The battle officially began just after noon. The Imperial fleet's two light carriers had already launched 120 light Foxbird fighters into the sky.
These fighters had once been the finest air-superiority escorts in the entire universe. They had distinguished themselves in the Seventh Galactic War—but that had been half a century ago.
Under the Red Ghosts' bites and charges, their thin interception line was quickly trampled to pieces.
At the same time, just before the Imperial heavy cruisers began their bombardment, the rebuilt Rogue Squadron's torpedo ships sprang into action. Riding alongside them was a dragon mounted by Mina Walter.
There were four dragons aboard the Pilgrim. Aside from Yu Lian's "Shanzi" and Feifei's "Huji," the remaining two were, of course, entrusted to the psionicists in turn.
Yu Lian was also more than happy to train a batch of dragon riders for the Commonwealth while he was at it. He taught Colonel Walter and her personal team everything he knew. They were the Pilgrim's entire psionic fighting force apart from him and Feifei, and they specialized in psionic combat. The stronger they became, the more they could ease the pressure on him.
So far, the training had gone quite well. The dragons were still uncomfortable with the other three psionicists, but they had taken rather well to Colonel Walter, who had already reached the fourth ring.
This proved that the Empire's claims—that "a dragon will accept only one rider at a time," that "one rider and one dragon are bound for life," and that "noble knights and loyal dragons" were all propaganda spread by those Imperial bastards.
It would have been asking too much of Colonel Mia to ride into battle against Titans and Dreadnoughts like Yu Lian. But as a rookie dragon rider, she could already skillfully use the