From cannon fodder to sweeping across thousands of stars.

Chapter 534 TF3, Prepare to Attack

When the entire bridge fell into darkness, with only a few independently powered emergency lights still emitting faint light, the captain of the reconnaissance ship knew that something was wrong.

From the time he became a cadet at a naval academy, to the time he was assigned to the garrison fleet and began formal service, to this moment, he had never heard of nor encountered a situation where the entire bridge suddenly lost power.

Of course, if the fusion reactor and superconducting battery stack of the ship were destroyed, a similar scene would indeed occur, but most people would never encounter such a scene while alive.
Under normal circumstances, for a warship's bridge to lose power so completely, the only possibility is that both the main fusion reactor and the backup energy source fail at the same time.

In the opinion of the captain of the reconnaissance ship, if he really encountered such a situation, it is very likely that there is not only a problem with the bridge, but there is an 80% chance that the entire warship has been cut off from power just like the bridge.

But until just now, the ship had not been attacked, so it is impossible that the ship was damaged by the attack and eventually evolved into the current situation.
The captain of the reconnaissance ship angrily hammered the armrest of the captain's seat, then shouted angrily:

"Fuck! We were hacked!"

The other people on the bridge did not have as much experience as the captain, nor did they think as quickly as him, so after the power was cut off on the entire bridge, they fell into a daze until they heard the captain's roar.

But before the duty officer and the staff could say anything, the captain continued to shout:
"Talia? Talia?!!"

This is the name of the onboard control personality of this reconnaissance ship, but no matter how the captain called, this onboard control personality that disappeared during the power outage just now has not appeared.

At this point, even the dullest crew member could realize what was happening.

Although the shipboard control personality looks like a delicate "virtual beauty" on weekdays, she is actually responsible for maintaining and coordinating the operation of all subsystems of the ship, and a large number of automated equipment also operate under her supervision.

Even when a ship is in dock for maintenance and all the subsystems on board are offline, the shipboard control personality will never go offline. Instead, it will help guide the maintenance work.

On some ships that have been in service for a long time, the shipboard control personality may have only been restarted a few times during the past few decades when the memory was cleared. The rest of the time, it has been kept running, at most dormant for a while.

The reconnaissance ship that everyone is currently on is still on a combat mission, and it is even less likely that the shipborne control personality will go offline under such circumstances.

So there is only one answer left, that is, the reconnaissance ship was attacked by an unprecedented electronic warfare virus, which even forced the ship's control personality to go offline before it could take any countermeasures.
Although he had realized that there was a big problem with his ship, the captain of the reconnaissance ship still decided to struggle a little longer.

"Can you send out an emergency signal?"

"No." The officer on duty shook his head after hearing this. "Except for the ship's life support unit, all other subsystems are offline. We can't even open the screen on the workbench!"

"Leaving us a life support unit? This guy is pretty nice."

The captain of the reconnaissance ship said with a complicated expression, and then looked at the crew members who were tinkering in and out of the hatch.

"How is it? Can the hatch be opened?"

"Captain! All the hatches leading to the outside world on the bridge have been opened, but the heavy isolation door in the external passage has been lowered. Once it is locked, it is impossible to destroy it by manpower alone.

If we had heavy engineering equipment, we could think of a way, but the problem is that we are on the bridge, not the hangar."

The captain was not too surprised by this answer, and just thought to himself, "As expected."

Since this mysterious electronic warfare virus can silently infect the entire warship and force the ship's control personality to go offline, it is naturally "reasonable" to close these fireproof and explosion-proof heavy isolation doors in the ship's internal passages.

But for the crew of this reconnaissance ship, they were completely isolated in each cabin, unable to carry out even the most basic shipboard communications, so they did not know the current situation in other cabins.

"Emergency escape unit?"

"Access denied, unable to reboot!"

“Can the backup operating system be enabled?”

"No energy supply, can't be activated!"

"Can I get into the maintenance passage?"

"It's OK to inspect robots, but it's hard to inspect humans." "Break the door violently?"

"We might be able to try this method with the HCPs in the hangar, but forget about it on our bridge. We don't even have many decent weapons."

