Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 1020: Final Battle (VII)
Crescent Fortress, Crater No. 4.
The old moon in the double moon is a natural satellite captured by the gravity of Alpha, while the new moon is an artificial satellite built from scratch by the Alpha civilization. Although they are artificial, there is not much difference between the new moon and the old moon in terms of the appearance of the planet.
The appearance of the crescent moon is also covered by a crust composed of bedrock. The average thickness of this crust is about 20,000 meters, and the surface is covered with large and small, nested craters.
However, unlike the craters on the surface of the Moon, which was once the Earth's satellite, all the craters on the surface of the Crescent Moon are "artificial" and not created by meteorites.
Both the New Moon and the Old Moon are equipped with powerful self-defense facilities, which can not only intercept all aircraft and weapons approaching the Twin Moons, but also destroy all meteorites flying towards the Twin Moons... In the past tens of thousands of years, no meteorite with a diameter of more than one meter has been able to fall on the surface of the Twin Moons - as for the craters on the surface of the Twin Moons observed by the Ark People, in fact, each one is a carefully disguised fully automatic defense position.
Crater No. 4 is the largest crater on the side of the crescent moon facing Alpha, with a diameter of 620 kilometers, more than twice the size of the largest "Pei Lie Crater" on the moon. But in fact, Crater No. 4 is a "fire circle" formed by 70,000 giant anti-aircraft guns. These giant guns, which are equivalent to the size of 30-story buildings, are buried in the crater, and the muzzles are hidden in the shadows cast by the mountain peaks.
"The enemy fleet has entered the range of anti-aircraft firepower. The saturation of anti-aircraft firepower in Crater No. 4 is 19%. Should we activate the interception system?" Selene's shadow stood behind Ke Lan and asked.
"Can we stop it with only 19% of the firepower?" Ke Lan asked.
"I need to correct it. The available firepower of Crater 4 is 19%. All other defensive positions on the front of the Crescent have been taken offline... If calculated based on the overall defensive firepower, the current available rate on the front of the Crescent is 2.7%."
"What is the chance of successful interception?"
"According to calculations, the existing firepower can eliminate 72% of the enemy. The remaining 28% of the enemy will break through the fire blockade and enter the Crescent Fortress."
"I'm wondering why such a large fortress doesn't have any robot troops... If there were a group of autonomous combat machines, at least we could engage in street fighting with the enemy." Ke Lan complained.
"There is a high probability that the programs of autonomous combat machines will be contaminated and evolve into corrosive AI similar to the Hive Mastermind, which has extremely high concealment and penetration. For the safety of the Twin Moon Fortress, except for the fortress's main control AI, any equipment with AI programs is prohibited from being brought into the fortress." Selene replied.
"Is it too late to rush the work now? There should be some kind of assembly line or fully automated production facility inside the fortress, right?"
"Fully automated factories also require AI to manage them, so they are also disabled in Crescent Fortress." Selene's answer completely wiped out Ke Lan's last bit of fantasy. "In fact, you have obtained all the permissions of Crescent Fortress. Anything that does not appear in the list of available functions is not available in the fortress."
"The resources I can use now...are really pitifully few..." Ke Lan roughly scanned the "list" that was directly transmitted into his brain, and sighed, "Let's start the fire interception first, and delay it as long as possible...If it doesn't work, you will maintain the charging process of the star destroyer later, and I will go outside to resist those monsters, is that okay?"
"After the charging process starts, there is no need for the authorized holder to stay in the control room all the time." Selene said, "But if you need to stop the charging, you must do it yourself."
"No need to stop, just fire it as soon as the charge is complete." Ke Lan took a step back and walked out of the light column. "I'll leave this to you. Also, I'd like to trouble you to send me outside the fortress... As for how long I can hold out, it all depends on luck..."
…
In order to prevent rapid breakthroughs by external enemies, there are no space channels inside the Crescent Fortress. There are only six space transmission nodes located on the shallow surface that connect to Alpha Star. When Ke Lan returned to the surface, he still took the vehicle called "travel shuttle" - when Ke Lan arrived at the surface of the Crescent Moon, the fleet composed of hundreds of pale warships had already approached to a distance visible to the naked eye.
