Warhammer: Hail to the Void Lords!.

Chapter 478 06.0477: "Two Days End"

"This is E-47 and E-46. The target armed freighter was destroyed and the destroyer release was unsuccessful."

"This is E-103. Our torpedoes hit the armed freighter, but it still released two destroyers before being destroyed."

"This is E-48. Our ship has detected a distress signal from an enemy ship. There are multiple sources of the signal. The entire merchant fleet is sending out distress signals."

Reports were transmitted from the intelligence station to Horatio's ears one after another. A large amount of enemy and friendly communication information was entangled together, making this starry sea lively.

"There is an enemy signal at 210,000 kilometers." Harvey also reported the latest war intelligence.

"It seems that we don't even have two days. In other words, before we chase these sheep to the vicinity of the star, the Tau Empire cruiser fleet will hunt us down."

Horatio spoke to the First Officer Collingwood and the Second Officer Louise, and then gave orders, one to serve as the commander and the other as the operations officer, to be prepared for high-intensity, day-and-night combat on the bridge of the Epic.

“However, the enemy does not yet know that the sunlight from a star will have an impact on the shadow field. Let us drive the flock away from the original route and keep it away from the star.

This way, when the enemy convoy arrives, we will have a chance to ambush them with the help of the gas cloud."

"Understood, Captain, we will deploy immediately."

The two men saluted and immediately rode at full speed to carry out his orders.

As the captain of the attack squadron, Horatio also issued new combat orders to the friendly ships:

"All squadrons, follow my instructions and coordinate with our ship to attack the enemy merchant ships."

Whoosh!Whoosh!
Under Horatio's coordination, torpedoes were fired almost simultaneously, rushing to their targets.

Horatio commanded the First Attack Squadron, launching rhythmic raids on the merchant fleet in front.

The torpedoes of each ship were fired almost as soon as they were loaded.

Torpedoes were fired from all directions, and the only two remaining destroyers seemed at a loss in the face of such an attack. Every time they rushed in one direction, the other side of the merchant fleet would be attacked by torpedoes.

They were unable to cope with the situation and could only watch as the cargo ships in front of them exploded, caught fire, fell behind, and were torn apart by the enemies in the shadows during their futile damage control efforts.

These two lonely destroyers were not really standing idly by, but they had more ships to protect and would not allow more cargo ships to be destroyed just for the sake of a half-damaged cargo ship.

Like sheepdogs, they tried hard to chase every wolf that pounced on them, but when the attack ships saw the destroyers approaching, they hid in the gas cloud, reduced their speed to the minimum to ensure the maximum power of the shadow field, and aimed their knife-shaped bows at the destroyers to reduce the probability of their own hulls being discovered by detection waves.

At present, the E-type attack ship is still a ghost in the eyes of the Tau Empire. They have not yet adjusted the original radar signal filtering conditions, and it is easy for them to point the bow at their Imperial attack ships with extremely low frontal projection and filter them out as meteorite clutter, which undoubtedly makes their escort work more difficult.

Even if the destroyer accidentally reveals its side and is detected, the active detection of radar signals can temporarily help the destroyer know its exact location.

However, the weapons equipped on the destroyer at this time could only fire two shots at that place as a deterrent at the moment of detection, and then chase after the merchant fleet in disgrace after the attack ship hid again.

That short deterrent shot from over a hundred kilometers away would have made it almost impossible to hit the attack ship with its bow pointed at them.

"Next one, heat source tracking guidance head ready."

Captain Kretschmer of the E-99 attack ship was looking at the target in the distance through a telescope. He felt so comfortable that he even wanted to have a cup of his favorite hand-ground coffee. However, he still had the unique majesty of an imperial captain and issued a new round of torpedo launch orders.

"The heat-seeking guidance head has been installed."

"emission!"

Whoosh!
A new torpedo was fired. It was slightly different from its other torpedoes in that a hemispherical glass crystal heat-seeking guidance head was installed in front of the warhead.

Inside is a psychic who is specially trained to perceive heat sources. His whole body is immersed in an anti-overload life-sustaining nutrient solution to achieve "hydraulic overload resistance" in the physical sense.

His head was shaved, his limbs were tightly bound, a group of neural plugs connected to the control panel were installed on the back of his head, and he wore a psychic conduction device shaped like an eye mask on his eyes to lock onto the heat source.

