213: Chapter 214 Segmented Blockade

The light cyst-shield temporarily evolved by the swarm acted like a thick sponge, blocking the sharp edge of the Mass-Energy Conversion Cannon's firepower.

Facing this sudden turn of events, Lin Li looked at the Men of Iron coordinating the overall situation beside him.

The blue light in 73's eyes flickered for only a few seconds before instantly completing the calculations to break the deadlock.

"Creator, there is no need for excessive worry."

73's cold, mechanical voice held absolute confidence, "The Guardian itself exists as an ultimate defensive fortress; its potential far exceeds just one type of main cannon!"

"Even if the swarm can use low-cost cysts to temporarily block the Mass-Energy Conversion Cannon, in close-range combat, we can still inflict damage on them through a combination of firepower!"

73 pulled up a fire control combination link on the holographic sand table and explained:

"As you can see, as long as we let them get close. Once they enter range, Iron Man U-999 can first control those one thousand heavy Macro Cannons and high-frequency laser arrays to conduct a carpet-bombing volley!"

"Use physical shrapnel and lasers to quickly kill and sweep away those fragile cysts protecting the enemy's main ships! After completely peeling away their outer defensive shell, then deliver a precise finishing blow using the Mass-Energy Conversion Cannon for targeted kills!"

"This is a perfect combination, and furthermore, by using this kite-flying tactic of feigning weakness, we still have the chance to lure out the Hive Mothership that has been hiding in the back! Once we find an opportunity to strike the Mothership's weak point directly with the Mass-Energy Conversion Cannon, the trajectory of this war will be clear!"

Lin Li listened, his eyes narrowing slightly, "You mean... open a gap in the formation and intentionally let them get close to fight?"

"Yes, Creator!"

"Tactically, there's no problem; this can indeed maximize the lethality of our various caliber cannons."

Lin Li frowned and raised a very realistic risk, "However, if we spread out the formation like this to fight in a melee, although our ammunition supply on this side can be continuously brought up from the surface by sea breeze no. 9 without fear of being besieged, what if other high-mobility Zerg ships slip past and circle to our rear? The rear of the galaxy is full of civilian cities without shields!"

73 answered without hesitation, "At this time, we can only choose to trust those clones and the local Defense Force on the ground."

"The clones have a sufficiently large number of ships and insane boarding capabilities to intercept those stray Zerg ships that bypass The Guardian. And the Defense Force on the surface has already prepared contingency plans to defend against scattered airborne bugs."

Lin Li rubbed his chin, thought about it, and realized this was indeed the case.

He couldn't just keep the orbital fortress here, fire all the cannons, and hog all the glory.

How would the hundreds of thousands of players below play? How would they farm military merit? How would this crappy game continue to operate?

The only thing he worried about was that the Defense Force that had just been incorporated on the surface might be cowards who would scatter the moment they encountered bugs.

But he couldn't worry about that much now.

As the saying goes, he who hesitates is lost!

Lin Li hesitated for less than a moment, slammed the tactical console, and issued the highest order directly to Ushtan:

"Send the latest system commands and battle plans to all clone fleets! Break formation! Intercept all Zerg ships attempting to bypass The Guardian along the entire line!"

"At the same time, send combat readiness messages to the local Defense Force on each planet in the rear! Enter wartime status immediately! Prepare to meet anti-aircraft and ground battles against any fish that slipped through the net!"

"Yes!" Ushtan immediately turned around and began broadcasting the order on all channels.

In space, after the Zerg temporarily resolved the absolute threat of the Mass-Energy Conversion Cannon using biological cysts.

The Norn Queen hidden in the depths still did not choose to press the entire army forward.

Instead, she mobilized a strike fleet composed of high-mobility biological ships through the Hive network, which began to accelerate continuously and charged madly toward the front of The Guardian!

The swarm's intention was very obvious!

They were clearly preparing to take advantage of this lull in firepower, using swarm tactics to take down this huge steel pyramid blocking the route in one fell swoop!

Taking a step back.

Even if they couldn't forcibly take The Guardian, as long as they could pin it down with their numerical advantage and prevent it from unleashing its firepower coverage in all directions.

Then the main Zerg force could drive straight in, enter the orbit of various habitable planets, and begin harvesting the sweet biomass on the surface!

This attacking Zerg force was very fast; the streamlined structure of their hulls was very obvious, clearly biological variants specialized for space travel speed.

