Will the out-of-control servitor meet the cosmic cat?

Over the past week, the Extinction Fleet has been continuously using gravity to dive to eat away at the defense platforms around humans. According to the calculations of the headquarters, the combat effectiveness of the defense platforms in the entire star field has dropped by about 22%. If it were not for the temporary drag from Mars That number could even increase to around 40% if the platform supplements—and even then, that equates to a loss of about a quarter of their platform firepower.

Of course, if you can wait until the reinforcements arrive, let alone a quarter of the platform, it doesn't matter even if you take the entire platform network out of the Gibraltar Fortress and give them to eat.

But obviously, this is impossible.

The final decisive battle is coming.

Looking at the shocking red hostile mark on the star map, everyone thought so.

Launching an attack at this point in time is indeed within human expectations—in order to consume as much human vitality as possible before the decisive battle, the extinct omnics will naturally hope to have as much time as possible to erode the periphery, but due to reinforcements Without the existence of the Red Fleet, it is impossible for them to extend this "pre-war preparation phase" indefinitely. Therefore, launching a decisive battle on the eve of the arrival of the red fleet has naturally become the best choice.

If it is launched too early, the consumption of the defense platform will be insufficient, which will lead to increased battle damage in frontal combat. After all, for the extinct omnic, it is not enough to win the battle with humans, it must also win The battle with the Cat League - if after the destruction of the human fleet, its losses are too great to win the battle with the Cat League, it means that it still lost.

And if it is launched too late and is successfully dragged by humans until the reinforcements arrive, it means that the "surprise" element of this war will no longer exist, and will be replaced by a head-on confrontation between two evenly matched fleets in orbit.

Obviously, if there is a decisive battle here, the human-cat alliance will have an obvious and huge advantage. Therefore, for the extinct omnics, they would rather lose a little more, and it is absolutely impossible to give humans a trace that can be dragged to the cat alliance. Chance.

Launching a general attack at this moment is completely in line with their previous predictions - from this, it can be seen that the two extinct omnics will most likely not engage in any more conspiracy with them.

Everything behaves as expected and nothing unexpected happens.

"There are still 4 hours before the Cat League arrives at the entrance of the wormhole."

Adjutant reported.

"Okay, I see." The commander-in-chief nodded slightly, "For the time being, don't worry about their side, anyway, they won't be able to help for a while, just report again when they pass through the cave."

"understand!"

Although there are still four hours to go through the hole, the wormhole they passed through is not the one that is less than a thousand kilometers away from the fortress and leads to the hinterland of human beings, but the one that comes from the planetary system of the extinct unit. , is located at the 4th Lagrangian point of the iron-core parent star and its satellite, or, it is the wormhole on the L[-] point.

It is a full 2 kilometers away from the G139-40d-b satellite. Considering that the L4 point is a point in the same orbit as the satellite, this means that this point is relatively stationary with the satellite.

That is to say, the fleet can’t just rush straight along the shortest distance—neither the acceleration nor the remaining DV is allowed—but it must first leave the current orbit, leave this gravitational balance point and enter the “free space”, and then Take the transfer orbit to go to the satellite.

Even if the cat alliance fleet has adjusted the speed and attitude on the side of the wormhole in advance, saving a lot of time and DV consumption for orbit change, but even so, according to Hong's calculation, the DV used in the current state does not exceed 50% of the remaining DV. Under normal circumstances, this process also takes at least 1.5 Earth days.

Humans have no objection to this. Although more DVs are used, this time can be further compressed, but this is obviously not worth the loss--use more DVs, and the arrival time can be faster, but at most That is to say, the level reduced from 1.5 days to 1 day cannot be compressed faster.

However, for this 0.5-day acceleration, the cat alliance fleet needs to pay a huge amount of consumption, reducing the remaining working fluid of the fleet to an extremely dangerous level, which will obviously seriously reduce the combat capability of the fleet. After all, it is different from the previous Expendable combat, this battle will be a real decisive battle.

In other words, this will be a fight to the end.

In this way, the working fluid will become an extremely important factor. Afterburner needs it, and the overloaded main gun also needs it. Especially when the battleship is fighting until the heat sink is completely lost and the water is exhausted, the more working fluid is left, the more the battleship will use. The longer you can fight.

For this reason, the humans and the cat alliance's cake layer have communicated in private - if the human side's battle situation is not good, and it is destined to not persist until reinforcements arrive, the cat alliance fleet will stop driving. If you run for one day, you will run for another day, and use the saved working fluid for combat.

Of course, no one would admit that they had said such things.

Although from a tactical point of view, this is obviously a profitable business-instead of driving the afterburner to rescue the human fleet that has completely lost its combat capability, it is better to save the working fluid to strengthen the still full-stacked fleet. The combat capability of the cat alliance fleet.

Anyone with some common sense of space warfare will understand this.

But it was never a tactical question.

In fact, if we really start from the perspective of winning the war, the best choice for mankind at this time is actually to avoid the war, that is, to completely abandon the defense of the wormhole, withdraw all the fleet to the low orbit of G2-139d-b, and rely on the planet Delay time for the bunker and preserve vitality.

