Chapter 221 Amber's Fangs

"Attention, the entire Atlas fleet, the special 'dissuasion' operation has officially begun!"

Sitting on the captain's seat of the Hermes, Cleeves suppressed the inexplicable sense of humor in his heart and gave a serious order to start action.

The helmsmen of the five battleships also simultaneously pushed the bells to the 'forward three' position.

The blue tail of the battleship's main propulsion array is getting longer and longer as the power continues to increase. On the display screen at the helmsman's position, the relative speed value to the same target point is also getting higher and higher.

At the same time that Atlas's fleet began to take action, the commander of the Timler family fleet located in the 'center' of the battlefield also made a decision.

"The entire fleet, adjust the axis clockwise, lock the enemy ships in the right hemisphere, and prepare to start the attack."

"All HCP squadrons are dispatched, and half of the HCPs are assigned to protect the rear hemisphere of their respective battleships to intercept enemy assaults! The remaining HCPs follow the battleships to launch an attack!"

The Timler family's fleet once again fine-tuned its formation and began to adjust the axis of the battleships, aiming the main gun rays at the nine enemy battleships in the right hemisphere.

If the fleet commander at this time is a pure novice, he may make the decision to divide the fleet into two groups and adjust the axis toward different hemispheres.

This seemingly safe and conservative approach is actually the worst approach in the eyes of experienced players.

It is a very simple operation to adjust the axis of the fleet uniformly, and it is easy to achieve unified action of the entire fleet.

But adjusting the axis separately is different.

Even the most elite fleets in the Federation or Imperial Navy will experience disconnection when the fleets are divided into two groups and adjust their axes in different directions.

Especially in this back-to-back situation, if you want to maintain the tightness of the formation, you can only rely on vector nozzles to exert force.

If it is a fleet that has never undergone targeted training, it will easily be separated into two 'squadrons', and then be interspersed and divided by the enemy fleet in close combat.

As the commander of the Timler family, Ron Schneider would naturally not make such a decision.

But he also knew that after the entire fleet turned to one side, the rear hemisphere exposed to the enemy's guns would become precarious.

What he could do was to order the HCP squadron to dispatch and rely on the "deflection field formation" method to block the gun muzzles of their warships and protect the fragile main propulsion array.

The entire fleet must also rush into the enemy squadron and fight with them within the time these HCP pilots have bought with their lives, and quickly destroy this enemy force with stronger firepower projection.

At the same time, after entering the close range strangulation, this kind of "you are among me, and I am among you" situation will also make the remaining enemy ships afraid to fire easily.

Ron Schneider was very nervous when he made the decision. After all, his decision was based on the safety of all members of the fleet, including his own family.

However, the two commanders of the combined fleet were more nervous than him.

Because the fleet was divided into two groups, it was equivalent to "drifting" in the asteroid belt at this moment.

This is a very dangerous behavior.

If the warships in the previous fleet could still use the bow deflection field and main armor plate to withstand the impact of asteroid fragments incoming at high speed.

So now each battleship has its relatively vulnerable sides exposed.

Soon, the first victim appeared.

On the holographic projection platform, a frigate at the end of the fleet formation on the right was marked with a 'red cross'.

The sensor images at the rear of the Financial Freedom were quickly projected onto the main screen of the bridge.

Antonio and Raven looked at the frigate that had turned into a huge fireball with heavy expressions.

This unlucky battleship was a step late due to emergency maneuvers, and was hit by an asteroid fragment about the same size as it at a relative speed of more than 10 kilometers.

The huge kinetic energy impact directly broke the entire battleship in half. The superconducting battery stack arranged at the rear of the ship exploded, and quickly formed a huge high-temperature plasma fireball that swallowed the entire battleship.

But Antonio had no time to mourn for the crew of this battleship, because at this moment, the fleet's main gun beam had coincided with the location of the Timler family fleet.

"All fleets! Fire freely! HCP squadron and heavy assault module begin the attack!"

The next moment, the United Fleet warship located directly in front of the Timler family fleet launched a salvo.

Dazzling white flashes and beams of charged particles swept across the asteroid belt, intertwining into a beautiful yet dangerous rain of death.

At the same time, the multi-functional launch silos of each ship also began to launch anti-ship missiles one after another.

This kind of weapon used for beyond visual range strikes on the planet has become auxiliary firepower only used in the stage of hand-to-hand strangulation in space.

Launch silos arranged on the top or bottom deck of each ship send these missiles into the upper and lower hemispheres of the battlefield.

With a distance of less than 3,000 kilometers, these missiles with too long flight time finally have a place to be used.

They attacked from the upper and lower hemispheres of the battlefield, making the already complaining air defense commanders feel as uncomfortable as eating arsenic.

