From cannon fodder to sweeping across thousands of stars.

Chapter 643 Tactical Shelter
Under Ceris's assignment, Amber's instructions were quickly delivered to the designated ship.

The warships of the rearguard fleet activated the multi-purpose launch silos located in the middle section of their hulls while maintaining their speed and course - this is also a common design of current human warships.

From battleships and super flagships to destroyers and frigates, the design concepts of overall structure and weapon group deployment are actually the same.

The heavy particle cannon or pseudo-heavy particle cannon (usually refers to the low-power heavy particle cannon on frigates) used as the main gun are all placed at the bow without exception, allowing the warship to maintain a posture where the bow projection surface faces the enemy when firing.

Next are the high-energy lasers, charged particle cannons and electromagnetic reconnection cannons installed on the ship. These weapons are usually tightly attached to the limit slots of the ship's hull. In non-combat conditions, they can almost be integrated with the ship's hull, and will be activated and deployed after entering combat.

Although this design controls the projection surface of the bow to a great extent, the problem that comes with it is that these "secondary weapons" cannot fire at the same time. Even if the warship is tilted at a certain angle to allow the secondary weapon group on the rear hull to gain a firing range, it can only guarantee that one side can attack.

Following the main guns and secondary weapons are missiles, which have gradually become a supporting role since the advent of the space warfare era. The vast and clean-background universe, as well as the increasingly long engagement distances, have almost made this traditional weapon lose its penetration effect.

Therefore, the missiles on various warships of this era, in addition to retaining a portion of heavy anti-ship missiles used for "lottery", are more likely to be various multi-purpose warheads with stronger functionality, such as scattering gel, high-density interference foil clouds, or anti-infrared/ultraviolet smoke.

Even nuclear bombs equipped with nuclear warheads are more often used for defensive operations rather than for directly attacking the enemy.

But even so, this type of missile has the highest flexibility in use among ship-borne weapons.

The vertical launch system originated from humans in the Blue Planet Navy era. After hundreds and thousands of years, although various new technologies have been added, there is no change in its principles and advantages.

These multi-purpose missile silos, which are arranged around the central axis of the ship and arranged in a circle in the middle of the ship, allow the warship to launch various types of missiles and even plasma torpedoes without being affected in any scenario and any posture, without having to adjust the ship's posture.

The only problem is that compared to missiles launched straight out, these missiles launched from the middle of the ship take longer and consume additional power to adjust their trajectory and head towards their locked targets.

However, this shortcoming seems insignificant when the missile itself is difficult to penetrate and is mostly used for miscellaneous tasks.
Just like the rear guard warships of the Atlas fleet in front of them, they strictly maintain their formation and speed, while the multi-purpose launch silos in the middle of the ship are spewing missiles as if they are free.

These missiles, whose warheads were filled with high-density interference foil clouds and interference smoke, also flew rapidly toward the rear of the fleet after a simple adjustment of their course, and soon exploded evenly to form a large "shielding layer" like a curtain.

At the same time, the process of the Atlas fleet carrying out this "shielding and covering" has also been optimized by Amber. It is not like the current Federation, Empire or civilian armed forces, which spread out all at once, but with the assistance of the ship-borne control personality, it is continuously deployed according to a certain pattern, so that the "shielding and covering" with the same consumption can last longer.

Of course, only the ten, fifty, and one hundred year "veterans" in the Atlas fleet who had been upgraded by Lilith could provide sufficient computing power to assist in calculations during combat.

On the bridge of the HMS Dreadnought, the flagship of the Federation Navy's First Fleet, Marshal Trafalgar and Admiral Carroll were naturally the first to learn that the Atlas Fleet had begun tactical concealment.

As the dense cloud of jamming foil and anti-infrared/ultraviolet jamming smoke spread, the radar images and optical windows of the Federation Fleet were left with only a large mass of jamming images. The reconnaissance teams of each ship knew that the Atlas Fleet was ahead, but suddenly lost all other information. Did the enemy fleet start to change track? Did it perform emergency acceleration? Did it adjust its axis 180 degrees to prepare for an attack?
It can be said that this information is completely unknown.

"Marshal, what does the other party want to do?"

Admiral Carol looked at the "shield" that was constantly forming in front of the fleet and asked with some confusion:

"From the most direct perspective, the other party wants to stop us from continuing to scout the fleet. In other words, they don't want us to find out their next move. If that's the case..."

Before Admiral Carroll could finish his words, the Tactical Information Coordinator suddenly spoke up, interrupting him.

"Report, nuclear explosion characteristics detected ahead of the fleet!"

At the same time as the tactical information coordinator reported, the image he reported also appeared synchronously on the processed optical image on the main screen of the bridge.

Dozens of nuclear bombs suddenly exploded at the same time from the back of the "shielding layer" in front, and a dazzling wall of light appeared in front of the First Fleet of the Federal Navy. Tens of seconds later, as if according to the pre-set interval, the second round of nuclear bombs exploded.
Admiral Carol, who saw this scene, couldn't help but frowned: "Even neutrino scanning is useless now."

"Let all fleets be on high alert. The enemy should be about to make a move, but I really can't predict what emergency situation will happen next."

Marshal Trafalgar also frowned as he spoke. Although his years of experience had warned him that the brat in front of him was up to some tricks, he still couldn't accurately predict what Amber was going to do.

"Could it be that the other party wants to accelerate the warp retreat?"

Marshal Trafalgar rejected this idea as soon as it came up, because in his opinion Amber was definitely not such a commander.

Moreover, since Griezmann has already held up the Atlas fleet on the front line, if Amber wants to break the situation, she must do something here.

Destroy the proton annihilation bomb assembly center, or destroy his elite fleet, or "I want them all". These are all options for Amber, but the only option is not to take the fleet to evacuate, because once Amber does this, he will completely lose the initiative.

"What on earth do you want, Mr. Amber?"

Marshal Trafalgar felt that he was getting excited for the first time in a long time. He had not been so excited even when he led the Federation Navy at its peak to invade the Star Dragon Empire.

The old admiral suddenly realized at this moment that perhaps the young man on the flagship of the opposing fleet might be the "strong enemy" he had been waiting for for many years.
(End of this chapter)