Chapter 1421: Chapter 535: Formation Change

Fudin Pacquiao, after all, was one of the Five Elder Clan leaders who held sway over a sector of the Shattered Star Ring. He had not only inherited the tens of thousands of years of accumulation of the William Pirate Group, one of the Five Elder Clan, but also preserved the pioneering will of his ancestor Pacquiao himself. By this point, how could he not understand the true intention behind that earlier maneuver of splitting the eight hundred medium Warships into three formations?

First, they used interference methods to further paralyze their own side’s command system and brain-assist devices, stripping their Warships of intelligence.

Then, the eight hundred compressed-fusion three-phase Missiles detonated by Duan Na were in fact not meant to inflict casualties at all, but purely to open up breakthrough corridors for the subsequent Red Spear Assault Battleships.

From a tactical perspective, that earlier large Warship which had suddenly rushed out of the ranks and repeatedly self-disassembled had completely achieved its tactical purpose: it had thrown the Pirate Alliance’s command hub into utter chaos, and it had also allowed the Assault Fleet to successfully punch into the interception fleet’s formation.

Before the two sides truly closed to bayonet range and fought at point-blank, Fudin Pacquiao, Grue Augustus, and the other Five Elder Clan leaders all shared a misperception. They acknowledged the absolute combat power gap shown by the intelligence provided by the combat command system, and they recognized the formidable technology and fighting capacity of the Red Blade Fleet. But they were convinced that the maximum exchange ratio on the battlefield would not exceed five to one, and with a tenfold numerical advantage, their victory was absolutely assured.

Yet now, the illusions of Fudin and the others were shattered completely in less than ten minutes.

Within these ten minutes, the Red Blade Ambush Camp Fleet and the nearby Pirate Alliance interception fleet had actually reached a battle-loss exchange ratio as high as one to fifty!

This was nothing short of despair-inducing.

The Warships from Red Blade Star still appeared to possess some kind of global information-sharing capability. They could always be the first to detect incoming Missiles launched in sudden raids and intercept them in advance; they could also always forecast the aiming direction of the pirate warships’ Energy Cannons based on their Energy Weapons’ charging status, and preemptively perform regional reinforcement on their performance-superior force field shields to block the Energy Cannon fire.

Those small strike craft launched from the large and medium Warships, although they did not possess the complex performance characteristics of equipment used by ultra-tier Professionals, had astonishing maneuverability, and the small ordnance and weapons they carried were sufficiently lethal. Often, as long as a few dozen small craft howled in and spiraled close, then simultaneously delivered precise strikes on the same point, they could easily smash open the force field shields of the Pirate Alliance’s large ships and then inflict severe damage on the hulls themselves.

All indications showed that the pilots of these small craft were not ultra-tier Professionals, but merely the most ordinary, well-trained soldiers. These troops, who in other factions were nothing more than standard cannon fodder and worth next to nothing, under Earl Red Blade’s command could rely on the superiority of their equipment to exert killing power equivalent to elite Imperial warrior units.

However, what truly dealt the Pirate Alliance fatal damage was still the chaos on their own side.

In order to intercept these enemy Warships that had penetrated their own formation, many pirate ships completely disregarded the risk of friendly fire and repeatedly poured out firepower in mad barrages.

These heavy volleys often failed to inflict any substantial damage on the enemy Warships before first inflicting serious harm on their own forces.

The Staff Department aboard Fudin’s flagship provided an extremely grim assessment: in at most twenty minutes, the interception fleet would be completely wiped out by the Red Blade Assault Fleet.

Fudin forced himself to remain calm and merely said, "This doesn’t count as bad news; it’s within my expectations. Once we have no more Warships on that side, it will be just the right time to use the Radiation Neutrino Bomb. Also, that previously most bizarre large Warship over there should also be at the end of its tether by now and is no longer a concern. Heaven knows what is going on with that Warship, where it got so many strange methods from. The coordination of the medium and small Warships generated after it split apart is absurdly strong, stronger even than the Empire’s regular forces with an information-flow system. A single ship has exerted combat effectiveness comparable to that of a medium-sized detachment. Fortunately, it has finally run out of steam."

The "end of its tether" Fudin spoke of was precisely Ren Zhong’s personal Warship, the one that had completely wrecked his Plan.

No matter how strong Ren Zhong was, he still had to comply with some basic rules. The large Warship he controlled had successively expended an extremely large quantity of munitions and Energy Weapons. By his calculations, that large Warship should also have exhausted its ammunition and be unable to continue.

According to the conventional understanding widely accepted within the Mechanical Empire, once a Warship ran out of offensive equipment, it naturally became a toothless tiger.

Just as Fudin had judged, the middle sections of the eight hundred medium Warships were taking advantage of the brief firepower vacuum in the surrounding area to recombine. They seemed to be attempting to reassemble into a slightly smaller integrated vessel. During this process, they did not launch any external offensive at all, appearing intent on taking their merits and withdrawing from the field.

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