Chapter 288 Hunting

A small human fleet is sailing silently in the vast sky and among the stars.

In the command ship, the commander and several staff officers are discussing the mission.

"The coordinates sent by the Silver Alliance are here, but there is nothing here."

"Yes, the distance from the nearest star here is more than 10 trillion kilometers."

"Is the predator really here?"

The commander thought about it and finally said: "Be careful no matter what. Keep observing."

This fleet, which consists of only a dozen warships and a medium-sized supply ship, is carefully searching in this airspace.

It is time to change shifts. According to the normal process, the commander needs to make a summary of his 10-hour work on duty, leave a record, hand over to the deputy commander, and then he can go to rest.

He retrieved all the observation records of the ten hours and began to review them for the last time.

In the process, he suddenly noticed something.

The detection radar detection record showed that three hours ago, a very small peak appeared in the radar wave signal.

This kind of thing is actually not uncommon. It could be caused by signal interference, interstellar radiation interference, interstellar dust cloud interference, etc. Even some stellar activities, some violent physical processes occurring in distant deep space, such as supernova explosions and black hole jets, may cause this phenomenon.

It did not even reach the warning threshold, so it was directly ignored by the detection team.

But for the experienced commander, it seemed to have some unusual meaning.

He clearly remembered that the radar detection record four hours ago seemed to have such a peak.

He began to look through the previous records, and looked through all the records within the past ten days. He was shocked to find that within ten days, the peaks with this nature appeared more than 20 times.

If it was interference, it would be unlikely that the nature was so similar. If it was not interference, then...

Woo wow wow wow...

The shrill alarm sounded in every spacecraft. The soldiers who were originally distracted by the long work instantly cheered up.

The captains of each ship rushed back to the command room, and the fleet leaders immediately gathered in the flagship control room.

"I suspect we have found the trace of the predator..."

After further detailed analysis and targeted detection, a miniature probe quietly flew in a certain direction.

With the help of the faint light released by thousands of stars and the use of high-definition low-light cameras, the probe finally sent back a very amazing picture.

In the vast space, a huge "flat plate" was quietly suspended.

This flat plate is composed of two smaller rectangular flat plates, which merged into a larger flat plate. There is a clear dividing line between the two flat plates.

Each small flat plate is more than 300 meters long and 150 meters wide, with a total area of ​​45,000 square meters. The two pieces together are more than 90,000 square meters.

In the middle of the two flat plates, there is a relatively small mass-like object, which is more than 20 meters long and about 5 meters wide.

From this mass-like object in the middle, a large number of vertical and horizontal branches-like things extend out, penetrating the entirety of the two huge flat plates.

"What kind of monster is this..."

Looking at this scene, the commander and the fleet leaders couldn't help holding their breath.

This thing is really beyond people's imagination. It seems that only some monsters in myths and ghost stories can be compared.

"This... is the predator?"

The discovery of the long-distance exploration fleet soon reached Han Yang. After discussion, the team was strictly ordered to be cautious and not to approach, and only allowed to observe carefully through small unmanned detection equipment.

"Its two huge wings should be light sails."

After some analysis, the scientific consultant assigned to the galaxy defense system came to this conclusion: "It is very thin, and the thinnest part can even reach the nanometer level. In this case, even if the light sail is so huge, the overall mass is very low. In fact, we believe that the total mass of the two huge light sails is less than one-third of its body.

Light also has pressure. These two huge light sails can use the pressure of light, as well as the pressure of various cosmic radiation and cosmic dust, to gather a little into a lot and achieve a change in their own state of motion.

If light is compared to wind, then every star in the universe is a powerful hair dryer, blowing strong winds in all directions. Different stars With different blowing powers and directions, under the thousands of stars, by changing the angle of the light sail, you can fly flexibly in the universe.

Although the light pressure is very small, after hundreds or even thousands of years of accumulation, it is possible to accelerate its own speed to sub-light speed...

However, combined with the public information of the Silver Alliance, we believe that for these predators, light pressure navigation should only be a means of long-distance interstellar navigation. The rapid turn in a short time should be propelled by nuclear fusion or nuclear fission. The source of fuel is collected from the universe through the light sail.

They have extremely strong concealment. In fact, if we are not in interstellar space, but in the near-stellar space with strong interference, we should not be able to find them so easily.

According to Silver Alliance data, there should be at least 100,000 predators in this space, but so far, we have only discovered less than ten..."

