196: The trajectory of fury

"Buzz— Buzz—"

This wasn't the roar of an engine; this was the wailing of steel.

On the tarmac, the air was so hot it felt like it could ignite. Dozens of maintenance robots crawled in and out of the hull like crazed ants, sparks flying everywhere.

"The output power has reached the red line! If we add more pressure, the cooling pipes will explode!" Lao Mo yelled toward the gangway, his face covered in grease and his eyes bloodshot behind his goggles.

"Let them explode!" Eve leaned halfway out of the power compartment of the flagship, the vengeance. Her once-tidy research coat was now stained with black coolant, her silver hair was stuck messily to her cheeks, and her eyes held a nearly pathological fanaticism. "Lock the safety valves! Cram all redundant computing power into the energy cycle! This is a one-time bomb, Lao Mo. All we have to do is make sure it blows up where it's supposed to!"

Reno stood at the entrance of the bridge, his palm stroking the scorching bulkhead. The deck beneath his feet was vibrating at an unnatural frequency, like a beast injected with an overdose of stimulants that could suffer cardiac arrest at any moment.

"Do you hear that?" Reno turned back to look at the group of makeshift captains behind him—there were former miner bosses, smugglers, and a few desperate mercenaries lured by the bounty.

"The state this ship is in right now is even more temperamental than your dead-drunk wives." Reno gave a savage grin and pointed upward. "But only this kind of madness is worthy of biting the throats of the regular army. Remember, don't worry about aiming, and don't worry about evasion. Push the engines to the limit and get right in their faces! If the collision doesn't kill them, beat them to death!"

"Roar—!"

He was answered by a chorus of beast-like bellows. When fear reaches its peak, it transforms into the most primal form of madness.

Twelve hours later. Outside the orbit of Ashen Earth Star, at the edge of the asteroid belt.

The Vast Sea Fleet took flight.

It couldn't even be called a fleet. The dozens of ships were a hodgepodge: bloated armed merchant ships, engineering vessels hung with heavy armor plates, and even a few shuttles forcibly welded with laser cannons. They had no orderly formation, and their exhaust plumes flickered with eerie, variegated colors due to impure fuel, trailing distorted bands of light across the dark void of space.

Chen Feng stood in the ground command center, watching this 'beggar army' on the large screen, his fingers unconsciously tapping on the table. One, two, three... it was the rhythm of a heartbeat.

"Entering the designated ambush zone." Su Li's voice was dry as she tightly gripped the communicator. "Radar... we have a hit!"

"Beep! Beep! Beep!"

The rapid alarm instantly pierced the silence of the command center.

"High-energy reaction detected! Bearing 030, distance 5000! Three targets... no, it's three Hound-class High-speed Guards!" Su Li's voice suddenly rose. "Xing Zhan's reconnaissance team! They didn't hide at all; they're charging straight at us!"

On the screen, three red dots emerged from the void like ghosts. Their speed was astonishing, their hulls streamlined and covered in the flickering shadows of optical camouflage. They were like three sharp scalpels, cutting straight toward the bloated Vast Sea Fleet.

"Jamming rounds! Full-spectrum blockage!"

Piercing static came through the communication channel. The radar screens of the Vast Sea Fleet instantly turned into a blizzard of white noise.

"We're blind! We're blind!" a mercenary captain screamed in terror. "Fire control radar can't get a lock! Where are they?!"

"Boom!"

A High-energy Particle Beam accurately pierced an armed transport ship on the periphery. The ship didn't even have time to raise its shields before it exploded into a fireball like a smashed watermelon.

"Don't panic!" On the bridge of the vengeance, Reno shoved aside the panicked helmsman and grabbed the controls himself.

His single eye stared fixedly at the fleeting streaks of light outside the viewport, ignoring the static-filled radar screen.

"Su Li! Don't give me coordinates, they're useless!" Reno roared into the communicator. "Eve! Give me maximum power output! Everyone, don't look at your instrument panels, look out the windows! The brightest spot is your tombstone, and the enemy's!"

"Power output... 120%!" Eve's voice sounded in the channel, carrying a hint of a tremor. "Phase Shift Shields preheated, only three minutes! Reno, you only have three minutes!"

"That's enough!"

Reno slammed down the throttle.

The engine nozzles at the rear of the vengeance instantly erupted with a blinding blue-white light, bordering on purple. The entire ship let out an ear-piercing screech of twisting metal, then accelerated in a way that defied physical common sense within 0.1 seconds, shooting out like a cannonball.

