Warhammer: Open the door! Human League players!

Chapter 164 Where did the reinforcements come from?

"Lock down the Human Alliance fleet immediately; don't let them escape!"

Sixty Imperial regular warships were arrayed in layers, locking down all routes and escape angles, forming an impenetrable encirclement.

The massive Imperial fleet, like a sleeping mountain of steel, had all its cannons aimed at the target in the center of the airspace, completely sealing off any possibility of breakout, detour, or withdrawal from a tactical standpoint.

This is the Empire's elite frontline fleet guarding Terra, battle-hardened and extremely powerful.

Three heavily armored battleships anchored the central position of the formation, their thick, adamantine armor reflecting the cold starlight. Their shipborne cannons and arrayed torpedo bays were poised to fire, forming the absolute core of the frontal assault.

Dozens of high-speed cruisers and frigates circled around, with a mix of fast and slow vessels, and complementary long and short ranges, filling in all blind spots in firepower. The entire formation was integrated in offense and defense, and could advance and retreat with ease.

With its saturation attack capability alone, this fleet is enough to crush a mixed fleet several times larger, making it the empire's toughest fangs guarding its borders.

The Martian Mechanicus's global monitoring array had already locked onto the target, and countless data streams were frantically flooding the frontline command terminals.

On the flagship, General Casting gazed at the screen, his expression cold and arrogant, his eyes filled with undisguised contempt. On the screen, three allied ships were arranged in a stable equilateral triangle formation, firmly protecting a gigantic, terrifyingly large floating device in the very center of the formation. The entire target was firmly anchored in the heart of the encirclement.

"Relying on our intelligence system, the People's Federation still does not have a single warship that truly belongs to it."

"The three warships in front of us were all lent by the Eldar to the Human Alliance and then modified by them."

"So, the Human Alliance's soldiers have advanced technology, but their warship technology is quite backward."

"They must have usurped the glory of Omnesia! This strange, colossal structure in the middle must be the heretical creation they rely on."

With three ships against sixty, the disparity in troop strength was so vast that it was despair-inducing, and the outcome was never in doubt from the start.

General Casting's calculations were ruthless and precise. He had no intention of immediately opening fire and destroying the enemy ships, but rather planned to use absolute military pressure to completely overwhelm his opponent, forcing the desperate commander of the People's Alliance to compromise and submit to negotiations.

He wanted to force the other party to hand over all core technologies, equipment prototypes, and complete data files, especially the giant device of unknown origin in the center, so that it could be reviewed and divided up by the Mechanicus, the Imperial Inquisition, and the State Religion.

Only by being forced to the negotiating table can the Mechanicus seize the greatest benefit from the entire standoff. Once the technology is completely stripped away, dismantled, and assimilated, the already weak Human Alliance will be reduced to a toothless ant, forever subject to the control of others.

They clearly saw that the Human Alliance's epoch-making mechanical humanoid forces had repeatedly suppressed the Imperial defenders on the surface battlefield, becoming the Empire's greatest threat.

Once they devour these three warships and the central giant device, and thoroughly understand the complete technological system behind them, the invincible mechanical legion on the surface will become their henchmen.

The truly valuable aspect of this battle was not the ships, armor, or weapons, but rather the complete control core and underlying logic that enabled the intelligent mechanical legion to fight.

In the eyes of the High Lords, this was a high-return gamble. If successful, Guilliman would have to defer to them, and military strength and industrial capabilities would be completely revolutionized.

Inside the UN command ship, the air was so oppressive it felt almost solid.

The pale blue monitoring screen continuously refreshed the vastly different combat power parameters between the two sides, while the red danger threshold alarms beat silently. Every set of cold data indicated a desperate battle situation.

The three ships maintained a triangular defensive formation, prioritizing the protection of the giant central equipment with all their shield resources, determined to fight the Mechanicus head-on to the bitter end.

Anna walked slowly to Anne's side, looking at the girl's tense profile and slightly trembling fingers. She gently raised her hand and placed it on Anne's shoulder, soothing her tension with a gentle and steady tone: "Are you under a lot of pressure?"

Anne shook her head slightly, her slender shoulders taut and her eyes heavy with worry.

She had watched countless videos of distant battlefields and witnessed firsthand how the commander-in-chief, alone on his ship, remained calm and composed, even when surrounded by hundreds of enemy ships, and managed to turn the tide of battle.

But she was perfectly clear-headed that she was just an ordinary person, without the power to transcend her time or the confidence to look down upon the stars.

At this moment, her only reliance, besides the Human Alliance's advanced technology that surpassed this dark age, was the squadron's...

A giant device bearing a crucial mission.

