duke Duke, and his final response method is relatively conservative.

The battle group's fleet entered the scene first to attract attention, and through fire reconnaissance, it roughly figured out the defensive forces other than the mobile fortress.

The reaction of the Federation's second mobile fortress was just as Hastings had expected. It was afraid of the Empire's celestial fortress and therefore did not open fire first.

In the eyes of the Duke of Hastings, this was actually an open conspiracy.

Under the guidance of Marshal Trafalgar, no matter how the commanders of the Empire think or hesitate, in 99% of cases, they will implement the "home exchange" tactic of using the celestial fortress to attack the mobile fortress.

This also means that the Federation's mobile fortress was prepared from the beginning to fight against two celestial fortresses at the same time.

Especially after Duke Duke and Duke William had taken the lead in launching the attack, the commander of the mobile fortress faced by Duke Hastings must have also received the news that his friendly forces had been attacked - here Duke Hastings silently thanked the Atlas Group for popularizing ultra-long-distance real-time communication technology, otherwise the other party would not have received the news so quickly.

In this case, the opponent must have focused most of its energy on the two celestial fortresses that could enter the scene at any time.

Therefore, when faced with a large number of imperial fleets that arrived first, they became a little cautious and did not dare to use their main guns to attack easily.

After all, the commander of the mobile fortress now faces a multiple-choice question:
A. Fire the main guns and attack the Imperial fleet that is already close to you.

B. Wait for the Empire's Celestial Fortress to enter the battlefield, then wait for an opportunity to open fire

This multiple-choice question is obviously not that easy to answer.

If the commander of the mobile fortress is impulsive, he can certainly use the main gun to wipe out an entire Imperial fleet, but the two celestial fortresses of the Empire are likely to enter the field just after he enters the 'CD period', and the situation will immediately become extremely bad. If he is not careful, he will be killed by the concentrated fire of the two 'Focusing Rainbows'.

So when the Duke of Hastings boldly sent out eight fully-strength fleets to launch an attack ahead of time, and only left two fleets at his side to deal with emergencies, the Federation's defense force in this galaxy became somewhat uncomfortable.

After Marshal Trafalgar withdrew his elite troops, there were only five fleets left in this galaxy, except for a mobile fortress, and half of these ships were just replenished some time ago or even just formed.

Therefore, when they were unable to obtain main gun support from the mobile fortress, the eight attack fleets sent by the Duke of Hastings had more room to play.

Even though the mobile fortress has a large number of battleship-class heavy particle cannons as secondary weapons in addition to the main gun, they are ultimately not as threatening as the main gun in terms of deterrence and lethality.

This period of time was extremely tormenting for the commander of the Federal Mobile Fortress, because he could only watch his own defensive fleet get involved in this bloody exchange.

So much so that he eventually disobeyed Marshal Trafalgar's orders and chose to open fire on the Imperial fleet.

When the surging heavy metal particle jets crossed the space domain and swept through the area where an imperial fleet was located, the commander of the mobile fortress looked at the wreckage in the target space domain, but he did not feel excited at all. What surged in his heart at this moment was more regret for his rash decision.

And after a while, when the alarm of detecting "super-mass growth" sounded twice in a row, this regret reached its peak.

Looking at the two celestial fortresses that appeared on the left and right in the cold universe, and their slowly adjusting beam axes, the commander of the mobile fortress asked anxiously, "How long will it take for the main guns to fire again?"

"Sir! It will take at least 20 minutes, and we can only irradiate at 70% power!"

After hearing this answer, the fortress commander knew that there was no time left for him to counterattack. According to the information collected about the Imperial Celestial Fortress, it only takes more than six minutes from leaving the jump to the main gun firing.
Thinking of this, he made a decision immediately.

"Pass my order, disconnect the energy circuits of all weapon units, and distribute all energy to the power unit and deflection force field unit at a ratio of 2:8! Activate the overclocking mode of all deflection force field generators, and set the route to intersect with the predicted route of the Imperial Celestial Fortress!
The defense fleet will continue to attack the Imperial fleet as planned. The restrictions on the use of proton annihilation bombs will be lifted, and the commander of the defense fleet will decide when to use them! "

When the mobile fortress commander gave the order, everyone in the core command room guessed what he was going to do.

There was no exciting speech, nor any morale-boosting speech before the final moment. In the limited time, there was only this cold order.

But despite this, no one in the core command room raised any objections or flinched at this juncture. They seemed to have been mentally prepared and continued to do their work in silence.

This federal mobile fortress, which seemed to be in a desperate situation, was rushing towards the Tranquility Fortress where the Duke of Artesia was located at an increasingly faster speed under the blue light of the main propulsion array in the rear hemisphere.

"Hastings!" The Duke of Artesia's somewhat nervous voice sounded in the communication channel.

Under the warning of the fortress control personality, she naturally noticed the federal mobile fortress that was rushing towards the Tranquility Fortress. Although it looked like a huge sphere with a diameter of 350 kilometers, it was equipped with a large number of high-power plasma propulsion arrays. When it accelerated, it was like a "flexible fat man."

Although it is not an easy task to accomplish a precise collision with an object of such size and mass, the Duke of Artesia does not want to see what it would be like if the two largest creations built by humans so far collided with each other.

"Don't panic! Just follow the scheduled procedure and complete the irradiation."

The Duke of Hastings' voice remained calm at this time, because the reaction of the Federal Mobile Fortress did not surprise him.

In other words, in this desperate situation, the commander of the federal mobile fortress only had this only option.

A few minutes later, in the core command rooms of Gospel Fortress and Serenity Fortress, the two fortress control personalities almost simultaneously issued a reminder that the "Focusing Iris is ready", and the two Dukes, Hastings and Artesia, did not hesitate at all after hearing the reminder.

"'Focusing Iris' begins to shine!" ×2
As their orders were issued, the next moment, two "celestial rivers" appeared simultaneously in this cosmic domain, and the federal mobile fortress at their intersection was completely engulfed by the sudden dazzling silver light.

(End of this chapter)