The Consequences of Collapse
In just ten minutes, the battle had been completely reversed!
Rear Admiral Dolla felt ice-cold all over as he watched the battlefield projection... He had been certain victory was within his grasp, yet just ten minutes had shattered all his illusions!
He had lured the Guardian Fleet's Generous-class frigates out, then launched a massive fighter assault. He had even anticipated their ambush at Planet Three and used space mines to trap their high-speed cruiser formation.
If the battle had continued like that, the Guardian Fleet's Generous-class frigates would soon have been mauled by the fighter squadrons due to their weak point-defense capabilities, while their high-speed cruiser formation would have been swiftly annihilated by his main fleet.
Then it would have been time to reap the rewards of victory!
But then a mysterious fleet suddenly entered the battlefield. Its arrival had somehow gone undetected by the border hyperspace sentry stations! Not only the hyperspace sentries, even the outer reconnaissance posts he had deployed showed no reaction whatsoever. In the end, only the final hyperspace fluctuations had been detected, and by then, he had less than ten minutes...
Even then, Rear Admiral Dolla believed that the mysterious fleet was not large and that he could easily swallow it with his numerical advantage.
But once the fighting truly began, he realized just how catastrophically wrong he had been!
This mysterious fleet was unimaginably fast and agile. Warships the size of light cruisers moved with the maneuverability of fighters!
Rear Admiral Dolla also discovered that their Sublight speed was astonishing. The tens of thousands of kilometers after leaving the hyperspace route might as well have been crossed in an instant. Those warships immediately charged into his fleet formation, plunging both sides into a chaotic melee.
Even so, Rear Admiral Dolla