Fifty stealth warships activated their optical camouflage. Their silhouettes gradually blurred in the void, finally merging completely with the background radiation. Then they began creeping toward the center of the battlefield.
The Imperial Fleet's detection systems did pick up some faint anomalous signals, but amid the raging battle, those weak signals were easily dismissed as interference.
The Stealth Fleet successfully approached to within twenty kilometers of the Titan-carrying warship.
"Lock onto the target," Shadowblade ordered. "All ships, concentrate fire on the engine section. Three, two, one-fire!"
All fifty warships decloaked at once, unleashing every weapon at full power.
Hundreds of ion cannon rounds, pulse missiles, and heavy torpedoes screamed in from every direction, all aimed at the warship's engines.
The sudden attack caught the Imperial Fleet off guard.
"Alert! Multiple enemy ships detected! Where did they come from?"
"Activate point defenses! Intercept those missiles!"
The escort fleet around the Titan-carrying warship reacted immediately, weaving a dense web of point-defense fire through the void. Most of the missiles and torpedoes were destroyed before reaching their target, but some still broke through.
More than a dozen ion cannon rounds and several heavy torpedoes struck the rear of the Titan-carrying warship.
Huge explosions blossomed across its hull, but its shields and armor were simply too thick. Attacks powerful enough to destroy cruisers left only black scorch marks and a few shallow craters on its immense hull.
One secondary engine was damaged, spewing a plume of black smoke, but the warship's main propulsion system remained intact.
The attack had failed.
Worse still, with its position exposed, the Stealth Fleet had become a target for every Imperial warship.
"Evade! Retreat at full speed!"
But the Adeptus Custodes fleet reacted with astonishing speed. Dozens of golden beams swept across the void, instantly destroying seven stealth warships