From cannon fodder to sweeping across thousands of stars.

Chapter 669 Destruction
"The lethality of this thing is beyond my imagination."

Half an hour after fifteen ice crystals at a speed of 0.12C hit the Stonehenge defense zone, Amber, standing in front of the panoramic porthole of the Infinity bridge, looked at the asteroid belt in front of her that had been plowed into fifteen grooves, and couldn't help but sigh.

If you zoom in on the 'grooves' created by the impact of the ice crystals, you will find that the gravitational balance of the entire asteroid belt has been completely disrupted, and a chain reaction caused by the impact has begun to occur. Countless asteroid fragments have begun to collide in a disorderly manner, and the situation continues to deteriorate.

"Although this operation 'pays tribute' to Marshal Trafalgar's 'Operation Star 12' thirty-five years ago, both the acceleration of the ice crystals and the final killing effect are far superior," Guterres said after hearing Amber's words.

"So the times and technology are constantly advancing. We are just catching this wave, and we must seize this opportunity."

Amber turned his head and looked at Guterres. He was very satisfied with the latter's recent command on the front line, as well as his suggestions on the final attack path and timing. It can be said that the former Vice Admiral of the Federal Navy had no secrets to hide.

Guterres nodded and asked, "Boss, do you need the fleet to continue the attack?"

Amber: "There's no need to attack head-on. The situation inside Stonehenge is too chaotic right now. I don't want to send the fleet in now and cause more casualties. The remaining fleet of the Federation Navy will definitely want to break out, so let each fleet control the periphery and attack all enemies who try to escape from the Stonehenge defense zone."

"Yes, Boss, I'll arrange it right away."

Guterres saluted Amber and turned to leave, while Amber stayed where she was and continued to look out the porthole.

Others on the bridge didn't know that in Amber's eyes, this chaotic rubble belt was 'evolving rapidly' as if the accelerator key had been pressed. This "Stonehenge Defense Zone" that once made the Federation proud was transformed into a slowly rotating metal graveyard during the accelerated operation.

Shock waves from the ice crystals reshaped the asteroid belt into a bizarre ring-like structure, with trillions of tons of debris following new orbits and occasional collisions producing sparks that bloomed silently in the vacuum.

Countless metal debris danced non-stop driven by inertia. A piece of armor plate with the word "Thor's Hammer" printed on it seemed to pass by Amber's eyes. Further away, the wreckage of the acceleration track, which had been corroded into a hollow structure by the hydroxyl cloud, cast lace-like spots of light under the starlight.
Then Amber looked at a giant structure in the distance. It was a spindle-shaped structure formed by the remains of twelve defense nodes in the "Stonehenge" defense zone, which were spontaneously assembled under the action of the Lorentz force. The surface was covered with a layer of silica crystals produced by the impact of ice crystals. Whenever debris passed by nearby, the crystal layer would release a cold light like a firefly.

The electromagnetic pulses released periodically from the remains of several gravity anchors weave an ever-changing light curtain over this "metal graveyard". The ionized samarium gives it emerald ripples, and the rays produced by the decay of cobalt-60 dot it with orange-red dots.

After becoming a psychic, as the strength of his psychic power increases, it will continue to transform Amber's body, for example, allowing his retina to see more spectra at this moment - those deep purple lines representing deadly radiation are flowing eternally in the light curtain in the form of a Möbius strip.

"Master, what are you looking at?"

Lilith's sudden voice woke Amber up from her 'rapid evolution'.

He looked carefully and found that the scene before him had returned to its previous state. The entire Stonehenge defense area was still in the state it was in shortly after being hit.

"Remember when I told you that my psychic powers had undergone some... um, changes after the Alpha Serpens explosion?"

"I remember, Master~ It was like this just now?"

Amber nodded slightly: "Yes, this change has occurred again. I saw the scene after 'rapid evolution' again."

"So what did you see this time?" Lilith asked curiously after quickly confirming that Amber was normal through the vital signs monitoring device.

Amber: "We built a 'clock'."

"clock?"

"Yes, every fragment in front of us is a second hand, and every collision is a countdown - the entire 'Stonehenge' defense zone will slowly turn into an artificial star ring under the influence of gravity, and this artificial star ring will continue to expand in the next few hundred years and become a nightmare for all navigators."

