Chapter 160 03.0159: "Only one chance"

The port side commanded by Horatio quickly blasted through the void shield of the rebellious dreadnought-class with superb artillery skills.

While coordinating and commanding the entire artillery group, he observed various details of the enemy ship's movements, thinking in his mind about the tactics that the enemy might adopt and the countermeasures he could take.

He squinted his eyes and judged from the ship's navigation track captured by the peripheral cameras that this dreadnought should have been corrupted by the mutiny of the corrupt crew.

Because her navigation operation was not smooth, sometimes she would sway from side to side, just like two people who were dissatisfied with each other and insisted on their own opinions.

He was the only one among all the reserve officers who noticed something unusual about the enemy ship, something that even many junior lieutenants failed to notice.

And Horatio was right.

There is now endless quarreling in the command bridge of this rebel ship, which is full of corpses and skulls.

Rather than a command bridge, it is more like a black market in the lower nest.

Crew members with profane marks painted on their faces accused each other of their actions and denigrated the command of other clan members.

Deceived by the evil god, they killed almost all the officers on the bridge in a blood-thirsty mutiny.

A small number of those who were detained and imprisoned refused to cooperate with them after being tortured, and were executed or killed one after another.

There are no Chaos Astartes to lead them as spiritual pillars; they are all fallen mortals.

These crew members who were unwilling to obey each other found it impossible to form a unified coordinated command chain, and they were unhappy with each other.

In the eyes of those clan leaders, what others said was wrong and what he said was right.

As a result, although this Dreadnought-class light cruiser participated in the war, its combat efficiency was even lower than that of some apostate attack ships.

After all, the commanders of these attack ships were once void pirates or slave owners, and they were much more professional than these makeshift teams.

After making this judgment, Horatio changed his mind.

He ordered the gun crew to change their target from the original bridge to dismantling its gun deck first, so as to reduce the threat to the surrounding frigates.

Then they would focus on the engine power system and completely paralyze the entire ship, preserving as much of the rebellious ship as possible.

Anyway, the command of the enemy ship is in such a mess, it would be more beneficial to keep the command bridge to reduce the negative effects on the enemy ship than to tear it down.

Under the fierce salvo of fire from the Indefatigable's port side, two of the six light macroguns in the Dreadnought-class light cruiser's array were quickly silenced.

The design concept of the Dreadnought-class light cruiser is consistent with that of the Ancient Terra light cruiser, and it serves as the flagship of the reconnaissance fleet.

It also plays the role of a hunter of small ships such as destroyers and frigates.

It is equipped with an array of up to 6 light rapid-fire macro cannons of smaller caliber but faster firing rate.

The huge thrust of the ten engine jets allows this slender and graceful light cruiser to maneuver as well as a frigate.

The surging power allowed her to reach her maximum acceleration and easily catch up with the enemy destroyer.

The spacious hull of 4.5 kilometers in length and about 0.5 kilometers in width at the fin, extremely dexterous handling, and high speed made her very popular in the Imperial Navy and lasted for a long time.

It is recognized by captains as the most comfortable warship for performing escort and patrol missions, without a doubt.

However, her weakness lies in the battle line's artillery.

As a reconnaissance cruiser, she could not fight a one-on-one battle with a real cruiser like the Doomsday class, not to mention that she did not have a torpedo model.

Her frigate-sized light macroguns were like a tickle to the Indefatigable.

Although the firing rate was fast, it could only penetrate the shallow deck of the Indefatigable.

Several shells hit the gun shield of the macro gun commanded by Horatio, blowing out some fragments. Although the deck of the command platform shook from time to time, which was a bit annoying, it was still unable to penetrate it effectively.

As Horatio shouted, the order to fire was transmitted to the two huge cannon firing decks.

The Mars IV macrocannon fires a massive shell with a huge caliber that can cause more than three times the damage of a light macrocannon.

In just a blink of an eye, the golden flames of the explosion directly tore apart a macro-cannon battery on the Dreadnought-class cruiser.

The rebel ship was badly damaged, and on the wing that was engaging the Indefatigable, only two light cannons were still able to survive.

The Indefatigable's lances caused severe damage to her interior, and a large area of ​​deck amidships collapsed, crushing many people to death.

The morale of the warship, manned by corrupt sailors, was completely lost, even though the command bridge was still shouting to turn around and continue the battle with the Indefatigable to satisfy the Scarlet God they were loyal to.

But the people of the clan steering the ship didn't think so. They picked up their guns and didn't let anyone get close to the steering wheel. The corrupt clan leader began to turn the ship around and tried to escape.

