The second line of defence, consisting of the five moons of ε Eri b, and the hundreds of thousands of hidden mines and controlled turrets hidden in the asteroid belt.
Hawke no longer expected the assault weapons on the second line of defence to do even the slightest scrape of damage to the droplet; as long as these weapons could hold the droplet back for two hours, Hawke would be satisfied.
Within those two hours, Hawke would manoeuvre the droid to cut apart the Large Particle Collider of the Ring ε Eri system, using one end as a gun port and manoeuvring the orbital adjuster mounted on it to aim it at the droplet. Then, at the other end, a proton would be fired, and after more than 200 million kilometres of acceleration, the proton would slam out of the muzzle and hit the water droplet at close to the speed of light.
That was Hawke's whole plan. In theory, this plan is perfectly feasible. Because the proton, travelling at close to the speed of light, would, at the moment of impact, explode with a layer of energy per unit area that far exceeded that of the energy cannon, and this would destroy the water droplet's strong force shell, causing it to shatter like glass.
The droplets have completely destroyed the first line of defence and are now barreling towards the second line of defence, which is expected to be approached in thirty minutes.
At the collider, Hawke had already manned a ship carrying 10,000 droids for an intense transformation project. The droids will first cut open the collider tube, then install large shielding devices at the gun ports to prevent any extraneous particles from entering the tube, then repair its damaged wiring, and finally, install a power system above the tube under Hawk's direct control, allowing Hawk to easily change the direction of aim for it.
By then, the entire Ring Epsilon Eri Large Particle Collider will have been transformed into a giant cannon over 200 million kilometres long!
In the midst of the robot's intense work, time slipped away, drop by drop. The droplet has crossed the billions of kilometres to the second line of defence.
The first thing that greeted the droplets were the five thousand battle ships that had been placed in the ε Eri b fortress. These five thousand ships included nearly a hundred county ships, and a total of eighteen giant energy cannons had been placed in the five moons of the ε Eri b.
The one hundred prefect ships led the five thousand village and township ships, firing a torrent of high-velocity bullets at the same instant, and among the torrent of bullets were thousands of interstellar missiles.
As soon as the two sides met, they immediately engaged in a killing spree without any unnecessary action.
The attacking power of these five thousand ships would be capable of crushing a civilisation twice as strong as the Lizardmen civilisation, but when faced with this water drop, these ships, were as fragile as a plastic toy in the hands of a baby.
Hawk saw, somewhat grimly, a county-class ship, which was approached by this water droplet in a frenzy of bullets, was instantly penetrated in its entirety by this water droplet in time to escape, and the nuclear fusion reactor instantly went out of control, and a furious burst of energy exploded out, blowing the ship to pieces.
But the tidal wave of energy from the ship's destruction also swept the droplet hundreds of kilometres away. The droplet tumbled and rolled all the way, directly destroying three other village-class ships.
In the battlefield, there were constant flashes of hydrogen bomb explosions, each one exploding with hundreds of millions of degrees of heat, vaporising everything within a few hundred metres, except the water droplet.
Its shell is still shiny and clean, without a single scratch. It still had a 100 per cent emissivity, reflecting the distant starlight of the universe and, closer to home, the light of a hydrogen bomb explosion.
Hawke could no longer care about heartache or fear. The five thousand ships here, and the five moons in the star fortress, and the hidden batteries concealed in the asteroid belt, were already at one hundred per cent attack power. They, by their own deaths, were doing their best to delay the advance of the droplets.
Behind them, 10,000 robots were busy at work. Forty minutes had passed, the cutting had been completed and the robots were installing shielding devices for the collider's cannon muzzles. After the shields are installed, the power systems will be installed, followed by a powerful laser cannon for clearing the orbit.
The huge space fleet of 5,000 ships has been destroyed, half of the ships have been destroyed, and of the one hundred county ships, thirty-six are still left. One of the five War Fortress satellites, already, had been completely destroyed with its weapons systems.
Hundreds of millions of bullets continued to impact the droplets, each one bouncing away after contributing its own kinetic energy. Hawke was doing his best to stall for time with this kind of ants-biting-an-elephant approach.
However, many ants can kill an elephant, and even if there were more bullets, they would not be able to destroy the water drop.
The battle was exceptionally fierce.
