Warhammer: Empire Reboot

"You're coming to find me?"

"What a coincidence, I've delivered myself right to your doorstep."

The Blood Tide is indeed a good ship.

Lawson wants the ship, and he wants it intact.

Therefore, his tactics are divided into two phases.

Phase 1: Peeling.

Phase Two: Opening the Cans.

"Full ship combat deployment."

The White Tiger Power Armor Squadron moved into the loading position of the boarding torpedoes.

Two Iron Cavalry Terminator armored vehicles, Er Gou and San Gou, rumbled into the main deck assembly area of ​​the flagship Blacksmith, the floor creaking under their weight.

The Ironsmith, Spark, and Broken Bone ships accelerated simultaneously, their engine thrust reaching 80 percent, and they charged toward the enemy fleet in a triangular formation.

Moran is bragging.

On the bridge of the Blood Tide, the chaotic pirate captain, who weighed at least 300 pounds, sat cross-legged in the command chair.

That chair was originally designed for the captain of the Imperial Navy, but he sat on it so much that it creaked and groaned, and it looked like it might fall apart at any moment.

His face was covered with ceremonial scars, his left eye was a mechanical prosthetic eye that glowed dark red, and his right hand below the elbow had been replaced with a crudely made power clamp.

He was boasting to the captains of various ships on the communications channel about his feat of ambushing the Imperial transport fleet outside the Eye of Fear years ago. When he got to the exciting part, he gestured wildly, and spittle flew onto the control panel.

"The captain of that transport ship was so scared he peed his pants! I fucking snapped his neck with pliers, just like breaking a shrimp's head."

“Lord Moran,” a communications officer interrupted him.

"Damn it! Can't you see I'm talking?"

"Three engine signals, starboard, approaching at high speed."

Moran's mouth remained open, his eyes turned to the detection screen.

Three tiny points of light.

The engine features are standard for the Imperial Sword-class corvettes.

Moran blinked his mechanical prosthetic eye, then burst into laughter.

"Brothers! Imperial patrol ships are here! Just three small fry! Damn! I thought it was going to be something big! All fleet, turn around and prepare."

Before he could finish giving his orders, the Broken Bone had already fired its first shot.

The standard armament of the Sword-class corvette consists of two large cannons at the bow and a laser cannon array on the sides.

Its firepower density is an order of magnitude lower than that of a cruiser.

However, the frigate that Lawson modified also had one more thing added: plasma melt jets on both sides of the bow ram.

This thing is useless in long-range artillery battles.

But at close range, its destructive power is enough to melt the armor shell of any small ship.

Lawson's tactics were simple and brutal: charge straight at the enemy.

The three frigates, in a triangular formation, sped into the right flank of the enemy fleet.

The pirate fleet's formation was already loose.

When the three warships of Lawson entered at an unexpectedly high speed, the four small boats on the right flank did not even have time to adjust their course.

The Broken Bone's macro cannon fired first.

Two super-heavy solid cannonballs streaked across interstellar space at near-light speed, accurately hitting the engine room of an armed merchant ship on the outermost right flank.

The ship's engine exploded instantly, and the entire stern was torn to pieces in an orange-red fireball.

The ship lost power and began to capsize.

At the same time, the Starfire also targeted a gunboat converted from a mining barge next to it.

Two cannon shots struck the midsection of the ship, one after the other, penetrating both decks.

The ship broke in two, and air and debris gushed out from the crack.

Both enemy ships were destroyed within the first fifteen seconds of the battle.

Moran's laughter caught in her throat.

"Damn it, full fleet, engage! Flank on the left flank! Surround those three bastards!"

But Lawson's frigates had already completed their first infiltration.

The three warships cut past the enemy's right flank at high speed, leaving behind two burning wrecks before making a sharp turn and circling around to the rear of the enemy formation.

This is a classic tactic for frigates against large fleets: hit and run, circling and cutting them off.

Frigates are more than twice as fast as cruisers, and their maneuverability is vastly different.

In the open interstellar space, as long as they don't make the foolish mistake of directly taking a volley of crossfire from a cruiser, the three frigates can relentlessly tear at the edge of the pack like hounds.

The fourteen ships, now twelve, are being pursued by smaller vessels, but their speeds vary.

The three fastest Viper-class destroyers broke away from the formation and caught up, leaving the remaining armed merchant ships and converted gunboats far behind.