Listening to Amber's description, Lilith, who was in the virtual space, had a strange look on her face:

"Master, how come you suddenly become so artistic? I think you really need to find time to let Ms. Saleh show you."

"."
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After the impact, the 'Stonehenge' defense zone has literally become a 'stone array'. In this huge rubble belt, the remnants of the federal fleet are like soldier ants whose nests have been destroyed, struggling in the turbulence of radiation storms and molten metal, trying to escape from this purgatory.

The combined fleet of Atlas and the Renaissance Alliance would be squatting like the "child" destroying the ant nest. As the Federation Fleet's numbers continued to decline, the warships that began to gain the upper hand had already completed the formation and attack formation outside the defense zone.

The light cruisers and destroyers that usually hid behind the main battleships also came to the front of the formation at this time. They deployed various detection devices and scanning arrays on the bow, scanning the outer area to capture those federal warships trying to escape.

The Federal Navy's heavy cruiser "Liberty" was patrolling at the edge of the defense zone when the collision occurred, so it was not drawn into the core area. Under the command of Captain Irene, it became the first battleship in the entire fleet to break out of the "Stonehenge", and also brought out more than a dozen destroyers and frigates.

But their luck ended there. As the battleship avoided the last threatening asteroid debris, the ship's control personality issued another warning, but this time it was a warning that the battleship was about to be attacked. "The squadron detected a high-speed approaching object on the starboard side, the number 120 corrected to 260, and it was judged to be a plasma torpedo salvo."

The voice of the ship's control personality was unusually calm, but the content made everyone on the bridge's hair stand on end. The feeling of having just escaped from the gates of hell only to step into a killing spree again was naturally not a good one.

On the holographic projection platform in the center of the bridge, the shipboard control personality has displayed the tactical situation picture. Dense red dots are approaching the starboard side of the squadron rapidly like a school of piranhas that have smelled blood. Judging from the intensity of the light spots in the infrared optical sensor on another screen, these plasma torpedoes have also restarted their thrusters and entered the final attack process.

"Distance 3230 kilometers, expected contact in 42 seconds."

"All ships! Emergency air defense operations on the starboard side! HCPs go directly to the deck and act as anti-aircraft firepower to intercept! Release all decoys and begin evasive maneuvers!"

Captain Irene actually had an idea of ​​how much could be done in 42 seconds. Perhaps the anti-aircraft weapon group on the starboard side of each ship could be activated, but at most it would be enough for the onboard HCPs to just climb up and work overtime. But she had no other choice at the moment and could only try her best.

As for maneuvering and evading, the restrictions are even greater. The starboard side is the direction where the plasma torpedoes are attacking, and the rear half of the port side and the entire rear hemisphere are the hell of "Stonehenge", which is even more impossible to evade, so the maneuvering space of these warships has become very limited.
Soon, a large number of decoy pods bloomed in the vacuum and began to simulate the infrared and electromagnetic characteristics of the warships. Captain Irene was betting that the seekers of these plasma torpedoes were conventional infrared and radar guidance, which is also the most common seeker configuration for plasma torpedoes. After all, this type of weapon has a relatively low priority in the navies of the Federation and the Star Dragon Empire, so it will not have a relatively complex configuration.

However, Captain Irene overlooked one thing, that is, the Atlas Group is one of the few forces in this universe that attaches great importance to the use of plasma torpedoes.
In addition to infrared and radar seekers, it is also equipped with image recognition and quantum entanglement recognition units. Coupled with the special probability algorithm developed by Lilith, the search accuracy is already at a level different from that of conventional plasma torpedoes.

Captain Irene and the others on the bridge almost watched helplessly as the torpedoes on the tactical situation map scattered around the baits they had spread out and continued to attack their position.

Outside the porthole, beams of directed energy weapons and dense orange-red trajectories appeared, and the starboard air defense weapon groups of each ship began the final interception.

However, relying solely on the anti-aircraft firepower on the starboard side of these dozen warships, it would be like a drop in the bucket to intercept a total of 260 heavy plasma torpedoes with armored front sections.