At the same time, two light cruisers of the Imperial Navy, the Endurance-class and the Diligence-class, entered the line of fire.

They fired a salvo at the fleeing rebels, causing fire to explode on the relatively intact side of the ship.

Although both are light cruisers, these new ships produced by the Voss Forge World adopt a design concept that is completely different from the Dreadnought-class.

The Duty class is a macro gunboat, the Endurance class is a lance gunboat, and the Defiance class is an escort carrier.

The three warships each have their own duties and functions.

As light cruisers, their speed is only about the same as that of the Diana class, and they are not suitable for hunting small ships.

That is why their battlefield positioning is as heavy escort ships for cruisers. The two have similar speeds and are equipped with standard cruiser armaments.

The Macrocannon is a newer Voss V Macrocannon. It is of similar caliber to the Mars IV Heavy Macrocannon, but does not have as far a range as the Mars IV.

However, its higher and faster production capacity makes up for this shortcoming strategically and logistically.

Seeing that the morale of the Dreadnought-class light cruiser had collapsed and it was trying to escape from the battle, Captain Peru acted decisively.

"Send an armed boarding team to carry out an immediate assault! We must stop her at all costs!"

"Yes, Captain!" The armed captain in the armed command operations room below the command bridge reported to the captain.

There are three categories of personnel in the Imperial Navy:

Armed boarding teams enjoying the treatment of first-class sailors, armed sailors enjoying the treatment of second-class sailors, and ordinary sailors enjoying the treatment of third-class sailors.

The duty of the armed sailors is to defend the warship itself, while boarding the enemy ship is the job of the armed boarding team.

The Indefatigable's Armed Command Operations Room dispatched an Armed Lieutenant to lead and carry out the mission.

He was not wearing a naval officer's uniform, but an officer's heavy carapace armor.

A red belt will be tied around the waist like the Astra Militarum to identify the officer.

Amid the sound of military drums, 2500 heavily armored boarding crew members of the Imperial Navy were ready to go and lined up in an orderly manner on the deck of the boat.

Accompanied by drum beats and sirens, we boarded the rows of neatly moored Shark assault boats on standby.

The Dreadnought-class activated its plasma engine overload, and Horatio saw the dazzling golden flames in the distance rapidly retreating.

At this speed, she would soon be out of the Indefatigable's extreme boarding angle.

Her void shield was about to rise, and it was difficult to use lightning strikes to teleport personnel in such a short time.

If they want to stop her, it all depends on the efforts of Horatio and the other artillery crews.

"Normal ammunition loaded!"

Hot sweat streamed down Horatio's cheeks.

[You only have one chance to stop it!]
At this time, errors began to flash frequently on the Thinker Array again.

"Yes, this broken machine just had this problem. It was fine after you came back, but now..."

Horatio stared at the error message on the ATX screen.

As a professional officer from a naval academy, he could understand the meaning of all the error codes.

"It's void waste code, not caused by the virus. It's the array that's disordered." Horatio said calmly.

"What should I do..."

"Normally, we have to ask the technical priests to handle it."

Horatio looked toward the enemy ship that was trying to sail away.

"But we don't have time now."

His iron hand extended a curved and slender neural dendrite, which reached into the dendrite socket on the Cogitator array that was inlaid with the skull gear of the Mechanicus.

Horatio explored the dark vision, a state in which the flow of time seemed to stand still.

"Damn it..." He tried to find the source of the waste code and saw a strange 0 flashing in the binary code that should have only 1 and 9.

Because of this, the Axe Check Code that comes with the Thinker Array pops up errors and invalid codes.

Because it simply can't handle an argument with 9 in binary.

Generally speaking, Tzeentch likes to make things difficult for the warring parties. As long as the warring parties are not Tzeentch's believers, he will set traps for them equally.

The Khorne warships on the opposite side encountered the same situation, or even worse.

Their Thinker array began to leak electricity, shocking many technical sailors who knew a small part of artillery calculations and causing them to twitch on the ground.

『Activation: Machine Soul Favor』

Horatio broke through the service protocol that only the Tech-Priests have the authority to activate and manipulate.

The 'insane' machine soul began to calm down, and Horatio restarted it.

The waste code disappeared, and the number 9 that was shining with a strange blue-purple glow in the binary calculator disappeared without a trace.

"Okay, correct the parameters!" Horatio said to Farida.

"Parameter correction completed, ready to launch!"

"Fire!!" Horatio, who was precisely calibrating the two macro cannons with Farida, shouted to the command sound array.

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(End of this chapter)