117. Galaspa (middle)
Death has already flown across the Galaspa galaxy. He spreads his wings. He sees the price, but he remains unmoved.
Death cannot escape itself.
The enemy's planetary defense system quickly and silently poured huge amounts of torpedoes and ammunition at them. This pocket civilization living in a corner accumulated unimaginable ammunition.
But they had no idea what exactly they were attacking.
On their scanning system, a fleet quickly flew to their home star. The giant flying objects at the top and outer ends of the fleet, as well as the plasma thrusters above, were recognized, and bullets were fired like rain.
Just as Mortarion thought.
It was not a Death Guard ship, but asteroids collected from various places, crudely installed with plasma thrusters, and controlled by technicians on the Fourth Knight.
The Death Guard had only a short time to prepare, so the plasma thrusters on these asteroids only allowed them to move forward in a straight line - and
that was enough.
The fleet on the opposite side finally reacted, and a huge number of warships sailed towards the Death Guard. The warships called "surveillance fortresses" and "firepower platforms" had dense artillery muzzles.
The first concentration of fire started, but it was obvious that neither side could achieve a flanking attack.
Suddenly, a cruise ship broke away from its formation and passed directly through the outer asteroid defenses. It stood in the center of the Death Guard fleet, shooting in all directions.
"Stay in formation,"
Mortarion said.
"All frontal batteries facing the enemy."
The ship was quickly torn to pieces, but it did not retreat a step until death came.
This further confirmed Mortarion's speculation about the Knights.
Retreat is not allowed.
Realizing the victory brought by the first Fortress, more and more Watch Fortresses broke away from the formation and rushed into the Death Guard fleet.
In the fierce fire, the asteroid began to disintegrate. The sensors buried in the rock layer in advance faithfully recorded this process and sent preset commands to detonate the giant Death Guard buried on the back side of the asteroid. Measure the bomb!
The planet exploded instantly, and on the Fourth Knight's return screen, gorgeous bright yellow waves gently swept through the dark void.
But Mortarion knew that it was an explosion wave powerful enough to destroy a light cruiser.
The scattered fragments of the asteroid flew rapidly towards the nearest enemy ship, and the meteor shower wildly shot at the enemy.
These planet showers only scratched the surface of a well-defended surveillance fortress.
But they successfully detonated the enemy's fire platform. One fire platform was destroyed by the explosion of its own ammunition. The aftermath of its death also enveloped other platforms, and death began to spread in the star sea.
At the same time, Mortarion ordered the destroyers on the second level of the fleet to attack the fortress that had broken into the Death Guard.
These were old decommissioned destroyers, controlled by remote control, and Mortarion had given them the right to die.
Those remotely controlled destroyers charged suicidally toward the enemy ships, pouring torpedoes and artillery fire while crashing into the enemy's belly like a sharp blade.
But the surveillance fortresses that were hit by the fireships did not retreat. The giant metal structures that were struck down hung on their bodies. Within the fortresses, the secondary explosion caused by the Death Guard attack was reverberating in the ships, and countless lives were moving towards them. Fading away -
but still igniting its final plasma thrusters.
It can still bring death to the Death Guard.
The other two surveillance fortresses sensed its behavior and ignited their engines, dragging their shaky bodies towards it and heading straight towards the Death Guard's heavy cruiser "Tombstone".
The engine accelerated to the extreme, and the ship's beams began to shake due to the rapid speed, and successive explosions began to explode on the surveillance fortress!
The Watch Fortress's engines were strained to the limit by the ship's need to reach and fight back the intruders, and it was damaged beyond repair, but because the engines were still running, no one even considered trying to shut it down. And so the inevitable death occurred -
the plasma drive exploded.
A large amount of energy burst out in the void, and the dazzling silvery white color blinded anyone who looked directly at it for a moment.
In the midst of the huge, star-like heat, these three surveillance fortresses evaporated and disappeared silently.
The explosion shattered more outer asteroids, and the fireship was all swallowed up.
The heavy cruiser Tombstone passed almost directly through the core of the explosion.
When people observed it again, the plasma engine that originally glowed with blue-purple flames had long been extinguished, and a huge gap was clearly visible on the port side.
Invisible to the naked eye, in Mortarion's imagination, the air on the tombstone was rushing into the void through this gap.
Its main artery had been torn, and blood was gushing out. It just relied on inertia to glide among the corpses of the fleet.
The Fourth Knight received a communication request from Captain Lavas of the Tombstone.
"Turn on the channel,"
Mortarion said quietly,
Lavas' voice laced with pain, cutting through a sea of static.
"Our strength is running low, my lord."
He coughed out the words with difficulty, but Mortarion would remember every word he spoke until his death.
"We can no longer keep up with the pace of the fleet, and now our responsibility is clear." The
breathing mask hissed, and he looked at death calmly,
"Let more people die before the end comes, Captain."
"We will, they will learn to fear us before they perish."
The Tombstone left the queue. Isolated, it became an attractive target for the Knights.
Mortarion stood here, standing on the tactical podium of the Fourth Knight, watching the Tombstone struggle in the enemy's siege, pouring death.
He noticed Barasin frown.
"Don't tell me the Dusk Raiders aren't familiar with sacrifice, Captain."
"The Tombstone's crew numbered one hundred and fifteen thousand men. They would be dead soon, and there would be more ships before the Fourth Knight could reach its target. The crew will also die. There is nothing to regret or regret, this is the price of war and nothing more.
