Warhammer: Hail to the Void Lords!.

Chapter 864, page 08.863: 'A Nightmare-like Battle'

“A battleship-class ship can launch over a hundred boarding craft within five minutes. Each boarding craft can carry approximately fifty armed personnel. This number is strikingly similar for every race in the galaxy…”

—"Imperial Navy Fleet Naval Science Textbook", Abridal Loyalty Academy.

The light cruiser "Swift Skyhawk" was firing at full power, gears, rails, hydraulic cylinders roaring along with its energy-filled plasma engines. Meanwhile, a battle was quietly breaking out in another area.

In the machine-spirit world, imperceptible to mortals, the torrent of data and the echoes of souls intertwine to form an invisible battlefield.

"It has been a long time... since I've experienced such a battle, so deeply surrounded." An ancient and steady voice resounded within the core of the machine spirit Xiao Shi's consciousness. The voice emanated from every keel and every piece of armor of the warship, carrying the vicissitudes and glory of a thousand years of sailing.

That was the soul of the "Swift Skyhawk" itself.

"Did you... often participate in battles like this before?" Xiao Shi's consciousness, a petite figure wearing a bright red and black dress, asked softly.

She stood guard beside the man who sat on the throne with his eyes closed, his consciousness immersed in the darkness.

"I have completed several seemingly impossible challenges with the current captain's father, including a battlecruiser that faced traitors head-on."

But... this is the first time I've experienced a battle with such a huge disparity in strength.

The Swift Eagle's machine spirit whispered, "That man's offspring... Will he be able to create miracles like his father? Or... will he ultimately follow in his father's footsteps and perish here?"

"I will never let him be captured by those aliens."

The consciousness of the machine spirit Xiao Shi clenched its fist, its tone carrying an illogical and resolute stubbornness: "Once the bridge is lost, I will immediately overload the engines and perish together with them."

"You're too self-willed," the Swift Eagle's machine spirit warned. "Acting recklessly without the Technical Priest's orders will kill you. This... could very well be the first step on your path to corruption."

Xiao Shi did not answer immediately.

Her data stream, all her perception, was focused on the man sitting upright on the throne with his eyes closed.

"Without him, I would rather die."

Amidst the bursts of explosions echoing from the void, the first batch of "Slave Raider" boarding pods that had successfully breached close-range firepower gently and softly adhered to the thick terracotta armor of the "Swift Skyhawk," like a persistent leech.

Without effective interception by carrier-based aircraft, close-in weapon systems alone are not very effective at intercepting these small, fast boarding pods, especially when the battlefield is full of empty decoys.

The amethyst high-energy laser beneath the boarding craft scorched blinding bright spots onto the terracotta armor. The scorching beams turned the several-meter-thick steel plates red-hot, and then, one after another, hulls resembling giant cockroach egg cases burst through the ship's interior.

Immediately afterwards, the slave ship quickly disengaged, making room for the next ship to attack.

Inside the ship.

"Fire!"

Upon seeing those oval-shaped, ominous-looking armored shells penetrate the warship, the armed sailors, who had been waiting at the breach, immediately unleashed a barrage of lasers and explosives at these egg-shaped shells.

However, one after another, twisted black shadows, concealed by the carapace, suddenly burst out from the open passage on its back, resembling the mouthparts of an arthropod.

Horatio glanced at the side of the control panel, at the closed-circuit television screen displaying static.

In addition to the agile members of the Ducale conspiracy he had already encountered, there was also a repulsive, half-human, half-snake-like alien.

Their lower bodies, covered in oily scales, slid erratically across the deck, while their upper bodies had four arms wielding sharp blades.

They burrowed into the surrounding shelters and pipes at an inhuman, extremely fast speed, like earthworms exposed to bright light and panicked.

" Engage the enemy! Damn it, these aliens are just like the green skins, we can't kill them all!"

As members of the conspiracy surged off the ship and engaged in fierce firefights with the sailors hiding behind cover using their poison crystal rifles, the people in the midst of the battle quickly forgot about the strangely shaped, serpentine aliens that had vanished without a trace.

The heavy-duty missiles mounted on the movable breastwork roared continuously, suppressing the enemy's charge. One after another, explosive shells, imbued with faith and fury, blasted horrific holes in the chests of the approaching conspiracy members.