"The consciousness fire control system is online and the connection is complete." Selene's voice sounded in Ke Lan's headset, "The defense system operation authority has been transferred to the connector, and all weapon safety has been unlocked."
Ke Lan only heard a slight "ding" sound, and two light blue, constantly changing circles suddenly appeared on her retina.
These two circles are actually the focus of his eyes. The operation of this consciousness fire control system is also very simple - Ke Lan only needs to focus his sight on the target to be attacked, that is, use these two circles to "trap" the target, and then directly give the order to fire.
This operating system is even more convenient than "point and shoot". Ke Lan silently gave it a new name in his mind - "Whoever you glare at will die".
The approaching Pale Fleet had a total of 246 warships. Excluding those "defective products" that were less than 100 meters long and had serious structural defects, there were a total of 37 warships that had reached the "perfect simulation" level, including four aircraft carrier battleships, 13 secondary battleships and 20 heavy cruisers - this scale was more than three times that of a fully staffed fleet of the Ark Air Force.
These simulated warships basically simulated the current models of the Ark Air Force, but there was also an aircraft carrier battleship whose shape did not match any of the aircraft carrier battleships known to Ke Lan - the reason why Ke Lan classified it among the four aircraft carrier battleships was entirely because of its nearly two thousand meters long hull...Except for the two "unique" ones, Ark and Yaguna Tor, only aircraft carrier battleships could reach this size.
The shape of this warship is very "characteristic". The front of the warship is like a huge horizontal spindle, and the hull is connected to the middle of the spindle. If a pair of tail fins can be added to the stern, it will be a magnified version of a hammerhead shark. In particular, at both ends of the "spindle", there are two external energy shield generators that look like eyeballs.
"It's a 'Fortress-class' battleship of the Hive Civilization." Selene said, "It's one of the main battleships of the Hive Civilization. The design drawings of this ship were later inherited by the Alpha Civilization. However, the Alpha Civilization did not build a large number of this type of battleship. Instead, the design drawings were sealed in a certain ruin."
"It seems that this ruin has been discovered by the Undead Crew." Ke Lan said, "Where is the weakness of the 'Fortress-class' battleship?"
"The bow," Selene replied. "The 'Fortress' class battleship adopts a front-engine structure. The energy converter, main power reactor and astral engine are all located at the bow. It is precisely because the bow is so important that two external energy shield generators are added for protection."
"Stellar engine..." This word was both unfamiliar and familiar to Ke Lan. It was unfamiliar because it was the first time he came across this term, and it was familiar because the information about the stellar engine was in the memory that had just been unlocked, and it was extremely detailed.
The stellar engine is an engine developed by the Hive Civilization for long-distance interstellar travel. Unlike conventional engines that use jets to propel warships forward, the stellar engine relies on "traction" rather than "thrust" - the stellar engine can create a "gravitational anchor hook" directly in front of the warship that is invisible to the naked eye. This "gravitational anchor hook" can lock onto and connect to a large mass celestial body in the target direction, and use the gravity of the celestial body to accelerate the warship.
Or to put it more vividly - using the gravity of a celestial body as a grappling hook to "pull" the warship towards the target celestial body.
The greater the mass of the target object, the faster the warship will be.
The advantages and disadvantages of this stellar engine are equally obvious. The advantage is that it saves energy and is particularly suitable for long-distance interstellar voyages without stable supplies. The disadvantage is that if there is no massive celestial body on the route or the massive celestial body is located beyond the farthest locking distance of the gravitational anchor hook, the stellar engine will completely lose its function and become a piece of "waste."
The "Fortress-class" battleship in front of us obviously set the crescent as the anchor point of the gravity anchor hook - fortunately, the mass of the crescent itself is not that large, otherwise, this "Fortress-class" battleship would probably have rushed to the front long ago.
