Counterfeit Hero

Chapter 1428: Chapter 118: One-eyed Python

"The Bandit Army Fleet is requesting to jump?" Chuckna 6th Group Fleet Commander Zheng Mengcheng put down his teacup, strode to the porthole, watched the Bandit Army Fleet stretching thousands of kilometers, ship after ship sliding past his view, and said in surprise, "They didn’t receive our recommendation?"

"Report, General, the lead ship has already, per your orders, transmitted to the bandit army the intel on the Western Alliance Fleet’s airspace blockade," the staff officer said. "However, the Bandit Army Fleet insists on pressing forward. They say..."

"Say what?" Zheng Mengcheng turned around.

"They say, once they jump past the Resk Jump Point, it’s war. And the purpose of this expedition is to throw themselves into that war." The staff officer said solemnly, "They asked us to wish them good luck!"

Zheng Mengcheng was stunned for a long moment, then suddenly looked back.

Outside the window, steel behemoths in neat formations, like pods of giant whales, disappeared into the boundless void...

——————

"Reconnaissance Ship No. 1, report your position."

"Order Reconnaissance Ship No. 4 to proceed immediately to airspace coordinates 320034.422955.39322.7 for covert reconnaissance."

"Order Reconnaissance Ship No. 9 to depart and maintain a relief formation with Reconnaissance Ship No. 3 to scout the far side of planet AE-6."

"Order Battleship Anpu, Battleship Hunter, Battleship Thunderbolt to lead Phantom First Fleet’s First Cruiser Squadron twelve thousand kilometers forward. Order Phantom First Fleet’s 3rd Destroyer Squadron to move thirty-two thousand kilometers ahead and conduct high‑speed orbital maneuvering..."

Central Command Platform in the command hall. Fatty had one leg cocked, half‑reclining in the command seat. As he watched the tactical computer on the platform spew data at high speed, he kept issuing orders one after another.

All the staff officers in the Command Room had been mobilized completely; calls, footsteps, and electronic system tones mingled together in a cacophony.

As orders from the Command Room were relayed by SkyNet to the entire fleet, the warships outside the portholes began to move. The tail thrusters of countless warships suddenly flared, breaking out of formation at high speed and flinging themselves into the distant star‑strewn void.

————

Diana stood by the railing on the third‑floor platform, staring in bewilderment at Fatty slouching below.

Although she was an Army Commander, she was no stranger to warship command.

She knew that for a qualified Fleet Commander the most crucial ability was to work seamlessly with the Staff Department, to promptly assess all intel collected by the fleet’s SkyNet System, and issue corresponding orders.

That intel included the gravitational environment the fleet was in or about to encounter, visibility, radar detection range, electromagnetic interference index, navigational obstacles, spatial "reefs" distribution along the route, as well as each ship squadron’s internal combat readiness level, timetables, cruising speed, course‑deviation correction, Energy Cannon charge status, shield resistance status, electronic ship recon reports, and so on and so forth... Its complexity was hundreds or even thousands of times that of an armored ground force!

If training an Army Commander already meant picking one in ten thousand, then training an excellent Group Fleet Commander meant you’d see only one in a hundred million.

Fleet command is an arcane discipline. Leaving aside the keen judgment and rich combat experience needed to win battles, just keeping a fleet running normally in non‑combat conditions is not something ordinary people can do.

After being around Tony for a long time, every time Diana watched him command the fleet with that effortless grace and casual ease, she admired him to the core—this was also why Tony had always held the leadership position among the four of them. But Tony’s command rested on the tacit understanding he and his staff had built up over many years.

Whenever SkyNet collected intel, the front‑line duty officers in the Staff Department would, according to established procedures, perform a preliminary collation and analysis on the hundreds of data points arriving each minute, then submit them sorted by category.

Upon receiving the preliminarily processed intel, the senior staff officers would perform a second‑stage organization on some of the information, make corresponding judgments and analyses, even swiftly convene meetings, draft operational plans and countermeasures—and only then would they submit their finished work to Tony’s tactical computer for him to make the correct decision.

This workflow had not changed for a thousand years. A wise Commander and an elite staff team together form the core of a fleet; the two are inseparable.

But now....... what was she seeing?

In the command hall, Tony’s staff officers were completely at a loss. Under the demands of that big‑headed Bandit Army staffer named Carl, they only performed a brain‑dead sort of cursory categorization on the data, then transmitted it directly to the command computer in front of Fatty.

And those senior staff officers had abandoned all their former duties and turned into liaison officers, exclusively responsible for communications with the few warships assigned under their names!

That Fatty just lounged there, half‑reclining, leg cocked, hands folded on his belly, staring at the dizzying screen and casually barking out orders.

God, who does he think he is—a central intelligent computer pumping out tens of quadrillions of operations per second?

This was outright nonsense!

What made it worse was that all the Bandit Army senior generals, including Margaret, not only failed to stop him, but instead took it for granted and stepped in to pick up the slack, drafting battle plans.

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