From cannon fodder to sweeping across thousands of stars.

Chapter 537 Red Lightning & Red Baron

The combat support AI of the Holy Shield quickly marked the position of the current communication target on the full-circle screen.

Johnny Riding tilted his head slightly in this direction, and the second-generation main monitor on the head of the machine immediately turned over and quickly captured the corresponding target - a red-painted MA-01B block 5 heavy armored combat boat.

This is the car of Manfred, the 'Red Baron'.

He was also ejected from the heavy cruiser "Sun Reward", and was leading his team to overtake the HCP in front at a faster acceleration, and soon caught up with Johnny Riding and others who set off earlier.

After hearing his friend's voice on the communication channel, Johnny Riding's nervousness from participating in his first space battle relaxed a lot.

Johnny Riding turned his gaze back to the front and replied:
"Hey, the driver is here. How many people can you take this time?"

"No more, no less, just enough for one team to pack up and take away~"

At the same time as Manfred's voice came from the communication channel, Johnny Riding's HCP team also received a request for "coordinated propulsion" from this heavy armored combat boat team.

"Then we won't be polite. Team 'True Red Lightning', prepare for 'coordinated advancement' docking!"

As Johnny Riding's order was given, the four fully-equipped Aegis boats, including his, slightly opened up the distance between them. After everyone agreed to the application for "coordinated advancement", the four heavy armored combat boats behind also accelerated and flew up.

Soon, these high-speed predators on the battlefield came "docilely" under the four Holy Shields, and the latter's full-circle screen quickly displayed the auxiliary docking page and instructions.

With the help of the auxiliary page, the fully-equipped Aegis and the heavy armored combat boat completed a one-to-one correspondence and entered a relatively static state.

Immediately afterwards, the two mechanical arms of the Aegis grasped the raising handles of the heavy armored combat boat and locked it.

Afterwards, the entire body of the machine was attached to the upper part of the heavy armored combat boat in a posture similar to lying down, and the knees and feet of the machine were combined and locked with the interfaces at the corresponding positions on the heavy armored combat boat.

"Docking lock completed, the control authority of the main propulsion array of the aircraft is shared with the 'Partner Combat Boat'!"

The voice of the combat support AI sounded, and Johnny Riding looked down. The Aegis he was driving had already docked with Manfred's combat boat. Under the armor plate in front of him was Manfred's cockpit.

"Manfred, I leave it to you and your team. Lead us through! When we get to the last distance, I will bring people to escort you and carve out a path for you!"

Johnny Riding spoke loudly in the communication channel, and Manfred's answer was also very simple. He pushed the throttle of the heavy armored fighter boat to the top, and with the additional control of the main propulsion array of the Holy Shield, the sudden burst of thrust almost bounced the fighter boat out.

His teammates were extremely compatible with him in terms of both strength and tacit understanding, so they started to advance at full speed in sync at this moment, and the entire team continued to maintain a diagonal formation and rushed towards the target direction.

Behind them, more and more ejected HCPs quickly docked with the heavy armored combat boats, and eventually formed assault formations that crossed the position of the Infinity and followed closely behind.

Currently, these heavy armored combat boats in the Third Combined Fleet have been upgraded from the earliest MA-01 to the latest model MA-01B block5.

The biggest difference between the improved model and the 'basic version', in addition to the more stable power unit and weapon unit and greater combined thrust, is the integration of a system called 'cooperative propulsion'.

As the name suggests, this thing can temporarily dock the HCP produced by Atlas and the heavy armored combat boat, and then, by integrating the dual-engine thrust, the combat boat can carry the HCP and break into the battlefield at a faster speed.

This system can be said to solve the two problems of "heavy armored combat boats lacking cover in melee" and "HCP easily becoming disconnected from combat boat forces during an advance."

The current battle is also the "first show" of this system in actual combat.

The HCPs and heavy armored combat boat squadrons of each ship launched a full-deck attack in accordance with Randall's order, and after completing the "fusion", launched an attack on the Rubion Galaxy Garrison Fleet. At the same time, the warships of the Third Combined Fleet also began their attack.

Under Randall's command, the Infinity and all other warships switched to conventional combat mode, and in the first and second rounds of long-range attacks, they chose to fire a salvo of all the ship's electromagnetic reconnection guns.

However, this time the weapon was not the most common heavy anti-ship penetrator, but another type of ammunition with stronger countermeasure capability - the AHEAD bomb, which is a cluster directional prefabricated fragmentation bomb.

