From the moment Hawk drove the ε Eri a to impact the ε Eri system, thus destroying the force field generator, the winner was already decided.
With the loss of this most powerful weapon, the Lucca civilisation performed exactly as Hawke had expected.
Hawke had finally won, securing what he had estimated at the beginning to be a mere forty percent hope of survival.
Hawke manned a full 40,000 ships and launched a pursuit. Ahead of them, three thousand ships of the Lucca civilisation.
The space chase was not like a war on the surface of a planet, it was destined to be protracted because the universe was too vast an arena.
Five days later, Hawk and Lucca crossed the orbit of ε Eri c, the last of the large planets in the ε Eri star system. That meant that, once they had crossed it, the two fleets would not be replenished until they reached the Oort Cloud. But Hawke was not worried. Hawke's fleet, with its large number of ships, could survive the dismantling of the ships if it didn't work out, or it could survive the night and kill the Lucan civilization.
But during the pursuit, a phenomenon caught Hawke's attention.
"The route the Lucca civilization ships are taking to escape seems a bit familiar ... hmm? They're following the same route they took when they attacked, the same way they came back. That ... seems to tell us one thing."
That is, the question of how the Lucca civilization fleet, returned.
It was simple to think that this free FTL transmission they had been given could not have been a going journey only, and not a return journey.
Since it is a two-way transmission, the biggest possibility would be to open a temporary passage, which would have an entrance and an exit. When you need to go back, just go in through the exit again.
Hawke made this guess.
"This guess, judging from their behaviour of returning the same way, is most likely correct. Is the entrance to the return route, then, the same exit as when they appeared? It is quite possible. And that entrance, as I remember it well, is about eighteen billion kilometres ahead of me."
"It's too much time to just chase them and there's a chance they'll get away. Why don't we just do it? I'll destroy the entrance first. I don't know what kind of technology the FTL route is built with, but temporary routes are usually not very strong, I'll get tens of thousands of nuclear bombs, I don't believe I can't kill it."
Having made up his mind, Hawk immediately detached a hundred of the most manoeuvrable village-class ships from the fleet, filled them with fuel, and manoeuvred the hundred village-class ships to start accelerating.
Before hitting the speed of light barrier, speed could be increased infinitely in space voyages as long as there was enough fuel. Previously, it was because of the fuel limit that the speed of the Hawk ships was limited to less than two thousand kilometres per second. Now, without having to worry about the rest, and with full acceleration, it would only take an hour for these village-class ships to accelerate themselves to eight thousand kilometres per second. Of course, to reach this speed, these village ships would need to consume all the fuel they could carry, which means that they would never be able to slow down or come back again.
But sacrificing a hundred village-class ships in exchange for the destruction of the FTL course, Hawke thought it was worth it.
With their course precisely set, the hundred village-class ships simultaneously burst into bright blue flames from their tails and dashed towards the bottom of the fleet.
With Hawke's movements, the flames emanating from the engines of these ships were so well disguised that they were largely undetectable to the Lucca civilisation.
The ships, which would need to make a circle around the Lucca fleet to prevent destruction, would then arrive at the entrance precisely twenty days later. Hawke's main force and the Lucca civilisation fleet, on the other hand, would take over three months to reach it.
Time, then, slowly slipped away as the two fleets chased each other and fled. Within that time, the two sides had exchanged occasional blows, each losing anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred ships.
Now, at last, the long chase was coming to an end. In half an hour's time, Hawke's task force would reach its target.
Hawke has placed surveillance satellites within a 20 billion kilometre radius of the Epsilon Eri system. Through these satellites, Hawke could see the entrance to the FTL route at any time.
Hawke noticed that the space there had been distorted, as if around a massive star.
Hawke's technology had not reached the point where he had sufficient knowledge of space, but through the gravitational lens, which was observing the bending of the starlight behind this area, Hawke could clearly sense the strange physical phenomena that were occurring here, beyond his understanding.
This area is hovering silently in the void, and Hawke's hundred village ships will arrive here in thirty seconds.
Each of these village-class ships carried a hundred 100-million-tonne-yield hydrogen bombs. One hundred ships, that's one trillion tonne equivalent. Such a huge hydrogen bomb could probably blow the moon right into a cripple.
