Counterfeit Hero

Chapter 1438: Chapter 124: The First Wave

Countless fish-like missiles lunged into the boundless starry void.

In that instant, everyone in the fleet merely turned to the windows on instinct. The Thunderbolt III space torpedoes like cigars; the Sak I high‑speed missiles like swordfish; the Shockwave B7 area self‑guiding torpedoes like mangoes; the Bloodthirsty Stinger dense missile swarm like a cluster of three‑edged bayonets......

The massive steel Battleships hung quietly in the emptiness of space, and through the immaculate portholes all around, it was as if they were seated on the viewing deck of a revolving restaurant built into a cliff.

Schools of torpedoes and missiles swept past the windows like flocks of seagulls.

Their speeds varied. The fast ones, in the blink of an eye, were nothing but flickering points of light; the slow ones drifted leisurely past the porthole rims. Missiles driven by ion thrusters trailed long luminous wakes through the black void, while torpedoes using chemical engines dragged tails of combustive smoke, etching countless condensed line‑clouds across the sky.

This incomparably spectacular scene left every officer and crew member in the fleet dazzled and spellbound. A tingling sensation like an electric shock crawled up their backs, up their arms and cheeks, stirring a surge of emotion they could hardly restrain.

"It’s too beautiful!" A ship captain clenched the railing of the command seat with all his strength, his voice carrying a faint tremor, like someone talking in their sleep.

"That General Tian is a madman..." A Battleship’s ship captain watched the last salvo of torpedoes spit from the launch ports in the Battleship’s prow, muttering to himself, "....and so are we!"

"I will remember this scene forever." A bored cook, peering out through the galley’s cramped round porthole, raised his camera and captured the sight before him. "Forever!"

This was an unconventional launch. No fleet had ever fired such a dense, massive volley of missiles and torpedoes—nearly a thousand vessels of four A‑class fleets unleashing their maximum saturation strike capacity. Every torpedo tube and missile catapult trench was emptied in these brief ten‑odd seconds!

The coordinates for all missiles and torpedoes had already been set. Within two to six minutes, they would split into five waves and streak toward that patch of space which, for now, was still utterly empty.

What would happen two minutes from now?

No one knew.

To lure the Western Alliance Fleet into the trap, the Bandit Army Fleet had cut its engines and energy shields after clearing the obstacle zone, feigning imminent jump—poised, yet not moving. This window of time was precisely the best moment for the Jiepeng Dragon Rider Fleet to launch its ambush.

Without such a ruse, General Auben would clearly never have taken the bait.

Like a giant python that has been watching its prey for a long time, it would only strike with lightning speed once it was sure the prey had relaxed its guard.

Therefore, the bandit army had to take a risk. The fleet could not possibly swing its main bow guns to bear on the jump space; it had no time to spin up the engines and charge the guns during the enemy’s two‑minute jump window, much less deploy into a Luu Zecheng Formation under the enemy’s nose to deliver the most lethal blow to the jump‑arriving foe.

Auben was a Great General, not an idiot. To turn his trap into an opportunity, the only tools they could rely on were missiles and torpedoes that could alter course in flight and home in on designated coordinates!

First wave, second wave....... As they watched the missile and torpedo clusters before them, the hearts of the officers and crew pounded wildly.

Everyone knew the warships were frantically rebooting their engines and energy shields. The harsh, rapid vibration of engine startup and that wind‑howling hum had not stopped for an instant. Outside, the armor plating was still a pitch‑black expanse, devoid of the familiar, comforting blue shimmer of the energy shield, leaving everyone on edge.

At this moment, the warships had not the slightest defensive capability.

The instant the enemy jumped into the void and the fleet launched its missiles, both sides became swordsmen thrusting at each other....... Life and death, victory and defeat, would be decided in these few minutes alone.

If the missile and torpedo swarm could hit the Jiepeng Fleet the moment it completed its jump, not only would they smash the enemy head‑on and throw its formation into chaos, the fleet would also have enough time to finish bringing its engines online, charge the main guns, and shift formations, thus seizing firm control of the strategic initiative.

But...... if their judgment was completely wrong and the missile and torpedo swarm merely brushed past the enemy, the consequences would be unimaginable. A fleet with no defenses would suffer a devastating blow.

This was a meticulously planned raid, a conspiracy, and a gamble!

"Will we succeed?" In the hushed flagship Command Room, Diana lightly pressed her slender hand against the porthole glass. The chill of the glass made her feel as if all the heat in her body were being drained away by this cold steel. She glanced at Fatty, who sat at the command seat fully absorbed in operating the tactical computer, then turned back to the distant lights, her lips bloodless.

This was not land, and she, unable to intervene in any way, felt as though she had lost all control over her own fate.

"We will." Garfield, usually taciturn, pressed his lips together in a tight line.

Beside Garfield, Isaac, face set like iron, stared out the window, his hands unconsciously clenched into fists.

Everyone waited in silence, and this wait felt as long as millions of years.....

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When a fleet jumps, the sudden surge of speed makes the familiar world turn strange.

At such high velocity, fine details are almost invisible; only distant, colossal Constant Stars blazing with ten thousand rays, and the eternally unmoving nebulae sprawling across the heavens, seem to drift through the field of view.

As the Dragon Rider Fleet slipped into the void, Planet No.3 outside the portholes receded at a furious pace.

