Chapter 62: Torrent
Tom had already confirmed that the enemy warships possessed the ability to intercept small targets.
This was yet another capability completely different from his own, and far beyond his technological level.
When faced with bullets, the only thing he could do was stack armor thickness and rely on it to withstand the impact. But these hostile spacecraft could precisely intercept those projectiles, using methods that were either electromagnetic cannon rounds or laser beams.
But it didn’t matter.
Even if your interception rate could reach 100%, with hundreds of billions of projectiles just sitting there for you to intercept, your interception equipment would overload and burn out before you could intercept even one percent!
When quantity exceeds a certain limit, it leads to a qualitative change. And clearly, this massive number of gunpowder gun bullets had precisely that effect.
Under the watchful eye of the spy satellite, Tom saw that the small spacecraft gathered around the mothership, after a moment of silence, seemed to finally make a decision.
The mothership’s engines, which had never been ignited and seemed not yet fully repaired, finally spewed bright exhaust flames. Its massive hull slowly accelerated, gradually breaking free from God-Enemy Star’s orbit, and, escorted by the small spacecraft, fled towards Deep Space.
The target of the bullet swarm attack was God-Enemy Star. So, as long as they left God-Enemy Star, they could avoid being affected by the bullet deluge!
This was obvious, and something Tom had anticipated long ago.
He had known for a long time that this wave of bullet swarm attacks was unlikely to damage the opponent’s mobile forces.
But, it still didn’t matter!
Tom had never intended to rely on this wave of attack to destroy the opponent’s spacecraft.
His target was the industrial bases on the surface of God-Enemy Star!
Your spacecraft can escape, they can relocate, but how do you relocate these industrial bases?
Since you used borrowed swords to kill, driving Monster Birds to attack me, so many years have passed, and you have finally managed to build industrial bases of considerable scale.
If I destroy your industrial bases, where will you get your supplies? Where will you get fuel? How will you make parts? How will you repair your damaged mothership?
Without the support of industrial bases, no matter how good your spacecraft’s performance is, what good is it? Isn’t it just like a gun without bullets, becoming a mere showpiece?
With the mothership as the core, this fleet desperately fled out of the bullet swarm’s covered range. Even when an explosion occurred at the mothership’s stern, causing a large amount of gas leakage, its engine propulsion did not stop, showing its urgency.
Sometimes, low accuracy is not necessarily a bad thing.
Just like now, his firearms couldn’t precisely aim at God-Enemy Star, so the bullet swarm, upon reaching God-Enemy Star, would inevitably be very dispersed, covering a very large area.
To escape this covered area in a short time, they needed to accelerate as quickly as possible.
They had to accelerate regardless of the cost, with all their might, to escape!
It was precisely for this reason that the mothership was so urgent.
"I didn’t expect to damage the mothership again; that’s an unexpected bonus," Tom sneered in his heart, "But the main course hasn’t started yet. Just wait."
The mothership and dozens of small ships finally escaped to a distance of tens of thousands of kilometers from Loshen Star.
There, they stopped accelerating and began to slowly move away due to inertia.
This distance was likely not enough to escape the bullet swarm’s covered range; at most, it could only avoid the core area.
And the mothership’s condition seemed poor; it truly couldn’t sustain another acceleration.
So Tom saw that all dozens of combat spacecraft were guarding the mothership, seemingly attempting to protect it with their own interception capabilities.
Amidst this escape, several hours quietly passed, and the vanguard of the bullet swarm finally arrived.
The next moment, a torrent composed of countless projectiles impacted the entire side of God-Enemy Star facing Loshen Star, like a flood.
Each projectile weighed only 0.5 grams but reached a speed of 6 kilometers per second, so each projectile possessed about 9 kilojoules of energy, equivalent to the energy of a large-caliber, high-power sniper rifle bullet!
What kind of scene would it be when hundreds of billions of large-caliber, high-power sniper rifle bullets arrived simultaneously?
Tom saw that no matter how solidly frozen the ground was, or how sturdily built the factories were, at this moment, they all seemed like paper.
Dust flew up from God-Enemy Star’s surface, and countless hard tolin, solid dry ice, solid oxygen, etc., were directly vaporized, bursting into large clouds of smoke that enveloped almost the entire land.
The tall factory buildings constructed on the plains were instantly torn apart, becoming riddled with holes, and the next moment, they were directly torn into fragments, completely merging into the land of God-Enemy Star.
There were also some bases that were built particularly strongly, or built in canyons and underground, struggling to hold on.
But it didn’t matter. This wave of attack was only the beginning.
Attacks of the same frequency would continue for a full three days!
During these three days, God-Enemy Star would also rotate, and the relative angle of the two planets would also change.
Thus, factories that could previously use canyon walls to block the bullet deluge soon rotated to face Loshen Star directly, and the bullet deluge from the sky poured down unimpeded.
Some factories previously built on the far side of God-Enemy Star, which could rely on the entire planet to block the bullet deluge, soon rotated into view with God-Enemy Star’s rotation, and still could not escape the bullet deluge’s attack.
Only a few factories built underground could survive. But how many such factories were there?
This was almost an all-encompassing, no-dead-angle bullet barrage. Anything facing the sky, whether on cliffs, in canyons, or on plains, could not escape the strike.
Because there were too many bullets, the ground was completely enveloped in smoke and dust, and Tom could no longer see what the surface of God-Enemy Star looked like at that moment.
So his gaze shifted to the mothership.
Tom saw that the dozens of warships were indeed advanced spacecraft that surpassed the peak of Human Civilization.
Although the number of bullets there was far less than in the core area, there was still a "flow" of tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of projectiles per minute.
And despite such a large number of bullets, most of them were intercepted by them!
Between the crisscrossing laser beams and electromagnetic cannon rounds, one tiny projectile after another had its forward path altered, failing to hit its target and failing to unleash its destructive power.
But, no matter how advanced their interception technology was, there were always a few that slipped through the net.
Even if only one-tenth slipped through, it would be enough!
So Tom saw that faint flashes of light also began to continuously erupt from the mothership and the combat spacecraft.