There is a limit to the explosive power of an atomic bomb; a hydrogen bomb has no such limit. As long as there were enough raw materials and technology, its yield could be increased without limit.
Hawke was watching the situation closely as he manned the thirty satellites nearby.
Time, with only ten seconds left, was still 80,000 kilometres away from the target. At that very moment, through the over-range communication satellites, Hawke noticed that a hundred Lucca ships suddenly appeared out of nowhere at the entrance of this temporary route. As soon as these ships appeared, they sharply began to target Hawke's ship, as if they wanted to start an attack.
"Sure enough, they have really left a defensive force here, and, at a distance of still 80,000 kilometres, they were able to spot the village-class airships I sent out, as expected of a Tier 3 civilization."
Hawk thought darkly.
These ships of Hawk's had stopped accelerating a few days ago and flew by inertia, and the communication with Hawk was done through over-the-horizon communication, which could not be detected by the enemy's listening, plus they were small and this was an extremely distant dark universe from the ε Eri system, finding the traces of the village-class ships 80,000 kilometres away was something Hawk could not even do.
Once again, this proved how tough the Lucca civilisation was. But it was no use being tough anymore, there were only ten seconds left to reach the target.
The Lucca ship was biologically operated, after all, and when faced with such an unexpected situation, it would take at least eight seconds from the time it emerged to the time it aimed to fire.
Eight seconds was enough time for Hawke to close the distance to just sixteen thousand kilometres.
"Let the blasts begin." Hawke gave the order.
Immediately, thirty of the targeted ships exploded violently a moment before the attack arrived, while the rest of the ships, in turn, exploded as they flew towards the distorted space, the nearest one, less than five hundred kilometres away from the distorted space.
In all, a trillion tons of hydrogen bombs exploded in a matter of two seconds. Hawk saw that under the explosion of such a huge amount of hydrogen bombs, the hundred Lucca ships could not even resist for a moment, they were instantly blown through the shields and then the whole ship was turned into flying ashes.
At this moment, Hawke's main force was still 11 billion kilometres away from here.
Ten hours later, Hawke was on top of the London, observing the flash of light that had appeared here.
It was as if a new star had appeared there, and at that moment the brightness of the blast point was one point seven times greater than that of the Epsilon Eri system, which meant a release of energy of such magnitude that Hawke hardly dared to imagine it.
A few minutes after the explosion, via the hyper-range communication satellites, when the afterglow of the hydrogen bomb had cleared, Hawke immediately saw the scene of that distorted space. Hawke saw that the explosion of a trillion-tonne-equivalent hydrogen bomb had not wiped out that space distortion, it had instead become larger. Moreover, behind this area, the starlight being distorted was also fluctuating violently, as if, this piece of distorted space, was caught in an extremely unstable situation.
Hawk breathed a sigh of relief in his heart.
"It doesn't matter if this distorted space is eliminated or not, as long as they can no longer use it. The way things are going now, it seems that this temporary route is, in all probability, unusable."
"The Lucca civilization should already know about the destruction of the entrance to the route. What will ... they do next? Surrender? Or fight to the death?"
Hawke was acutely aware that ahead of him, the fleeing Lucca fleet was scattering in formation.
"They must not be pushed to the brink. Otherwise, if they blow themselves up or fight me to the death, I'll get nothing. They have to be given some hope, and it's best to lure them into surrendering. As long as they surrender and I take over the ship, I will be able to fight or kill them if I want to."
With this in mind, Hawke immediately radioed a message to them.
"Greetings, Lucca civilization. Unfortunately, you have lost the war with me. Here, I would like to explain a few things to you. First of all, I am a mechanical civilisation that has evolved to an intelligence and consciousness of its own, not a cold, electronic being that only acts under the command of a code. So don't despair, I don't want to kill you, I just want to get something out of you, like, your technology, the information you know."
"You can continue to survive inside my ship, it seems a good thing to have you to relieve my boredom during a long journey. Of course, it may not feel good to be kept in captivity, but that doesn't seem like an unacceptable end compared to eternal death. Anyway, the decision is yours."
"You should know very well that you can't run away without your logistical supplies. You are left with only two ways to go, either be killed by me in battle or surrender to me and I will provide you with a comfortable existence until you die a natural death."
"So, give me your answers. By the way, you have only one hour to think about it."
Hawke followed this message with a dictionary message and sent it along.