Chapter 550, Life and Death Chase

Chapter 550, Life and Death Chase

The three Holy Grails maneuvered at full speed, found a direction, and evacuated.

To be honest, they looked quite embarrassed when they evacuated.

The enemy's firepower was a bit too strong.

Before they were out of the enemy's fire, the combined firepower of the Retribution and the two battle barges was about 2.5 times that of the three Holy Grails. After being hit hard, one of the Holy Grails was hit by concentrated fire, and its void shield was directly overloaded and shattered. The ship was also hit by two rounds of the Wrath of the Loyalty Cannon.

Fortunately, the Grail class is only fragile compared to battleships. Compared to ordinary Moon-class cruisers, its armor thickness is still better, so it is unlikely to be destroyed by two rounds of Chutsugu's Wrath.

There was some damage to the hull, but it was not fatal, at least the power system was not damaged.

This is critical.

We definitely cannot win the fight. If we want to stay alive and keep the ship, the power system is the thing we can rely on the most.

The fleeing Alliance fleet also made the decision to disperse its forces. Several Moon-class ships and other small boats chose many different directions to escape.

However, the Fury Fleet didn't care about these interferences at all. They had a complete advantage in the number of ships, but they didn't even have the interest to split up and hunt, and their eyes were fixed on the three battlecruisers of the Alliance.

The biggest fish have been caught, so of course no one wants to look at the small fish and shrimp.

Bai Qifan could only try to find the silver lining and thought that at least there were more than a dozen ships running separately, so he would definitely be able to save his life.

As for the three battlecruisers under his direct command, he did not choose to disperse.

If they completely separated into three directions, then with the speed of the battlecruiser, it was possible that one or two ships could escape. However, just as he did not choose to start the warp engine immediately and sacrifice one or two ships to run to the other side, Bai Qifan's goal so far was to keep all three warships.

If they escape separately, they may still suffer losses due to lack of mutual cover.

This is something Bai Qifan doesn't want to see.

He did not deny that he had stepped into a trap and that he should take responsibility; but precisely because of this, he had to lead the troops out of the pit personally.

The three battlecruisers gradually picked up speed, taking turns to cover their teammates. At the cost of one of their shields being broken, they escaped the attack range of the Retribution-class battleship, which had the most powerful enemy firepower.

Once the Holy Grail class increases its speed, the Retribution class will definitely not be able to catch up.

However, the two flagships of the two Space Marine Chapters, the Battle Barges, from the Fury and the Torch of the New World, were not slow-moving creatures.

Battle barges are rare ships in the human empire, only used by space marines, and are the flagships of general chapters. They do not have a unified standard design, but are customized according to the needs of each chapter from some familiar and well-connected forge worlds.

Some combat barges pursue speed and flexibility, which are similar to battlecruisers in this respect; some pursue strong ships and powerful guns, which are similar to normal battleships; and some are designed with an aircraft carrier tendency.

However, because they are custom-built, many of the performance characteristics of the ships are different. Some powerful combat barges that are willing to spend more money and do not care about the cost-effectiveness can even have the projection capability of an aircraft carrier and the firepower of a battleship, while being fast.

Of course, to achieve this, one must first accept a customized forging world, and the technical capabilities must be outstanding enough; on the other hand, the cost-effectiveness of stacking such performance on a ship is definitely not as good as using the same money and resources to build two or even three warships of the same level.

In addition, battle barges, or Space Marine-exclusive warships including strike cruisers, all have a feature: they have dedicated Space Marine crew positions. From firepower to ship management to communications and command, there are dedicated positions that allow Space Marines to directly control them, just like using genetic nerve cords to connect to the black carapace.

In this way, the performance of the ship can be further improved based on the original hardware.

In any case, the level of manual control of mortal crew members is certainly not as good as the direct neural connection of Space Marines.

However, the two battle barges, Fury and New World Torch, did not go too extreme.

After a brief observation, Bai Qifan roughly judged that the performance of these two battle barges was between that of battlecruisers and battleships. Their firepower was slightly inferior to that of the Retribution class, but they also had two X-class cannons; their speed was slightly inferior to that of the battlecruisers, but not much, and at least they could keep up.

In space, this formed a long, seesaw chase.

After running and chasing, Bai Qifan successfully brought three battlecruisers to another jump point and made a jump to the south of the star map.

Just before they entered the jump state, the two battle barges arrived at the jump point with a group of destroyers.

