212: Chapter 213 Zerg Response

Not far away.

Iron Man U-999, which was plugged into data cables as thick as buckets, turned its massive metal head with great difficulty, the red light in its eyes flickering.

"Report, Creator. The system shows that the main energy storage pool is low on power!"

Lin Li was stunned to hear this and turned to look at 73.

"What's the situation? Didn't we just fire one volley? How is it already low on power?"

The blue light in 73's eyes flickered rapidly as he immediately activated his sharp-tongued mode:

"Creator, the power consumption of a single Mass-Energy Conversion Cannon at the moment of firing is already terrifyingly high. On top of that, you insisted on cramming a full thousand outdated gunpowder Macro Cannons and over a thousand high-frequency laser cannon arrays into the limited space of this orbital fortress!"

"After excluding the necessary energy for the life support systems and the fortress's deflector shields, the remaining energy conduit space and capacitors only leave this much for the main cannons to utilize."

73 commented mercilessly,

"As an utterly incompetent lay client, the various unreasonable modification demands you proposed on the blueprints back then were highly illogical to begin with. You should know this in your heart."

Lin Li, rebuffed by the Man of Iron, scratched his head and tried to save face:

"No big deal. How long until the main cannons are fully charged again?"

"Ten minutes," 73 provided the precise data.

Hearing that it was only ten minutes, Lin Li breathed a long sigh of relief:

"Only ten minutes? That gave me a scare. I thought recharging would take ten days to half a month."

He turned to look at U-999 on the fire control console and issued a tactical command:

"999! Fire every ten minutes! Specifically target those large, thick-skinned Swarm frigates and cruisers for me!"

"Command received." U-999 turned its head back and locked onto the star map.

As for why they didn't target the mothership, it was because it was surrounded by layers of other vessels, completely out of sight.

It had to be said that with U-999—a pioneer-type Man of Iron born and bred for war and slaughter—serving as the fully automated fire control system, The Guardian's firepower projection efficiency was outrageously high!

Under its precise computing power, the effective hit rate of the cannons actually reached a terrifying ninety percent!

One must know that

in the vast and boundless theater of space warfare, distances easily spanned thousands or tens of thousands of kilometers, where even meteors hundreds of kilometers wide could only be considered tiny specks of dust.

To achieve a ninety percent effective hit rate under various electromagnetic interference, biological forcefield deflections, and high-speed target movements was simply a mythical feat!

If the Empire's Royal Navy Fleet had such a heaven-defying hit rate, it would be as if the Omnissiah had manifested on the gun barrels to bless them, and the Tech-Priests on board would not be able to express enough gratitude even if they kowtowed until their heads bled.

"Old Seven, what is the status of our fleet's combat damage?" Lin Li asked, staring intently at the tactical sandbox.

73 quickly compiled the battlefield data.

"Report, Creator. In the clone fleet's battle line, 13 large modified ships suffered overloaded deflector shields due to receiving too much concentrated fire from biological projectile weapons at once. One of them was penetrated by acid corrosion, lost its main engine power, and is making an emergency landing. The remaining ships only sustained damage to their outer armor plating, and their formation remains intact."

73's tone shifted,

"However, the low-grade Greenskin fleets on the right flank, having absolutely no energy shields installed, could only use scrap metal to take the damage head-on, and are currently suffering heavy losses. Thousands of junk ships were hit, and in just one round of exchange, one-fifth of them have already been destroyed."

Lin Li nodded. This casualty ratio was entirely within his expectations.

"How is the Swarm reacting?"

"They are adapting very quickly."

73 zoomed in on the sensor feed.

"Just like when they dealt with the vanguard fleet last time, upon discovering that we possess an absolute single-point instant-kill firepower advantage, the Swarm has begun dispersing large-scale spore clouds into space that can block optical sensors."

"Furthermore, they have abandoned long-range exchanges, and all of their small frigates are accelerating toward our fleet."

