We may have just made the decisive move in this battle! The soldiers of the Thirteenth Fleet and the Starport Fortress could all feel it, and their morale surged.
At Eleanor's command, the high-speed fleet of Earth cruisers on the other side seized the opportunity to press forward instead of retreating, unleashing their fiercest barrage since the battle began. In just three minutes, every main gun on their forward ships fired at least five volleys, while they launched more than two hundred missiles and fifty proton torpedoes.
Of course, the Marauder ships weren't just sitting there and taking the hits. Even blinded by the electromagnetic interference, they continued firing back. They were doing far better than those big cats—the roadkill specimens in the Nishio system—had back in the day.
But without communications, the ships could no longer maneuver in formation or coordinate their fire. They had to fight on their own. Under the intense electromagnetic interference, they finally managed to sink a destroyer and cripple the Corsica so badly that it had to withdraw from the battlefield. But in return, six ships of the same class or larger were completely destroyed.
It might have been the five minutes that decided everything. During that brief span, both sides lost more ships than they had in the entire hour or more since the battle began.
Meanwhile, the carrier fleet moving behind and to the flank of the battlefield hadn't advanced. Instead, it began a cautious retreat, signaling its fighters to return.
The Earth fighters tangled in combat had already trained to disengage from a melee, and their withdrawal went smoothly. With the Marauder fighters cut off from communications and their motherships' coordinated command, they had already shot down more than half the enemy fighters and over forty drones. The Falcon Squadron, having