108: Take off! Captains! Fire away!

After repeated wrangling, the Decoy Fleet was eventually formed by a mixed fleet of the Empire and The Consortium.

The reason was simple: Kelaifu had brought a peripheral fleet this time.

Because some newly built Warship had been retired due to various malfunctions, the fleet, which hadn't even reached its full authorized strength, totaled only 3,109 Warship.

Furthermore, after careful consideration, Kelaifu decided it was safer to keep his own fleet together—after all, he intended to secretly take potshots.

If The Consortium's fleet really got angry and intended to attack him, he wouldn't really know what to do if his forces were scattered.

He didn't mind being the bait; after all, even a peripheral fleet from the Empire was at a nation-destroying level when brought out.

He didn't believe that a bunch of terrorists who barely managed to blockade a star system by taking shortcuts could knock him out—even if they really could, it didn't matter, as long as he protected his flagship, and the Void Shield equipped on the flagship could absolutely guarantee its safe retreat.

In short, after negotiations between both sides, the Decoy Fleet was composed of all the Warship from the Empire's side, plus 2,003 Warship provided by The Consortium.

The total force consisted of 3,000 frigate and destroyers, 1,600 cruiser, 500 battlecruiser, and 12 Battleship, which was no different from a second-line Cosmic Army fleet of The Consortium.

Seeing that the bait was assembled, Gould's opinion of this Imperial fleet improved slightly—at least these troublemakers were actually willing to do something, rather than just coming to disgust him.

The bait was a very important part of his plan, the kind that could significantly reduce the difficulty of the operation.

As for what the bait would do, that was irrelevant to the plan; as long as they could sail over and lure the enemy out, that was enough—besides, he also intended to let the bait take a beating first before going out to ambush the enemy Warship.

As for what to do if the opponent didn't show up?

Then he could just turn the feint into a main attack, right?

Although the Empire was disgusting, in a completely favorable situation, they still wouldn't give The Consortium a reason to declare war—battlefield friendly fire and actively opening fire on friendly forces were completely different in meaning.

When the last red marker on the command console turned green, Gould confirmed that all Warship had entered their designated positions.

He directly opened the command channel of the joint fleet and shouted orders—

"The vanguard fleet, depart immediately!"

"Target: recapture the Node Space Station!"

"After setting up the gravity lane generation device, launch it covertly!"

...

...

"Alert: fleet gathering at (,,) location."

Just as Xi Hai was watching the scout drone collision show performing above the space station, night lamp suddenly sounded an alarm.

Xi Hai opened the star map and saw—ho, at the edge of the space station's detectable field of view, an alarm icon with a triangle and an exclamation mark was popping up.

It looked like a massive fleet was slowly moving toward the Node Space Station.

"Pull up the footage from the lane cameras."

As soon as Xi Hai finished speaking, an image was projected onto the command console—an asteroid blocked two-thirds of the screen, and a huge fleet slowly emerged from behind the asteroid—then, a flash of white light passed, and the image disappeared.

"There are no available cameras on the relevant lane."

Well, it seemed the other side was quite shy; they wouldn't even let him look.

However, before it was physically shut down, the camera had at least captured something—half a fleet, and half the body of a giant ship.

After sending the photo to White Shark with the question "Does this look like a main fleet?", Xi Hai received a positive reply in less than half a minute:

"Looking only at the bow, it has a very obvious fourth era style. Comparing the size, this should be a Relic Battleship."

"Although this photo only shows a few hundred Warship, if that Suhart's intelligence is true and there is only one Cosmic Army fleet of The Consortium behind it, then this is the main force."

"The value of this one Relic Battleship is worth an entire fleet; no one would be extravagant enough to use this thing as bait."

Before he had even finished listening to this report, Xi Hai already felt his heart pounding "thump, thump, thump"—the battle that would decide whether he could completely establish himself here was coming!

"All remaining Pilot, attention!"

"The enemy's main fleet is approaching the space station!"

"Everyone, battle stations!"

As this order reached the ears of the Pilot remaining at the space station, those guys, as if wound up like springs, immediately sprang into action—engine after engine of the fighters began to warm up, and the Pilot stopped everything they were doing and immediately returned to their Pilot seats.

Since there were only 2,000 Pilot, when assigning them, the choice was made to group 5,000 AI-controlled fighters together as the first strike wave to meet the enemy fleet's long-range anti-aircraft fire; the remaining 2,000 manned aircraft would follow closely behind, and they would use the cover of the AI-controlled fighters to charge into the enemy fleet and then give the other side a super cool sterilization.

Originally, Xi Hai was worried about whether the Pilot selected from the 2,000 former slaves would be unreliable, but when he saw the operating systems of those fighters, all his worries vanished—to give an analogy, it was roughly:

"This is forward, this is dodge, this is shoot."

"Okay, now you've learned it, now you can go and fight bugs, aliens, demons, rebels... and all other enemies of Super Earth."

That's right, when you finished reading the paragraph above, you have already been voluntarily conscripted by Super Earth, of course, if the quota is full, you might also be transferred to Holy Terra.

Alright, perhaps the analogy above isn't that accurate, but in short, those operating systems were very simple, the kind that a novice could master in two minutes (similar to the mouse-aimed joystick in War Thunder), so Xi Hai just let them be.

Moreover, with Clones available now, if they die a few more times, they will one day be able to grow into the best Pilot—

"Enemy Warship have entered the predetermined strike range!"

"Start launching fighters!"

When that fleet sailed into the planned range designated by night lamp on the star map, Xi Hai decisively issued the order to take off, "Shoot through the drums of those Warship for me!"