Warhammer: Hail to the Void Lords!.

Chapter 591 06.0590: "Ancient Abomination"

On the warship that was boarded by sharks.

The piercing alarm broke the silence of the bridge, and the holographic tactical sandbox suddenly flashed a few times and then went out, leaving only the coordinate numbers jumping on the data panel.

When the hum of the tactical analyzer turned into a sharp death wail, all the operating consoles were lit up with ominous blood-red lights.

The starry sky outside the main observation window suddenly lit up, and a blue and gold plasma fireball bloomed in the dust cloud, turning the ship into a sky full of metal debris.

The electromagnetic pulse from the explosion caused the bridge's lighting system to flicker on and off, casting ghostly, mottled shadows on the faces of the Tau warriors.

In the last image sent back by the surveillance camera, the astonished faces of the Titanium sailors were being swallowed up and torn apart by some silver-gray afterimage.

"Kan#feng, the Wa#ula patrol team has lost contact! The final coordinates are 374.819!"

The news that a patrol fleet suddenly lost contact with the boarded warship from the tactical analyzer more than a thousand kilometers away shocked the entire tactical bridge.

Soon, they saw the blue and gold fireworks from the explosion of a cruiser illuminate a large area of ​​the night sky.

On the bridge, the Tau's fingers froze above the console, and his pupils, reflecting the blue light of the explosion, trembled violently - the plasma bursting out from the wreckage of the exploded cruiser was dyeing the dust cloud within a radius of 100 kilometers into a phosphorus blue color like a ghost fire.

"What happened? If they were destroyed, they should have had time to send in an attack report."

"That was an explosion caused by an overloaded plasma engine," the Earth Clan technician concluded. "They were invaded! The enemy is right there!"

"Notify the fleet, turn immediately..."

Before the captain finished speaking, the ship and the bridge began to shake violently.

"Our ship is under heavy attack! The shield was overloaded by the first round of bombardment from the enemy!" The Earth Clan technician in charge of engine monitoring screamed, his four operating appendages dancing on the console, "The stern engine β-3 is seriously damaged!"

On the schematic diagram of the entire ship's structure, the block representing the stern engine β-3 had turned a blinding scarlet red, and the constantly beating damage control alarm made his pupils look like burning sapphires.

Drone bees and damage control teams are carrying out emergency repairs.

The suddenness of the incident and the severity of the trauma were beyond his imagination.

"what happened!?"

"KAN#FONG! The enemy's...battleships! Over our heads!"

A huge shadow suddenly appeared on the bridge dome.

The Tau captain turned slowly, and his wearable visual organ captured the huge object slowly appearing outside the porthole - the armor plate of the human empire battleship was covered with red copper rust, and the ancient eagle emblem glowed like bronze under the illumination of the plasma core.

When he saw the three-tier artillery batteries filled with heavy artillery on both sides aimed at him, the gills under his breathing mask twitched uncontrollably.

It was a Human Empire battleship that they had never seen before. It was about 7.4 kilometers long, and had three rows of huge cannons staggered on its hull.

Of course, they had never seen such a battleship before. Even Horatio had to read the ship identification manual for a long time before he determined that it was an Abomination-class battleship named Wicked Claw, which could be traced back to the early days of the Great Crusade.

——Of course, it is also for this reason that she, which was a battleship during the Great Crusade, has now been classified as a large cruiser by the Imperial Navy.

In the early days of the Great Crusade she could still be classified as a battleship, but subsequent larger and more powerful ships updated the standards and replaced her classification.

This also makes the number of ships of the same type extremely scarce, with only a handful of them still existing in a small number of sealed battle fleets with a long history.

She has a similar bow layout to the Luna Wolves' flagship, now serving as the traitor Abaddon's flagship, the Vengeful Spirit.

The plasma core that looked like a huge cold eye made this Abomination-class battleship look like a killer whale wandering in the void, staring fiercely at the alien battleships - just like her classification name, she harbored strong malice and hatred towards all enemies.

This Abomination-class battleship named Vicious Claw is just as its name suggests, with its battle-hardened gun barrels like the sharp teeth of a ferocious beast.

Her three-deck gun deck uses a three-deck staggered gun port structure similar to that of a first-class sailing warship, with as many as 24 huge cannons on one side.

The base of each turret is engraved with a victory inscription from the Great Crusade.

Although they are old-fashioned cannons and the caliber of a single one is lower than that of today's Imperial Navy heavy cannons, up to 24 of them can fire together. Such a large number can still destroy all enemies that stand in their way.

Noisy!
The three light double-barreled lance turrets on the ship's spine fired six dazzling rays at the same time.

Six beams of light lances tore through the void, cutting into the stern fin of the Tau cruiser as it made an emergency turn, burning out several messy and hideous cracks.

The bright and dazzling steering nozzles of the Tau cruiser suddenly went out.

In the surveillance footage from the bridge, the severed skeg section was flowing with silvery metallic liquid, like the remains of a manta ray torn apart by lava claws.

The battleship's ancient fire control system roared like a steam turbine, and the sound of the chain transmission of the automatic bomb hoist came through the hull, like the grin of some mechanical giant grinding its teeth and sucking blood.

As a former battleship and now a large cruiser, the cruiser that beats the Tau still has the overwhelming advantage in tonnage and firepower.

