Fleet Battle

Fragments still drifted through the starry void. In the weightless universe, space debris was affected by inertia, continuing in the direction it had initially been propelled.

The warship that had just exploded was close to the flagship. Now, the fragments produced by the explosion struck the flagship's energy shield with harsh scraping sounds, like the ghosts of fallen soldiers scratching at a wall with their fingers.

If Visitors still had not realized what was happening by now, he was unfit to command a fleet.

Even without letting the shipmind analyze it, he knew the enemy had changed targets while his forces were concentrated, launching a surprise attack on the weakly defended warships—and succeeding.

Installing self-destruct mechanisms on warships was common practice in every military. After all, a spacecraft could sometimes lose mobility during battle and end up drifting through the battlefield.

If their side won, that was one thing. But if the enemy won, the warship could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands. Otherwise, once the enemy repaired its propulsion system, they would essentially have gained a warship for free.

The materials needed to build a warship were trivial. The key was time. A large warship often took several months to construct, while a supercapital ship like the Dark Aster had taken more than a decade to build even with the Kree's level of industrial productivity.

Time was the most precious resource in war.

As Kree who had fought wars for years, they naturally would not make the mistake of giving away warships. Their military regulations clearly stipulated the circumstances under which a warship had to self-destruct. Even if there was not a single living person aboard, the shipmind would automatically carry out the order.

There were dozens of such circumstances.

For example, losing power in battle with