The massive AHEAD shells fired by the entire fleet in two salvos turned into countless orange-red trajectories and disappeared in front of the fleet. According to the calculations of the fleet gunnery officer, these two salvos fired according to the calculated lead time will just cover the position of the garrison fleet in a few minutes. "Let them intercept slowly. It would be best if they can be fooled~" After hearing the fleet gunnery officer's report that the salvo had ended, Randall nodded and continued:

"The entire fleet is ready to launch a salvo of heavy particle cannons from all gun ports. The timing of the salvo is controlled by the fleet gunnery officer!"

"Yes, sir!"

The fleet gunnery officer turned his attention back to his workstation and put a helmet on his head.

Soon, the bridge of the Infinity disappeared from his sight, replaced by the cold space and the warships of the surrounding Third Fleet.

On the frames marking these warships, green icons representing "shooting preparation complete" gradually lit up and connected together, and after more than ten seconds, all the shooting preparations were completed.

The fleet gunnery officer who confirmed this did not hesitate to issue the tactical order to all ships to "fire all heavy particle cannons at once".

In an instant, the universe, which had just been illuminated by the purification beam and then gradually extinguished, was lit up again by the salvo of heavy particle cannons.

Everyone on the bridge only felt a flash outside the porthole and closed their eyes involuntarily. When they opened their eyes again, countless blue-white beams of light were still lingering on their retinas.

A distance of 2 kilometers is only less than seven seconds for a heavy metal particle jet that travels at percent of the speed of light. Coupled with the fleet gunnery officer's 'pre-aiming', it was no surprise that the heavy metal particle jet swept across the flank of the garrison fleet.

It took only two minutes from the time they were attacked to the time they were hit by the heavy particle cannon fire. During this time, Major General Kimmel had already realized that they had been ambushed and gave the order to turn around and meet the enemy.

But for this large and fully staffed fleet, it is completely impossible to complete the turnaround of the entire fleet under such circumstances.

Except for some captains with more flexible minds who have already commanded the warships to complete axial adjustments in advance to prepare for meeting the enemy, most of the other captains have just begun to command the turn according to Kimmel's orders.

Although these warships could not take care of the personnel at the bow and stern at this time, who might have red vision or even fainted due to the sharp turn, and tried their best to face the enemy with the front of the warship, they were still one step too late.

The surging jet of heavy metal particles immediately set off a spectacular "fireworks" among the Rubion galaxy garrison fleet.

In a fleet battle, it is a very terrifying thing to be shot at by the enemy with an advantageous formation. Amber has emphasized this to Randall and his team many times, but Randall did not fully understand this at the time.
But now, Randall finally realized what Amber meant by 'horrible'.

In the image synthesized from the observation results of optical, infrared and synthetic aperture radar, a large number of warships, including many battleships in the Rubion galaxy garrison fleet, were cut off by this round of salvos.

Those warships that were hit by fusion reactors or superconducting battery piles exploded and immediately turned into a huge high-temperature plasma fireball.

Combined with the three rounds of strafing by the Infinity with its super-heavy purification beam generator, the combat intelligence team speculated that one-third of the ships in the garrison fleet might have been completely sunk in just a few minutes, and nearly half of the remaining ships were injured.

The damage was far beyond Randall's prediction of the first round of attacks before the war.
However, this 'novice fleet battle commander' did not take it lightly, but immediately realized that this was a great opportunity. An opportunity to achieve the tactical goal of 'quickly annihilating the enemy'.

"Pass my order, the entire fleet begins to slow down and maintain the bombardment, Infinity! Deploy the battle module! Prepare for a wide-area electronic warfare attack!"

On the other side, on the flagship of the Rubion Galaxy Garrison Fleet, the Balkan, Major General Kimmel finally recovered from the panic caused by the enemy's sudden attack.

Just when he issued the order to "turn the entire fleet to meet the enemy", he had already realized that he had been tricked by the Atlas fleet and that the other side had completed a beautiful "tactical deception".
However, he never expected that his fleet would suffer such losses in the enemy's first round of attack.

But no matter what, it has happened and the battle has begun, so Kimmel knows that he only has one way left - that is to calm down, command the battle, and try to achieve a reversal in desperate situation.

"Report! A large number of high-speed flying units have been detected. The ship's control personality has determined that they are electromagnetic reconnection guns firing. The number is 3392!"

The information reported by the tactical information coordinator made Kimmel a little confused as to why the other party started to attack with electromagnetic cannons at such a long distance, but he did not have time to think about it at this time, and could only give orders according to the standard handling procedures:
"All ships begin air defense operations! All HCP squadrons dispatch to coordinate defense!"

(End of this chapter)