Chapter 49
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Translator: Silver Dragon
Chapter: 49
Chapter Title: Why Is This Your Planet? (2)
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"Then it's war!!!"
"Fleet, attack them immediately!"
The enraged Juno fleet launched their assault.
The first to move were the patrol ships.
The Junos weren't particularly bright.
Rather than designing and building new ships from scratch,
they preferred to refurbish abandoned vessels for military use.
The Mole-class patrol ships were a prime example.
Originally, they had been massive commercial mining vessels designed for planetary-scale operations.
These mining ships sliced into a planet's surface with plasma cutters to extract minerals.
The harvested ore was then accelerated through mass drivers at hypersonic speeds and ejected beyond the atmosphere,
where waiting transport ships collected it and hauled it back home.
Though purely commercial in origin,
they had been hijacked by the Junos and converted for combat.
The plasma cutters were refitted into pulse weapons that could slice through enemy armor,
and the enormous mass drivers were transformed into kinetic artillery that hurled rocks as projectiles.
"Activate the plasma cutters!!!"
"We're still out of range! We need to get closer!"
"Grahhh! This junk heap of a ship!"
The patrol ships' plasma cutters locked onto the human escort vessel.
Six of them rapidly closed the distance.
Soon, the human ships would be within the plasma cutters' effective range.
"Captain, enemy patrol ships approaching!"
The human ships responded without delay.
The massive escort destroyer began maneuvering.
The captain's first choice of weapon was missiles.
"Intercept those patrol ships with missiles to keep them at bay."
"Which missiles, sir?"
"Lock them down first with gravity anchors to crimp their mobility, then finish them with Adrians."
"Firing the first salvo."
— Fwoosh!
The vertical launch system hatches popped open,
and six missiles rocketed out simultaneously.
They streaked toward the patrol ships.
"Keeek! Missile alert!"
"The humans fired missiles! Evade!"
"Evasive maneuvers!"
The Junos might have been dim, but they excelled remarkably in ship refits and fleet tactics.
They immediately swung their bows around and accelerated.
The missiles pursued at high speed, but the Junos dodged with astonishing acrobatics, zigzagging everywhere.
"Grahhh! Intercept them now! This thing's a nightmare to fly!"
"Blast the missiles with the plasma cutters!"
The plasma cutters picked off the missiles one by one.
But not all were downed.
— Boom!
As the missiles closed to within a set distance,
the gravity anchor warheads activated.
Instead of exploding, they generated powerful gravity fields.
"Keeek?! The ship's not moving!"
The ensnared patrol ships were pinned in place by force.
They could no longer leverage their greatest asset: mobility.
"Two enemy ships captured."
"Fire Adrians."
"Launching Adrian strategic nukes."
Immediately after, missiles launched to hammer the patrol ships.
Dozens of strategic nuclear missiles hurtled toward their targets to pulverize them.
"Kieeeek!!! Intercept! If those hit, we're dead!!!"
"There's too many!"
"You idiots! Intercept faster!"
The Junos frantically tried to shoot down the missiles,
but sadly, there were far too many.
The surviving nukes reached the Juno patrol ships.
Then, the warheads armed.
Upon activation, the antimatter was released from its magnetic confinement.
Contact with normal matter followed,
and vast quantities of high-energy gamma rays and pions erupted.
The gamma rays from the antimatter annihilation slammed into the hydrogen fuel with immense radiation pressure,
compressing it into a full nuclear fusion reaction.
What happened next was bizarre.
Gamma rays from the fusion burst out simultaneously,
and the crew vanished in an instant.
The gamma rays had shattered every molecular bond in their bodies, disassembling them at the atomic level.
At the same time, thermal radiation engulfed the ships.
Exposed to the colossal energy, the vessels vaporized entirely.
"Th-they vanished!"
"Grahhh! I won't forgive them!"
"We'll have our revenge!!!"
Their comrades had evaporated before their eyes.
The Junos burned with hatred, vowing vengeance.
"Rip them apart with the plasma cutters!"
Having closed to within range, the surviving patrol ships fired their plasma cutters.
Ultratemperatures plasma beams assaulted Orca's shields.
"Captain, enemy ships are firing on us."
"Ship damage report?"
"Shields at about 8% damage so far."
"Blast those close-in bastards with the main guns now!"
The deck turrets swiveled into action.
The primary armament, the main cannons, targeted the enemy patrol ships.
The escort destroyer wielded nuclear shaped-charge cannons as its main guns.
Upon firing, the onboard antimatter ignited.
Just like before, it triggered a nuclear reaction.
The antimatter-induced fusion surged into a nuclear explosion,
and the blast's immense energy was focused by the cannon's lens structure into a single point.
This condensed energy transferred to a 600-ton metal liner,
which accelerated to 3,000 km/s and launched.
"Kehk?"
When the nuclear shaped-charge cannon fired,
gamma rays and X-rays struck first.
If shields were down or armor thin,
the radiation alone would cook the crew.
But the Juno patrol ships' armor was thick enough to survive that.
Next came the powerful nuclear EMP storm engulfing the ship.
The intense nuclear EMP was enough to shred the patrol ships' shields.
This exposed their main armor,
and the final catastrophe approached.
A high-energy metal jet.
Struck by the jet, the ships erupted in massive explosions and were utterly destroyed.
