For five years, Hawke had been preparing for this moment. During these five years, Hawke has not dared to relax for a single moment, keeping his spirit tense at all times.
Now, the battle was finally coming, a battle that would determine Hawke's life and death.
Two months later, these strange shaped dark green ships finally approached the ε Eri c orbit and began to slow down. Ahead, 10 million kilometres away, Hawke had already manned a huge fleet, with the two City ships Xingtai and Handan at its core, and was standing by.
In an hour and a half, the two sides would meet head-on. But before the encounter, Hawke had already launched his attack.
Precisely targeted weapons, miniature nuclear bombs reduced to a size several times smaller than an ordinary bullet!
Accelerated by electromagnetic coils, these miniature nukes can reach speeds of up to six thousand kilometres per second!
At the ε Eri c orbit, there are two City ships, three hundred county ships and as many as twenty thousand village and township ships.
Together with the six armed satellites at ε Eri c, and the space-based batteries, nearly thirty million miniature nuclear bombs were launched in that single moment.
These miniature nukes, in Hawke's battle planning, would serve to sap the energy from the opponent's shields.
This was without a doubt a torrent of bullets. This was a move that Hawke had used when he faced the Lizardman civilisation. But back then, the torrent of bullets were still purely kinetic weapons, now, these bullets had brought along micro nukes in addition to kinetic kills.
These bullets would be enough to wipe out the entire fleet of the Lizardmen civilization!
But to Hawk's surprise, these bullets, basically, did not deal much of a blow to the other side. Hawk's advanced long-range communication satellite transmitted this image.
The bullets, after coming within 100,000 kilometres of the Lucca fleet, suddenly turned red and exploded in the void after less than 20 seconds.
In the distance, a vast array of bright spots appeared, rising and falling, like stars in the sky. Each flash of light represented that a bullet had done a useless job.
"What kind of technology is this! I'm not monitoring any laser weapon interception! These bullets, why are they exploding on their own!"
Thirty million bullets, because of this unknown means of interception, exploded at least ninety-nine percent. The remaining one percent of the miniature nukes, after breaking through the many obstacles and getting inside the enemy fleet, and after another laser interception, some of the last remaining bullets, finally hit their targets.
Hawk saw that when the last bullet hit its target, a dark green glow suddenly appeared on the surface of the opponent's ship, quickly neutralising the white light emitted by the bullet's blast, which both vanished into nothingness.
The final results of the battle came in. Hawk saw that 30 million bullets, enough to destroy the entire Lizardman civilisation, had only wiped out three Lucan civilisation ships. It was the smallest of ships, smaller than Hawk's village-class ship, and, just three of them!
Hawke was shocked, but it was too late to analyse why. Because Hawke observed that the Luca civilization ships had already made an attacking move.
Laser coverage!
There were countless high-energy laser beams emitted from the Lucca civilization ships, racing towards Hawk at the speed of light.
Generally speaking, laser weapons could not be dodged. Because lasers travel at the speed of light, the moment they are observed, they arrive. This situation, however, has changed since the development of the hyper-range communication technology.
As soon as the high-energy laser beams were launched, the communication satellites that were placed there in advance reported the energy level and position of the lasers to Hawk by means of over-the-horizon communication, making it possible for Hawk to dodge the laser beams in advance. Hawke was about to maneuver the ship to dodge, but, zero point one second later, Hawke came to a startling conclusion.
Because ... these laser beams could not be dodged!
The other side seemed to have guessed that Hawke was going to dodge, so these laser beams, were fired in a wide range of directions! These lasers will take twenty seconds to reach Hawk, and within those twenty seconds, with Hawk's speed, no matter where Hawk escapes to, he will be hit.
Of course, these laser beams could not achieve full plane coverage, but the spacing between them, as if they were specially measured, was five hundred meters, or one thousand meters, between every two lasers, and countless lasers wove a large net in space.
Hawke got the information about these lasers before the laser beams arrived by means of over-the-horizon communication, but Hawke could not dodge!
A thought popped up, "This Lucca civilisation, it's definitely a veteran of interstellar warfare, they have a wealth of experience in warfare, not something a novice like me can compare to."
"However, I have 100,000 ships and the location, I still have a chance to win this war! If you can't hide, then don't hide! I'll give you a set too!"
