It only took a few minutes for all seven thousand airships to pour out of the teleportation channel. As Hawk was just reacting, these seven thousand Lucca ships simultaneously lit up with light ink-coloured energy shields and rushed towards Hawk.
Energy cannonballs, high-energy laser cannons, particle beam weapons and so on, all kinds of weapons hit towards Hawke in a flash.
The London, just above them, was less than 10,000 kilometres away. This wave of attacks sent the hundreds of country and county class ships in the way of the London exploding with a bang. However, it was fortunate that with these ships in the way, the London did not take the attack directly. Otherwise, Hawke might have been dead all at once.
From the time the first Lucca ship appeared to the time the Lucca fleet launched its attack, there were only a few minutes. It was these few minutes that gave Hawke a rare buffer time.
In those few minutes, Hawke gathered nearly ten thousand ships to surround himself. The rest of the ships, which were running to the side or back of the ε Eri a at this time, would need at least ten more minutes to get here.
In other words, within these ten minutes, Hawk had to fight the 7,000 ships of the Lucca civilisation with 10,000 of his own ships.
In just a few minutes, the 7,000 ships of the Lucca civilisation had completed the encirclement of Hawke's 10,000 ships, successfully putting Hawke within his own encirclement.
"This is definitely a well-prepared, well-planned raid! They seem to know that my flagship is the HMS London!"
A thought flashed through Hawke's mind.
At this point in time, escape was out of the question. Whether or not he could break through the opponent's encirclement was another matter, but the London was a City ship, and its huge mass dictated that its manoeuvrability could not be strong, and even if he broke through the encirclement, Hawke would definitely not be able to run far.
In Hawke's mind, there was an iron rule that his own ship, his flagship, would not engage in a head-on battle until it was the last resort, a critical moment of life and death.
Hawke's situation is different from that of an intelligent creature's commander-in-chief or commander-in-chief. If the commander dies, there is a second commander, if the commander dies, there is a second commander, if Hawk dies, the whole fleet is finished.
But now, Hawke had to break that iron law.
"Then, fight!" In this moment, Hawke seemed to feel a surge of hot blood rushing up his whole body.
"I have 10,000 ships for the time being, this 10,000 ships, it shouldn't be a problem to last through ten minutes, after ten minutes, the remaining 30,000 ships will all come over, it seems that their ships aren't equipped with force field covering weapons, I don't necessarily lose!"
Hawke made up his mind.
Hawke placed the London under a heavy airship encirclement, using the sacrifice of smaller airships to keep himself safe. At this point in time, the outer ships, were already engaged in a fierce firefight with the Luca ship.
It would be a near-earth type of space battle. On the surface of the planet ε Eri a, 17,000 ships, a bloody fight was waged. Moreover, the scale of the battle continued to grow, with a constant stream of Hawk ships coming from the other side of ε Eri a to attack the Lucca civilisation ships on the periphery of the encirclement.
In such a situation, the more violent the attacks on the outside, the less pressure on the Hawks on the inside, and the greater the hope of escape.
This is the borderline between day and night in ε Eri a. In the distance, only half of the ε Eri system remains dazzling, and just under the gaze of the ε Eri system, countless ships are chasing and shooting at each other above this tiny planet.
"What a vicious ploy, a bitter ploy indeed ... First use a weak fleet to draw my attention and strength, leaving my rear empty, then send the main force to sneak in ... But how can I let you get what you want? It is not certain who will die!" Hawk gritted his teeth fiercely, his huge information processing ability showing through as he commanded two fleets at the same time, fighting furiously in the middle of two battlefields.
On the ε Eri b battlefield, Hawke's ships were still left with about thirty-three thousand, while the Luca ships, on the other hand, were left with only one thousand. Hawke left 13,000 ships in ε Eri b to continue the battle with the Lucca ships here, while the remaining 20,000 ships returned at full speed to support the main base. But because of the distance, it would take at least two days for them to return.
Inside the encirclement, Hawke's ships were depleting at an alarming rate. After just one hour, at least half of the 10,000 ships inside the encirclement had been lost, and even the flagship London had suffered some damage. But as the number of ships on the outer perimeter and their attack power increased, this rate of attrition was gradually decreasing.
