The enemy's navigation speed was 170,000 kilometers per second.
It exceeded that limit.
And by 20,000 more.
The bridge fell silent for a moment.
The relaxed laughter from earlier had completely vanished.
The Adjutant stood beside Knight, also staring at the screen.
His brow was tightly furrowed, but soon, it smoothed out.
Not from relaxation, but from sudden realization.
"Commander, it's a gravitational slingshot."
His voice was urgent, carrying a belated tension.
"They used Danube Star's orbital acceleration!"
Knight sharply turned his head to look at the tactical screen.
On the screen, Danube Star's orbit was clearly visible.
That pale blue dotted line stretched from the left side of the screen to the right.
And the Federation Fleet's flight path.
Was precisely drawn from the edge of that orbit.
Like a stone fiercely flung from a slingshot.
Knight's expression changed.
He understood.
Those Federation warships suddenly turning around was to utilize Danube Star's orbital acceleration.
They were borrowing momentum.
Using Danube Star's gravitational field to accelerate themselves beyond their designed limits.
The Adjutant continued, his tone growing increasingly urgent.
"Commander, we must immediately escape Danube Star's gravitational field!"
He reached out, tracing an arc on the screen.
"Right now, our navigation speed is only 60,000 kilometers per second, while theirs is 170,000.
A speed differential of nearly three times!"
"If they attack from the flank..."
He didn't finish.
But everyone knew what he meant.
On the space battlefield, speed is life.
A faster fleet can choose the engagement range, select the attack direction, engage or disengage at will.
While a slower fleet can only passively endure the assault.
Knight opened his mouth, about to give the order.
The Sensor Supervisor's voice suddenly erupted, filled with barely suppressed horror.
"Report!!
High-energy reaction detected!"
He stared fixedly at his screen, his pupils abruptly contracting.
"Enemy main cannons have locked onto our right flank formation!"
The bridge instantly plunged into deathly silence.
Then Knight's voice roared out, carrying a desperate, hoarse cry.
"All ships, port auxiliary thrusters at full power!"
His finger pointed rigidly at the screen.
"Break free from Danube Star's gravitational field!"
"Entire fleet, maneuver toward the enemy!"
"Free fire!!"
Before his words faded.
On the screen, within the formation of that Federation Fleet.
Forty-eight blinding beams of light ignited simultaneously.
The Blood Locust Fleet's right flank formation.
Forty-eight heavy particle beams, like light spears descending from the heavens, tore through the void and slammed fiercely into that dense Imperial fleet group.
The first beam struck the shield dome of an Imperial T4-class heavy cruiser.
The pale blue energy shield, once a symbol of sturdiness in the eyes of this cruiser's captain, capable of withstanding three direct hits from same-class main cannons.
But now, it didn't even hold for a tenth of a second.
The shield shattered like thin ice, transforming into scattered light debris, drifting silently in the vacuum.
The particle stream fell unimpeded, instantly melting through three meters of composite armor.
A searing, penetrating molten hole was carved through the midsection of the hull.
Entering from the starboard side and exiting from the port, the edge metal melted and curled under high temperature, glowing with a dim red afterglow.
The energy core overloaded within a tenth of a second.
Sympathetic Detonation.
A blinding incandescent fireball instantly engulfed the entire warship.
The fireball expanded, contracted, and expanded again, tearing the several-kilometer-long hull into countless fragments.
Molten metal droplets splattered into zero-gravity deep space like scalding raindrops, trailing brief red streaks of light in the darkness.
Then they cooled, solidified, becoming floating metal debris.
The leviathan that once carried over a thousand officers and soldiers was reduced to those slowly drifting fragments in just three seconds.
Immediately after, forty-seven beams formed a saturation crossfire, slamming mercilessly into the turning formation on the right flank.
A Destroyer had just turned to a sixty-degree angle when its bow was cleanly sheared off by a beam.
The severed bow section, along with its main cannon turret, tumbled away, the explosion from its propulsion bay illuminating the nearby ships.
The officers and soldiers aboard had no time to react before they were sent helplessly tumbling and drifting into the vacuum along with the half-shattered hull.
An Escort Ship attempted an emergency halt to its turn but was pinned in place by two crossing particle beams that struck its power bay.
The ship instantly lost stability.
It began spinning like a leaf caught in a gale, uncontrollably colliding with a Supply Ship that was evading beside it.
The two leviathans tangled together.
Sparks from the collision burst into scattered light in the darkness.
The Supply Ship's cargo hold was torn open, spewing out its contents and debris.
The Escort Ship's hull twisted and snapped upon impact.
They became entangled, a burning, slowly tumbling mass of scrap metal.
The Bridge of a right-flank Battleship had just lit up with evasion alarms when it was simultaneously pierced by eight particle beams.
Its T5-class shield instantly overloaded and shattered.
The Bridge vaporized in an instant.
The out-of-control hull, trailing black smoke, plunged headlong into the most concentrated area of artillery fire.
Three seconds.
Just three seconds.
Hell descended.
The once-orderly right-flank turning formation completely disintegrated.
Nearly a hundred Starships were directly vaporized by particle beams—no wreckage, no fragments, only faint blue particle residue drifting slowly after the beams vanished, proof they had ever existed.
More ships suffered hull fractures and engine shutdowns.
Escape Pods swarmed out from the damaged hulls like ants, densely packed, flashing faint distress signals in the darkness.
But stray particle streams and exploding debris gave them no chance.
One Escape Pod was swept by the residual shockwave and instantly annihilated.
Another was shattered by flying wreckage, the figures inside disappearing into the vacuum.
Sympathetic Detonation fireballs linked together.
The blue flames of engines, the shattered light of shields, and the crimson firelight of exploding ships wove a chaotic inferno in deep space.
The Imperial fleet array was brutally torn open by a fatal breach over a hundred kilometers wide.
Over a third of the more than three hundred ships on the right flank were instantly lost.
The linkage with the main fleet was completely severed.
The halos of the forty-eight Heavy Particle Beams gradually faded.
Leaving only transverse, lavender particle trails across deep space, like fingerprints left behind after the Grim Reaper's passing.
Those trails slowly diffused, annihilated, and finally vanished into the darkness.
General Knight cursed angrily.
"Damn it!"
His lips parted slightly, ready to issue the counterattack order.
Then he saw it.
That ship.
That strangely shaped Battleship.
It was positioned at the core of the Federation Fleet's formation, protected in the center by four T5-Class Battleships.
Its bow.
That massive, ring-shaped structure.
Was now slowly lighting up.
Knight's pupils abruptly contracted.
He had seen that ring before.
Just a few hours ago, at that moment he never wanted to recall again in his life.
That ring had lit up once.
And then his fleet, three thousand warships, had been reduced to the current twelve hundred.