The Mech Touch novel Chapter 7558

Chapter 7558: Early Strike

The giants were ready.

Each of them had donned their raiments and equipped their respective weapons.

Their morale had risen to a new height.

Their willingness to venture into darkness under the leadership of their polemarchos had just peaked!

The Dark Apostle grinned with satisfaction. With this formidable troop of giants under his command, he could truly reshape the entire battlefield.

The deployment of over 30 Ascended Giants at once could never be underestimated. Even if they were not well-equipped for the current battlefield environment, their hard power and sieging capabilities could never be denied.

Just as the Dark Apostle was about to order his men and women to disembark the ship, all hell suddenly broke loose.

Nobody received a warning.

In one moment, everything aboard the Armitage worked normally.

In the next moment, a blinding flash and a wrenchingly powerful physical impact suddenly smashed against everyone, causing them to cry out in pain and surprise!

Nobody braced for the impact that had suddenly engulfed their entire awareness.

It happened so quickly and without any possible warning that by the time that the giants who recovered the fastest noticed the disaster unfolding to the side, they struggled to make sense of what just happened.

Several more seconds passed in confusion before the Armitage’s alarms belatedly started to ring.

The once-glorious assembly hall started to flash with alarming red lights. No sounds could be transmitted because whatever struck the giant carrier had torn a rent along the entire length of the hull!

This wound was not trivial in the slightest. The mere fact that an unknown sneak attack managed to carve through the entire side of the assembly hall meant that many other compartments had been affected even worse!

Entire spaces had been blasted into pieces!

Hundreds of unsuspecting human crew members got vaporized in an instant!

Other major compartments lost pressure, and the emergency shielding measures meant to plug the gaps did not always activate!

Supplies spilled into open space.

High-tech instruments became misaligned due to the strong physical impact or became miscalibrated due to intense radiation exposure.

Many ship systems abruptly failed as their energy and data channels all got cut off at once.

Though the crew assigned to the Armitage consisted of seasoned officers and spacers for the most part, they lacked the veterancy and cohesion of a truly elite and reliable force.

It couldn’t be helped. The Red Collective’s naval traditions were still too new and young. Its naval personnel mostly consisted of members of many different states. It was already a small miracle that this eclectic band of people managed to form an effective hierarchy in so little time.

As such, the surviving personnel reacted slowly to this sudden calamity.

Confusion remained the dominant thought as far too many people asked what just happened when they should have been thinking about conducting rescue and damage control operations.

Fortunately, the surviving officers gradually managed to get their act together. They organized at a local scale first, and gradually began to coordinate their actions once they sorted out their communications.

"We... were just attacked." The Fiery Axe transmitted over their communication channel as her armored form wobbled on the damaged deck. "The audacity... this insult... cannot stand!"

Several other giants echoed their indignation of what just happened. The clues could not be denied. Their alien adversaries had already made the first move!

The Dark Apostle felt just as outraged as his underlings, but he knew better than to lose his cool.

The vast scientific knowledge reserve that he had access to made him much more aware of the practical difficulties of launching an attack at this range.

The native aliens absolutely could not have launched an attack from such an enormous distance!

"An attack of this scale cannot come from an ordinary alien battleship." Blinky spoke. "Not unless she mounts a spinal mount, which has never been their style. Spinal mounts pose a greater threat towards their ’native gods’. This has to be a relatively new construction, one built for the express purpose of countering humans. My personal speculation is that the attack was either launched from one of the orbital fortresses or that bizarre planetary temple. Accuracy is an enormous problem. Even if the Armitage is a capital ship, she still followed a random trajectory, just like any other warship operating in a hostile environment. The probability of landing a hit with a kinetic strike at this range should have been statistically insignificant."

The Dark Apostle scowled. "Well, whatever math you are thinking about doesn’t apply here. The aliens somehow made it happen."

Blinky dipped his feline head in agreement. "That is unfortunately the case. The native aliens of the Red Ocean have the capability to build such a powerful weapon, but I doubt they possess the ability to achieve such a miraculously high hit rate. The best explanation that I can think of is..."

"The deathborn. You suspect that they have already teamed up with the native aliens to help them guide their aim."

"OUR FORWARD SCOUTS DETECTED A HIGH-ENERGY SEQUENCE FROM ONE OF THE FOUR ORBITAL FORTRESSES." Casella spoke in her empowered voice now that she had interfaced with the Minerva Mark II. "THAT IS NOT ALL. THEY ALSO DETECTED DISTURBANCES IN THE DARK MIASMA ALONG WITH MOVEMENT FROM THE SURROUNDING DEATHBORN. THE CONCLUSION IS CLEAR. OUR ENEMIES HAVE ALREADY COMBINED FORCES TO DEVELOP AN ACCURATE, LONG-RANGE SIEGE CANNON."

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