After he and the crew tried all the methods they could think of on the bridge and found no results, the captain of the reconnaissance ship finally gave up trying and asked everyone to sit down and rest to save oxygen and energy.

He knew that the people on the bridge would have to pray to God if they wanted to save themselves, so it would be safer to wait for other cabins to find a solution, or for the garrison fleet to discover the abnormality and send people to rescue.

Of course, the premise is that the garrison fleet will have the leisure to bring a "salvage boat" to this piece of rubble.——
On the other side, Kimmel on the flagship of the garrison fleet was actually nervously checking an encrypted communication channel from time to time to see if there was any new information.

This encrypted channel is the independent communication channel between the reconnaissance ship and the flagship. If the other party wants to issue an early warning or other information, it will be transmitted through this encrypted channel.

In addition to actively issuing early warnings, the reconnaissance ship will always be in a state of "passive reception" of information, so in theory, the safest situation is when there is no message in this encrypted channel.

But for some reason, looking at the empty encrypted channel, the garrison fleet commander, Major General Kimmel, felt a little uneasy.

"Am I too nervous? This isn't my first time in actual combat, so why am I starting to overthink?"

Major General Kimmel shook his head, quickly put the idea out of his mind, and then focused his energy on the current command.

After calming down, he asked, "How far are we from the enemies in area V6 now?"

"General 28 kilometers! According to the current relative speed, we expect to get a composite image in seventeen minutes and be able to engage the enemy in thirty-five minutes!" the intelligence officer replied.

"Very good. Continue to search for the enemy and monitor. By the way, how is the monitoring of the G9 area?"

Although he knew that the G9 area was being watched by his own secretly deployed reconnaissance ships, Kimmel still couldn't help but ask, as if he wanted to hear the "double insurance" answer he wanted to hear.

The intelligence officer's answer did not disappoint him.

"The second escort detachment on the flank conducted a round of reconnaissance 15 minutes ago, but more than 80% of the units in this round of reconnaissance did not send back radar echoes like before."

The intelligence officer looked at the information on the terminal and continued:
"The Second Drive and Escort Detachment believes that the enemy's bait may have reached the limit of its operating time, so it has gradually become ineffective. The number of scans in the previous few times has also been getting smaller and smaller each time."

"Understood. Send a message to the Second Drive and Escort Detachment. Do not let your guard down!"

"Yes! General."

The intelligence officer quickly followed the instructions and delivered the message, while Kimmel comforted himself in his mind:
"It's okay. The sentry didn't issue any warnings, and these unidentified targets did show the characteristics of long-distance decoys, which means that the G9 area is the direction of the feint attack to lure the enemy.
You have to stand firm in your opinion, Kimmel!"
-
"Report, the fleet's ships have activated radar wave cancellation in accordance with the previous deployment, and have completed the activation of optical camouflage. It is estimated that during the enemy's next round of long-range radar scanning, we will disappear from the enemy's radar control screen!"

"Report, the observation team reported receiving a light signal from the gravel area. The source of the signal is 'Polarized Light'. The content of the signal is: 'Pull out the sentry, ready to move!'"

"Report."

After hearing a series of reports from various combat positions on the bridge, especially the report that the Polarized Light had eliminated the enemy's secret sentry, Randall's expression relaxed a little.

To be honest, it was not until the Polaris sent out a signal just now that Randall, who lacked experience in fleet warfare, realized that the other side might have deployed secret sentries in this natural "shielded zone", and he had actually forgotten this before.

Fortunately, the Polarized Light that he had sent over successfully killed the enemy's sentry. Otherwise, the Third Task Force's attempt to launch a surprise attack from the flank of the garrison fleet's "blind spot" would have failed.
"Captain, how long will it take us to get into attack range?"

"Sir, judging from our current relative speed to the target fleet's track point, we will be within attack distance in seventeen minutes!"

Randall nodded after hearing this: "Notify the entire fleet to maintain the current formation and relative speed and prepare to enter the battle! After entering the attack range, each ship will immediately start to slow down, remove the optical camouflage and start the attack.

We must try to maximize the effect of this round of 'flanking strike' before the other fleet can react!"

(End of this chapter)