Warhammer: Hail to the Void Lords! - Chapter 480

Chapter 478 06.0477: ‘The End of Two Days’

“This is E-47 and E-46, the target armed cargo ship was destroyed and the destroyer was not successfully released.”

“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 monitored the enemy ship’s distress signal. There are many signal sources, and the entire merchant fleet is sending distress signals.”

One after another, reports were transmitted from the intelligence station to Horatio’s ears. A large number of communication messages between the enemy and ourselves were intertwined, making the star sea lively.

“There is an enemy signal at a distance of 210,000 kilometers.” Harvey also reported the latest war situation 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, they will become the Tau Empire’s cruisers hunting us.”

Horatio said to First Officer Collingwood and Second Officer Louise, and then ordered that one of them serve as the commander and the other as the operations officer to prepare for high-intensity day and night operations on the bridge of the Epic.

“However, the enemy does not yet know that the star’s sunlight will affect the shadow field. Let us drive the sheep away from the original route and keep them away from the star.

In this case, when the enemy convoy arrives, we will still have the opportunity to rely on the gas cloud to ambush. “

“Understood, Captain, we will deploy immediately.”

The two of them saluted and immediately rushed to implement his orders.

As the leader of the attack squadron, Horatio also issued new battle orders to friendly ships:

“The entire squadron followed my instructions and coordinated with our ships to attack enemy merchant ships.”

Whoosh! Whoosh!

Under Horatio’s coordination, torpedoes were fired almost simultaneously, rushing to reach the target.

Horatio commanded the first attack squadron and launched a rhythmic attack on the merchant fleet in front of him.

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

Torpedoes were fired from all directions, and the two remaining destroyers seemed at a loss in the face of this offensive. Whenever they rushed in one direction, the other side of the merchant fleet would be attacked by torpedoes.

They had no choice but to watch the cargo ships in front of them explode one after another, catch fire, fall behind, and then be torn apart by the enemy in the shadows in the futile damage control.

The two lonely destroyers were not really standing by like this, but they had more ships to protect, and they could not allow more cargo ships to be destroyed wantonly for the sake of a half-broken cargo ship.

They tried hard to chase every attacking wolf like a shepherd dog, but when the attack ship saw the destroyer approaching, it hid in the air cloud, reduced its speed to the minimum to ensure the maximum power of the shadow field, and aimed its knife-shaped bow at the destroyer. , reducing the probability of your own ship being discovered by detection waves.

Currently, the E-type attack ships are still a ghost in the Tau Empire’s perception. They have not yet adjusted the original radar signal filtering conditions, and it is easy to aim the bow of the ship at their Imperial attack ships with extremely low frontal projection. , filtered out as meteorite clutter, which undoubtedly made their escort work even more difficult.

Even if it accidentally exposes its side and is detected, active detection of radar signals can temporarily help the destroyer know its precise position.

However, the weapons equipped by the destroyer could only fire two shots at it in a deterrent manner at the moment of detection, and then chase the merchant fleet in despair after the attack ship took cover again.

That short deterrent shot, which was more than a hundred kilometers away, was almost impossible to hit the attack ship whose bow was pointing at them.

“The next one, the heat source tracking seeker is ready.”

Captain Kretschmer of the E-99 attack ship looked at the target in the distance with his binoculars. He felt content in his heart and even wanted to have a cup of his favorite hand-ground coffee. However, he still showed the unique majesty of an imperial captain and issued a new order. A torpedo launch order.

“The heat source tracking seeker has been installed.”

“emission!”

Whoosh!

A new torpedo was fired. It was slightly different from other torpedoes of its kind. A hemispherical glass crystal heat source tracking guidance head was installed in front of the warhead.

Inside is a psyker who has been specially trained to discern heat sources. His whole body is soaked in an anti-overload life-sustaining nutrient solution to achieve ‘hydraulic anti-overload’ in the physical sense.

His head was shaved, his limbs were tightly bound, and a group of nerve plugs connected to the control panel were installed on the back of his head. He wore a psychic conductor in the shape of an eyepatch around his eyes to allow him to lock on to the heat source.

The psyker screamed. His sanity had already been destroyed by specific training. At this time, he only had the instinct to chase the light in his [vision]. He leaned his neck forward and howled silently in the liquid.

Under his guidance, the glass component on which it was located was pushed toward the target by the torpedo’s engine.

The target of E-99 was a destroyer rushing towards the E-103 attack ship.

When the torpedo approached, the Tau Empire destroyer captain broke out in a cold sweat, and instantly realized that the enemy’s target was not only the merchant ship without the ability to resist, but also himself.

The destroyer immediately launched a group of noise and photothermal decoy bombs.

This is not the first time that the Empire has used thermal-seeking torpedoes on the battlefield against the Tau Empire. Just in case, the Tau ships that are not short of money and have a high level of technology are all equipped with almost all capabilities when designing them. All the interference sources that come to mind are stuffed into the decoy launcher group around the hull. Once attacked by a torpedo, the full-band decoy will be sprayed directly.

Several light sources suddenly appeared in front of the psychic. As the destroyer turned to evade, the target’s tail flame became smaller and smaller in his dark vision, and was eventually replaced by a more dazzling heat source bait.

He screamed and controlled the torpedo through the neural plug to rush towards the suspicious light. Just as he controlled 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 group, a false light source.

The Tau Empire destroyer turned around, and the ion close-in defense gun on the ship locked the torpedo, ready to fire in the preheating hum.

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

The continuous roaring ion beam pulses hit the hemispherical guidance head crystal cover. After the barrier shattered, the crystal life-supporting 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 scorched and shattered by the high temperature of the ions in a short time.

The heat source in front of him began to lose blood and became double and blurred.

At the moment of his last breath, the psychic screamed in a mad way, and saliva splashed with blood foam. Perhaps it was the programmed brainwashing training, or perhaps it was his long-dusted mind. In this place where no one knew and no one paid attention, he forced his vocal cords to roar that no one listened to:

“For the Lord of Mankind! For the Emperor of God!”

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

“Report, the heat source tracking guidance head torpedo failed to hit the original target, but hit the merchant ship near the target.”

The officer next to him reported, and Captain Krezimer stood expressionlessly on the observation platform, using a telescope to observe the battle situation in front.

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

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

Faced with an irreversible situation, the captain of the damaged freighter decisively ordered the crew to start abandoning the ship in the escape pods.

This decision was made because the communication was still full of distress signals from the escape pods launched earlier by other destroyed ships.

The attackers seemed to be busy chasing the freighters and were too busy to care about the escape pods.

But this happened to play into Horatio’s psychological warfare tactics. He deliberately did not let the Fury interceptors attack those escape pods to create the performance that the attacking ships were busy hunting merchant ships and not touching the escape pods.

So that those life-saving Tau Empire captains can be more inclined to encourage their crews to abandon the ship and escape, and let the goods in the cargo hold be destroyed by the fire, rather than fighting the empire to the death on the front line of damage control.

As the commander of the first attack squadron of the first hunting group, Horatio knew that his mission was not to kill people, but to destroy the enemy’s logistics and transportation lines.

Everything should be based on the main task.

Krezimer turned his eyes away from the target who had abandoned the damage control and escaped.

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

“Torpedo No. 4 starts preheating, wire guide.”

“Torpedo No. 4 adds wires, start preheating!”

The fatigue of the long battle is really distressing. After the war, it is indeed time to let my personal secretary give me a cup of hand-ground coffee.