The pirates' inability to fight back, only take hits, gradually chilled even the fearless pirate NPCs. Their usually steady morale began to slip, bit by bit.
At first, the change was barely noticeable. But after half an hour of fighting, it finally reached a tipping point. Fewer than two hundred pirate ships remained, yet the two sides were still a full five light-seconds apart.
After taking one-sided fire for so long, the fleet finally began to waver. Its once orderly formation grew ragged and scattered.
Even Wu Tianyi and the others could see what was happening now, and only then did they appreciate Lin Zhichen's foresight.
"Big brother, are the pirates about to retreat?" Link asked over the comms channel. The outcome was already decided; the only question was how many ships they would take down.
"But that doesn't make sense, big brother. I checked the information on StarNet, and NPC fleets in the wild are fearless. They don't retreat even when they're down to their last ship. Why are they already buckling after losing only a little over a third of their numbers?"
"Everything you've seen has been face-to-face combat. The NPC fleets even had a certain advantage in fleet size," Lin Zhichen replied. These were lessons he had only recently come to understand through battle.
"But we're facing the enemy with an overwhelmingly inferior fleet, yet we've beaten them by an overwhelming margin without taking any damage ourselves. The pirates haven't even been able to find anyone to shoot at this whole time. Naturally, that's had a huge impact on their morale."
In truth, morale was a subtle thing, always shifting from moment to moment.
On ancient battlefields, armies fighting with cold weapons could usually withstand casualties of no more than ten percent. Any force that could endure thirty percent losses was elite.
In modern warfare, however, it was not uncommon for armies to fight to the last soldier.
That was partly the result of training, partly a consequence of national identity, and partly due to changes in weaponry. Together, these factors made modern armies far more capable of enduring casualties than ancient ones.
That was even more true in the Interstellar Era. With the nature of warfare transformed, battles usually continued until one side was wiped out, unless one side held an overwhelming advantage.
This was true not only of the Regular Army fleets of civilized societies. NPC fleets, with their muted emotions and programmed minds, had even higher morale than the average Regular Army, putting them on par with elite units of Intelligent Life.
It was easy to imagine how difficult it was to break the morale of an elite force.
"But even the highest morale has its limits. Those pirate NPCs are clearly at theirs," Lin Zhichen said.
Just then, the first Pirate Raider slowed down and began to turn away.
Its appearance was an unmistakable signal. Soon, a second and then a third pirate ship broke ranks to flee. The collapse came in an instant. Within just a minute or two, the nearly two-hundred-ship pirate fleet stopped advancing, turned around, and fled as one.
But while the pirates had stopped advancing, the Meteor Mercenary Group had not. As the distance steadily closed, their accuracy only improved, putting the pirate fleet under ever greater pressure. A pirate ship turning around would suddenly be struck by a shell and erupt in flames.
That silent pressure accelerated the fleet's collapse. Some pirate ships even tried to dodge the relentless hail of fire before they had completed their turn, veering off to the side.
But the panicked pirates who did so often became the first targets of the next volley. The pirate NPCs soon realized that the ships trying to flee fastest were usually the first to be destroyed.
Under the growing pressure of life and death, the pirates—who had barely managed to maintain their formation and discipline—finally fell apart. One by one, they scattered and fled in every direction.
By then, the two fleets had closed to within four light-seconds, still inside firing range.
And as the fleeing ships exposed their relatively vulnerable sterns, a single projectile was often enough to turn even a sturdy starship into a ball of fire.
Explosions flashed one after another. The pirate fleet was taking an even worse beating than before. Every salvo destroyed three or four pirate ships, with the reaper's scythe never far from their necks.
The fleeing pirates accelerated frantically. Some ships went so fast that they couldn't dodge in time and crashed straight into asteroids.
Under the repeated blows, their low morale continued to crumble faster and faster, like a string being pulled tighter and tighter.
Twenty minutes later, the first of the former pirate NPC gunners who had recently joined the Mercenary Group broke through to Master-level, ushering in the others' rise to Master-level.
The powerful bonus from the Master-level skill further improved the fleet's accuracy, accelerating the rate at which pirate ships were destroyed. In just two minutes, more than twenty pirate ships were blown apart.
