Super Mothership
Aboard the Avian flagship.
Watching the battlefield footage sent by the Sea Tribe fleet on the screen, Isabel’s brows were tightly knitted, and her face grew darker and darker.
The combat footage sent by the Sea Tribe was quite intense, but it was obvious that it had been “artistically edited,” with a heavy dose of embellishment. The edited clips focused on highlighting the strength of the enemy’s biological fortress and how devastating the losses of their own fleet were.
According to the battle report sent by the Sea Tribe fleet, their warriors fought bravely despite heavy losses, yet they were unable to inflict effective damage on the enemy and had no choice but to abandon the interception plan and temporarily avoid the enemy’s sharp edge.
But the experienced Isabel only needed a quick mental replay to reconstruct the battlefield situation — and how could she not see that the Sea Tribe fleet had clearly held back and avoided going head-to-head!
The Sea Tribe fleet had indeed suffered no small losses, with eight or nine warships sunk or damaged.
But clearly, the main reason for these losses was that the enemy’s firepower was far more ferocious than expected, catching them off guard in the brief exchange. If they had known in advance that they were facing such a tough opponent, who knows — they might have even chosen to avoid the battle altogether.
“These slippery bastards…” Isabel’s face was as cold as water.
Although she knew full well the Sea Tribe was sandbagging, they had done enough on the surface to make it look good. As the acting supreme commander, she really couldn’t be too harsh on them.
What troubled her even more now was whether this was the Sea Tribe deliberately conserving their strength — or if it was the handiwork of the supposedly dead-or-alive “Gustav,” who may have left behind a hidden hand within the fleet to sow discord.
“But… so many fortress-class weapons — how exactly did the enemy transport them to Planet Kara?” Isabel immediately thought of an even more puzzling question.
More than a dozen fortress cannons of such tremendous power, along with their supporting equipment, were absolutely beyond the construction and installation capabilities of the technologically-backward Kara civilization. Kara didn’t even have the industrial conditions to manufacture such weapons. So… this must be the work of the All-as-One Society again.
Yet such a large amount of military hardware could never have been smuggled onto Kara through mere small-scale, covert channels.
So how exactly had the enemy managed to smuggle so many weapons under the nose of their tight surveillance?
Could it be that Gustav had already subverted the entire Sea Tribe’s logistics system?
Was his ability to incite rebellion really that strong?
Or had the enemy already laid this plan and secretly prepared their trump card long before the Gemini War even began?
The more she thought about it, the more frightening it became!
Perplexed and unable to figure it out, Isabel of course could not have guessed that Nie Yun’s entire industrial system was always “carried with him” — as long as there were mechanical bugs, he could deploy a “mobile base” to manufacture guns and cannons right on site!
Advance preparations, large-scale smuggling… were completely unnecessary…
Faced with the ever more mysterious and unfathomable All-as-One Society, Isabel became even more cautious. She reviewed the Sea Tribe’s battle footage repeatedly, and soon her brow lifted slightly.
There is no invincible defense — only weaknesses that have yet to be exposed!
Isabel didn’t believe the enemy’s fortress could truly block all attacks perfectly. If it really were that invincible, the enemy wouldn’t have needed to subvert Gustav and play all these tricks — they could have just steamrolled through.
Sure enough, after repeated replays of the footage and comparison of the battle data, the meticulous Isabel finally noticed something unusual!
Although the dense branches and leaves concealed the interior of the Immortal, after several rounds of bombardment by the Sea Tribe fleet, the enemy’s firepower output had actually dropped by more than 30%!
This meant… the enemy was very likely injured!
“Order the Sea Tribe’s Third Fleet to withdraw from the wormhole and prepare to intercept the enemy’s biological fortress a second time.
Tell them the enemy is very likely already wounded and hollow beneath their tough exterior. When they attack, they are to switch entirely to force-field weapons and probe the enemy’s true condition!” Isabel ordered.
“Yes!”
…
In fact, it was just as Isabel had guessed — having exited combat, the Immortal’s current state was quite poor.
The fortress’s initial strike had indeed been a devastating display, shocking everyone and crippling the Sea Tribe fleet, but it had also paid a heavy price itself.
On the massive trunk of the Immortal, there were now more than a dozen sunken craters. Although not too conspicuous compared to its vast body, the damaged areas inside were already in tatters, far worse than they appeared on the surface.
Sweeping force-field beams had carved deep furrows into its trunk, dozens of weapon platforms in the affected areas were twisted, sparking, and clearly beyond repair.
The force-field beams carried a distortion effect that acted like splash damage, destroying delicate equipment across a wide area around each impact point!
How could the Twin Stars have dominated the surrounding star systems without considerable power?
Even the steel-hard body of the Immortal couldn’t withstand the destructive crush of invisible force fields. Against such high-penetration force-field attacks, only a force-field shield — itself a product of force-field technology — could offer much protection. Other defensive methods were of very limited use.
Nie Yun still didn’t have super-large-scale force-field shield technology, and it was impossible to provide full coverage protection for the gigantic Immortal. Even if he had such tech, the energy consumption of a shield at that scale was something the few power generators he had could never support.
So he could only activate base-type force-field shields at a few core areas, supplemented by the Immortal’s own psychic shield. This way, even if it got unlucky and took a direct hit to a vital spot, it wouldn’t be “one-shotted.”
Apart from the heavily damaged areas under attack, even the weapons and turrets that hadn’t been directly hit now had barrels glowing red-hot and warped out of shape.
To exert maximum pressure and deterrence on the Sea Tribe fleet, Nie Yun had previously pushed the rate of fire to the limit, disregarding cooling entirely. As a result, more than 50% of the fortress cannons were declared scrapped after the battle due to overheating and overloading, and the rest all suffered varying degrees of malfunction.
On top of that, the Immortal’s outer branches and leaves had also thinned noticeably, drooping slightly now, making the whole tree seem a bit withered and dispirited.
The Sea Tribe’s attacks hadn’t completely broken through the Immortal’s defensive layers, but they had blown off and severed many branches, and after weathering the enemy’s thunder barrages head-on, the losses were considerable. The Immortal’s protective “armor” was weakened by more than 60%.
This battle could truly be called a mutually damaging stalemate — the Sea Tribe fleet had taken heavy losses, and the Immortal had also been battered and bruised, with greatly reduced combat power.
If Nie Yun hadn’t bluffed and used psychological tactics to scare off the Sea Tribe fleet, and if they’d pressed the attack more decisively, it was still hard to say who would’ve won in the end!
However, as a plant-type magical creature, the Immortal’s greatest advantage was its incredible regenerative ability. As long as it wasn’t killed outright, it could quickly recover like an immortal cockroach.
Its wounds were already healing at a rate visible to the naked eye, and a large number of new buds and shoots were sprouting again — the repaired tissues and organs even growing back stronger than before!
As for the damaged equipment and weapon platforms — needless to say — even if they were twisted like pretzels, the silver swarm of mechanical bugs flowed over them like mercury, “washing and polishing” them back into shape with ease!
This was why Nie Yun dared to push the weapons to their limits without regard for the cost. So what if they overheated and overloaded? A few hours later, they’d be good as new!
As a tank, with the dual blessings of life-water and mechanical bugs, the Immortal’s “healing” speed was simply outrageous — the one thing it wasn’t afraid of was a war of attrition!
And if the Sea Tribe’s Third Fleet really did charge straight back in…
Emmm… that would be quite a sight to behold…
TL Note- Charge....
Next
Comments
Post a Comment