Warhammer: Hail to the Void Lords!.

Chapter 873, page 08.872: "The 'Mad Dog' Among the Enemy Group"

In the deathly silence of the void, a fierce battle is reaching its climax.

This darkness was like a canvas smeared with blood and wreckage, filled with twisted metal debris, the silently floating corpses of crew members, and the silent flashes of weapons firing in the distance.

An obsidian-black ark, dragging its wounded body, stumbles through the sea of ​​stars.

Its design itself is a brutal work of art, with a sharp, menacing outer edge and a hull that seems to devour light.

At this moment, on its stern, a jagged, menacing wound was continuously "flowing" out angry, violet-colored plasma—the energy flames spewed out by the punctured engine as it roared and struggled.

Its propulsion system was severely damaged, with one of the thrusters malfunctioning and the other intermittently convulsing, leaving only the other two engines to propel the massive hull.

However, the wounded beast did not retreat.

It continued sailing, though its greatly reduced speed had forced it to abandon its pursuit of the distant Imperial fleet, but its bow, like that of a hungry predator, remained locked on the Imperial Navy light cruiser that dared to harm it.

That relentless malice traversed the void, clearly conveying a message: it intended to drag its prey back to the endless suffering of the Comoros.

Suddenly, a burst of reddish-purple flame erupted on the side of the black ark, briefly illuminating its malicious silhouette as it slowly turned.

The light came from a Ducalli raiding ship that had just been completely destroyed.

In its final five minutes, it endured a relentless bombardment of eighteen high-explosive shells from the ten light cannons aboard the Swift Eagle.

The house-sized adamantine warheads rained down, each impact tearing a massive gash in the slender attack ship. Finally, it exploded like a firecracker, scattering twisted remains and burning fragments into the cold vacuum.

The Swift Skyhawk was like a rabid dog that had stumbled into a pack of wolves.

It rampaged through the enemy fleet, and Captain Horatio Cochrane was navigating the warship with near-mad precision.

It was maneuvering wildly, its vectoring nozzles spewing out scorching plasma. The entire warship groaned in agony under the immense overload, the sound carrying through the deck and making every crew member's teeth tremble.

Ignoring the swarm of sickle missiles, its shipborne close-in weapon turrets wove an impenetrable net of fire in the air, blasting each incoming missile to pieces in mid-air.

Bang - boom!

With a deafening roar that seemed to shake the very insides, the guns on both sides of the HMS Swift Eagle roared once more.

The salvo of fire, like two brief sunrises, instantly illuminated the void on both sides of the ship, dispelling the gloom left by the previous battle, composed of coolant steam and gunpowder smoke.

The light swept across the Gothic buttresses and silent hero statues on the ship's hull, casting rapidly moving, menacing shadows upon them.

The life's work and glory of Captain Cochrane have been elevated to their pinnacle today by the unparalleled ship handling skills of his son, Horatio.

HMS Swift Eagle deftly steered, sped, and drifted, dodging leech torpedoes that attempted to cripple it with their energy-draining effects, while maintaining a delicate distance from the Black Ark, whose engines were damaged and maneuverability greatly reduced. It then performed deadly circling maneuvers around the blind spots of the Black Ark's bow weapons.

This agile warplane possesses maneuverability comparable to a destroyer, but its more intense firepower gives it the capability to confront any enemy ship in the alien fleet, except for the Black Ark, head-on.

Two Drucali raiding ships have already been torn to pieces by it, as well as a slave ship whose captain foolishly believed that his heavily armed pirate ship was qualified to engage in a battle line with an Imperial Navy warship filled with a death-defying will.

But the battle was over almost instantly.

The gunfire from the Swift Eagle precisely tore apart its bridge.

Horatio's orders to the gun crew were simple and ruthless: concentrate fire on the enemy ship's command center.

This is a duel devoid of any honor, tantamount to blinding one's opponent before the very first encounter.

But in the cold, void-based laws of war, honor is a prize that only the victors can afford to talk about.

The bridge of the slave ship was engulfed in flames, and the ship listed helplessly to one side, completely losing its fighting capability.

However, the moment of victory is fleeting.

Once they regained their senses, the enemy ships launched a frenzied attack on the "Swift Skyhawk".

A barrage of missiles broke through the near-defense fire net and slammed into its armor.

The explosion tore through the thick terracotta shell, and the sturdy gun shield trembled violently in the shockwave.

