Chapter 258: "Ancient" Gunnery
To facilitate communication, Xian Yu, the staff officer, numbered Dark Sun's territories. The entrance star system was No. 1, and Ruins Star, the "BOSS room" of this battle instance, was located in the deepest star system, No. 7.
Four hours after the combat mission began, the Xianyang battle group arrived at its pre-set position, using the ship's large-caliber infrared search and tracking system to lock onto the Dark Sun space station 60,000 kilometers away. They also detected 4 Dark Sun fighters within 500,000 kilometers.
"Executive Officer, fire control system has completed targeting!"
"Ammunition loaded, Entropy Zero Element Furnace operating power increased, sabot pre-cooling initiated, current temperature: 78K."
"Correction: 26K."
"Correction: 2.3K."
"Main cannon fully charged, superconductivity and infrared stealth reliability maximized, ready to fire at any moment!"
"Main cannon on standby," Lu Yuan ordered. "Air wing prepare."
"Understood!"
While maintaining radio silence, various combat units coordinated through superluminal communication on a dedicated section of the player community forum.
Soon, Lu Yuan saw five indicator lights on the Captain's panel illuminate, signifying that the air wing under his command was in position.
A few minutes later, six circular indicator lights illuminated, indicating that the other 6 warships in star systems No. 1 and No. 2 were also ready. "Fire!"
At a single command, the seven main cannon gunners in the fleet almost simultaneously disengaged their safeties and then pressed their firing buttons.
"Shunzi! I won! Hahahaha!!"
At this moment, inside the Dark Sun space station, the pirates, accustomed to their leisurely lives, were unaware that their lives had begun to count down. They were still passionately playing Texas Hold'em in the lounge.
No one in the Star Alliance could explain where the "Texas" in Texas Hold'em came from.
Some said it was a place where people liked to ride cattle, while others said it was famous for a food called "Paji."
In any case, such details were not important.
What was truly fatal was the problem exposed behind the small poker cards.
Mr. Sang might indeed have been a clever man, but his individual capabilities could not be effectively passed on to his subordinates.
Upon learning of the Punishment Fleet's disastrous defeat, being severely punished by the enemy instead, this interstellar overlord immediately realized he had made a huge mistake.
He effectively abandoned Apollo, which he had built for many years, and immediately relocated to Dark Sun.
Upon arrival, he issued orders to recall all pirates who were robbing trade routes outside, raised the alert level to the highest, and began preparing for war.
It must be said that such a determination to abandon illusions and make a clean break was commendable.
Unfortunately, pirates were still pirates.
The gap between these scoundrels, criminals, and rabble, and regular armies with faith, could only be described as a world of difference.
More than a month had passed since the recall order was issued, yet over sixty percent of the pirate squads had not returned to their home star system.
Their reasons were bizarre: some claimed navigation computer malfunctions, others said they were surrounded and intercepted by fleets from other factions and couldn't break free.
Some simply played dead.
The remaining, more loyal ones who returned promptly, also found the boring life on the space station unbearable.
The state of high alert and readiness lasted only a week, after which it loosened day by day.
Matter and energy in the universe always tend towards equilibrium.
As easy as it was to attract pirates with money then, it was now just as difficult to make them obey.
When Mr. Sang finally realized this, deep down, he knew he was a little slow on the uptake.
Boom!
Accompanied by a peculiar recoil dizziness, the stainless steel warhead left the main cannon rail at a speed of 60 kilometers per second, flying towards the space station.
Since this strike was against a stationary target, the Xianyang was able to fire from a greater distance, and specifically chose the most concealed angle with its back to the star.
When the electromagnetic pulse generated at the moment of firing spread like ripples to the space station, its intensity had already dropped to the level of stellar background noise.
The monitoring system inside the space station directly filtered out this signal and did not issue a warning.
The duty pirate was watching his cherished Paradise Island Mortal Kombat gladiatorial combat recording, engrossed in various exotic execution poses, completely unaware of the impending destruction.
Finally, after another 970 seconds, the space station's high-power L-band radar detected a warhead whose diameter was on the same order as the radar wavelength, through a resonance effect.
【WARNING! UNIDENTIFIED OBJECT APPROACHING AT HIGH SPEED! QUANTITY: 1】
【CURRENT DISTANCE: 1800 KM; ESTIMATED IMPACT TIME: COUNTDOWN 30 SECONDS, 29--】
In the lounge, all the pirates suddenly stood up, dropping the cards in their hands.
"Damn it! It's Cangyuan! They're here, we're the first target! What rotten luck!"
They cursed their bad luck while implementing emergency response procedures.
In fairness, by pirate standards, Dark Sun's tactical proficiency was not low at all.
Most members, before joining this pirate group, had already experienced years, even decades, of desperate, life-on-the-edge existence, undergoing multiple rounds of "natural selection." Those who survived to this day were all high-level criminal experts.
Their on-the-spot reaction speed surpassed that of Apollo headquarters employees, and far exceeded the miscellaneous subordinates of the branch responsible for developing remote areas. "M-D, intercept quickly!"
"Don't rush! The laser cannon is already charging!"
"Good! The rest of you follow me to the hangar, quickly!"
A few seconds later, the six GW-class lasers on the space station simultaneously fired in the direction of the incoming projectile, and more than a dozen large anti-aircraft missiles carrying nuclear warheads were also launched.