This is exactly what Lawson wants.

"Divide and conquer them one by one."

The Blacksmith continued its high-speed, straight-line journey, leaving the three pursuing destroyers further and further behind.

The Spark and the Broken Bone both slowed down, one turning left and the other right, forming a pincer attack.

The Viper-class destroyer leading the chase noticed something was wrong; two escort ships suddenly flanked it from the left and right, and it had already escaped the main fleet's fire support range.

Its captain attempted an emergency turn, but the Viper-class's inertia was extremely difficult to overcome at high speeds.

The side-mounted laser cannon arrays of the Starfire and Broken Bone ships opened fire simultaneously.

Dozens of laser beams simultaneously cut through the hull of the destroyer from two directions.

The destroyer's void shield flickered for three seconds under sustained concentrated fire before collapsing.

The laser beam cut into the exposed armor, carving grooves into the hull like a hot knife through butter.

A torpedo finishes the job.

The Broken Bone fired a standard anti-ship torpedo from its forward torpedo tube, which penetrated directly into the laser-cut wound on the destroyer.

The explosion tore the entire ship apart from the inside.

The captains of the two destroyers behind were so frightened that they hurriedly slowed down and turned around.

But then the Blacksmith turned around and launched a surprise attack. The flagship of Lawson had completed a 180-degree turn 4,000 kilometers away and was charging head-on at the two turning destroyers.

The bow ram of the Sword-class corvette activated the plasma melt jet during the charge.

A jet of blue-white plasma at six million degrees Celsius erupted from the tip of the ram, scorching a crater twenty meters in diameter into the side armor of a destroyer.

Then the rammed corner went in.

The sound of metal colliding is silent in a vacuum, but it was transmitted through the ship's structure, and every crew member on the Blacksmith felt the impact, causing the entire ship to tremble violently.

The ram pierced the destroyer's side armor, inner deck, and load-bearing beams, like a nail driven into a wooden plank.

The destroyer was nailed to the ground.

The Blacksmith's side torpedo tubes fired three torpedoes at point-blank range, all of which penetrated the destroyer's open wounds.

After three muffled thuds, the destroyer was blown into an expanding fireball from the inside.

The Blacksmith suddenly accelerated backward, its ram pulling itself out of the burning wreckage, bringing with it a large amount of twisted metal fragments.

The captain of the last destroyer had never seen such a fighting style in his life.

The Empire's frigates rammed into people?

Which lunatic taught this?

He didn't have time to come up with an answer.

The combined fire of the Starfire and Broken Bones' cannons blasted his bridge to pieces in the next second.

From the start of the battle to the complete destruction of all three destroyers, it took four minutes.

Moran stared at the detection screen on the bridge of the Bloodtide, his face ashen.

His fleet's only capable escort force, consisting of three destroyers, was wiped out in four minutes.

The remaining nine small, ragtag boats were screaming in terror on the communication channel, and three of them had already begun to turn around and try to escape.

"Come back! Get back here right now!"

Moran roared into the communication channel, "I'll kill every single one of you who tries to escape! Everyone, gather around my ship!"

But the three frigates had already begun their second round of harvesting.

For those scrap metal vessels with no value for modification, such as armed merchant ships and mining barges, they can be directly destroyed at long range using macro cannons and laser arrays.

For ships with potential for conversion, such as those two privateers whose hull structures were still relatively intact, boarding torpedoes were used.

When the first privateer was caught by the Broken Bones, it offered almost no resistance.

An improved boarding torpedo pierced its upper deck armor at supersonic speed, blasting a four-meter-diameter hole inside the hull.

Two combat suicide soldiers tumbled out of the torpedo's troop compartment, their feet landing on the scorching metal floor.

One of them knelt down on one knee and activated the teleportation anchor.

0.3 seconds later, the static field tore open an invisible crack.

Lawson emerged from the crack.

The golden visors of the Tiger King armor shone brightly in the dimly lit cabin.

Behind him, two Iron Cavalry Terminator armored vehicles crashed to the ground. Er Gou and San Gou, each holding a two-meter-tall ceramic storm shield and a hellish brass power axe, stood on either side of Lawson.

Three people, facing an entire ship full of pirates.

Lawson closed his eyes, his psychic senses covering the entire privateer.