At last, the thread of reason stretched to its limit snapped. The first pirate ship appeared with its engines shut down.
On a space battlefield, a moving starship and a stationary one were worlds apart. The former could advance or retreat, and might even turn the tables at a crucial moment. It was an enemy to be wary of. But once its engines went dark and its energy reactor stopped running, it became a sitting duck—a coffin of steel, with its fate no longer in its own hands.
No matter the engine, it always took time from startup until it could power the ship—perhaps a dozen minutes, perhaps several dozen, perhaps even a few hours. During that time, the weapons couldn't charge, and even restarting the engine was out of the question. This was the standard surrender signal on a space battlefield, though it applied only among natural life forms. NPCs usually took no prisoners.
The fleeing pirates soon noticed that their comrade, which had shut down its engines and surrendered, was not being attacked, while the ships that kept fleeing were being destroyed one after another.
Under that crushing pressure, a second pirate ship surrendered, then a third, then a fourth.
Like a row of dominoes, once the first fell, the rest inevitably followed. Aside from a few determined to keep running, the remaining pirate ships shut down their engines and surrendered.
By the time the last Pirate Pursuit Cruiser was destroyed and the battlefield finally fell quiet, more than half an hour had passed.
The surrounding space was now completely dark. Asteroids and shattered pieces of starship hull were scattered across the vast battlefield.
"Deploy the Space Fighter Group. Dapeng, time to get to work," Lin Zhichen ordered.
"Got it, big brother!" Wei Peng's excited voice rang through the comms channel. Watching the fierce fleet battle had made him itch to join in, and only now was it his turn.
"Big brother, we've finished counting. There are fifty-five pirate ships in all: seven Pirate Gunboats, one Pirate Pursuit Cruiser, and the rest are Pirate Raiders!"
Wu Tianyi's steady voice couldn't hide his excitement. This was a huge victory. If they absorbed this batch of pirate ships, the Meteor Mercenary Group's fleet would immediately double in size!
"Big brother, we've struck it rich!" Link's voice trembled as he spoke. After seeing his Ship Command skill rise to Expert-level during that one battle, he could barely contain his yearning for another breakthrough. It took him a while to calm down.
He wasn't the only one. Now, everyone in the fleet—except the Fighter Pilots, who had seen the least action—had their primary skills at Expert-level or above.
Even the Federation's Main Fleet didn't have such a stacked roster. Only an elite fleet could boast that kind of talent.
A civilian military organization with personnel on par with an elite military fleet—it was almost like a dream.
"Clean up the battlefield. Take a short break, then we'll pay the pirate base a visit," Lin Zhichen declared.
That was the plan, but accepting the pirates' surrender and searching for spoils across a battlefield tens of thousands of kilometers in diameter would take time. The fleet wouldn't be ready to depart for at least another day.
While they waited, he uploaded the information on the pirate base they had obtained to the Meteor Mercenary Group's homepage and left his contact details: "A Small Pirate Base has been discovered in the Asteroid Belt. Interested parties, please get in touch."
Just as the Rockefeller Family wanted to establish a base in the Asteroid Belt as a harbor for its private fleet, many of Earth's conglomerates and families hoped to secure a foothold in the resource-rich region.
The most difficult approach was to find a suitable location and spend a fortune in manpower and resources building a base from scratch.
The simplest was to seize an NPC Base and make some modifications.
Of course, though the method was simple, not everyone could pull it off. The Rockefeller Family was one of Earth's most prominent old families, yet even they needed Lin Zhichen's support to take a Mini Pirate Base. That showed how difficult it was to capture a pirate base without causing too much damage.
At first, nobody paid the announcement any attention. But the internet age had no shortage of idle people. Whenever someone posted valuable information, it soon spread across the web at an exponential rate.
Just half an hour later, the news had spread like wildfire across Earth Star Net, and the Meteor Mercenary Group was famous once again!
"It's you again! Meteor, meteor, a shooting star of fame!"
"First!"
"The guy above is an idiot."