Predators are a large category that generally refers to social non-intelligent life forms that have evolved through the evolution of life, have powerful bodies and interstellar navigation capabilities, and feed on cellular structure life.

Based on all the information, the scientific advisory team finally gave this predator an official code name.

Pterosaur.

Han Yang also made up his mind.

"Try to catch one and see, life or death"

"yes."

In the distant space, this combat team quietly dispersed their formation. With an order, hundreds of electromagnetic cannons fired simultaneously.

The projectiles that hit the light sail easily penetrated it, but the projectiles that hit the pterosaur's body were directly reflected and burst into flames. Suffering a sudden blow, the next moment, the pterosaur seemed to suddenly wake up. The two huge light sails suddenly shrunk rapidly, and finally shrank to only more than 200 square meters, which was dozens of times smaller.

The next moment, fierce flames sprayed out from the light sail, pushing the pterosaur, which had been extremely shrunk but still very large, towards a Stardust-class battleship.

"Maneuver to avoid!"

The battle-experienced human warrior did not hesitate at all and immediately evaded. But the pterosaur also adjusted its direction, and its short-term burst of maneuverability seemed to be faster than that of the Stardust-class battleship. In the end, it slammed into the Stardust-class battleship at an extremely fast speed.

The armor, which was thick enough to withstand the bombardment of electromagnetic gun projectiles, had a huge dent under this impact. Inside the battleship, the huge overload pressure made the soldiers dizzy and even vomited blood.

The surrounding warships opened fire together, and the pterosaur seemed to be in a state of extreme anger, crashing around in the dark space, and even pounced directly on a Stardust-class warship.

It is still larger than the Stardust-class battleship at this moment. The wings spread out, even completely covering the Stardust-class battleship.

Even though they were mentally tough, being directly caught by the pterosaur this time, the soldiers still felt a little fear in their hearts. However, he did not act in a panic, but still calmly controlled the electromagnetic gun and laser cannon, and fired directly at close range.

The soldiers on the other battleships clearly saw that the pterosaur was furious and began to tear the battleship armor with its fangs and claws. The soldiers in the battleship heard continuous creaking sounds and the harsh sound of metal twisting.

At this moment, even though he was far away in the solar system, Han Yang, who was watching the battle in real time, couldn't help but have a thought in his mind: "So powerful? Can you really tear apart the armor of a battleship with your flesh and blood?"

Once the armor is torn, the soldiers in the battleship will lose all possibility of survival. At the same time, it's time for me to adjust my expectations for the pterosaur's combat power...

But fortunately, this pterosaur failed to tear apart the armor of the Stardust-class battleship. However, all the exposed equipment without heavy armor protection suffered.

Electromagnetic guns, thrusters, radars, telescopes, etc. were all damaged in the violent tearing. For a time, this Stardust-class battleship lost its power, attack power and observation ability, and completely lost its combat capability.

Faced with this "iron can", the pterosaur finally had no choice but to give up and instead planned to attack the other warships. But the other battleships didn't give it a chance. Under another volley, its wings were torn apart, its body covered in tough scales was also penetrated, and there was no movement.

But at this moment, the commander saw from the radar that in the vast deep sky, at the moment when the pterosaur died, at least tens of thousands of signal fluctuations appeared at the same time.

Even with his psychological quality, he couldn't help but feel numb at this moment.

"This is a stab in the old man's nest... retreat, retreat, retreat immediately!"

Three battleships moved forward, one dragged the pterosaur with its mechanical arm, and the other two dragged the powerless battleship to the left and right, and the entire fleet escaped at the same time.

Tens of thousands of "stars" appeared simultaneously in the dark space. At least tens of thousands of pterosaurs activated their short-term rapid maneuvering capabilities in an attempt to catch up with this human fleet.

"Go! Go quickly! Maneuver at full power!"

The commander wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.

Until those tens of thousands of "stars" disappeared, the fleet did not stop, but escaped at least hundreds of thousands of kilometers.

After confirming that the threat was lifted, the soldiers breathed a sigh of relief.

Now looking back at the starry sky, people can see that there is no difference between that starry sky and the rest.

Equally quiet, equally vast and magnificent. Like nothing happened there.

If it weren't for the huge pterosaur corpse still behind the spacecraft, the soldiers would have simply thought that what happened before was their hallucination. (End of chapter)