"Very well."

Lin Li's eyes turned cold.

"Continue the next wave of firing once the charge is complete! As for those frigates trying to rush us for melee combat... tell the players to grab their gear and prepare for a reverse boarding action!"

At this moment,

in a corner of the right flank of the Alliance's joint fleet.

[I Think The Emperor Can Stand Up] stood on the bridge of a massive junk battleship, watching through the window as the ships his subordinates had painstakingly cobbled together were blown into brilliant fireworks by the bugs, one after another.

He felt as if a knife were twisting in his heart!

"Everyone, stop what you're doing!"

The Emperor grabbed several Mekboys nearby who were hammering with wrenches, pointed at the battlefield outside, and roared,

"Do you see that?! I told you the scrap metal you built wasn't tough enough! The bugs opposite just took a random leak and wrecked our ships!"

"Now look at those humies' ships! They've got a shiny, glowing shell on the outside. The bugs' shells hit them and just bounce right off, completely unharmed!"

Several green-skinned Mekboys rubbed their bald heads, looking at the shield ripples shimmering on the surface of the players' ships in the distance, and suddenly had an epiphany.

"Boss! I think I get it now!"

One Mekboy excitedly raised the wrench in his hand.

"We should build one of those things too! So we can blow away the incoming shells just like the humies do!"

*Bang!*

The Emperor punched the Mekboy hard in the face, sending him rolling twice on the ground, before roaring excitedly,

"Yes! That's exactly how we'll do it! Point is, hurry up and build it for me!"

"And another thing!"

The Emperor turned and roared at all the Mekboy Boyz on the ship,

"Salvage all that blown-up scrap metal out there! Weld our ships back together and make them even bigger! I think as long as the ship is big enough, the bugs won't be able to break it!"

...

Ten minutes passed in the blink of an eye.

Amidst the sporadic exchanges of dense conventional fire in space,

deep within The Guardian fortress, those one hundred Mass-Energy Conversion Cannons were fully charged once again.

Unlike the deafening, fire-belching commotion of a Macro Cannon firing,

the firing of the Mass-Energy Conversion Cannons was extremely quiet, to the point where it couldn't even be felt inside the command room.

However, their power was absolutely devastating.

One hundred antimatter projectiles, invisible to the naked eye, instantly crossed the vast distance and struck one hundred Swarm frigates and cruisers with absolute precision!

Immediately after, massive, blindingly bright spheres of light, akin to supernova explosions, erupted in space once more!

The violent annihilation energy instantly tore those one hundred thick biological warships apart, blasting them into charred halves without exception.

Meanwhile,

after realizing that the enemy wanted to desperately close the distance for boarding actions, the players' fleet immediately went full throttle and began nimbly pulling away in space.

The players skillfully employed a kiting tactic.

Although the firepower on the Dahe-class destroyers wasn't as fiercely lethal as The Guardian's,

they made up for it with sheer numbers, their dense net of fire still inflicting widespread casualties on the biological ships lacking long-range cover.

Once the players' fleet pulled away,

only the massive Guardian and a few crippled player ships with damaged engines that couldn't escape were left at the very front of the defense line.

Naturally, those players who couldn't escape wouldn't just sit and wait for death.

They all grabbed their melee weapons, ready to replicate Flame Fist and the others' previous reverse boarding tactic!

As for The Guardian,

it naturally served as the absolute bridgehead of the entire system's defense line, holding the front line with unyielding resolve.

The players' ships were small and agile, allowing them to easily wage guerrilla warfare.

But The Guardian could not.

Once it retreated, the Swarm's massive main fleet would drive straight in, attacking the several inhabited planets behind it!

Although the Defense Force was deployed on the planetary surfaces and should have no problem dealing with a small number of airdropped bugs, they would likely be swallowed up instantly if they had to face the sky-blotting main Swarm armada directly.