The psychic screamed. The special training had destroyed the rest of his consciousness, and now he was left with only the instinct to chase the light in his own [vision]. His neck leaned forward, and he howled silently in the liquid.

Under his guidance, the glass part was pushed by the torpedo engine to the target. The target of E-99 was a destroyer heading towards the E-103 attack ship.

When the torpedo approached, the captain of the Tau Empire destroyer broke out in a cold sweat and instantly realized that the enemy's target was not only the merchant ships that had no ability to resist, but also himself.

The destroyer immediately launched a set of noise, light, and heat decoy bombs.

This is not the first time that the Empire has used torpedoes with heat-seeking seekers on the battlefield against the Tau Empire. To be on the safe side, the Tau ships, which have plenty of money and a high level of technology, have designed almost all conceivable interference sources into the decoy launch groups around the hull at the beginning. Once attacked by a torpedo, they will directly spray full-band decoys.

Several light sources suddenly appeared before the psychic's eyes. As the destroyer turned and evaded, the target's tail flame became smaller and smaller in his dark vision, and was eventually replaced by a more dazzling heat source decoy.

He screamed and used the neural plug to steer the torpedo towards the suspicious light. Just as he was controlling the torpedo to hit the light with joy of relief, he was disappointed to find that the torpedo did not explode.

This made the psychic realize that it was a decoy bomb set, a false light source.

The Tau Empire destroyer turned around, and the ship's ion close-in defense gun locked onto the torpedo, ready to fire with a warm-up hum.

The psychic struggled hard in the nutrient solution, facing the ion beam of the close-in defense gun, and controlled the torpedo to rush towards another light source not far away.

Continuous roaring ion beam pulses hit the hemispherical crystal cover of the guidance head. After the barrier shattered, the crystal life-support fluid quickly vaporized in the low-pressure environment and sprayed into space.

A beam of ions brushed past the torpedo, and the aftermath hit the psychic's lower limbs. He whimpered, and a mouthful of blood mixed with nutrient solution was squeezed out of his mouth. His waist and legs were burnt and shattered in a short period of time by the high temperature of the ions.

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The heat source that was being tracked in front of me also began to show double and blur due to blood loss.

At the moment of his last breath, the psychic screamed like a demon, spitting out blood and saliva. Perhaps it was the programmed brainwashing training, or perhaps it was his long-obscured mind. In this place where no one knew and no one cared, he forced his vocal cords to roar that no one heard:

"For the Lord of Mankind! For the God-Emperor!"

He locked onto a corner of the double image, stared at it intently, and controlled the torpedo to hit it.

"Report, the heat-seeking torpedo failed to hit the original target, but hit a merchant ship close to the target."

As the officer next to him reported, Captain Kretschmer stood on the observation platform with an expressionless face, observing the battle situation ahead through a telescope.

He watched as the engine reactor at the stern of the Merchant-class freighter was blown to pieces and scattered everywhere, and then a series of engine ion explosions violently and savagely tore apart the entire stern.

She completely lost power, and the ion energy leaking from the engine flowed back into the cargo hold. Anything touched by the dark blue plasma flow was instantly melted.

Faced with an irreversible situation, the captain of the damaged cargo ship decisively ordered the crew to abandon ship in escape pods.

This decision was made because the communications were still flooded with distress signals from escape pods launched earlier by other destroyed ships.

The attackers seemed too busy chasing the cargo ship to bother with the escape pods.

But this played into Horatio's psychological warfare tactics. He deliberately did not let the Fury interceptors attack the escape pods in order to create the appearance that the attack ships were busy hunting merchant ships and not touching the escape pods.

So that those life-conscious Tau captains would be more inclined to encourage their crews to abandon ship and escape, allowing the cargo in the hold to be destroyed by the raging fire, rather than sticking to the front line of damage control and fighting the Empire to the death.

As the commander of the 1st Attack Squadron of the 1st Hunting Group, Horatio knew very well that his mission was not purely to kill people, but to destroy the enemy's logistical transportation lines.

Everything should be focused on the main task.

Kretschmer turned his attention away from his target, who had already abandoned ship and abandoned damage control.

He noticed that the squadron commander had marked a new target for him.

"Torpedo No. 4 begins warming up, wire guide."

"Install the wires for the No. 4 torpedo and start preheating!"

The fatigue after a long battle is really distressing. After the battle, it is time to ask my personal secretary to make me a cup of hand-ground coffee.

(End of this chapter)