Gustav's flagship had been rear-ended, and judging by the damage, it could only be towed back to the Spaceport's docks for repairs along with the Hive.
But he no longer had time to mourn his ship. Convinced that he had caught the spy slipping up, Gustav immediately mobilized his technical personnel and every resource available to trace the viruses and electronic attacks back through the Hive.
What happened next, however, went far beyond Gustav's expectations...
"Reporting, Commander! Just moments ago, our fleet suffered another hacker attack. At the same time, a large-scale electronic virus attack broke out internally, crippling systems. Bomb viruses have now been discovered aboard dozens of warships!" his adjutant reported in a rush.
"What?! Dozens?" Gustav was startled.
One rear-end collision had nearly crippled two warships. If dozens of ships ran into trouble at once, he would effectively be left commanding a fleet with nothing to its name.
"What are the losses?" he asked urgently.
Once the damage reports from the ships came in, the adjutant's expression turned rather odd.
"Uh... overall, the losses aren't actually that serious. After the Hive's collision, we immediately ordered everyone to watch for enemy electronic intrusions. So far, every attack has been stopped outside the AI Cores' central firewalls."
Gustav breathed a sigh of relief, but his adjutant continued, "Although the AI Cores' core functional modules haven't been breached, the enemy cunningly bypassed our heavily defended areas and targeted peripheral functional modules instead. So, uh... it's caused some confusion..."
Codename's surprise attack aboard the Hive had caught the Twin Stars off guard, but once the Twin Stars were prepared, the contest became purely a clash of raw capability.
Electronic warfare could broadly be divided into two domains: red and blue. The red domain represented intrusion, including electronic viruses, penetration, compilation,