Although the unguided kinetic projectile fired by "Qinling" had enormous kinetic energy, its lack of maneuverability made it not difficult to intercept once its trajectory was detected.
A moment later, after simple corrections, all four infrared laser beams converged on the stainless steel projectile body, rapidly vaporizing its front half. Under the disturbance of the thrust created by the metal vaporization, the warhead quickly deviated from its original trajectory.
【TARGET TRAJECTORY CHANGED, IMPACT WARNING: CLEARED】
"Hahahaha! Stupid Cangyuan!"
A cheer erupted from the pirates in the space station.
"Do you really think we're on the same level as those shitty Jialan? You're dumbfounded now, aren't you! Come on! Keep firing!?"
"Brothers, quickly board your ships! Let's take this opportunity to counterattack, board their warships! And sell them to Paradise Island!"
Only the most experienced old pirates couldn't get excited.
"Something's wrong—Mr. Sang previously determined, based on the leaked combat footage, that Cangyuan's railgun had an initial velocity of over 100 kilometers per second. That shot just now didn't reach that speed!"
"So what!? The capacitor broke, causing it not to fully charge!"
On the Xianyang's bridge, Lu Yuan leaned back comfortably in his chair, a slight smile playing on his lips.
Executive Officers were also human, and it was inevitable for them to have a little mischievous streak.
The first shot was just a test, to tease them, that's all.
As for what came next...
Cangyuan had a large number of Engineers and Scholars, including many like Jubian who worked in the military industry in the real world.
How could they not be aware of the drawback that direct-fire cannons were easily intercepted?
【WARNING! UNIDENTIFIED OBJECT APPROACHING AT HIGH SPEED! QUANTITY: 45】
【CURRENT DISTANCE: 1500 KM; ESTIMATED IMPACT TIME: COUNTDOWN 12 SECONDS, 11—】
Hearing the emotionless mechanical alarm again, all the pirates froze on the spot, their vision going black.
What the hell...
How many did you just say again!?
Life, so many ups and downs, great joy and great sorrow.
One of the great advantages of electromagnetic cannons was the ability to easily adjust the projectile's muzzle velocity by controlling the current.
The reason the Xianyang set the first shot's speed to half of its full charge was precisely to allow each subsequent shot to have room for gradual acceleration.
The ultimate effect achieved was to have all projectiles fired within six and a half minutes arrive at the target space station almost simultaneously, achieving a super-saturated strike with high firepower density!
This was a gunnery technique that was quite well-developed in the 20th-century era of mass artillery, but it quickly declined with the rise of counter-battery radar and battlefield drones, and few dared to use it anymore.
And now, in the vast expanse of space, an old tree blossoms anew!
The only drawback of this tactic was the high consumption of ammunition, so Lu Yuan chose to use stainless steel warheads, which were much cheaper and had a much larger ammunition capacity.
At the same volume and initial velocity, its power was less than half that of a tungsten steel shell, but it was sufficient.
45 deadly warheads, in a beam-like formation with an approximate 3-kilometer spacing, hurtled towards the Dark Sun space station.
"Keep intercepting! Quickly launch all anti-aircraft missiles! Hurry!!"
Due to the extremely high relative speed, the success rate of large anti-aircraft missiles intercepting these warheads was less than 3%. After a nuclear warhead exploded, its effective interception area could at most cover only one warhead at a time.
As for laser cannons, they also had issues with radar/optical guidance accuracy and target switching efficiency, making it difficult to intercept all warheads in a short time.
Not to mention, Cangyuan was also very insidious, coating some of the warheads with anti-laser plating, which was truly despicable.
These 45 warheads could only bring destruction and despair to the pirates.
In the end, only 8 warheads were intercepted.
The remaining 37 projectiles unleashed energy equivalent to 10,000 tons of TNT explosives on the space station, completely pulverizing it into debris fragments with an average diameter of less than 10 centimeters, as well as a large amount of sublimated metal vapor.
Most of the pirate fighters that had desperately left the space station hangar earlier were shot down by these high-speed scattering debris, and some were even scalded to death by the metal vapor.
Only the first two Captain's aircraft to leave managed to survive by chance. However, the pirates inside were still shaken and before they could catch their breath, they noticed that everything in front of them seemed to subtly vibrate.
"This is a spatial ripple generated by a warp bubble!"
!
The Xianyang had warped over, and the laser gunners on board, who had long been itching for action, simultaneously pulled their triggers. Several clearly overpowered blue lasers then sliced these last remnants of the enemy into a chaotic, unrecognizable mass of glowing red debris.
"This is Xianyang. Combat mission accomplished. Initial observation shows no survivors. Air wing, please report combat results."
"This is the air wing. The four fighters we were tracking are all destroyed. We launched a surprise attack from their 12 o'clock; they had no chance. During the process, we detected more enemy aircraft approaching from the vicinity. Do you want us to engage them?"
"Yes. Try to intercept and disperse them to cover our withdrawal. Then initiate warp and proceed to the next stop as planned!"
"Air wing understood!"
Lu Yuan let out a long breath.
This first move was quite good; Apollo's air power was reduced by one-third!
He saw that good news had also come from the other ships; they had used the same artillery tactic at the same time and had all achieved complete victories.
"This is a victory for the staff team."
Lu Yuan looked at Xian Yu and Caoyuan.
It was these two, along with more than a dozen other players proficient in modern and contemporary military history and technology, who proposed and refined the recent tactic.
Cangyuan, what a wealth of talent.