Charging at the very front were a dozen ferocious cruisers, each four to five kilometers long;

On their flanks, closely following them were hundreds of slightly smaller frigates with sharper mouthparts!

Behind them were various strange-looking assault ships, following in a dense, snake-like formation.

Countless spore sacs were continuously released, forming a massive cloud of poison sufficient to obscure the light of the stars, used to resist the optical irradiation threat of the high-frequency laser cannons on The Guardian.

And those newly evolved large-area meat-shield cysts were simultaneously attached to the outside of the armor of various ships, acting as perfect meat shields.

In the far rear of this strike fleet.

That terrifying Hive Mothership, tens of kilometers long, remained steadily at a safe distance under the layer-upon-layer protection of countless heavy cruisers, quietly watching the battlefield.

Fully displaying the cautious instinct of an ancient cosmic predator.

Lin Li saw this scene through the optical screen and couldn't help but curse:

"Damn it, the Mothership is so huge, is it really this cowardly?"

But this was actually no wonder for Lin Li's exclamation.

Such a sky-obscuring strike fleet was right before his eyes.

There were nearly ten thousand frigates alone used as cannon fodder, hundreds of heavy cruisers, and countless other messy drop ships and melee biological ships!

This was completely different in nature from the vanguard fleet that only knew how to charge mindlessly at the agricultural planet before!

The Hive had an existence like the Norn Queen, possessing extremely high tactical intelligence, commanding the entire massive fleet.

As an ultimate predator that had survived in the universe for who knows how long, maintaining a cautious, probing attitude before fully figuring out the prey's trump cards was the bare minimum survival logic.

At this moment, looking from afar.

In this originally magnificent and deep space, that massive Zerg strike fleet looked like a viscous, writhing dark red cloud of flesh.

It was carrying the potential energy of destruction, slamming fiercely into The Guardian, which stood as towering as a steel mountain!

Mobius Prime, inside a tavern booth in the lower hive.

Marshal Miller held his glass of strong liquor, his palms already slick with cold sweat from nervousness.

He watched the terrifying scene of the impending collision in space through the screen, his heart filled with doubt and confusion.

He didn't understand why The Guardian suddenly stopped firing?

Why didn't it use the weapon that instantly killed cruisers before to eliminate the Zerg fleet's living forces on a large scale? Instead, why let those dangerous alien fleets get so close?!

"Could it be..."

Miller gasped, "Could it be that in such a short time, the Zerg have already found a way to deal with that superweapon?!"

Miller had seen the data in the Adeptus Arbites' top-secret files.

The Zerg, as a species, were inherently extremely adept at evolving at the speed of light and optimizing battlefield strategies during intense combat!

If this guess was true, then The Guardian was likely in danger now!

After losing the ability to quickly annihilate the enemy's large ships, the Zerg's seemingly endless numerical advantage would be fully unleashed!

They would quickly press forward under fire, close in, and board.

Then release countless melee Genestealers and Warrior Bugs, like ants eating an elephant, to slowly dismantle The Guardian's resistance from the inside!

On the screen, the distance was rapidly closing.

At this moment, the distance between the two sides had closed to the point where one could even see the outlines of the ships with the naked eye!

"Boom—!"

The Guardian on the screen finally opened fire again!

On the surface of the pyramid, thousands of large-caliber heavy Macro Cannons roared simultaneously, continuously spitting out blinding orange-red fire!

A massive amount of high-explosive solid ammunition slammed into the bug cloud like a torrential rain!

In this instant, under the deluge of massive physical ammunition!

The violent kinetic energy of the Macro Cannons forcibly tore apart the airtight dark red bug cloud, blasting open a huge gap!

And at this moment, the thousand-unit high-frequency laser cannon array, precisely aimed by Iron Man U-999, simultaneously projected blinding beams through the gap!

The high-frequency lasers instantly vaporized the cyst meat shields attached to the enemy ship surfaces used to protect the ships!

Finally! And the deadliest move!

"Hum—!"

The long-charged Mass-Energy Conversion Cannon finally unleashed its power again!

One hundred antimatter particle projectiles, following the armor gaps cleared by the lasers, smoothly and extremely precisely hit the exposed Zerg ship hulls!

Subsequently, a blinding light of destruction erupted inside the ship hulls, and they were blown into scorched, flying flesh fragments in silence.

When the blinding light of annihilation lit up in large areas within the bug cloud again.

Marshal Miller swallowed hard, his dry throat, and his body, which had been tense to the point of cramping, finally relaxed, letting out a long breath:

"Thank goodness! Thank goodness! So they changed tactics. As long as the Alliance still has the means to deal with these monsters, then there is no problem."