You know, under normal circumstances, stellar engines generally set stars as the traction targets of gravitational anchors.
As Ke Lan's gaze moved, the two circles symbolizing "focus" firmly locked onto the spindle-shaped bow of the "Fortress-class" ship, and then he gently snapped his fingers.
"Fire."
A circle of bright light suddenly rose from the peak of Crater No. 4 and flew towards the "Fortress-class" located in the center of the fleet at an extremely fast speed, and hit the spindle-shaped structure at the front of the "Fortress-class" almost in an instant.
Ke Lan had also seen the battle that had just taken place on the deck of the Yaguna Tor. He knew very well that such warships or mechas simulated by means of mimicry would not cause a secondary explosion even if their ammunition and energy cabins were blown up when they were not attacking - but the stellar engine was different, the stellar engine was always in operation. Ke Lan chose this "fortress-class" battleship as the primary target of attack in order to catch the opponent off guard.
As long as this "fortress-class" ship fails to shut down the stellar engine in advance and "invalidate" the structure of the engine part, this first round of attack can achieve great results - the "fortress-class" battleship is indeed stronger than all the battleships of the Ark civilization, but it is also a huge "safety risk" in this fleet.
Ke Lan made the right bet.
The energy shield of the "fortress-class" ship was blasted away by the dense barrage of bullets in an instant. The energy contained in each of those bright spots of light was equivalent to thirty times that of the Skadi's triple plasma main gun. If it was the Crescent Fortress in its prime, it could destroy the fleet within two seconds at full firepower. A lean camel is bigger than a horse. Even if only 2.7% of the guns could fire, it would be more than enough to destroy the energy shield of a "fortress-class" ship by concentrating the firepower at one point.
The spindle-shaped bow of the "Fortress-class" battleship was instantly engulfed by the light spot - under normal circumstances, the destruction of a battleship's engine or main power reactor would cause a huge explosion, but this "Fortress-class" battleship did not explode, but instead showed signs of collapsing inward!
A "black hole" with huge attraction appeared inside the spindle, and everything around it - including the wreckage of the "fortress-class" and nearby friendly ships, were forcibly sucked in. In the center of this huge fleet, a gravitational vortex with a diameter of more than 10,000 meters appeared!
Apart from the obvious shortcoming, the danger of the stellar engine is also one of the important reasons why the Alpha civilization sealed up the "fortress-level" design drawings. Although the energy required for the operation of the stellar engine is only one thousandth of that of a conventional engine or even less, once the engine gets out of control, it will produce a gravitational vortex comparable to a small black hole, and everything around it will find it difficult to escape.
Several secondary battleships near the "Fortress-class" had been sucked into this gravitational vortex at this time. Under the tearing of the huge force, the battleship's armor, signal towers, turrets and other external structures were torn off first, and then the main body of the battleship... twisted, deformed, and then disintegrated... The huge fleet that was so majestic in the last second has now turned into space junk all over the sky.
And it was the kind of space junk that was dumped into the toilet...
The collapse of the stellar engine destroyed nearly 40% of the fleet in one go, but the remaining 60% of the fleet gathered together and tuned all the energy shields to the same frequency - the shields of dozens of warships were combined together to form a super shield, which gradually advanced against the firepower of the Crescent Fortress.
This "fortress-class" ship equipped with a stellar engine is already the biggest flaw of the opponent, but this flaw is not fatal enough.
The anti-aircraft batteries on Crater No. 4 kept firing, causing the enemy's joint shield to shake, but they were never able to penetrate the shield.
"Tsk... They actually know how to cope with situations on the spot... This is a bit troublesome." After observing for about half a minute, Ke Lan discovered the problem - these mimicry warships had actually temporarily changed their internal structures, replacing all the "temporarily useless" equipment such as armor and weapons with energy shield generators.
Rather than a battleship, it's more like a bunch of mobile energy shield generators.
At the current rhythm of attack and defense, unless the enemy fleet's energy is completely exhausted, it will be impossible to break through this joint shield.