Three fully modified human-powered ships, equipped with special phase shields and composite superconducting alloy hulls, work together to form a unified defensive force field, prioritizing the central megastructure. This indeed possesses a defensive ceiling far exceeding that of Imperial warships of the same class, sufficient to withstand a large-scale saturation bombardment for a short period. However, every defense has a critical threshold; no barrier is indestructible. Once the Imperial fleet unleashes its full firepower to relentlessly crush the defenses, breaking through the defensive limits, the megastructure, along with the entire squadron, will be utterly annihilated in the void's barrage.

After a brief moment of contemplation, Anne suppressed the turbulent emotions in her heart, all hesitation in her eyes vanished, leaving only an unwavering determination.

She lightly tapped the holographic panel with her fingertip, relying on the faster-than-light communication module built into the central giant device to send a message outward. A secret, high-frequency, encrypted signal completely beyond the local spectrum instantly penetrated the barrier of Terra orbit and sped towards the endless, deep, distant starry sea.

The moment the signal fluctuation lit up, the Mechanicus's monitoring arrays, which covered the entire airspace, immediately and accurately detected the abnormal energy reaction.

The ship's mechanical priests, servants, and data sages were all on standby instantly, frantically analyzing and tracing the source, but they were helpless against this unfamiliar, epoch-making frequency band.

They couldn't decipher the content or pinpoint the signal coordinates; all they could confirm was that the other party was using the giant device in the center to conduct an ultra-long-distance communication across an endless sea of ​​stars.

Those in the imperial high command who witnessed this scene all wore expressions of mockery.

Within the Empire's cognitive framework, the vast expanse of space is an insurmountable chasm. Void turbulence would tear apart most communication channels.

In such cases, conventional signals would completely dissipate over light-years.

The Empire maintains interstellar communication solely through the psionic transmission of the Star Speakers and the connection of the Star Torch; no technology has ever been able to achieve lossless, long-distance interstellar communication.

In their eyes, this young human commander was nothing more than making a futile and laughable death struggle in a desperate situation.

The general remained motionless, his gaze fixed on the three ships arranged in a triangle on the star chart and the giant device in the center.

He patiently waited for the other side's mentality to collapse, for their seemingly stubborn resistance to completely crumble, and for the People's Alliance to take the initiative to beg for peace.

They walked into the trap of his self-interest.

But the next second, inside the command ship, Annie suddenly spoke, her voice calm, crisp, and without the slightest hesitation.

"Fire."

The concealed weapon unit atop the bow of the Human Alliance fleet instantly flashed with blinding electric light, and the ultra-high-energy arc emitter was instantly fully charged.

A pale, violent plasma dragon tore through the cold void, traversed several kilometers of blocked airspace, and precisely struck an Imperial cruiser on the outer perimeter.

A violent surge of high-voltage current instantly enveloped the entire hull, penetrating the thick adamantite armor and surging wildly into the warship's power lines, fire control systems, and core reactor. A deluge of electric light exploded and surged between the compartments, instantly incinerating all circuits, mechanisms, and communication modules.

In just a moment.

The signal from that Imperial frigate went completely black and was lost, disappearing entirely from the star map array.

Three ships escorted the massive structure, with three against sixty, representing an extreme disparity in troop strength.

The Human Alliance, which should have been sitting idly by and waiting for death or seeking peace in a desperate situation, actually took the initiative to start the war, clearly intending to rely on the giant device to fight to the death.

The entire imperial fleet fell into utter silence.

All the observers were dumbfounded, their hearts filled with shock and bewilderment.

"Are they crazy?"

"How dare they attack the Empire's fleet?"

To try to move a mountain with ants, to try to take on a main fleet of sixty ships with three ships—are they really not afraid of death?

The brief silence shattered with a deafening roar.

The Mars-forged general's eyes were bloodshot, his mechanical body trembled violently, and his overwhelming rage completely shattered all his arrogance and calculations.

"The outsiders are so unruly!"

He gritted his teeth and growled, his voice cold and furious.

"All ships! Full fire! Annihilate them! Prioritize destroying the central heretical megastructure!"

In the next instant, the entire airspace above Terra Orbit was completely illuminated by the artillery fire.

All sixty Imperial warships simultaneously unlocked their weapons, unleashing a deluge of cannon fire, thermal beams, plasma cannons, and void torpedoes. The overwhelming destructive power, like a raging tidal wave of falling stars, densely packed and layered, crashed relentlessly against the triangular formation and the giant device protected at its center.

The flames engulfed the field of vision, and the roar shook the void, as if the entire orbital space was trembling violently.

But just as the devastating firepower touched the target, a giant, pale silver three-dimensional force field spread out along the interconnected three warships, firmly enveloping the entire giant device.

The mysterious and stable high-level force field rippled slightly like water, managing to withstand the simultaneous saturation salvo from a full sixty Imperial fleets.

The explosions, endless beams of light, and layers of shockwaves were all perfectly isolated and evenly dissipated by the force field, leaving no trace of the coating on the giant structure's surface.