However, just as Miller was about to take a sip of liquor to calm his nerves.

The former Governor Cromwell, who was standing to the side and staring at the monitoring sub-screen, suddenly turned extremely grave.

"Look at this image." Cromwell pointed at the screen, "Those bugs following behind... something seems wrong!"

Miller quickly put down his glass, following the direction of Cromwell's finger.

Looking at the wide-angle shot taken by the deep-space reconnaissance drone, located at the core position in the far rear of the swarm.

There, in that safe star sector.

Countless biological recovery ships, shaped like giant jellyfish, were wandering around the perimeter of the battlefield.

They used their long tentacles to continuously suck the wreckage of the biological ships and the flesh fragments of their companions that had been blown up in space back into their bodies, and then, like infusion tubes, transported them back to the Hive Mothership in the rear!

And immediately after, a hair-raising scene occurred!

After receiving the feedback of biomass.

On the surface of the Hive Mothership's massive body, countless huge tumors began to writhe violently!

"Pfft!"

Accompanied by the spraying of mucus.

Around the Hive fleet, dozens of brand-new variant frigates—small in size, but extremely streamlined in shape, and appearing to have almost no heavy armor—were suddenly birthed!

Moreover, the hatching number of these weird warships was still increasing exponentially!

In just a few minutes, there were hundreds more of these light-armored ships in space!

Cromwell watched this scene, his eyes full of incredulous fear:

"In such a short time... the Mothership can directly grow and deploy hundreds of new ships?! This troop production speed is too terrifying!"

Marshal Miller was a veteran after all, and he saw the clue at a glance.

"No! This is not logical!"

Miller stared at the screen, "These couldn't have been birthed! These should be the ships that were already formed but about to hatch in those incubation sacs inside the Mothership. They received some kind of stimulus command during wartime, had the time-wasting heavy armor mounting procedures temporarily removed, underwent extreme specialized modifications, and were then forcibly deployed to the battlefield ahead of schedule!"

"They are moving!" Cromwell exclaimed.

These nearly one hundred light biological ships without any armor protection, having just detached from the mother body, immediately opened their engines to the fullest and charged madly toward The Guardian ahead at a terrifying speed that seemed to be burning their own life force!

That speed was so fast that it even left trails of afterimages in space.

Far from comparable to those ordinary heavy-armored frigates and cruisers!

Moreover, Miller also keenly discovered.

Those weird bugs specialized for speed did not choose to break through the firepower network from the front.

They were cunningly hiding under the flesh cruisers in the long snake formation ahead that were attracting firepower!

They used the huge bodies of the cruisers as cover, directly bypassed the frontal Macro Cannon trajectories, and charged at full speed toward the most vulnerable bottom shadow area of The Guardian!

The bottom of the fortress.

Not only was the relatively fragile main propulsion engine array installed there, but there were also a large number of metal docking gates used for personnel entry and exit, and for replenishing ammunition and supplies!

The pyramid-structured The Guardian indeed had no firepower blind spots on any of its surrounding faces in its design.

But at the very bottom, because space had to be reserved for the hangar and engine nozzles, that was the only place where the anti-aircraft firepower layout was relatively sparse.

And this was instantly captured by the Hive's terrifying tactical analysis capability!

However.

The mutations occurring on the battlefield were far more than just these!

In space, that large group of flesh ships that had originally been following behind the assault formation like a long snake, seemingly about to crash directly into The Guardian.

Halfway through the charge, they suddenly feinted!

They completely ignored the firepower that The Guardian was frantically pouring out ahead.

Actually taking advantage of the ten-minute firepower recharge interval of the Mass-Energy Conversion Cannon.

The large formation suddenly scattered! Dividing troops up, down, left, and right!

They drew a huge arc and directly bypassed this tough nut to crack, The Guardian.

Like a giant opened net, they charged madly toward the rear of the fortress!

And there, it was the player fleet that had already received Lin Li's interception order, turned their ships around, and were preparing to engage!

Fortunately, under the unreasonable interception strike of The Guardian's firepower network, more than half of the bulky heavy cruisers had been destroyed and left behind.

But even so, there were still a large number of relatively fast small frigates and assault boats that, relying on their numerical advantage, successfully broke through the fortress's blockade firepower network, roaring as they charged toward the strange-looking player ships.

The entire space battlefield was instantly cut into countless chaotic and tragic local meat grinders!