Warhammer: Hail to the Void Lords!.

Chapter 393 05.0392: "Parallel Battle Lines"

Outer orbit of Phar, 11:00 noon Terra time.

"The enemy Chaos Fleet is approaching parallel to our fleet! The distance is about 1/8 of a star link."

The lookout updated the position information, and the logo on the display screen in front of Horatio was updated almost synchronously, moving slowly with the speed of both ships.

"The escort ship's reconnaissance vision is clear. The enemy's battle line is within the second gun range of our fleet, about 962 kilometers away. Captain, should we open fire on the enemy's battle line?" The operations officer reported and asked.

"Communications Department, telegraph Lord Daros, and ask our ships to focus fire on the enemy's lead ship, Emperor's Death."

"Yes! Lord Daros responds and will be executed immediately!"

"All gun batteries on the starboard side have been loaded, and the ship's spine lance has locked onto the target!" The weapons department officer reported the loading status.

"All artillery groups, from front to back! Fire!" Horatio gave the order, and the sound arrays in all the artillery command rooms conveyed his will.

The battleship was silent for a while, and then a violent fire lit up on one side of the battleship. After the shock was reduced layer by layer, when it reached Horatio's hand on the command throne, only a slight tremor remained.

Each firepower array fired in salvos in sequence starting from the first macro cannon at the bow. The light spears on the ship's spine also started in sequence from the first light spear turret, bursting out a string of brilliant lights like beads.

Horatio looked at the abominably black wedge-shaped ship in the void, its void shield struck so hard that it swayed like an oil film being stepped on.

Horatio hoped that by using his largest battleship to focus fire on the enemy's most threatening warship, he could reduce the threat and damage it could pose to the light cruisers at the rear of the team.

The principle is similar to Tian Ji's horse racing. When the two fleets are sailing across each other, each ship will engage in fire with all the warships in the enemy's battle line in turn.

The strongest battleship at the head will fight against the strongest battleship of the other side, and then fight the weakest battleship at the end of the team in turn.

Any ship that was destroyed or separated from the battle line due to being unable to withstand enemy fire would expose the entire fleet to potentially fatal weaknesses.

"In the first round of firing, more than half of our shells hit the target! The enemy's void shield is estimated to be overloaded by 54%. Each artillery group is correcting the parameters."

"Well done! Prepare for the next salvo immediately."

"Enemy ships open fire! Our void shield is deployed normally!"

The small cannons on the side of the enemy ship opened fire first. The design of these cannons now seemed quite outdated. A round of bullets hit the void shield of Lord Daros, splashing ripples.

Then, two large twin-mounted turrets that looked like the characteristic equipment of ancient Terra's dreadnoughts opened fire, and unclean black and red flames gushed out from the muzzles.

Four heavy shells wrapped in black flames came towards the Indefatigable. Two forked shells passed through the fin and spine of the Indefatigable respectively, and the other two hit the void shield directly, causing a shrill whistle roar in the vacuum.

"Our ship's void shield is overloaded by 30%!" The power department reported the energy status of the void shield.

Then the enemy's second Slaughter-class cruiser also opened fire, targeting the Lord Daros.

But she was in poor condition. The right side of the ship that was responsible for firing had many obvious cracks, and several small turrets were always in a misfiring state. They should have been damaged in the battle with the orcs and had not yet been repaired.

Thanks to the Imperial Navy's decision to back off from the planet Far, the shells fired by the two enemy cruisers were effectively flying straight toward the planet.

Their trajectories were more or less affected by the planet's gravity, and their accuracy was not optimistic. Many shells passed over the Indefatigable and Lord Daros with large errors, and deflected across the target in a semi-circular form along the direction of the planet's rotation orbit.

The trajectory of the Imperial Navy warships firing into the void was much straighter, and the hit rate of the first round of calibration shooting was as high as over 50%.

According to the macro artillery officer's estimate, if the current relative speed is maintained, the hit rate of the next round of macro artillery will be about 70%.

After the largest battleships in the two fleets opened fire, both sides immediately reloaded.

The two Dreadnought-class light cruisers at the rear of the Gothic strike group also engaged in a fierce firefight with the greenskin vanguard ships after the smoke cleared, suppressing the advance of the garbage ships with their high-rate light macrocannon arrays.

It was not just the ships of both sides that engaged in the exchange of fire.

In the void, a large-scale carrier-based aircraft melee is about to break out.

"Enemy mothership spotted releasing carrier-based aircraft." The sharp-eyed Air Wing Commander Fasha spotted at a glance the familiar and hated Doomsday Fire Bombers flying out from the stern fins of two Hell Apostle-class light cruisers at the end of the Chaos fleet.

It was these fighter planes that destroyed her home in Taran more than a decade ago.

These Chaos warships are of old design from the 30K era, with only three shuttle ramp gates on each side, while the Imperial Navy's newer ships have as many as eight.