When these plasma torpedoes were about to hit the target, the composite metal armor at their front end bloomed and unfolded like petals, and a sulfur-colored halo suddenly stretched out in the vacuum. It was liquid metal lithium bound by an electrostatic force field. Three plasma torpedoes that broke through the anti-aircraft firepower network gently kissed the starboard side of the "Freedom".
"Fifty million Kelvin fusion reaction detected."

The ship's control personality issued another warning, and Captain Irene also roared the order to prepare for impact, but these voices were soon drowned out by the whistling sound of metal. The core of the plasma torpedo instantly corroded through three layers of composite armor plates. The brightness of all the helmets in the cabin was automatically lowered, but it could not block the sudden orange-red halo that appeared on the cabin wall - that was the secondary radiation caused by the ultra-high temperature particle flow penetrating the hull.

In front of Captain Irene's eyes, the three-dimensional projection of the damage control system instantly turned red. Areas B7 to D12 were all offline, and the airtight gates connecting these areas were evaporated before they were closed.

Then, Captain Irene saw her command console begin to glow, the ionized metal atoms were releasing X-rays, and her bones appeared as a white relief under her skin. This was the last picture before her consciousness faded.

A series of blue and white high-temperature plasma fireballs lit up in succession in this area of ​​the universe. More than a dozen federal warships that had finally escaped from the "Stonehenge" defense zone were reduced to a pile of unrecognizable wreckage under the saturation attack of plasma torpedoes.

And such scenes are constantly being played out in various parts of the Stonehenge defense zone.

Looking down from deep space, this hunt presents a strange geometric beauty: Federation warships are gushing out from the cracks in the rubble belt, like a jet of matter ejected by a supernova, while Atlas's front-line fleet is weaving a filter with various weapons to burn every grain of "metal dust" into ion ash.
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The tactical holographic screen suddenly went out during the fifth violent vibration. Major General Griezmann felt his nails digging deeply into the shock-proof rubber layer inside the gloves of his cabin suit. Through the panoramic porthole of the bridge, he saw a two-kilometer-diameter asteroid debris brushing past the left side of the battleship, and then slamming into a nearby powerless destroyer. The destroyer was completely unable to resist the debris that was several times larger than itself, and was shattered in an instant.

"Start full-band radar scanning! All electromagnetic reconnection guns switch to obstacle-breaking shotgun shells!"

Rear Admiral Griezmann's voice mixed with the damage control alarm echoed in the bridge. He tapped a few times on the control panel of the suit on his wrist, and the subcutaneous syringe inside the suit pierced his neck. The next second, his pupils contracted instantly, and then slowly dilated a little - this is a high-risk stimulant that the Federal Navy combat forces will only authorize to issue in an emergency. It can increase a person's reaction speed by three times, but the cost is that some nerve tissue will inevitably fail after the war.

The operations officer's hands almost left afterimages on the holographic console, and the voice coming from the communication channel also carried a hint of despair:
"The density of the debris reaches 846 units per cubic kilometer! This is far beyond the threshold for air defense operations and obstacle clearance!"

"Don't worry about it! Intercept first and then..."

Major General Griezmann's voice was interrupted by a sudden collision. A piece of gravel flying from the right side scraped past the starboard side of the battleship. The entire flagship was like a tin can kicked by a giant. Everyone felt a huge force throwing them to the left.

Before Griezmann could fully come to his senses, he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his neck. This was a physiological warning triggered by his close-fitting combat uniform after being locked by the enemy's composite fire control system.

"High-energy reaction detected!" The tactical information coordinator's voice trembled, "Source location T9N4, feature matching completed. It's a laser battleship like Atlas!"

The moment he heard the news, Griezmann realized that everything was over.

The next second, the deflection field of the battleship where Griezmann was located disappeared after a flash, and then twelve high-energy laser beams accurately shone on the outer armor plate just above the bridge.

As these high-energy laser beams penetrated the bridge, Major General Griezmann was trying to send the final order of "self-breakout" to the surrounding federal warships. His last consciousness stopped on a summer night as his life progressed. He was eight years old and lying on the lawn in his home yard, with the Milky Way pouring over his head. It was this scene that made him set the goal of becoming a naval officer since he was a child.

The beam swept past, and Major General Griezmann's body was instantly decomposed into countless elementary particles, while the front end of the "Spectrum Destroyer" battlecruiser was still flowing with rainbow light, as if wiping a bloody sword.

(End of this chapter)