From cannon fodder to sweeping across thousands of stars.

Chapter 74 Life-Sacrificing Assault

"High electric field and high magnetic field response detected! It is determined that the enemy's heavy particle cannon is charging!"

The slightly nervous voice of the tactical information coordinator sounded from the bridge of the Kraken-class battleship Equality, the flagship of the task force composed of the remaining federal soldiers.

Although he has served on this battleship for almost five years, today's battle is the first time he has experienced a true large-scale fleet battle.

"Each ship maintains the adaptive power output of the deflection force field. After the destroyer and frigate are attacked, they will adjust their position to avoid subsequent attacks while maintaining the course normal."

The voice of Commodore Duwell, commander of the task force, came from behind.

His instructions were also transmitted to other ships in the fleet in real time through data links.

Different from the command model of the Imperial fleet, although the core of the fleet command of the Federation Navy is also the fleet commander, this role will often conduct detailed tactical command, rather than leaving it to the tactical staff group under his command.

There was no distinction between these two command models in the last war between the Federation and the Empire.

Therefore, in the many years since the signing of the peace agreement, both parties have continued their command traditions without major changes.

A few seconds after Commodore Duwell's order was issued, the main guns of each ship in the Imperial fleet also completed charging.

In a large-scale fleet battle, each ship's attack target is discussed by the shipboard control personality in a 'meeting'.

After figuring out the course path of the federal task force, the controller of the Dawn Excalibur immediately held a "short meeting" with the controllers of other warships and assigned the attack targets of each ship.

Of course, this 'meeting' is just an anthropomorphic description. In fact, this firepower distribution is completed the moment the trajectory is solved.

A burst of flashes of light appeared in the target area in front of the federal fleet.

Immediately afterwards, the bismuth alloy projectiles that were impacted by the plasma flow released by the battleship's fusion reactor into a flow of heavy metal particles were accelerated to nearly one percent of the speed of light through the heavy particle cannon acceleration channel on the battleship's axis, wrapped in a directional magnetic field. , spanning a distance of nearly 30,000 kilometers, hit the face of the federal task force.

The federal fleet was arranged in a spindle formation during the high-speed assault. The warships on the outside of the formation were almost simultaneously wrapped in a dense layer of electric snakes.

Including the flagship "Equality", the bridge windows of all the hit battleships burst out with dazzling white light.

The moment the shipboard controller detected that the amount of light was too high, he lowered the amount of light entering the optical sensor.

Therefore, from the perspective of the people on the bridge, while the ship was shaking violently, a flash of light appeared on the porthole for less than half a second.

The moment the stream of heavy metal particles hit the deflection force field, it was twisted, disintegrated, and scattered.

These twisted jets are also dangerous. They will scatter to other surrounding warships in unpredictable trajectories by the shipboard control personality.

But under the condition that the combat distance is strictly maintained, these metal jets can still be withstood by the battleship's layered armor.

The confrontation phase of the fleet battle is a very pure power competition. Calculated solely from the number of warships on both sides, the Imperial fleet clearly exceeds the Federation fleet in terms of overall power.

The result is that the attack coefficient of this salvo of the Imperial Fleet has exceeded the defense threshold of the deflection field of all warships of the Federation Fleet.

Three Hydra heavy cruisers were sunk after being targeted by Imperial battleships.

Some high-speed destroyers and frigates whose deflection field power was not high enough were directly destroyed after the deflection field generator was overloaded.

A Jackdaw-class high-speed destroyer on the periphery of the fleet, after resisting three destroyer-class heavy particle cannon shots, the deflection field generator was directly overloaded, and was subsequently taken offline for protection under the operation of the shipboard control personality.

In order to support the operation of the deflection force field generator during the recent attack, the instantaneous power of the battleship's fusion reactor exceeded its capacity by 25%, and the main energy supply channel immediately experienced voltage abnormalities.

At the same time, although the bow part of the ship that was attacked was protected by a deflection force field, the high temperature generated by the heavy metal ion jet still caused the destroyer's front-stage liquid helium cooling system to issue an 'abnormal working condition' warning. In this case, the captain of this high-speed destroyer sweated profusely and ordered to switch to the backup power supply, allocate the main power to the cooling system, and let the main fusion furnace reduce the power to prevent a worse situation.

The warship's weapons control and fire control units were also temporarily shut down, and the entire ship suspended its counterattack procedures.

Following the captain's order, the helmsman controlled the destroyer to adjust its attitude and maneuver toward the rear of a nearby heavy cruiser while keeping its course normal line unchanged.

There is nothing inappropriate about this series of actions, and it can even be called a relatively calm emergency response.

But unfortunately, the imperial fleet opposite them fired two salvos this time.

At this time, under the infrared sensors, the front sections of all warships in the Imperial Fleet were all red.

A large amount of liquid helium coolant was injected to forcefully cool down the heavy particle cannon that had just been fired.

Although under normal procedures, you should wait for the acceleration channel to cool down before firing to prevent the heavy particle cannon from malfunctioning.

But under the 'double salvo' order from the flagship, the captains of these warships just waited until the temperature dropped below the red line before giving the order to fire again.

Therefore, less than ten seconds after the first salvo ended, the second torrent of heavy metal particles once again swept across the federal fleet in the high-speed assault.

The Jackdaw-class destroyer, which was evading behind the heavy patrol of friendly forces, ran out of luck.

Two heavy metal particle beams hit the rear half of its hull.

The raging energy torrent directly shredded the rear laminated armor, and the internal alloy bulkhead was also directly melted.

The damage control personnel who were on their way to the main fusion reactor and superconducting battery stack happened to walk onto the beam, which evaporated into several plasma clouds in an instant without any pain.

Such tragic situations happened all over the task force's formation.

In this round of double salvoes, the Empire's Eighth Expeditionary Strike Group made perfect use of its own firepower advantage and directly sank 9 Federation warships, including three Hydra-class heavy cruisers that were used as the firepower output of the Federation fleet.

Looking at the holographic image in the center of the bridge, there is a 16.8% loss rate and a 32.7% damage rate.

The expression of Commodore Duwell, the commander of the task force, did not change significantly.

Such a loss rate had actually been predicted by the shipboard control personality at the pre-war meeting.

As a mediocre general in the federal navy, he does not have the ability to change this result.

Otherwise, when he was nearly 60 years old, he would not be just a mobile fleet commander who was ordered to station in the edge system.

But even so, the other commanders who came to join still chose to implement this combat plan and completely obeyed Duwell's command.

Among these federal troops, there are not many "patriotic officers" who are unable to flee to the edge of the galaxy without even returning their hands when their country is invaded.

Naturally, there were voices of opposition among the crew, but after a few leaders were labeled as 'escapers' and 'disturbing the morale of the troops' and then thrown into the cold space, the voices of opposition disappeared.

Seeing that the development trend of this raid was not much different from what was speculated at the pre-war meeting, Brigadier General Duwell, who had already put on his spacesuit, coldly issued a new order:

"The course normal of the entire fleet remains unchanged, advancing three."

　Thank you in advance for your tips, monthly votes and recommendation votes~

　　I can only say that I don’t have much experience, so I wrote several chapters of battle without realizing it.

　　I guess I won’t be able to change this habit for a while. 0.0

　　Let me give you a final preview. The first volume will end at about 20 words, and each subsequent volume will probably be between 20 and 30 words.

　　

　

(End of this chapter)