The empire's relentless bombardment, advances, and barrages were all rendered futile.

The shield strength of the Human Alliance ships has long since exceeded the limits of Imperial technology.

The technological gap is on full display at this moment.

Immediately following, the three Allied warships simultaneously activated their full weapon arrays, officially launching their counterattack.

Each shell precisely targets the weak points of the Imperial ship's hull, penetrating armor, disabling power, and tearing apart fire control arrays.

Precise, fierce, and efficient futuristic firepower crushed the empire's outdated military equipment point-to-point.

Sixty imperial warships, seemingly overwhelming in number and tightly encircling the enemy, possessed an absolute advantage in manpower and formation, yet they were helpless against the ultimate technological suppression.

Despite repeated and relentless attacks and attacks from the massive fleet, they were unable to break through the triangular defenses and shields, or even touch the core mega-device.

The entire battlefield presented an absurd yet realistic situation—sixty imperial main forces were tightly surrounding three isolated ships and a floating megastructure, yet they were unable to suppress, break through, or defeat them in the slightest for a short period of time.

Mars Forging General's gaze was fixed on the triangular formation on the star chart and the giant device in the center, his chest burning with rage.

He had been in charge of Martian military affairs for a thousand years and had never suffered such humiliation. It was clearly an absolute siege and a dead end. He had a hundred times the number of troops, yet he was being held in a deadly stalemate by a mere three foreign ships protecting his heretical creation, who were wantonly provoking him.

He completely abandoned any thought of forcing a surrender through negotiation, leaving only a brutal obsession with crushing everything—he had to force the United Nations to bow down, destroy the giant device, and crush this arrogance!

"Command across the entire region! Reinforcements!"

The cold, mechanical commands echoed throughout the Terra Orbit command network.

All the dormant orbital fortresses were unsealed from their combat berths, and the entire Terra near-ground garrison reserve fleet, the Mars Sentinel assault team, and the orbital mobile patrol fleet were launched to provide support.

Giant battleships broke through the clouds, and countless cruisers spread across the starry sea. The number of Imperial warships increased exponentially, from sixty to a staggering one hundred.

The densely packed steel ships formed a triple encirclement, sealing off every void coordinate and every warp portal.

Every inch of escape airspace.

A truly impenetrable and inescapable net of a hundred ships has been fully formed.

The intense, endless barrage of artillery fire tore through the atmosphere, terrifying energy shockwaves pierced through the void barrier, and even the hard surface of Holy Terra trembled slightly. The palace dome was illuminated crimson by the orbital warfare.

Inside the Regent's Hall, Guilliman suddenly opened his eyes.

The war resonance spanning the entire planet Terra directly impacted his senses; it was no small-scale friction, but the violent upheaval of a full-scale interstellar war.

He stood up, gazing at the crimson flames of war in the sky, and a fury, unparalleled in a millennium, suddenly surged in his eyes.

The Mechanicus cult secretly mobilized hundreds of ships and heavy troops to wage a desperate siege at the border of Terra: the outsiders relied on the massive structure to resist and refused to give an inch.

Both sides completely disregarded imperial decrees, Terra's prohibitions, and the authority of the imperial regent.

No one reported it, no one asked for instructions, and no one respected the order.

While he was overseeing the stability of Terra, the two forces escalated the conflict to the terrifying level of all-out war!

"Ferus, why did the fleet attack the Human Alliance?"

Ferrus frowned.

"These warships were disconnected from the command system an hour ago."

"They bypassed us and attacked directly!"

"absurd!!"

Guilliman's fists were clenched, his voice cold and furious, echoing in the empty hall.

"Two major powers have unilaterally mobilized their troops, started a war without authorization, and wreaked havoc on Terra's airspace—completely disregarding the laws of the Empire!"

Just as the Empire's hundreds of ships were closing in, the shields were wearing down, and the battle was on the verge of its most desperate moment, the surface of the giant device guarded by three ships in the center of the formation suddenly lit up with a continuous stream of golden and blue lightning. The entire behemoth flashed briefly, and a hidden signal pierced through deep space.

In the blink of an eye, in the distant and deep dark star sea, ten dazzling blue-white jump rifts suddenly tore open simultaneously, causing a spatial tremor and a surge of light.

Ten identical, silver-white, and futuristic main warships of the Human Alliance leaped out of hyperspace!

Precise support, instant deployment, and formation.

The three human alliance squads that were originally guarding the megastructure were instantly added to the main fleet.

Thirteen futuristic warships, with interconnected positions, synchronized weapons, and deployed in formation, faced off against the Empire's hundreds of steel-clad ships, once again firmly upholding an overwhelming technological barrier.

"Are you kidding me!"

"Where did this warship come from?"

"Why wasn't any subspace fluctuation detected?"

Yes, no one noticed the fluctuations in the subspace.

What is the connection between these suddenly appearing warships and that giant device?