The ships had been assembled and the battlefield was roughly divided into three layers. The flagship London, with its 5,000 ships, was in the innermost layer, which was under the heaviest attack, followed by the 6,500 or so Lucca ships, which were attacking the inner layer while at the same time suffering from the 30,000 ships belonging to Hawke in the outer layer.
The situation was critical. In the outermost layer, there were 30,000 ships, but for a while, they could not break through the ring of Lucca ships and could not rejoin the flagship London.
Hawke's attack could already be considered frantic.
On the outer side of the circle, a prefect stalked a Luca prefect, firing at full power and pounding away at the Luca's energy shields.
The Lucca was so battered and bruised that its energy shields had dulled to the point of being almost invisible to the naked eye, and it was struggling to escape while launching a weak counterattack against the ship that was nipping at its heels.
It would only take ten minutes at most for Hawke to decimate the enemy prefectural ship. But through the monitoring satellites, Hawke was keenly aware that another country-class ship had joined the fray, its energy cannon muzzle glowing, and Hawke knew that this was a sign that it was about to launch an attack on his own county-class ship.
If he dodged at this point, the county ship would be able to dodge it. However, it would then lose its lock on the enemy county ship. With a comprehensive analysis, Hawke manoeuvred the prefectural ship, ignoring the danger in front of him, as if he were mad, and just poured out his fury on the Luca prefectural ship.
Finally, a second before his ship was hit, its cannon fire broke through the Lucca's energy shield. Deprived of its energy shields, the powerful energy weapon easily shredded its hull armour, causing it to explode into a cloud of debris.
The next moment it exploded into pieces, Hawk's county-class ship was also smashed into pieces by the Luca country-class ship.
One after the other, the two ships exploded into space in a fierce flash, announcing the end of their lives, before the shattered hulls fell towards the ε Eri a, trailing behind them a long tail of thick black smoke like two black meteors.
Hawke then struggled to free himself from the encirclement by fighting in this frantic, unconcerned way, without regard for damage.
The battle, for a time, was at a stalemate.
In terms of overall strength, Hawke's 40,000 ships were no match for Luca's 7,000 ships. This stalemate was the result of Hawke's desperate and reckless attacks without regard to attrition. In other words, this stalemate would not last long. Hawke estimated that it would last another eight hours at most before he would rapidly fall into disadvantage.
"Let's get myself out of here first, my life, that's what it's all about." Hawke pondered silently.
In the midst of the frantic battle, Hawke suddenly noticed something else.
Hawke saw that about a hundred Lucca ships had broken away from the battle group and landed towards the ε Eri a ground.
"What are they trying to do?" Hawke was a little puzzled, but although he couldn't figure it out, Hawke very simply separated a battle group of one thousand ships and chased after these one hundred Luca ships, flying together towards the ε Eri a ground.
The hundred Lucca ships fought with Hawke's battle group while heading towards the ground, and when they were still a few hundred metres from the ground, the hatch at the bottom of the ship suddenly opened and about a hundred huge odd instruments were thrown down.
After these instruments landed on the ground, Hawke realised that they probably formed a circle. After the instruments were all lowered and stabilized, suddenly, a light ink-colored light emerged from among these instruments, and hundreds of channels of light interlocked with each other, gradually widening, and eventually, forming a hemisphere, like the shape of an upside-down bowl.
"This is ... an energy shield." Hawke understood at once, but another doubt surfaced.
"What are they doing constructing an energy shield here? It certainly isn't anything good anyway." With his mind made up, Hawk sent another fleet of two thousand ships, three thousand ships in total, towards the hundred Luca ships to fight.
But to his surprise, the Lucca civilization seemed to attach great importance to this energy shield, and instead sent a full 300 ships to chase after them.
In the sky, shells flew and light flashed, and the wreckage of the ships kept falling down with thick black smoke, just like the apocalypse predicted in the poem. It was in this scenario that the Lucca civilisation's ships began their intense construction work.
More than a hundred ships were the first to enter the shield before it was finally constructed, and then the shield closed to keep out all attacks.
In Hawke's heart, a bad feeling suddenly arose.
"What are they, exactly, going to do?"
This doubt of Hawke's did not last long. Almost only half an hour had passed before Hawke knew the answer.