They crumbled to dust.
"Grahhhh!!! You cruel bastards!!!"
"We won't run!!! We'll have our revenge!!!"
"All-out attack!!! Hit them all at once!!!"
Perhaps they refused to just take it lying down.
The Juno fleet went for a total assault.
While the patrol ships kept hammering Orca,
two enemy escort destroyers finally brought her into their firing arc.
Verminator-class escort destroyers.
Frankenstein ships pieced together from discarded civilian hulls and parts from other vessels.
Larger in class, they boasted even more powerful weapons.
The deadliest was the massive coilgun.
The two destroyers approached from either flank.
Their deck cannons locked onto Orca.
Coilguns were inaccurate at long range,
so the Junos held at around 800 km.
"Captain, enemy destroyers opening fire!"
Having closed to dangerously near, the Juno destroyers unleashed their barrage.
They hurled kinetic slugs at 80 km/s.
"Evasive maneuvers! Full speed ahead!"
Orca accelerated sharply and veered.
Even at max thrust,
maneuvering the massive ship proved tricky.
The engines were fine, but the hull's sheer size left power wanting.
"Uwaaah!!! You sons of bitches!!!"
Something glowing and liquid-like narrowly missed the ship.
A coilgun metal liner.
A split-second later, and it would've been a direct hit.
"Keeek?! Can't even land one?!"
"We almost hit!"
"What do you expect with this crap gun?!"
"Useless fools! Get the ship in closer! Shorter range means better accuracy!"
While the surviving patrol ships raked Orca with plasma cutters at knife-fight range,
the destroyers accelerated to close further.
Seeing enemies closing from both sides,
the human captain sensed the peril.
"This won't do! Hard to port. We take out those patrol ships first!"
— Whiiiine!
The ship banked sharply left.
The patrol ships were too close and fast for main guns.
"Fire gravity anchors again."
"Gravity anchors away."
The VLS hatches opened once more.
Missiles screamed toward the patrol ships.
The Juno crews screamed at the sight.
"Grahhh!!! Missiles!!! Incoming missiles!!!"
"What?! Why do they still have missiles?!"
"Evade!!! Full speed!"
As the anchors closed in,
they deployed their gravity fields.
With the patrol ships slowed, this was the perfect chance to sink them.
"Hit the flanking enemies with laser AA turrets."
"AA turrets locked. Firing laser pulses."
The point-defense laser turrets sprang to life.
Dozens of laser pulses lanced out simultaneously.
They hammered the two patrol ships relentlessly.
"Kieeek!!!"
"Dozens of enemy lasers hitting our ship!!!"
"We're melting!!!"
The overwhelming power was too much.
Shields evaporated instantly,
and the exposed armor began to melt.
They wouldn't last long.
"We have to run! Activate warp drive!"
"W-warp drive's melting too!"
"Eh...?"
"Kehk?"
The Juno captain and crew exchanged glances.
They screamed, sensing doom,
regretting their delay too late.
Lasers pierced the bridge.
Everything inside melted,
then flames overtook it in a catastrophic blast.
"All enemy patrol ships destroyed."
"Good. Now just the destroyers."
But right then—
— Boom!
The bridge shook violently.
The captain barely kept his footing.
The ship AI informed him.
"Enemy destroyers have closed even tighter. Railgun fire from both sides."
The railgun hits shattered the shields in seconds.
Another stark reminder: shields were weak to kinetics.
"Argh!!! This ship's brand new!!! Less than a month since commissioning, you xeno scum!!!"
The captain roared in fury, steeling for battle.
"These bastards won't go easy! Target those destroyers with nuclear shaped-charge cannons now!"
"Quantum radar can't lock—their plasma chaff is interfering!"
"What?"
Quantum radar generated entangled photon pairs—one fired, one stored.
When the fired photon hit the target,
its state collapsed, instantly revealing data via the stored photon.
But it wasn't working, unexpectedly.
The Junos' destroyers leaked plasma during firing due to shoddy internals,
creating a stealthing plasma fog.
"Can't get precise target coordinates through the fog."
"Can't we just fire blind?"
"How? No coordinates."
The enemies were close,
but still hundreds of kilometers out.
Precise targeting was essential.
The human destroyer faced the unforeseen snag.
The Junos wouldn't miss the chance.
"Kuhahaha! They've got problems!"
"Perfect! Pour it on! Don't let up!"
"Smash the enemy!"
The destroyers bombarded from both flanks.
At that moment, the human captain dashed to the command console and gripped the controls.
"What are you—?"
"Brace!!!"
The nose pitched straight up vertically.
The ship rocketed upward.
The targets vanished from view abruptly.
As the enemies faltered,
Orca escaped the barrage and fired missiles.
"EMP missiles away!"
Two missiles launched from the VLS.
They closed on the plasma clouds around the enemies
and detonated in massive EMP storms.
The blasts swept away the plasma shrouds.
Quantum radar pinged the destroyers' positions again.
"Now! Hammer them with the mains!"
"Nuclear shaped-charge cannons firing!"
The three main guns along the hull
belched hellfire in unison.
"Ah."
The Juno destroyers regretted it too late,
realizing they were too far in to turn back, and despaired.
— KABOOM!!!
Both destroyers exploded simultaneously.