"Hold the formation! Hold it! Fourth and Fifth Squadrons, turn immediately!" Lieutenant General Skarrid roared into the comms.
But the replies coming through the communicator were drowned out by even louder interference. He had no idea whether his orders had gotten through.
The Destruction's bombardment continued. However, with its enormous 1,600-meter hull and formidable defenses gained by abandoning all sorts of extraneous functions, the Knight-class Star Destroyer did not have to worry about suffering fatal damage from the Destruction's dense but limited-firepower barrage in the short term, even without Deflector Shields.
"Deflector Shield cycle complete! Activating!" the shield team soldiers reported loudly.
"Engine inspection complete! Energy core restart complete!"
"Main gun batteries one, three, and four have completed restart!"
"Fire Control Radar operational again! Please designate a target!"
The ship's various systems quickly began recovering. Clearly, the Destruction's ion pulse cannon, without a full charge, could only affect a Knight-class Star Destroyer for a short time.
Yet in those brief few minutes, the entire battlefield had undergone a world-shaking change!
If Lieutenant General Trinald Skarrid had carefully studied Sefrans Tann's past battles, he would have understood that before launching a counterattack, Sefrans Tann often crippled or restricted her opponent's command systems.
Then he would have understood that the attack on the Knight-class Star Destroyer he was aboard was merely the beginning of a series of moves by Sefrans Tann!
When Lieutenant General Skarrid's flagship finally restored communications, he was horrified to discover that nearly all of the third of his fleet positioned in the rear had suffered heavy damage and were resisting desperately. The two-thirds at the front, meanwhile, were in total disarray. Some tried to turn, while others attempted to charge, stretching the formation farther and farther apart and instead falling into a counter-encirclement by the Rendili Defense Fleet's