On the bridge of the Eternal Loyalty, Talos was paying attention to the rapidly deteriorating situation of the entire galaxy through the huge main holographic sphere on the ship.
He believed that he had never been a master of naval warfare, perhaps his former superior Fan Zhuode was. Anyway, in the tens of thousands of years he had served, he had never shown any talent for large-scale command.
But now he has to shoulder the responsibility. Maximilian, the captain of the Astral Knights, is just a warrior. Arash, the chapter leader of the White Templars, can hardly be called an excellent commander. As for the other chapter leaders,
...
The situation in this battle was very serious. The survival of the Eleventh Legion was left to outsiders, and Talos could not explain it to Soshyan.
Yes, at least in Talos's view, the situation has truly reached a critical point of life and death.
No one knows when, where, or by what means such a large Hive Fleet suddenly appeared. By the time the peripheral detection equipment discovered it, they were already at the edge of the galaxy, patrolling in more distant areas.
The reconnaissance fleet reported nothing, and they didn't even know what happened.
According to the mechanical priests, the secret of the movement of the Hive Fleet seems to have been cracked. It stands to reason that as long as a narwhal is found rushing against the ship, the trajectory of the Hive can be deduced, and the change in the gravitational field is also an omen.
But something unexpected happened this time. There was no movement trajectory of the narwhal ship, and there was no change in the gravitational field. The hive fleet almost touched the edge of the Westeros galaxy in a "stealth" way.
What's worse is their terrifying numbers.
"All fleets, prepare to attack the tendril fleet heading towards Planet 4."
In addition to Talos, there are several figures standing around the central holographic sphere in the tactical center, responsible for monitoring every aspect of the galaxy's defense, mainly Bahram, Lothar, Maximili, Oscar and other company commanders.
Talos's instructions were mainly issued by Bahram, who was now the nominal commander-in-chief of the fleet. The person who replaced Soshyan was Talos's arrangement against all objections.
During Soshyan's absence, the legion's decision was voted on by the Archon Council, but Ustad among the five was not present. Before leaving, Soshyan asked Mark to give priority to Talos's opinion. Arash also said
Respecting Talos's opinion, Bahram was pushed to the position of fleet commander as captain of the tenth company despite his efforts to refuse.
Almost three standard Terran days have passed since the discovery of the Tyranids to the launch of the invasion. At least the theory of the Mechanicus Priests was not completely unexpected. After the Tyranids entered the range of the galaxy's gravitational field, their speed slowed down.
The empire has deployed a large-scale minefield in advance, and the biological ship is moving towards the target at almost a "crawling" speed, which is Westeros 2, 3, and 4 planets.
At this time, there are still nearly 1.5 billion refugees and 3.2 billion local residents in the galaxy that have not been evacuated. Such a huge population is almost a super delicacy for the Tyranids, so the action mode of the Tyranid fleet is also very simple. The entire fleet is
They spread out completely, as if they were a big mouth that wanted to swallow the entire galaxy in one bite. Therefore, even though their speed was very slow, they still brought a sense of oppression that was almost desperate.
From the human perspective, the Tyranid fleet formed a huge arc formation. The entire fleet was more than 250 million kilometers long. If it were an ordinary fleet, it would be courting death to dare to stretch itself so long. However, they are Tyranid fleets.
Lun.
At this moment, the tactical panel of the Eternal Loyalty was blurred by the maddening number of ships, and the number of enemies far exceeded the limit it could display.
"This is the first time in my life I've seen anything like this."
Talos, who wanted to take a look at the so-called Tyranids, also lamented his good luck. Not long after he arrived, he encountered a big wave of them.
"How many are there? One hundred thousand? Three hundred thousand? Five hundred thousand?"
Leaning on his chain halberd, Talos stared at the crazy numbers on the tactical instrument and couldn't help asking soul torture, but no one could answer his question.
Just by "walking" through the minefield, tens of thousands of Tyranid biological ships were blown to pieces. The vast area at the edge of the galaxy was filled with broken carapace fragments and huge pieces of flesh. Frozen body fluids floated on the corpses of the biological ships.
composed of a ring of fragments.
But for every biological ship destroyed, twenty came to replace it.
To make matters worse, those dead fleets are being reabsorbed and used. The tentacles extended by the huge biological ships wrap around the same kind of fragments, ruthlessly pulling the fragments towards the bloody mouth. They eat everything, bones, flesh and blood,
Even metal fragments of void mines, and then these recovery ships will provide the digested materials to the mother ship through tentacles like umbilical cords.
The Hive Mothership was the thing that shocked Talos the most. They were even bigger than the Queen of Glory.
It is like some kind of insect that has been magnified countless times, wrapped in ancient yellowish crust-like chitin, and even fragments of asteroids. These miscellaneous things are stuck together by secreted body fluids, like
As hard as any armor.
According to Bahram and others, the Adeptus Mechanicus had always guessed that a hive fleet would only have one mothership, but what really happened was beyond their expectations.
At least based on the scan results, there are more than fifteen insect nest motherships in this huge hive fleet, or biological ships of this level!
Fifteen ships!
What kind of concept is this? The alien inquisitor who came to Westeros said that from the first encounter with the Tyranids to the present, the Empire has not encountered so many hive motherships in hundreds of years!
If one Hive Mothership in the Empire represents a tentacle fleet, then it is equivalent to saying that there are at least fifteen tentacle fleets gathered in the Westeros galaxy now!
You must know that the hive motherships not only represent command nodes, they are extremely powerful battleships themselves. Although they do not have active defense systems such as energy shields, they still rely on their unparalleled size and petrified chitin shells.
Able to sail through the most powerful cannon fire from Imperial ships with little impact.
Putting aside the countless small biological ships, these fifteen very large biological ships are enough for the Suffering Alliance who stayed here to drink a pot. However, according to the speculations of the Mechanic Priests, among these fifteen hive ships
One must be the real "mothership", and the others are just guardians or nodes - but their theory has no evidence to prove it, and they can't give any confirmation plan.
"grown ups!"
Suddenly, a communications officer ran near the tactical instrument and saluted Bahram.
"This is an encrypted communication from the Inquisition. You need to connect it in person!"