At this point,

those Swarm frigates accelerating to close the distance naturally noticed the pyramid-shaped fortress standing alone at the very front.

Several hundred hideous biological warships turned their direction, braving the dense fire to charge madly toward The Guardian!

The distance was rapidly closing.

On the surface of The Guardian, over a thousand high-frequency laser cannon arrays began flashing frantically, continuously slicing through the armor of the leading Swarm vessels.

Yet, the defensive measures did not stop there.

Heavy armor plates on the sides of the fortress flipped open one after another.

One pitch-black torpedo tube after another was exposed to the vacuum.

"Fire!"

Giant space torpedoes, each hundreds of meters long and carrying high-yield nuclear fusion warheads, were ejected from the bays in succession!

Under U-999's fine micro-control,

these massive torpedoes, like agile hounds roaming in space, precisely bypassed the thick chitinous armor and plunged straight into the weak underbellies and spiracles of the Swarm's biological ships!

This triggered a continuous chain of internal secondary explosions!

Soon, another ten minutes had passed.

The third round of the Mass-Energy Conversion Cannons was fully charged and fired silently!

Lin Li stared intently at the holographic screen, waiting for those one hundred bursts of destructive light to light up again, ready to deal a heavy blow to the Swarm's vanguard assault line in one fell swoop.

However,

the expected supernova explosions, magnificent enough to light up the deep space, never occurred.

In space, only one hundred extremely faint, dark red sparks lit up, resembling one hundred match heads extinguished in an instant, failing to cause even the slightest splash.

Lin Li was stunned.

He whipped his head around to look at the fire control console:

"999! What happened with this shot? Did we miss the targets?"

"Creator,"

U-999's mechanical electronic voice carried a trace of confusion. "According to my ballistic trajectory calculations, all one hundred antimatter projectiles absolutely hit their targets with a one hundred percent success rate!"

"However, it appears the Swarm fleet made some sort of physical structural adjustment in the past few minutes. This resulted in the absolute annihilation power of the Mass-Energy Cannons being drastically reduced, or even completely neutralized!"

Lin Li's heart sank, and he immediately turned to look at the Man of Iron coordinating the battle: "Old Seven! Deploy the optical array immediately and analyze the enemy's front-line structure!"

The blue light in 73's eyes flashed frantically as he processed the micro-image data sent back from the front line at high speed.

A few seconds later,

73 actually let out an exclamation of disbelief, remarkably like a human:

"Creator, I must admit... the temporary genetic adaptation capability of these space locusts is simply terrifying!"

73 projected the analysis feed directly onto the large screen in front of Lin Li.

"Look here. Just moments ago, the various Swarm assault vessels simultaneously spat out and hatched a batch of giant, broad-surfaced, but almost entirely unarmored light bladder bugs into space!"

"These creatures, as fragile as balloons, clustered in swarms on the outermost layer of the cruisers, forming a wide biological shield!"

"They clearly figured out the killing principle of the Mass-Energy Cannons through the first two rounds of strikes. This weapon mainly triggers a violent mass annihilation reaction by colliding with high-density heavy armor—the thicker the armor, the greater the destructive energy released!"

"If these fragile bladder bugs were used against ordinary lasers or solid-projectile Macro Cannons, they would shatter upon contact, offering almost zero defensive effect."

"But! They serve as the most perfect meat shields to prematurely detonate the antimatter projectiles! When the Mass-Energy Cannons hit these bladder bugs, the weak annihilation reaction is instantly and completely consumed inside these hollow biological balloons! It doesn't harm the capital ships behind them at all!"

Looking at the Swarm fleet on the big screen, which continued its mad sprint covered in balloons and drawing closer to the fortress, Lin Li's brow furrowed into a tight knot.

The bugs opposite had not only used sacrificial units to test out the exact ten-minute firing interval of the Mass-Energy Cannons,

but they had now directly evolved a perfect countermeasure! The strongest trump card had failed.