(Hell Apostle Class Light Cruiser/Planetary Attack Ship)
Given the size of the Fury, only one Fury can take off and land at a time at each of the three gates, and a squadron needs to score three releases to complete the task.

However, due to the small size of the Speed ​​Death Fighter, two can share a shuttle landing pad. Therefore, it is different from the Imperial Navy Air Force, where a Fury Squadron has 8 fighters and a Starhawk Squadron has 4 fighters.

The Chaos Air Force uses the old-fashioned organization, with a Death Squadron of 6 planes and a Doomsday Fire Squadron of 3 planes.

The Death Squadron will be divided into two three-plane formations, or three two-plane formations for combat.

This also means that in terms of the take-off and landing volume of warships of the same size, the Imperial Navy ships have a better scale advantage than the Chaos ships.

In particular, each fighter of the Imperial Naval Aviation uses a single shuttle ramp. When a fighter is damaged and an accident occurs on the way back, it will not cause another fighter to be unable to land.

When two fast-death fighters share one shuttle apron, it often happens that the first damaged fighter encounters an accident during landing and returning, resulting in the dilemma of the other fast-death fighter being unable to land.

In addition to releasing the Doomsday Fire Bomber and its escorting Death Fighters, the Greenskins also spewed out a large number of fancy homemade aircraft from their large iron pipes that were like radiator nozzles.

The Indefatigable's aviation department promptly received early warning information from other ships and its own aviation team. Archie used all his brainpower to pay attention to the movements of the two groups of enemies at the same time.

"Captain, regarding the latest movements of the enemy air force, I believe that the Chaos carrier-based aircraft should be targeting the Indefatigable, while the Greenskin carrier-based aircraft should be targeting the Chaos flagship 'Emperor's Death'.

At present, the formation of the greenskin fleet is rather chaotic, but their leader is obviously a cunning and ferocious beast. It is trying to shrink its formation and form an impact formation.

I suggest that we have the Ikaros Storm (Provocation-class light cruiser) release the Starhawk bombers to carry out concentrated fire bombing on the lone light cruiser-class junk ship that is turning to form a battle line."

The three huge, semi-circular display screens in front of Horatio were filled with various parameter reports.

He used his brain waves to drag aside the aviation tactical concept diagram sent by Archie, and his brain was thinking at high speed.

At the same time, it is also responsible for handling the constantly updated information sent by a series of departments such as the Operations Department, Navigation Department, Weapons Department, Lookout Department, Communications Department, Power Department, and Supervision Department.

If it were an ordinary person, he would have felt dizzy, or even nauseous.

But Horatio is different.

Ever since Father Latti completed the secret transformation surgery on him, he felt that his brain was like a multi-threaded CPU, able to handle several tasks at the same time with accuracy.

This kind of battle patrol command activity is too brain-burning for ordinary people, and it is difficult to bear without a year or two of ship command experience, but it is still manageable for him.

The machine soul of the Indefatigable is also dedicated and sincere enough. This old ship, which has been in service for a thousand years, has absorbed the command strategies of dozens of captains throughout the ages.

It's not that Horatio is actively adapting to her, but that she is actively adapting to Horatio.

In the short time since Horatio inserted the neural plug, she had already gained a preliminary understanding and adaptation to the command habits of the acting captain through several operations.

It can always display the content he wants to see in front of him in the most timely manner through the eye-catching device, and handle those unimportant and tedious matters for him based on the optimal solutions made by previous captains.

Now Horatio finally understood why in Warhammer 40K, older ships were more useful.

He could vaguely feel that he was not alone in commanding the battle.

Instead, he received all-round intelligent assistance from the aftermath of the wisdom of previous captains condensed by the Machine Soul, allowing him to lead the Indefatigable to new victories and glory.

"Archie, I have marked the target for the cluster bombing. We should be able to destroy or disable a light cruiser-class junk ship before the greenskin fleet forms a battle line.

I have made some minor adjustments to the airstrike plan, please implement it immediately."

It took Horatio only two or three minutes to use his brain waves to redraw the optimal bombing route and sent it to Lieutenant Collingwood for implementation.

"Yes! This is the aviation department of the flagship Indefatigable, the Ikaros Storm, immediately dispatch four Starhawk squadrons to target the green-skinned alien fleet, the Horn of Rosgob. Our ships will provide air superiority escort for the bombing formation."

"'Ikaros Storm' received, commanding and dispatching the bomber formation."

One after another, Starhawk bombers rushed out of the shuttle ramp of the Defiant-class light cruiser carrier under the command of ground crew.

They flew over the Tenacity and Diligence class light cruisers that were firing, with smoke particles still blowing on the fuselage from their gun barrels, and the deadly and brilliant rays of light spears complementing the tail flames from the nozzles.

Accompanied and escorted by two squadrons of furious interceptors on the left and right, they charged forward fearlessly towards the ugly alien creature that had turned around and was left alone in the distance.

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(End of this chapter)