Can't catch up.

After entering the star tunnel, Bai Qifan finally felt a little relieved after feeling the anxiety that had been weighing on his mind for the past few days.

Should be safe?
But soon, news came from the navigator.

The enemy did not give up the pursuit.

They followed closely behind, also started the jump engine, and entered the same star tunnel. In the star tunnel, the two sides would not fight. There is no concept of space in the star tunnel. Although the two ships are in the same tunnel, they cannot actually touch each other.

However, this raises another question: the time to complete the astral tunnel jump does not depend on the normal speed and flexibility of the ship, but only on the specifications and performance of the jump engine.

The three Holy Grail-class ships built by the Alliance all had good jump engines. However, due to the limitation that the ship power module of the battlecruiser itself was not as large as that of the battleship, some trade-offs had to be made in terms of conventional engines, firepower output, jump engines, energy shields, etc.

In this case, the materials used in the warp drive are good, but the specifications are somewhat limited.

Generally speaking, the warp engine is important, but not the most important. When there is a trade-off, the warp engine with a single purpose will often be reduced in specifications and some performance will be castrated to save more energy supply for other systems.

This was also done when the Holy Grail level was designed.

So the question is, are the two battle barges on the opposite side, and the Retribution-class ship that lagged behind but could reach the jump point in half a day at most, castrated on the jump engine?

Don't let the situation happen that you are the one who started the star jump first, but end up arriving at the other side later than the other side.

If this is the case, it's all over.

By then, they would have their void shields on and their firepower ready, and as soon as they appeared in the real universe, they would immediately start searching for the enemy, locking onto them, and opening fire. Their fragile battlecruisers would be hit the hardest before they could even open their shields.

It was not easy to search and explore information in the astral tunnel. However, no matter how difficult the objective conditions were, under Bai Qifan's strict orders, the navigation psychics and astropathic psychics on the three ships tried their best to search and explore the enemy's situation.

During the two-day or so process of star-boundary migration, Bai Qinian's mood changed dramatically.

Mainly the situations reported are very different.

One moment, it was said that the enemy's teleportation was not good and it was estimated that they would arrive at the target location one day later than their side. But before Bai Qifan could be happy for a while, the next message was the latest revision of the exploration situation, that the enemy's speed was faster than their side, which made him nervous again.

Sometimes, astropaths and navigators even give different situation reports.

It was not until the entire jump journey was almost over that the information gradually converged: both parties should arrive at the target location at about the same time.

Bai Qifan was not very satisfied with this answer.

What does "almost" mean?
How much is the difference?
The time after completing the jump is a very precious golden moment. A difference of five or ten minutes may not seem enough for the battleship to turn around under normal circumstances, but in this golden moment, it is the difference between life and death.

If they arrive ten minutes earlier than you, then when you come out, you will have to face a group of enemy ships with their shields turned on.

If I arrive ten minutes earlier, not only can the shield be opened, but after switching to the conventional engine, I will have another ten minutes to increase the speed and make it impossible for the enemy ship to catch up.

However, the psychics really had no way of giving an exact time.

It was impossible for Bai Qifan to continue forcing them.

What is the use of persecution?
Putting a knife to someone's neck and forcing them to tell you a time will only lead to nonsense. Making judgments based on wrong information will only cause bigger problems.

He could only prepare for the worst.

And when the jump was completed and the ship arrived in the real universe, this worst-case scenario actually happened.

The enemy ship is right in front of us.

The two battle barges of the Fury Fleet, and the fleet they led, arrived first!

When Bai Qifan saw the two huge ships appear on the giant observation screen of the bridge command center, he almost had a cardiac arrest.

However, the next moment, he realized there was hope.

The enemy ship's shields are not lit!
Only a few patrol ships were lit up!
This means that the enemy may arrive just a little earlier than them!
still have a chance!

He stood in the center of the bridge, his hands clenched into fists.

He said nothing and did not take this opportunity to issue any orders.

Because there was no need. All the relevant plans had been arranged in the past few days. The moment they arrived in the real universe, the shield system and engine system were already fully activated. Everyone on the ship knew what they should do, and they all knew that this was a life-and-death race.

If the boat explodes, no one will survive.

At the critical moment, the opponent's shield had not yet lit up, but the artillery fire had taken the lead and bombarded the alliance ships!
The opponent chose to concentrate their strength and open the firepower system first!

(End of this chapter)