In the midst of such a technologically asymmetrical war, Hawke's vast computing power was not of much use. Computational power is only useful in wars where the underlying theory is at the same level and there is only a technological gap. In a war with Waterdrop, even if Hawke's computational power is excellent, and his attacks are efficient, and he is able to use a thousand percent of his attack power, he will still be slaughtered in front of Waterdrop.
The water droplet is still incredibly raw. Its speed is never reduced by the flood of bullets or the explosion of hydrogen bombs, and even if it is temporarily reduced, it is instantly boosted back up again.
Moreover, it seemed to be able to control the trajectory it was bouncing off, and after being bounced off by the impact, it would always take the opportunity to crash into a few village-class ships that were too late to dodge.
Hawke's total number of airships now was 20,000 village level airships, 5,000 township level airships, 400 county level airships and four City airships. This was all that Hawke had accumulated over the centuries, and now, with over a hundred County-class ships lost, the Country-class ships and the Village-class ships, a total of over eight thousand ships had been lost.
This was equivalent to a quarter of Hawke's war effort, equivalent to hundreds of years of Hawke's accumulation, reduced to nothing.
Moreover, there was no doubt that if Hawke did not have a good solution, in a day's time at most, Hawke's fleet would be completely wiped out and Hawke would be dead.
The only hope was to see if the Large Particle Collider in the Eri system would do the trick.
The modifications to the collider have been carried out to the point of installing laser cannons. The laser cannon is currently known to be ineffective against water droplets, but Hawke needs to rely on the laser cannon to clear a clean orbit for the protons to fly.
It is important to understand that protons rely on impact to kill, and with the vast amount of matter in the ε Eri galaxy, it would be a waste of time if the orbit was not cleared and the protons hit other matter.
It takes at least twenty minutes to launch a proton. Of this, the acceleration process would take up fifteen minutes and the preparation time would take up five minutes. That means that Hawke would only have at most two chances. After two, if the water droplet does not die, it is Hawke who dies.
This is a big gamble between life and death. If he wins, Hawke will continue to have a future, if he loses, Hawke will be removed from the universe and human civilization will be removed from the universe.
In the second line of defence, over four thousand of the five thousand ships had been destroyed. Of the five battle satellites, three have lost their offensive power. This thousand ships are no longer capable of organising an attack on the scale of the one they started with. The killing rate of the water droplets rose with it. The second line of defence is expected to hold back the drops for another twenty minutes.
Here at the Collider, the laser cannon had been installed and Hawke was directing the droids, working on the power systems. With the power system in place, Hawke was able to adjust the direction of the cannon's aim before he could target the droplets and fire the protons.
This process would take at least forty minutes.
"Faster, faster." Hawk chanted silently in his mind, a little anxious.
Time passed bit by bit, and the middle of the battlefield was already filled with the wreckage of the ship. Those that had reached the third cosmic speed were already flying out towards the ε Eri star system, not knowing where they would end up, while those that had not reached the third cosmic speed would orbit around the ε Eri star system.
The water droplet rushes towards ε Eri b, accelerating to a speed of 5,000 kilometres per second, and with its powerful kinetic energy and momentum, it penetrates directly into the sixth moon of ε Eri b, turning it directly into a world of earthquakes and volcanoes. The weapons systems placed on it were all destroyed.
The entire second line of defence has now been turned into a tomb, and the droplet, like a horrific zombie crawling out of the tomb, rushes towards the interior of the galaxy with death in its veins.
Between the Large Particle Collider and the water droplets, only the last half of the defence line remains. That is, the asteroid belt.
But the weapons Hawk had placed in the asteroid belt were mostly for surprise attacks and destruction, and in Hawk's planning, there was no consideration for a scenario like facing the droplets.
The asteroid belt is expected to hold for twenty minutes. After breaking through the asteroid belt, the droplet would take thirty minutes to reach the collider. By then, all it would take is a single impact to destroy a random point on top of the collider, and the entire 200-million-kilometre-long Ring Epsilon Eri Large Particle Collider would be paralysed.
Twenty minutes passed and the water droplet broke out of the asteroid belt. This time, it did not choose to destroy all the weapons hidden in the asteroid belt, because the entire belt, hundreds of millions of kilometres long, would have taken too long to empty. Instead, it cleared out a 100,000-kilometre-long section. The weapons in the rest of the belt could not attack it, so it did not bother.
Thirty minutes to go before it reaches the collider. The installation of the collider's power systems is in its final stages.