"The port side anti-aircraft firepower is too weak! What is the anti-aircraft team doing?!"

The air defense commander of the Timler family fleet and the destroyer Thunderfire Sword sat in the virtual cabin, anxiously looking at the several HCPs breaking through the warning circle in the upper hemisphere and the anti-ship missiles catching up at a faster speed.

"Apply for shipboard control personality to intervene in air defense operations!"

The air defense commander connected to the CIC's communication, hoping that these powerful shipborne AIs would help guide the target.

"Application rejected, the current shipborne control personality has reached the computing power occupation threshold, and there is a risk of downtime if the computing power is allocated again"

"Boom!"

The tactical operations officer had not finished speaking when the entire battleship was enveloped by a violent explosion.

When the air defense commander came to his senses, he found that the communication had been interrupted, and only the words "signal lost" remained on the virtual screen.

There is only one scenario where this situation will occur in direct communication within the ship.

That is, the entire CIC was blown up.

The frightened air defense commander hurriedly opened the three-dimensional model of the entire ship, and found that the location of the bridge and CIC had been covered by a red light.

A heavy anti-ship missile that was launched later and arrived first fortunately broke through all the close defense weapon interceptions and hit the top armor plate of the battleship almost vertically from the zenith direction of the upper hemisphere.

This heavy anti-ship missile launched by the USS Financial Freedom light cruiser not only has a huge charge, but the warhead is also designed specifically for the multi-layer armor plate structure of the battleship.

Just one shot sent everyone in the bridge and CIC into the sky.

The big hole blown by the anti-ship missile also gave the inert helium filled in the ship an "outlet".

The large amount of gas ejected made this place an oversized "vector nozzle".

The out-of-control warship plunged towards the lower hemisphere of the battlefield, exposing its fragile hull.

"It's over. Madam, children, I love you."

The air defense commander only had time to think of this.

The next second, a jet of heavy metal particles hit the middle section of the warship that was not protected by the deflection force field.

The surging heavy metal particles violently tore the external armor plate, and then were diverted by the internal armor of the multi-layer composite structure, and a large number of sand-like pores appeared on the hull structure.

But this 150,000 megajoule attack still directly broke the titanium alloy structural frame inside the warship.

The warship, which was hit through, finally disintegrated into two pieces after struggling for a moment.

Although the fusion reactor and the superconducting battery stack were not detonated, the two parts of the ship still entered an irregular roll.

In this case, even if there were other survivors on the ship, they had actually been sentenced to death.

The counterattack of the joint fleet not only killed the destroyer, but also blew up another frigate on the spot.

But they themselves were not in a good mood, because the two light cruisers of the Timler family fleet also began to exert their strength.

Under the leadership of these two light cruisers, the other warships of the Timler family also followed the shooting targets of the light cruisers and began to concentrate their fire.

The firepower of the light cruiser, which dominated the battlefield, directly destroyed the deflection force field generators of the two destroyers.

The concentrated fire attack that followed also directly sank the two destroyers that did not have time to maneuver to the rear of the friendly ships.

The entire battlefield began to set off "fireworks" at a faster speed than before.

Ships were constantly hit, or burst into a series of flames, or in a larger ball of fire, directly turning all the people on the ship into "cosmic ghosts".

But more of them were the HCPs and heavy assault pods that were like moths to a flame, dancing waltz with the enemy's attempts to intercept the HCPs in the dense anti-aircraft fire.

Then in this universe, they turned into a ball of ashes engulfed by a plasma fireball.

When the battle entered this stage, the commanders of both sides knew that there was no possibility of stopping.

Fleet hand-to-hand combat was not like conventional shooting or raiding, which could relatively calmly withdraw from the battlefield.

When dozens of warships began to strangle at close range in this chaotic asteroid belt, both the fleet commanders and their crew members and pilots were already blood-thirsty.

There was only one way to end the battle, and that was to do everything possible to kill the opponent and become the last person alive.

Just as the battle entered its most intense stage, the tactical information coordinators of the flagships of both sides almost simultaneously reported a message that made the commanders of both sides' hearts stop beating:

"Zenith direction! Unknown warships detected, number 6!"

"Heat source emitted by unknown warships detected, infrared characteristics determined to be HCP, number 17, approaching at high speed from directly above the fleet!"

"Wait, this action is indeed HCP, but how is it possible in such an asteroid belt!"

The tactical information coordinators of the flagships of both sides looked at the heat source on the screen in front of them, performing inhuman maneuvers in the chaotic asteroid belt, and their voices changed.

"The front machine is approaching at three times the speed of the follow-up machine!"