"I do not doubt the necessity of sacrifice," said Barazin.
"But what I want to ask is, can we lose the tombstone?" No.?
"You can ask. " The answer is yes, we can and must afford whatever brings us victory. "
Including death. " “
Tombstones still have power. If we slow down the pace, we can retain its power as part of our formation.
"What good does that do to us? " "
Mortalion asked back,
"We are figuring out the enemy's tactics and formation. Their ships are definitely no match for our ships. We can move forward more steadily, and then tear the enemy's fleet apart bit by bit." "Their numbers are too many.
"
Mota Lean said slowly,
"This is the key, quantity, the key to the Knights' defense. If we slow down, we will give the enemy a chance to fully exert their power.
They will drown us in a sea of corpses.
After we die, it will be proved Those who supported the blockade of Galaspa were right to be cautious, and the Empire would forget about it until it was needed again for the Great Crusade. We are
not here to siege the city. We are here to thrust straight into the heart of tyranny. The Tombstone remains this It is part of this war. It will do its last bit to move forward. We will continue to move forward at full speed.”
Advance, unstoppable advance.
If you hesitate, if you stop because of a wound, then unbearable failure will come.
Lavas means what he says. Readings from the platform's screens, long after the last transmission, told Mortarion that the Tombstone would not die easily.
The roar of the engine, the figure of the Tombstone, and the figures of the enemy ships surrounding it were left behind them.
They move on.
The closer they got to the main star of Galaspar, the more intense the artillery fire they suffered. After losing the defense of the outer asteroids and old destroyers, more and more enemy ships rushed into their formation.
Huge amounts of data flowed through the console, and Mortarion looked at every loss, every death.
He anticipated the coming death and carefully considered the acceptable death.
"Minimum flanking counterattack,"
he said, further pronouncing necessary and necessary death,
"concentrate your efforts to target the defenses
in front of the fleet." The enemy ships in the front dissipated under the concentrated firepower of the Death Guard, and the main force of the forefront of the Death Guard remained. Move forward quickly.
Enemy ships, as well as their own ships with damaged engines, were left behind.
The abandoned Death Guard ships will slow down the enemy's outer fleet's return inward defense.
As they were about to get close enough to Galaspa, the Knights' firepower could already be described as desperate.
Mortarion looked through the porthole of the Fourth Knight beside him. Saw the intense firepower of the fortress break out on the cruiser Melancholy. The torpedo penetrated its hull and detonated the ammunition magazine.
The explosion threw it off course, and it tilted inevitably to starboard, causing
Melancholy to crash into the battleship "The Call of Necessity" due to the dense formation of the Death Guard.
Their bows collided together and then turned to starboard together, threatening to endanger more ships.
"If they can't stop," Barasin said.
He did not voice the danger.
The formation of the fleet is very compact, and the turning radius of the capital ship is quite wide. If a disaster occurs, there is no way to avoid it.
"They will turn around,"
Mortalion said decisively,
"The crews on those ships will find a way. They have to do this, they know the stakes, and they will sacrifice everything to keep the main fleet moving forward. "
He looked at them silently, he believed in them, and they believed in him.
Following Mortarion's words, the right engine of the "Necessary Call" began to roar violently, and it violently turned sideways to the left at a speed that completely exceeded the maximum acceleration that the ship could withstand.
The tiny ship structure fell away from the "Necessity Call"'s huge body as it moved.
At the same time, the Melancholia also began to desperately ignite its right engine, which had long been scrapped and was in a state of disarray. Due to the crew's forced ignition, its right engine suddenly exploded, and a huge amount of flames spewed out!
But this further halted its trajectory to the right.
The actions of the two ships caused them to collide even harder -
they instantly turned into huge ruins.
Stumbling and twisting, it tilted to the left and hit an asteroid quickly and straightly.
At the last moment, both ships fired all their ammunition to the port side. The dense meteor showers and big explosions produced when they hit asteroids also dragged enemy ships into the abyss of death.
They didn't even send a communication request to the Fourth Knight because they knew exactly what they were supposed to do.
So they did that.
Nothing needs to be said.
The Death Guard have no battle cry.
Mortarion watched their deaths in silence.
Perhaps he should have reacted, but not now.
He is the commander of the legion, he is the decision-maker, and he is the master who holds the sickle.
In the shadow under the hood, the Pale King's amber eyes sparkled, and a huge amount of information flowed into his mind.
"We have broken through the Knights' defense line," Barasin said.
"The ones outside," Vox said.
Mortarion said nothing. He stared ahead, preparing for attacks from the orbital platforms and planetary cannons of Garaspa Prime.
The voyage through the galaxy is just the prologue.
If he misjudges the capabilities of the Fourth Knight, he will lose everything.
This article is not v, the reason is the same as the previous article.
There should be another article in the evening. I will try my best to finish the plot of Galasper, the Pale King today.
In fact, when I wrote this article, I felt very emotional. I was the one responsible for the Death Guard breaking through the defenses of the Galasper System.
In this article, the main tone of the Death Guard led by Mortarion is already obvious, sacrifice and trust.
There are definitely some criticisms, but it does look stunning.
Thanks again to the Translation Column and Translation Court of Station B.
The proceedings and dialogue in this article are heavily quoted and adapted from the original text.
(End of chapter)