The first wave of landings at Dukali suffered extremely heavy losses due to the fierce resistance of the well-prepared Imperial armed forces.

Their corpses lay scattered in front of the pre-designated fortifications, their blood staining the gray-black metal deck red. The blood slowly converged along the drainage ditches on both sides, eventually flowing into the wastewater treatment system in the lower deck. There, the blood was removed in a disinfection pool filled with pungent chlorine gas and filtered into water that could be recycled.

However, despite paying such a huge price, these "test-tube babies" conceived in the Bloodling Life Support pods still advance one after another like emotionless war machines.

They used a barrage of poison crystal bullets to frantically suppress the "savage monkeys" that were still resisting.

What chilled the armed sailors even more was that these aliens would brazenly mock their compatriots who had died in battle and whose bodies had piled up like mountains.

There was not a trace of fear on their faces, nor any concern for the heavy casualties.

They are always so full of self-confidence, fanatically believing that they will achieve better results than their predecessors.

They launched wave after wave of frenzied attacks on the pre-set fortifications until they themselves fell, becoming the laughingstock of the next Ducali to charge forward.

It's like an endless swarm of bedbugs.

Those dark purple egg cases were still being continuously poured into from the breach in the hull, and more and more ferocious aliens emerged from them.

In Ducalli's brutal, social Darwinist social structure, apart from those "naturally born" children who have parents and can inherit family businesses, the vast majority of IVF children must rely on their own bloody struggle to gain honor and wealth.

From the moment they are brought into the conspiracy, the consuls and petty bosses will constantly instill in them the fact that they are just one of thousands of cattle and horses, and if they don't do it, there are plenty of others who will!
They were ruthlessly competing, using the most direct force to eliminate those of their kind who couldn't keep up.

They spare no expense, have no moral bottom line, and will even stab their fellow test-tube babies in the back, all for the sake of a pitiful bit of honor and wealth, stepping over the corpses of others to climb to a new social class.

(The ruthless tycoon – the conspiratorial governor)
Under sustained high-intensity attacks, the ceramic steel breastwork, which served as the first line of defense, was pierced by the highly corrosive toxic crystals, gradually losing its protective function.

The deadly poison crystals could easily pierce through the holes above, penetrating the bulletproof chest armor of the next victim, injecting the vicious toxins into their body, causing their flesh to rot instantly, and their eyeballs to roll out of their sockets.

Such attacks are completely incurable, and the victims can only die in extreme pain.

"They outnumber us too much! Our lines can't hold! Retreat! Everyone retreat! Retreat to the next position!" A sergeant in charge of the front line shouted hoarsely to the few men remaining beside him.

The heavy weapons shooter is dead.

He lay limply on the heavy-duty dartboard, his face a pool of rotting orange slime, his nose riddled with holes, making him look as if he had been dead for days.

Under the sergeant's orders, his comrades cautiously pushed aside the limp corpse, removed the heavy explosive bolt gun, which had been corroded and mottled by the poison crystal, from the terracotta breastwork, and retreated.

Several smoke grenades were released, and thick white smoke instantly enveloped the area, providing cover for the evacuation operation.

The members of the Dukali Conspiracy, amidst the smoke, emitted piercing, scathing laughs that sounded like scraping glass, relentlessly battering the morale and sanity of the human soldiers.

The retreating armed forces ran desperately backward, not daring to look back even once, and could only bury their heads and run wildly toward the next pre-arranged position.

Those aliens were so fast that they could clearly hear one comrade after another falling in the smoke behind them, letting out shrill and short screams.

The smoke, originally intended to cover the retreat, has now become a terrifying curtain of death, filling every soldier shrouded within it with fear of the doom that may befall them at any moment.

The scarlet emergency lights, like the eyes of a demon, flickered in the narrow compartment. The dim environment added a heavy layer of terror to this desperate evacuation.

"We're almost there! Go around that intersection ahead, there's a boarding force guarding the entrance to the IK-11 compartment!" The sergeant pointed ahead, trying to give his men a last glimmer of hope.

Boom!
Before he could finish speaking, a sickeningly loud noise suddenly came from the metal ceiling above his head.

(End of this chapter)