For this reason, it doesn't matter even if they lose the fortress and all the defense platforms. As long as they can join the cat alliance fleet, the combat power ratio will immediately become evenly matched, and the winning rate will approach 50%.

Compared with letting the human fleet wear down the enemy's strength as much as possible at first, the cat alliance fleet's return mode can increase its winning rate by at least 15%, and the risk is also greatly reduced.

But humans can't do that.

If the people behind the wormhole know that in order to "preserve the vitality", their fleet gave up the wormhole without firing a single shot and let the enemy rush into the hinterland of mankind to wreak havoc, then even if the battle is won in the end, human civilization will be destroyed. It's almost over.

At the very least, all the countries present are finished.

A government that is not trusted by the people has no possibility of continuation.

Therefore, no matter what the reason, it is absolutely impossible for them to back down.

But on this basis, they also need to consider the future of mankind-this is why they communicated with Hong privately. The human fleet needs to fight for the people behind them, but if the reinforcements are destined to be too late, instead of letting the cat alliance The fleet that can affect the outcome is wasted on afterburner, it is better to use it to improve the winning rate of the entire camp.

However, they also know that if the battle situation is really unfavorable, they don't need to say it, and the Cat League itself will take the initiative to choose to save working materials.

They are aliens, and they don't have any responsibilities to humans.

Moreover, as soldiers of the Cat League, if they want to be responsible to their people, what they should do most is to increase the overall winning rate of the entire organic camp, which is the best way to ensure the safety of the people of the Cat League.

Moreover, as a member of the camp, humans will naturally enjoy this effect.

Both humans and cats can see this clearly.

But even though they know that whether they say it or not, the cat alliance will make a choice, but they still need to say it, because this is the same reason that the human fleet chose to stick to the wormhole.

It's a matter of attitude.

...

Under the strong light of the stars, after about 5 hours of sailing, the Extinction Fleet finally arrived at a position [-] kilometers away from the fortress.

That is to say, the position that is about to enter the range of the battleship at the forefront of the position.

"The current relative speed of the enemy fleet is 1.8 kilometers per second, and it will enter the range of the main fleet in about 14 minutes and 30 seconds."

The high-sensitivity lidar is sending back various data of the enemy fleet in real time, and the giant detection array mounted on the space station is working at maximum power to detect as much as possible the electromagnetic artillery shells that the enemy may launch—even though the current distance , a low-speed warhead with a speed of only a dozen kilometers or even a few kilometers per second wants to accurately hit a warship that can maneuver irregularly and has a frontal cross-section of only 2400 square meters.

But just like the design idea of ​​the "Ou Hulu" class tactical fire support ship of the Cat League, these low-speed warheads have never thought about hitting accurately from the beginning. If they are on a trajectory that can hit the enemy ship, then they will either have to pay for working fluid to maneuver sideways to avoid the ballistic trajectory, or they will have to eat a metal warhead that travels thousands of meters per second.

It may not consume a lot of working fluid to avoid a warhead, but as long as the fighting time is long enough, these consumptions will become the last straw that overwhelms the camel sooner or later.

"In 14 minutes, good, let the fleets prepare..."

"Wait, there seems to be something wrong?"

Before he could finish his order, the orbital tactical planning officer on the side suddenly spoke.

Obviously, interrupting when the chief officer is giving orders is a very wrong thing most of the time-interrupting when the immediate boss is giving orders, what do you want to do?Do you still see me as a leader?

"What's wrong?"

However, the commander-in-chief didn't pay much attention to this point—the front-line combat department didn't have so many red tapes. Compared to this, the subordinate who had worked with him for many years suddenly made a noise at this time, and he must have discovered something that he thought was wrong.

The orbit planning officer also knew that his voice was abnormal at the moment, so he cut the long story short and went straight to the point:

"What about their missiles?"

Volume Two: The War Against Extinction: Chapter 130 Six The Snipe and the Clam Fight, and the Fisherman Wins

"missile..."

Yes, what about their missiles?

Everyone was shocked.

They didn't realize such an important matter!

"Look what's going on!"

he ordered.

Because logically speaking, even if their headquarters is too busy to remember this kind of thing for a while, the staff should remind them!

Even if the staff has forgotten, there are also those from the supercomputing department, from the rear expert group, from the weak artificial intelligence, and even from the frontline fleet commanders. Everyone of them may raise this question when conveying information. question.

Why didn't it happen to be discovered by an officer in the command who planned the orbit until the engagement was imminent?

However, no matter why it was not discovered, and no matter how many loopholes in the decision-making system of the Space Force were exposed in this matter, at least now they should pay more attention to why the other party did not launch missiles like before.

"That's right, there are missile ships following, and according to the report from the photoelectric department, these missile ships have been refilled with ammunition before."

"Then why didn't..."

"Sir, it's an emergency!"

His words were interrupted again.

But this time there is no need to say much—the four words of emergency are enough to explain the reason for the subordinate's interruption.

"Observed that the enemy fleet is starting to jump!"

"what?"

"And according to the report from the Ministry of Optoelectronics, the light of this transition is red, which means that the enemy fleet is transitioning away from us!"

