The Empire begins with the Fourth Scourge.

2806. A Devastating Collapse (Part 2)
"Charge! Charge! Charge!" General Grievous roared and waved his arms from the bridge of the Invisible Hand.

The Protoss Purifier fleet launched an unstoppable charge!
Before the Imperial fleet could fully deploy, the Purifier drones swarmed in like a silver beehive. And this time, they charged alongside the aircraft carriers!
In previous battles, the Purifier's warships always stayed far behind, only launching drones to fight. Coupled with the Purifier's drones' powerful firepower, the Imperial intelligence department always perceived the aircraft carriers as ordinary aircraft carriers.

Because a typical aircraft carrier requires a large hangar platform, as well as various supply and maintenance stations to accommodate pilots and ground crew. The bridge also needs flight control systems, command chains, guidance systems, and so on. All of this support is necessary to unleash the maximum combat power of an aircraft carrier.

That's why there are so few aircraft carriers; their cost is simply incomparable to that of gunboats.

In reality, aircraft carriers can indeed exert combat capabilities far exceeding those of ordinary warships. The simplest example is that bombers launched from an aircraft carrier can bypass the strongest points of an enemy warship's shields and directly attack its engines—a capability unmatched by any other weapon, including missiles.

Therefore, after recognizing the immense power of aircraft carriers, the Galactic Empire once vigorously developed aircraft carriers. However, due to the increasing advantage of the Dawn Kingdom's fighter jets, it returned to the combat combination of giant ships with cannons and specialized anti-aircraft warships.

Therefore, according to normal understanding, after an aircraft carrier is equipped with so many systems around fighter jets, it is impossible to have much space to install other weapons and equipment.

But the Galactic Empire's intelligence department had no idea—and no way of knowing—that the Protoss had already reached the pinnacle of energy manipulation. Furthermore, their carriers didn't require traditional hangars or pilots; they only had a drone production line, nothing more.

Therefore, Protoss aircraft carriers are actually equipped with weapons...

Ten Purifier aircraft carriers rushed toward the Imperial fleet's formation at an extremely high speed. Under Gideon Tarkin's command, the Imperial fleet hastily responded, but it had already fallen behind.

A large number of Purifier drones have begun attacking the Imperial warships, with Purifier reconnaissance aircraft following closely behind.

Immediately afterwards, the captains of the Imperial Fleet discovered that the Purifier reconnaissance aircraft, which were over 30 meters long and looked like heavy fighter jets, had firepower that was far more powerful than they had imagined!
These reconnaissance aircraft are equipped with antimatter missiles, and the antimatter warheads are refined and compressed using Protoss technology!
Attacked by these antimatter missiles, even the shields of the Imperial-class Star Destroyers were fluctuating violently, and some reconnaissance aircraft even began attacking the rear engines of the Imperial-class Star Destroyers under the cover of drones.

The scene immediately descended into chaos. At this point, the engine shield of an Imperial-class Star Destroyer was breached, the engine spewed out countless flames, and finally the reactor exploded.

The destruction of this Star Destroyer shocked the captains of the Imperial fleet.

Keep in mind that this is a 150:10 troop ratio! This isn't just a simple matter of two or three times the number of troops; it's a full fifteen times!
Given this disparity in numbers, it was actually the side with the larger numbers that suffered casualties first! This was a devastating blow to the morale of officers and soldiers at all levels of the Imperial Fleet.

But this is just the beginning.

Taking advantage of the chaos caused by countless drones and reconnaissance aircraft within the Imperial fleet, the Purifier carrier has already broken into the Imperial fleet's formation.

These aircraft carriers were already much faster than Imperial-class star destroyers, and the surprise attack meant that the Imperial fleet had neither the distance nor the time to leverage its numerical advantage and concentrate its firepower on the Purifier aircraft carriers.

Moreover, these aircraft carriers pressed forward relentlessly, completely ignoring attacks from other warships.

Several aircraft carriers had their shields breached, spewing pale blue flames from their hulls. However, thanks to continuous cover from drones and reconnaissance aircraft, these carriers were not subjected to concentrated fire. At that very moment, the Purifier carrier group was approaching Gideon Tarkin's flagship!
"Purification Beam! Fire!!" General Grievous issued the order with an extremely ferocious expression.

Suddenly, a huge beam emitter was deployed on the bow of the ten aircraft carriers, followed by a series of terrifying purification beams that shot out instantly!
That's right, this is the Purification Beam, a weapon used by Protoss carriers to carry out purification missions, which is essentially orbital bombardment of planets!
This powerful beam can cause devastating damage to the surface of a planet, but its drawbacks include a long charging time, a short range, and because it is an axial weapon, it can only be aimed by warships turning around, so it is rarely used in fleet battles.

But this time, General Grievous used it directly to attack Gideon Tarkin!

He consistently gave the Imperial intelligence service the false impression that these aircraft carriers were cowardly and incapable of close-quarters combat with Star Destroyers, and that all their fighters were mounted on unmanned interceptors.

This led the Imperial Intelligence Department to assume that these aircraft carriers were conventional aircraft carriers without any weapons.

In a sense, they are right. The Protoss carrier is indeed a traditional aircraft carrier, and the Purification Beam is indeed unusable in fleet battles.

However, General Grievous cleverly created the conditions for himself to launch an attack using the Purification Beam.

He first secretly traveled to the planet Losar to meet with Lin Nanyi and others at a high-level summit, attended by only three or four people. Afterwards, he told Lin Nanyi that he would not participate in any affairs of the Eastern Territory, including military affairs—he would not participate in any of them.

This made him virtually invisible in the Eastern Territory, making it impossible for the Imperial Intelligence Department to determine his command style.

Indeed, if Gideon Tarkin had known that General Grievous was in command of the carrier strike group, he would never have left only 150 capital ships!

Because the name Grievous means ruthless raids and cunning sneak attacks!

Meanwhile, Grievous had been cultivating the impression in the Imperial Intelligence Department that he was there to harass the enemy's logistics, which made them never expect that the heavily fortified Chalos IV would be directly attacked.

Even Gideon Tarkin believed that the purpose of these aircraft carriers was to cut off the supply lines of Chalos IV, as these aircraft carriers began to operate on the logistics hubs of Balamak and Torglia.

However, he did not expect that the reason these two planets became logistics hubs was because of their convenient transportation, which made it easy for transport fleets to navigate.

However, facilitating the passage of transport fleets also facilitates the passage of raiding fleets!

Finally, General Grievous exploited a time difference, giving Gideon Tarkin only 10 minutes to react after the enemy discovered the carrier fleet had disappeared.

The location of Gideon Tarkin's flagship, and even part of their battle plans, were all discovered by the Protoss Watchers who were roaming around!
Ten aircraft carriers fired purifying beams at Gideon Tarkin's flagship at extremely close range!
The Imperial Class II Star Destroyer exploded completely in less than ten minutes, shattering into countless fragments.

This explosion also destroyed the Imperial Twelfth Army... (End of Chapter)