After that came thousands upon thousands of crew members, each fulfilling their duties and loyal to the Emperor. The gun deck of the Swift Eagle was a vast cavern that blended Gothic cathedral style with colossal mechanical structures.

The towering dome was hidden hundreds of meters above the darkness, shrouded in thick smoke and steam, with only the massive adamantine ribbed arch reflecting a dim luster under the emergency lights.

The air was thick with the pungent smell of ozone, hot metal, sweat, and engine oil.

A whistling, multi-tonnage shipboard railcar towed a flatbed with massive shells, sixty or seventy meters long, fixed on it, whistling through the passageways between the gun emplacements.

Once a large cannon has fired, emitting a deafening roar, the tense loading process immediately begins.

Several crane arms lifted a new shell from the railcar, and amidst the creaking of the winches and the shouts of hundreds of crew members, hoisted this thousands-ton messenger of death onto the ammunition rack.

The massive triangular loading arm then activated, working in tandem with the imposing telescopic arm to snatch the shell from the ammunition rack amidst a piercing metallic scraping sound, aiming it at the newly opened breech, which was still radiating intense heat.

As the technical priest in his red robe chanted the loading prayer, the shell was slowly pushed deep into the breech.

Then, the breechblock, weighing several tons, closed, and several sailors worked together to turn the huge mechanical locking wheel until the technical priest stepped forward and used his mechanical prosthetic hand to complete the final ritual calibration and locking.

"Fire!" Commander Hong's roar echoed through the loudspeaker.

In the next instant, another devastating salvo will tear through the void.

Even with all the ammunition already fired and the only option being to hoist it one round at a time, like on a traditional warship, the time between firing and the next firing was still compressed to an unbelievable three minutes.

Unless the ammunition on several railcars is completely exhausted, this ferocious rate of fire will continue, turning the blood and sweat of thousands of crew members into pure fury fired at the enemy.

This is a system that pushes both manpower and machinery to their limits, a true microcosm of the imperial war machine.

Meanwhile, an even bloodier battle was unfolding around the gun emplacements and in the key passageways throughout the ship.

The soldiers of the armed forces are fighting desperately against the Drucali forces that are boarding the ship from all sides.

These alien creatures from the Comoros spread like a deadly plague inside the ship.

They moved with inhuman speed and grace, like deadly phantoms in the narrow corridors, wielding a variety of vicious weapons that resembled instruments of torture, each attack taking away a life.

The deck of the key passageway was already piled high with the corpses of soldiers from both sides.

The air was thick with the stench of blood, gunpowder, and overheated metal. The red flashes of the emergency lights fragmented this hellish scene into disjointed frames.

When someone falls, the person behind will immediately step over their comrade's warm body, take the weapon from their hand, and continue the fight.

The thickened barrel of the heavy-explosive musket was red-hot and hissed as it cooled.

In the three already fallen sections, the sailors used up almost all of their stockpile of explosive ammunition in the final moments.

The entire ship was truly united as one.

Whether they were ordinary crew members or battle-hardened armed sailors, they set aside their social barriers when faced with the life-or-death situation of being called upon to arms.

In positions lacking sailors, if there are extra armed sailors, they will not hesitate to pick up their rifles and join the crew to lend a hand, such as carrying energy blocks for the cannons or pulling heavy hoisting chains.

In the fierce battle zone, once a heavy weapons marksman is accurately shot by Drukali or sniped by those damned mercenaries, the nearby sailors will immediately put on ill-fitting breastplates, set up their heavy ramrods, and continue to pour suppressive fire into the passageway.

The Imperial Navy's boarding squadrons, the toughest men on board, are using their familiarity with the terrain of their respective zones to wage deadly guerrilla warfare and close-range raids against the invaders.

Taking advantage of their home ground, they laid ambushes in the crisscrossing corridors that had been patrolled countless times, engaging in close-quarters combat (CQB) with the members of the Dukali conspiracy group, and even managed to exchange parts of the territory with Birapin at one point.

The Swift Skyhawk's cunning tactics of using its maneuverability to circle and attack the Black Ark deeply enraged the "Son of Thorns" governor on that enemy ship.

A new wave of boarding attacks surged in, and with the Void Shield of the Swifthawk completely ineffective, Drukalina's signature lightning strikes were able to be unleashed at full power.

Unlike traditional raids that take a subspace route, these aliens possess their own indescribable "black technology".

Like a killer, silently sneaking up behind the victim.

(End of this chapter)