The massive County-class as well as City ships simply stayed put, abandoning their intention to dodge. Hawk quickly calculated the energy levels of these high-energy laser beams, predicted the damage they would inflict on himself, and for those within an acceptable range, went straight to hard resistance with their armour, and for those unacceptable, manoeuvred the smaller ships to block the front, saving the larger ones at the expense of the smaller ones.
Meanwhile, after the bullet flood attack failed, Hawke used his own attack.
The same laser-covered network! And a laser coverage network with an even higher energy level than the other side!
Because, after all, the opponent's fleet was smaller in number, the laser network covered less area, and accordingly, the energy level was increased. Moreover, here in Hawk, together with the various space-based turrets, there were more than 20,000 laser cannons!
The laser network fired by Hawke was equally undodgeable.
The first head-to-head encounter between the two sides kicked off with a laser network.
The first to be attacked was Hawke's fleet. The high-energy laser beams are rapidly burning the shells of Hawke's ships, and if they hit the power areas, they can cause explosions.
A brilliant flash of fire began to appear in space. Each flame represented the death of a ship. But those that died were small ships. None of the county level and above ships were destroyed, only many small holes were made. These small holes were through the whole airship. There were twenty county-class airships that lost the battle in the first encounter.
In the first encounter, Hawke lost three hundred and sixty-five village and country-class ships.
It was at this point that the nanobots came in handy. Amidst Hawke's control, there were billions of microbots that became busy, repairing the broken shells of the ships and mending the damaged instruments inside the ships. The twenty prefectural ships that had lost their fighting ability would be restored to fighting strength in fifteen minutes.
Hawke turned his attention to the opposing fleet. Hawke saw that after the arrival of the laser network, the opposing ships did not make any dodging moves at all, as if they knew that dodging was unnecessary in the face of the laser network.
But they were in control of the energy shield technology! If the laser network wanted to hurt the other ship, it had to break through the energy shield first.
At this moment, Hawke once again felt the power gap brought about by the technology gap. Our laser network, with a higher energy level than the other side, had only destroyed five of the other side's small ships.
"Motherfucker." Hawk cursed and launched a second attack sequence.
In an interstellar war, the encounter between the two sides had already started when they were hundreds or tens of millions of kilometres apart. Moreover, depending on the speed at which the weapons operated, they would show a certain pattern.
Laser weapons are the fastest and have the lowest energy dissipation rate for long-range strikes, so laser weapons are undoubtedly the first to be fired. Energy weapons are the second fastest, so energy weapons, rightly so, come second.
The first wave, the laser weapon encounter, had come to an end, and the second wave, it would be the energy weapons that would take over.
There was no significant time lapse between these two waves of attacks. In fact, after ten seconds of continuous firing of the laser weapons, the energy weapons came out with it. By the time the laser weapons exchange came to a close, the energy weapons had, essentially, reached the opposing fleet.
This was the second wave, the energy weapon engagement.
Hawk's energy weapon system, with its basic theory derived from the Lizardman civilisation, had been refined and developed by himself, and its power and speed, as well as its range, had increased by leaps and bounds. Even, Hawke had miniaturised the energy weapons, equipping all the village and township level ships with energy weapons.
In this moment, tens of thousands of energy cannons each aimed at their targets and began firing.
Numerous ghostly blue rays flashed through space, darting swiftly towards their targets.
Although the speed of energy weapons was fast, it was still a bit less than the speed of light, so it was basically impossible to make a network-like coverage with energy weapons. However, there are exceptions, for example, when the number of ships on your side is much higher than that of your opponent.
Like now, Hawke has enough power to make a network of energy cannons for his opponent, but his opponent cannot make a network for Hawke.
So Hawke could manoeuvre his ship to dodge the energy cannonballs, while the other side could not.
This is an advantage!
At this moment, the two sides were four million kilometres apart, and over such a long distance, the two sides were engaged in an energy cannon blast.
Hawke also saw that while firing the energy cannonballs, the other side was also firing many small instruments. With a moment's thought, Hawke understood that these instruments, must be hyper-range communication satellites.
"It seems that the other side has the same war theory as I do. In the middle of a space battlefield, the speed as well as quality of intelligence acquisition is a very important factor in determining victory or defeat."
Thinking of this, in addition to continuing to blast out energy shells, Hawk also manipulated his laser weapons and began to target these hyper-range communication satellites with precision, while at the same time, Hawk also began to launch new satellites to replace the ones previously destroyed by the Lucca civilization.
In the battlefield, it was important to preserve one's own access to information and to destroy the other's access to information.