Standing on the command dais, Auben once more savored the solitude that came with hurdling through space at such speed.

He liked this feeling.

Like a giant python that, with a Thunderbolt’s swiftness, lunges at the enemy with jaws agape in that one instant... only he stretched that instant out and took up residence within it. While others’ thoughts had not even begun to turn, he could already savor, ponder, and, at the same time, control it.

Holding other people’s lives and deaths in his hands!

The Command Room was deathly quiet. On the forty-meter-high bridge Command Room of the flagship Space Carrier Supreme Glory, the staff officers were working calmly and methodically. For this kind of attack, they no longer felt any tension. Ever since Auben became the Commander of this fleet twenty years ago, they had always fought like this.

Whether it was a raid or a frontal confrontation, the Dragon Rider Fleet had not tasted defeat for a very long time.

Many officers and soldiers of the past had retired without ever knowing what defeat was.

There was no enemy the Dragon Rider Fleet could not crush—there hadn’t been before, there wasn’t now, and there never would be in the future. As long as Auben was there, as long as this tactical master took off his eye patch and issued his orders, this fleet could devour any enemy. Its strength was beyond belief!

The undefended Fei Alliance Fleet before them was nothing more than yet another sacrifice.

The officers and men were working almost mechanically; for them, this was not the time to be excited at all. The only thing that might stir their interest was that this fleet, clearly composed of the most advanced Fei Alliance Battleships, actually bore no markings whatsoever. They didn’t even know the fleet’s designation, much less who its Commander was.

However, that was not important.

This was a standard Feiyang Group Fleet formed from four A-class fleets. Once they destroyed it, another dazzling star would be added to the Dragon Rider Fleet’s roll of honor.

General Auben’s prediction had been very accurate: with the Western Alliance投入大量兵力 into the Resk Battle and the Fei Alliance’s front line under pressure, the Fei Alliance Joint Command would never sit idly by. They needed to support their front-line troops; at this critical moment, committing part of their forces to pin down the Western Alliance seemed the best plan before their preparations for a large-scale troop increase were completed.

General Mikami Yuto’s pinning actions against the Western Alliance Fleet at Leifeng Star and Canglang Star had thoroughly misled these slow-witted Fei Alliance Generals.

They had no idea that, with Su Jie’s reinforcement fleets arriving one after another, the logistics supply route they had always believed to be secure had long since fallen under threat from the Western Alliance Fleet. Cutting off their supply lines would be the easiest thing in the world. The only reason they hadn’t done it yet was that General Auben needed to use this opportunity to encircle the city and strike at the relieving forces!

This was the kind of battle General Auben excelled at most. In the vast space of Resk, along those endless star lanes, the Dragon Rider Fleet was the king walking in the dark!

Now, it was time for the king to make his entrance.

The Command Room was utterly silent; after the jump was initiated, everything remained normal.

For this kind of short-distance jump, there was no need to activate the Jump Engine; the power from the Power Storage Device alone was sufficient. This meant that, at the very instant the jump ended, the conventional engines—never shut down—would immediately support the combat systems in launching an attack.

The jump countdown on the main screen had only one hundred seconds left.

Everyone was quietly waiting.

Suddenly, the satellite relay image on the main screen twisted for a moment, then turned into a black screen.

What happened? The Command Room erupted into commotion. The Electronic Soldiers frantically switched to other satellite feeds... nothing, there was nothing at all. The ship-borne satellites deployed near Planet No.3 had all lost contact at the very same moment.

Without satellite imagery, warships in mid-jump were instantly turned into the deaf and the blind.

Auben’s heart gave a violent jolt. He snapped his head up, staring toward the bridge side windows at the front of the Command Hall. Outside the windows, the universe warped before his eyes; the massive Constant Star was shifting, growing larger, while that Fei Alliance Fleet, merging into the darkness as it moved at high speed, was essentially impossible to see. Yet a drifting beam of light, in that instant, stabbed his eyes like a needle.

A shrill alarm suddenly blared, and the liaison officer’s shout, laden with boundless terror, tore from his throat in a hoarse roar that somehow sounded as if it came from the end of the heavens.

"Enemy attack!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

The entire Command Room plunged into chaos. On the SkyNet System screens, both the energy detector and the radar showed abnormal fluctuations at the same time. On the radar, countless tiny dots were surging wildly; on the energy detector, the circular energy gauge shifted from blue to red until, finally, it became a mass of deep crimson, like the detonation of a Constant Star.

The Supreme Glory finally completed its jump.

When this giant beast, under the escort of the Battleship cluster, emerged from the void, what appeared before everyone’s eyes was a scene straight out of hell!

Countless missiles and torpedoes crisscrossed the starry sky.

The officers and soldiers of the Dragon Rider Fleet had never seen so many missiles, so many torpedoes. These terrifying killers were right before them, wave after wave, endless and inexhaustible.

The Destroyer Fleet, which had jumped out of the void ahead of the main formation, was like Knights charging into a rain of arrows.

Violent explosions dyed the whole sector of space blood-red. Chunks of steel debris of all sizes tumbled and streaked across the cosmos. One warship after another jumped out of the void, only to slam straight into missile after missile, or torpedo after torpedo. Rolling flames and shockwaves, like a chain of detonating explosive charges, extended endlessly through the vacuum.

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