A chill shot up his spine.
That icy sensation crawled from his tailbone all the way to the back of his head, making his scalp tingle and his fingers tremble uncontrollably.
That ring.
That damned ring.
In his eyes at this moment, it was like a gallows noose.
Cold, silent, inescapable.
Lavender light began to converge toward the center of the circular ring.
The light was soft, even beautiful.
Like dawn filtering through mist, like faint starlight leaking from the depths of a distant nebula.
But Knight knew what it was.
That wasn't beauty.
That was death.
The death of nearly two thousand warships being crushed into iron discs, stretched into noodles, utterly erased in an instant.
On the bridge, a deathly silence reigned.
No one spoke.
No one made a sound.
Everyone stared at the tactical screen.
Stared at that slowly brightening circular ring.
Stared at that increasingly intense lavender light.
The sensor supervisor sat at his station, motionless.
His hands were still on the control console, but they had completely stiffened, like two cold blocks of iron.
The navigator's face was as pale as paper.
His lips trembled slightly, wanting to say something, but no words came out.
The adjutant stood beside Knight.
His Adam's apple bobbed up and down, emitting a soft gulp.
The sound of swallowing saliva.
Even though his mouth was so dry there was no saliva left to swallow.
General Knight's voice exploded across the bridge.
It was sharp, hoarse, carrying a tremor he himself didn't recognize.
It was fear, despair, the instinctive roar after completely abandoning resistance.
"Evade!!"
He stared fixedly at the tactical screen, at that circular ring gathering lavender light, and shouted with all his strength.
"All units, evade!!"
"Get out of its attack range!!"
No one responded to him.
But everyone moved.
The remaining thousand-plus vessels of the Blood Locust Fleet, upon receiving the order, acted as if a weight had been lifted.
Those cruisers fighting desperately, their gun muzzles not yet cooled, had already begun to turn.
All Imperial starships were using their last bit of power, accelerating frantically in the direction away from that strange ship.
No one felt the word "retreat" damaged the dignity of Imperial soldiers.
Because no one wanted to face that bizarre battleship again.
That ring.
That lavender light.
That monster that had wiped out nearly two thousand of their warships in a single strike.
The surviving vessels on the right flank were the first to flee.
Those Imperial starships that had just survived the first round of attacks now paid no heed to formation, cover, or pretty words about covering the retreat of allied forces.
They simply turned their bows, pushed their engine power to the limit, and fled madly toward the area beyond the Danube Star gravitational field.
The Blood Locust Fleet's turn order had just been issued.
Over a thousand warships began turning simultaneously.
But in this airspace enveloped by the Danube Star gravitational field, turning wasn't a simple matter.
Those warships moving at full speed needed to decelerate first, then turn, then accelerate again.
And during this process, their broadsides—the parts with the weakest armor and sparsest firepower—
would be exposed for a prolonged period to the gun muzzles of the Federation Fleet.
For the pursuing Federation Fleet, this was nothing less than a gift-wrapped target.
Qin Beiwang stood on the bridge of the Kunlun Mountain - Modified, watching the red dots on the screen clumsily turning.
The corner of his mouth lifted slightly.
"All units, attention."
His voice was steady, yet it clearly reached the communication channel of every warship.
"Target the enemy's right flank. Free fire."
The next moment.
The Federation Fleet's vertical launch units opened simultaneously.
One after another, Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile Spears roared out from their missile bays.
They spewed fierce flame tails, tracing thousands of straight white smoke trails in the vacuum, like a pack of unleashed hounds, charging straight for the Blood Locust Fleet's right flank formation.
The missile swarm automatically assigned targets during flight.
The broadside of every Imperial warship was simultaneously locked onto by at least three to five missiles.
Close on their heels came the roar of the Punisher twin-linked railguns.
Tungsten alloy projectiles were accelerated to their limit by electromagnetic force, shooting from the gun muzzles at sub-light speed.
They had no tail flames, no smoke trails, only a fleeting, faint ion trail and the release of devastating kinetic energy upon hitting their targets.
The Blood Locust Fleet's right flank formation was desperately turning at this moment.
The captains of those warships stared fixedly at the missile swarm drawing closer and closer on their screens, barking out various orders.
"Shields to full power!"
"Point defense cannons activate! Intercept the missiles!"
"Starboard! A projectile swarm approaching starboard!"
But their broadsides were facing the Federation Fleet; most of their main cannons simply couldn't swing around in time.
Point defense cannons fired frantically, weaving interception nets in the void.
Some missiles were hit, exploding into fireballs dozens of kilometers from their targets.
But more missiles pierced through the interception nets.
The first missile struck a cruiser's broadside shield.
The shield flickered violently, dented, but did not shatter.
It held.
The second, the third followed in quick succession.
The shield's glow grew dimmer and more unstable.
When the fourth missile exploded at the same spot, the shield finally shattered, dissolving into a shower of light debris.
Immediately after.
Five tungsten alloy projectiles simultaneously struck that cruiser's stern.
The kinetic energy of the projectiles was devastating.
It was pure, brutal impact.
The first projectile pierced through the stern armor, tearing a breach tens of meters in diameter in the hull.
The second and third bored deep into the hull through that breach, ripping apart the engine room, destroying power conduits.
The fourth and fifth directly hit the thruster array.
The massive fusion engine nozzles were smashed, twisted, and severed. Uncontrolled plasma flare streams erupted from the damaged areas.
The stern of that T4-class heavy cruiser was completely destroyed.
But its bow was still surging forward due to inertia.
The hull lost balance and began tumbling violently.
Propelled by inertia, it slammed into a destroyer beside it that was trying to evade.
The collision came too fast, far too fast for that destroyer to react.
The two leviathans collided violently in the vacuum.
The cruiser's broken stern acted like a giant hammer, smashing into the destroyer's broadside.
Armor plates twisted and tore, compartments were crushed into iron discs, the hull bent into a grotesque arc from the middle.
Then, sympathetic detonation.
The cruiser's energy core was completely detonated.
A blinding incandescent fireball erupted from the point of collision between the two ships, instantly engulfing the wreckage of the cruiser and swallowing the destroyer it had struck.
The flames expanded, contracted, and expanded again.
In that instant, both warships, along with thousands of officers and crew aboard, were reduced to countless scattered metal fragments and plasma embers.
Similar scenes were unfolding in every corner of the right flank formation.
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