The opposing Hound-class Guard clearly hadn't expected this clunky cargo ship to have such explosive power. Its fire control radar had just locked on when the target was already right in its face.

"Go to hell!" Reno roared.

The Industrial Laser Cannons on the bow of the vengeance, originally used for cutting high-density ore, spat out thick pillars of light under the overclocked power supply. These weren't weapons; they were cutting machines!

"Sizzle—"

There was no world-shaking explosion, only the hair-raising sound of melting.

The Guard's energy shield flickered for a split second upon contact with this violent energy, then was torn open like thin paper. The industrial lasers, like a hot knife through butter, swept directly across the Guard's bridge.

The entire Guard ship instantly lost control, spinning under inertia and crashing into a nearby asteroid, exploding into a magnificent firework.

"Ram them! Everyone ram them!" Reno's eyes were bloodshot with killing intent as he controlled the massive hull, completely disregarding the fact that his flank armor was being riddled with holes by another enemy ship's secondary batteries.

The remaining Vast Sea ships were infected by Reno's madness and followed suit. They no longer tried to trade fire from a distance; instead, like a pack of mad dogs, they launched suicide charges right through the cannon fire.

As long as the distance is close enough, even the most advanced radar isn't as useful as the naked eye!

"Boom! Boom!"

Two more bursts of fire lit up.

The remaining two reconnaissance ships were completely dazed by this chaotic 'face-to-face' tactic after falling into the melee. One was surrounded by several mining ships and had its power wings forcibly torn off by Tractor Beams; the other tried to pull away but was caught in the blast of an overloaded self-destructing drone, and after its engines stalled, it was focused down and turned into a sieve.

In just ten short minutes.

The battle was over.

Burning wreckage floated in space. Black smoke rose from the hull of the vengeance, its engines spewing unstable ion flows due to overheating, looking like a beast that had just finished a kill and was panting heavily.

"We... we won?"

In the command center, Su Li looked at the three red dots that had disappeared from the screen and covered her mouth in disbelief.

"Ha... Hahahaha!"

Reno's arrogant laughter came through the communication channel.

"What regular army? Huh? What bullshit Scavengers?" Reno's voice sounded distorted from extreme excitement. "They're just a bunch of wimps who only know how to press buttons! I haven't even used my full strength, and they've already shattered!"

"Reno, report damage status immediately!" Chen Feng's voice cut in. Although he remained calm, his speaking rate was noticeably faster.

"Damage? Two ships dead, five damaged—that's just their bad luck!" Reno shouted dismissively, wiping away the blood from a cut on his face caused by the violent vibrations. "Boss, did you see that? The engines Eve modified were simply divine! As long as we're fast enough, their cannons can't catch us!"

Eve sat at the console, looking at the telemetry data. Her face was pale yet flushed. "Data... data verification successful. This overclocking tactic... in those few minutes, our maneuverability truly exceeded theirs."

"Did you hear that!" Reno roared. "Whole fleet, listen up! No stopping! While the engines are still hot, charge straight for Coordinates B-7! I'm going to go dismantle that old dog Xing Zhan's flagship!"

"Wait! Reno!" Su Li shouted urgently. "You need to regroup! The engines need to cool down!"

"Cool down my ass! Speed is the soul of war, don't you get it?" Reno interrupted her directly. "By the time we cool down, they'll be ready. It has to be now! Charge over there and scare them to death!"

Chen Feng watched the light representing the vengeance on the screen accelerate without hesitation, heading into deep space. His brow furrowed slightly as a sense of unease welled up in his heart.

It was won too easily.

But as he looked at the cheering staff around him and the truly destroyed enemy wreckage on the screen, that unease was suppressed. Perhaps... the technological gap really was leveled by this insane tactic?

"...Keep communications open." Chen Feng ultimately did not issue the order to stop. "Watch out for traps."

"Don't worry, Boss!" Reno's voice was full of fatal confidence. "In the face of absolute speed, no trap can catch me!"

Dozens of ships, trailing black smoke and with overloaded engines, roared toward the abyss that could swallow everything, like a pack of sharks driven mindless by the scent of blood.

And in the darkness tens of thousands of kilometers away, a pair of cold red electronic eyes watched all of this quietly, the corners of the mouth curling into the cruel smile of a hunter seeing its prey fall into the net.