"What's the Meteor Mercenary Group? They actually took a Small Pirate Base? Even the private armies of the major families would suffer heavy losses trying to capture one, wouldn't they?"
"Which mountain did the guy above crawl out of? He doesn't even know Commander Lin?"
"666—now that they have a Psionic Warship, they can do whatever they want!"
The internet was abuzz, and Lin Zhichen's Holographic Communications were just as relentless.
"Respected head of the group, I'm Staley, the person in charge of the Morgan Financial Group in the North American Sector. Please allow me to—" A middle-aged man prattled on with his introduction.
Lin Zhichen listened politely until the man had finished, then smiled. "Sorry, Mr. Staley. So many people want this base that we ask you to submit your offer through a sealed bid on our group's website. We'll contact the families and financial groups with the highest bids.
"Please don't worry that there's only one base and too many people who want it. More NPC Bases will be captured and offered for you to choose from. We appreciate your support!"
The Holographic Projection soon went dark. Lin Zhichen rubbed his temples. "Have the numbers come in? How many financial groups and families have signed up?"
"They have. So far, we've received sixteen bids from six continents," Wu Tianyi reported briefly.
"The highest bid is 2,500 Energy Coins!"
"Not bad. We can make more than ten thousand Energy Coins just by selling these bases, even if it's a one-time deal," Lin Zhichen said with a nod.
He understood what Earth's major factions were after: to secure a foothold in the Asteroid Belt as quickly as possible. Then their families' private armies would have a base, and it would be easier to 'farm monsters' too. In fact, the Asteroid Belt's complex terrain made it one of the easiest places for NPC fleets to spawn.
"Big brother, we've secured all the newly captured pirate ships, and we've collected the spoils. Can we set out?" Wu Tianyi asked. He was now serving as the fleet's adjutant.
"Let's go," Lin Zhichen said. "Qinyuan and I will lead the attack this time. Dapeng, how many of your ground troops can you spare?"
"Most of them are busy supervising the newly surrendered pirate NPCs. I can only send one battalion—five hundred men." Wei Peng scratched his head. "It's a good thing the carrier has plenty of space and can take more people. Otherwise, I couldn't even spare five hundred!"
"Then five hundred it is. You can send them in after I've taken out the pirate base's turrets," Lin Zhichen said. Then he added, just to be safe, "By the way, you'll stay behind to command. You're not allowed on the front lines!"
"Understood!" Wei Peng pouted but said no more.
Maybe he would have had objections before, but now that he had heard about the Psionic Crystal, he could wait until he awakened and had a way to protect himself before taking any more risks.
Once everything was ready, Wu Tianyi took command of the fleet as it slowly closed in on the pirate base. The Qinyuan led the way, followed by the ground-force Transport Ship, and the two ships charged toward the base one after the other.
"Bzzzz—"
One dazzling beam after another cut through the darkness of space, mixed with a storm of Electromagnetic Projectiles.
The Qinyuan made sharp turns through space, dodging the incoming hail of fire at Sublight speed.
For its size, the pirate base's radar had almost the greatest possible power. Even the radar aboard the carrier had a slightly shorter detection range.
As soon as it detected the Qinyuan closing in and entering firing range, the pirate base's large turrets opened fire, while its Medium and Small Turrets unleashed a wide-area barrage.
Their response showed that the Meteor Fleet's strength had clearly intimidated them. The pirates had nearly ten times as many ships, yet had suffered a crushing defeat without inflicting a single loss. Faced with such an overwhelming disparity, the pirate NPCs inside the base were already terrified.
Compared with a Mini Pirate Base, this Small Pirate Base had far greater firepower. Its dense barrage rivaled that of the Meteor Fleet before its recent acquisitions. Under such a fierce attack, even the Qinyuan's capabilities weren't enough to keep it from circling through space several times.
But it was only a last-ditch struggle. Once the Qinyuan's radar displayed a full image of the pirate base, the outcome was already decided.
Almost in an instant, the Qinyuan's speed surged to fifty percent of the speed of light, then rapidly dropped to thirty kilometers per second one second later. Six shells streaked through space. The Energy Shield rippling over the surface of the pirate base wavered, then was pierced by the Electromagnetic Projectiles,
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