From cannon fodder to sweeping across thousands of stars.

Chapter 72 The task force begins to enter the scene

Since the location where Marquis Ascania was just now was not far from the bridge, he and Raphael returned to the bridge not long after the warning sounded.

"Captain arrives on the bridge!"

After seeing the Marquis enter the bridge, the first mate stood up from his second seat and saluted.

The Marquis nodded without saying anything and sat directly on the captain's seat decorated with dragon-wing sculptures.

"What's the situation now?"

"Sir, the space collapse early warning terminal we deployed three minutes ago detected the phenomenon of space collapse, and the mass detector of the peripheral reconnaissance ship also detected abnormal mass growth."

A combat officer on duty on the bridge reported the situation while opening the virtual star map and marking the corresponding areas.

"No other friendly units reported this space collapse phenomenon in advance, so our preliminary judgment is that a certain fleet of the Federation is leaving the jump. Currently, the long-wave radars and composite reconnaissance units of each ship are searching the target airspace."

After hearing the report from the battle staff, the Marquis of Ascania fell into thinking.

The jump of one or two battleships will not trigger the mass detector of the reconnaissance ship, causing it to issue a warning of 'abnormal mass growth'.

Achieving this level of quality growth requires at least the size of a squadron.

It is impossible for friendly forces not to report a jump in the size of the squadron, so the fleet that appears at this juncture can only come from the Federation.

Based on the hypothesis derived from this inference, the Marquis believed that no matter how incompetent the federal fleet commander was, he would not be stupid enough to use a squadron to attack their main fleet.

Therefore, the size of the opponent's fleet should not be much smaller than theirs, and there will be at least a few capital ships stationed there.

"Pass my order, the fleet enters combat status, stop orbital operations and recall all orbital attack ships!"

Marquis Ascania firmly grasped the dragon claw decoration on the armrest of the captain's seat with his right hand and ordered loudly:

"In addition to the peripheral reconnaissance fleet maintaining surveillance of the target area, other squadrons came to assemble immediately."

"The ships in Lansford Harbor stopped decoding the space elevator and immediately implemented emergency departure procedures. This ship and other ships in the fleet began to maneuver toward the port to cover them until the rendezvous was completed."

Having said this, the Marquis looked at Lansford Military Port in the distance through the 'panoramic porthole' and couldn't help but sigh.

He thought that when he led the main fleet of the Eighth Expeditionary Strike Group to launch a raid on Lansford Military Port some time ago, the federal garrison fleet also hurriedly left the port to fight.

“The tide has really turned.”

As the Marquis of Ascania issued the order, the bridge lights of the Dawn Sword dimmed. At the same time, the combat command center diagonally below the bridge immediately transmitted the combat instructions to the surrounding ships through the data link.

And use them as "signal relay stations" to radiate combat instructions to the entire fleet.

The Imperial warships that were originally stationed scattered in the Robert IV synchronous orbit lit up the plasma propulsion arrays at their tails. Driven by the faint blue light, they began to gather like schools of fish in the deep sea.

The laminated armor was quickly lowered on the outside of the side windows of each ship and entered combat mode.

The Imperial battleships and heavy cruisers in Lansford Harbor immediately started the emergency departure procedure after receiving the combat order.

After disconnecting from the port and allowing the shipboard control personality to regain full computing power, the helmsmen of some heavy cruisers showed superb and bold skills. They even completed a 180° U-turn while leaving the berth.

These steel behemoths weighing hundreds of thousands of tons to millions of tons, under the auxiliary control of the shipboard controller, kept an extremely dangerous distance of several hundred meters and kept sailing out of the port.

Like a poisonous snake that had ended its hibernation, it slowly poked its head out of its burrow.

Just as the Marquis of Ascania was looking at the slowly rising fleet assembly progress on the command terminal, he was thinking about how to deal with it next.

The tactical information coordinator's voice sounded through the amplifier in the bridge:

"Long wave radar found the target!" The attention of everyone on the bridge was attracted at this moment.

"The celestial north pole is 116 degrees, the ecliptic is 32 degrees, and the angle between the ecliptic and the ecliptic is 20 degrees. Traces of an unknown fleet were found!"

The ultra-high-power long-wave radar equipped on the reconnaissance ship discovered a fleet that had completed its jump in the previous rounds of continuous frequency hopping scans.

But when they continued to scan, they lost traces of the other party. It was obvious that this fleet immediately started radar wave cancellation after detecting the radar waves.

Although the tactical information coordinator reported an 'unknown fleet', everyone on the bridge knew that this was a federal fleet.

"Huh, dogmatic and rigid response"

Marquis Ascania snorted disdainfully.

In single-ship or small-scale fleet battles, since both sides will use optical camouflage, there is no problem in using radar wave cancellation to conceal themselves.

But in a fleet-scale confrontation, this is purely unnecessary.

As long as the general direction is confirmed by a round of long-wave radar scanning, a large number of reconnaissance ships in the fleet will scan the area through composite reconnaissance units.

As for the battleship in the cosmic background, not to mention the heat emitted by itself, the infrared characteristics of the plasma propulsion array and heat dissipation plate are very obvious.

Not to mention a fleet that had just finished its jump and gathered together. Under infrared and ultraviolet observation equipment, it was as conspicuous as a pile of fire in the dark night.

Therefore, in the large-scale fleet battles that have been conducted in the past, the two warring parties almost always discovered the opponent's position at the same time, then continued to test and approach, and finally started boring exchanges of fire after entering the combat distance.

The Marquis's judgment was not wrong. Not long after the long-wave radar lost the opponent's trace, the infrared observation equipment re-captured the target.

On the main floating projection screen in the center of the bridge, the converted infrared image showed a dense pile of long strips of heat sources.

At the same time, the tactical information coordination officer’s voice sounded again:

"Coordinate data updated!

天球北极116度02分、黄道32度01分、黄道面夹角20度01分，直线距离125038公里，红外、光学侦查单元捕捉到目标舰队，数量89！

The infrared signature was compared with the database data and determined to be the Federation fleet.

The number of Kraken-class battleships is 7, the number of Hydra-class heavy cruisers is 29, the number of Jackdaw-class destroyers is 36, and the number of remaining frigates is "

The face of the Marquis changed for the first time. He did not expect that the sudden appearance of the federal fleet would reach such a scale.

On the other side, the tactical information coordination officer's report continued.

"The relative speed between the enemy and ourselves is 80 kilometers per second and continues to increase. It is expected to enter the combat range in 18 minutes!"

Marquis Ascania frowned. He had roughly guessed the next move of the federal fleet.

Because the ships of the Eighth Expeditionary Strike Group are basically parked near the space elevator.

Therefore, the opponent most likely wants to use the speed advantage after leaving the jump to quickly pass through and conduct a raid.

This is also a commonly used tactic when the weaker side has a speed advantage when the strength of the two sides is imbalanced.

After thinking for a moment, the Marquis calmly issued the order.

"We have lost the opportunity, Raphael, order the squadron to speed up its assembly, and at the same time start organizing fleet defense operations!"

"As you command, my lord!"

(End of this chapter)