As the automatic ammunition hoist completed loading, the charging lights from the 24 gun ports lit up simultaneously, dyeing the surrounding star field the red of Judgment Day.

"From front to back, fire at full force!"

Following the order of Grey Claws Captain Neff, the twenty-four gun crews began to fire in precise intervals. The first gun near the bow began to spew out eye-catching flames, and each gun crew fired alternately, firing in sequence from the top, bottom, center, middle upper, middle lower, and rear center.

As each turret fired, the entire battleship shook like a struck bronze bell, and in the corners, dust accumulated over thousands of years of service fell from the cabin ceiling.

Hiding in the darkness relying on the shadow field, Horatio watched the rare antique fire and analyzed the reasons for doing so.

It is very likely that the purpose of alternating broadside firing was the same as in the sailing age - to avoid the huge vibrations caused by simultaneous firing of the turrets, which would have a greater impact on the ship's deck and course, so they fired alternately from front to back.

24 rounds of adamantium shells rushed towards the target, flying over the turning hawk and dog. Seven of them flew densely and hit a destroyer that followed the flagship's turn almost at the same time.

The first shell had already torn open the destroyer's ceramic armor, and the next six shells hit it, forming a deadly destruction matrix that turned most of the battleship into stardust.

The remaining shells continued to advance through the light, fire and dust of the explosion, and only three missed the target and passed by.

Other shells hit the side of the cruiser in a rhythmic pattern, and the explosions occurred in a series to prevent the shells from hitting the armor at the same time and detonating.

The gap created by the armor-piercing shell that hit the ship in the first round had not yet cooled down when the subsequent shells penetrated deep into the hull through the gap. The chain of explosions dealt a heavy blow to the manta ray's spine.

The surveillance camera recorded a horrifying scene: as soon as the Titanium engineer in a cabin turned around to escape, his entire body was crushed into a colorful flesh membrane by the overpressure shock wave and stuck firmly to the explosion-proof wall.

With just one salvo, the Vicious Claws severely damaged the deck of the cruiser. Thousands of alien crew members died on the spot and were burned by the flames into carbonized stones with a hint of cobalt blue.

This Void Killer Whale took advantage of the victory and pursued, shooting its spine-light spear viciously at the exposed side of the bridge.

When the spear of light pierced through the bridge, the crystal fragments from the shattered holographic projection screen swept across the entire command cabin like an ice storm.

The bridge that once had a sci-fi feel has now turned into a purgatory filled with the smell of burning electronic components and painful wails.

The captain's lieutenant watched his melting palms slowly slide off the console, his bio-alloy bones bending into grotesque abstract sculptures in the heat.

He tried to sound the damage control alarm, but found that the inside of his mask was covered with boiling organic tissue.

The Earth Clan technician, covered in flames, jumped down from a height in panic.

Many people melted on the ground, their bodies bubbling from the high temperature caused by the simultaneous volley of six light spears.

The surrounding light cruisers and frigates tried to cover the flagship, and they turned around and headed towards the Vicious Claw.

The Gray Claws were naturally not afraid. They opened the sliding cover of the six-mounted torpedo silo at the bow, revealing the cold and old-fashioned torpedoes inside.

No one knows where these antiques came from, perhaps from the Ultramarines armory during the Legion era, or perhaps they were harvested from the secret treasure room of the Night Lords.

But it doesn't matter, now these torpedoes will destroy the invading enemies for their new owners.

They strike first.

Torpedoes came out in droves, and their flaming tails left six straight trails in the dark void. Any warship that was hit would suffer a devastating blow.

This extremely threatening weapon interrupted the frigates and light cruisers' attempts to launch heavy Seeker missiles, causing them to scatter and make high-energy turns to avoid the attack.

But doing so would cause the cruiser flagship, which had already been severely damaged and was currently undergoing emergency repairs using drones, to suffer another devastating blow.

The remaining ion cannon on the damaged Guardian Cruiser was spinning at high speed, and the barrel quickly turned red and hot as it rotated thousands of times per second.

The torpedoes came rushing in, in huge numbers.

Even if two of them were swept away, there were still four still on the way, and the speed did not decrease.

Click! Click!
As a series of fires broke out within the ship, the plasma engines leaked, melting the power pipes.

Even though the ion cannon's artificial intelligence was still locking onto the incoming torpedo, no ion beams could be fired.

"We are finished... Has the attack signal been..."

Before he died, the Titanium captain, whose face was half melted by the high temperature of the light spear, looked at the tactical analysis table that kept popping up high-energy red alarms, and spoke incoherently with his lips stuck together.

boom! boom!
The blue-gold explosion, exactly the same as the one in the distance, was like a lit beacon, lighting up the airspace on the other side, brilliant and prosperous.

The vicious claws tore through the wreckage, not caring at all about the flying debris leaving scratches on the hull.

"Tell that Imperial Navy lieutenant colonel that we have solved these troubles." Chapter Master Neff stood on the bridge, folded his arms and looked at the wreckage outside the porthole and said.

Buzz!Buzz!
call out! boom!
The hull of the Vicious Claw suddenly shook, and the bridge also felt the vibration.

"what happened?"

"Sir!" said a Chapter Servant, "We were hit by missiles from enemy carrier-based aircraft."

Neff looked toward Liuli above his head. Several squadrons of Tau attack aircraft were swooping down and dropping plasma bombs on the ancient and majestic hull.

(End of this chapter)