"?!"

Jump away from them?

Could it be that he was worried that he would not be able to fight and ran away?

At the moment when they first heard the news, most of the people present thought so in their hearts—after all, if this kind of situation really happened, it would be called a great happy event.

Although even if the enemy retreats, the situation of the war will only return to evenness, but it doesn't matter. For today's human beings, it is possible to conduct a battle that can be "evenly matched" under the suppression of the mobility of the group transition. , is already an unimaginably huge advantage.

However, it is clear that this is impossible.

In less than 20 seconds, the fortress confirmed the jumping point of the enemy fleet—next to a dense asteroid group about 139 kilometers away from the G4-db-L20000 wormhole.

It is said to be a group, but there are actually only 6 in total, and the largest one has a long axis of more than 400 meters. After all, there is not a battleship captain.

Indeed, in terms of mass, the mass of an asteroid is casually hundreds of millions of tons, which is very different from a battleship whose overall density is not as good as water, but from the outside, these asteroids are really just " It's just a "small" planet. If the jump to the asteroid belt is just to let these asteroids block the figure of the battleship, then the result may be a bit disappointing.

However, the average interval between these six asteroids is only about 300 kilometers, which is indeed dense. Obviously, such a high density shows that it is probably not natural.

In fact, before human beings occupied G2-139d-b, it was an important source of raw materials for the iron core parent star, responsible for providing material support to the industrial port that used to operate at point L4.

Of course, after humans invaded the iron core mother galaxy, these factories were naturally abandoned, and considering the distance factor, humans did not choose to take over these asteroids, but just built a few hidden listening stations on them—— Now they regret not putting some nuclear bombs on it, so that they can only watch the other side regroup their troops instead of making any meaningful moves.

"Report to your boss immediately!"

...

Due to communication delays, by the time Hong on Catus got the news, it had been 10 minutes since they completed their leap.

In other words, the "latest situation" she sees at this moment is actually just the past that the cat alliance fleet "has" experienced 10 minutes ago. At that time, it was already 20 minutes later.

Perhaps for the command at the strategic level, the 20-minute delay seems insignificant. After all, in conventional civilization, "making decisions" itself is a process that takes at least several hours or even days, and strategic maneuvers and transfers are not a day. A job that can be done in two days, so a small delay doesn't affect it.

However, for tactical level command, 20 minutes is a completely, completely unacceptable horror delay-if this fleet is an automated unmanned fleet controlled by weak AI, things will definitely become very bad .

But unfortunately, Hong refused.

Because she stuffed a pup into the fleet.

"After discussing with people from the Federation, we agreed that the current situation is basically the same as Plan No. 226, so we decided to make tactical arrangements on the basis of Plan No. 226, and have already let your mother, your split body, start to follow the plan. The matters here are pre-war preparations."

In the video, Stuart, who rarely changed into military uniform, reported this.

"In addition, we also contacted the Human Space Force at the same time to let their fleet set sail as soon as possible, but they said they need to confirm with their superiors, so they haven't given a definite answer yet."

Hong looked up the No. 226 plan. The design goal of this plan is to deal with the situation that the main fleet of the exterminated unit is jumping over the face when one's own large fleet passes through the wormhole in batches. Obviously, this is roughly the same as the situation they have encountered so far. unanimous.

Although for some reason, the opponent did not directly lead the main force to jump to a direct firefight distance of less than 10000 kilometers as Hong expected, so as to end the battle in the shortest possible time and avoid being pinched by the human fleet coming out of the fortress, but at least There is nothing wrong with the general idea, and there is no problem in making arrangements according to this plan.

"Ah, very good."

By the way, Stewart, who is wearing a Space Force military uniform, is even more beautiful than she imagined—this is different from the red one, because the red body appearance actually tends to be weak, so when When she wears serious-style clothing such as military uniforms and government uniforms, she emphasizes the sense of contrast more, the feeling that she is speaking in a serious manner but feels very cute.

And Stuart has that kind of... heroic temperament?Just standing there can make people feel very reliable and trustworthy.

However, it might just be because she is his own cub. After all, there are many women who fit this temperament on Jeffery's side, but Hong doesn't have such a strange feeling when looking at them.

Of course, this is also inseparable from the distorted character of Red Chef.

"be careful."

At the end of the communication, Hong exhorted softly.

Although according to her calculations, with their fleet configuration, it is not difficult to protect Zhou Quan before the arrival of the human fleet, but as the mother of the cubs, she will still be a little worried after all.

After all, in front of the barrier of the speed of light, she who is far away from Katus can do nothing.

"You must win."

...

Compared with Hong's orderly response, there was a little problem on the human side.

This question itself is very easy to solve, and only needs a "yes" or "no" to answer, but it is such a simple question that has hindered the human fleet from sailing at this moment.

"going or not?"

For most normal people, the first impression faced with this kind of question must be - go, do you still need to ask?

This is the reinforcements who came to help them. Now that the reinforcements from the allies have come from thousands of miles away, they are blocked by the enemy only one step away from them. Hiding in the fortress?