Chapter 45: The Weight of Command

“Target locked. Target locked.”

“All warships, prepare for combat.”

“Fire control systems, fully activated!”

“The target is approaching our position!”

Suddenly, the command bridge of the flagship buzzed with fervent activity. In such a vast fleet, every single command required precise transmission to ensure the entire force could unleash its full might.

According to the Imperial classification standards, a high-ranking general could effortlessly command an ultimate battle group, comprising nearly a million warships, as if it were an extension of their own arm. Odinxis, however, did not believe he possessed such extraordinary talent.

Even after receiving a temporary enhancement from His Majesty the Emperor, he still found it challenging to maneuver this fleet of nearly ten thousand warships.

Nevertheless, he had no choice but to push through. Recalling the basic warship attack manual etched into his mind, Odinxis swiftly ordered the fleet to assume formation. The entire battle group consisted of roughly four distinct types of warships.

The first type was the defensive warship, colloquially known as a shield ship. Its entire hull was meticulously covered with a super-metal, secretly developed by the Empire, and further reinforced with a special-grade energy barrier. These vessels appeared cumbersome and unwieldy.

Typically, these shield ships were positioned on the outermost perimeter of the fleet, serving as the primary barrier to absorb incoming fire. In critical situations, they could even activate an absolute defense system, using each shield ship as a node to generate a super-barrier that enveloped the entire fleet.

Despite their clunky appearance and relatively low offensive capabilities, these warships, when piloted by skilled operators, could easily overwhelm any contemporary vessel of a lower generation.

Indeed, the era of their inception was one where the shield ships represented a ‘shield greater than spear’ philosophy for the Empire. This imbalance left offensive warships in a precarious, neither-here-nor-there state.

It took numerous upgrades and generational shifts in offensive weaponry before the Imperial Research Institute finally restored the attacking warships to their crucial role.

Yet, the shield ships from that series were permanently integrated into the Imperial fleet. Researchers at the Imperial Research Institute had adamantly guaranteed that their design represented the pinnacle of defensive engineering across the entire universe.

They asserted that all materials, both physical and energetic, had reached their absolute limits, making any further breakthroughs impossible.

The second type of warship was, naturally, the offensive vessel. Prompted by the ‘shield greater than spear’ dilemma, the Empire’s research institutions embarked on an intense quest to push the boundaries of energy output.

At the cost of obliterating five or six abandoned star system test sites, they ultimately developed the Ultimate Destroyer series, ranging from Type VI to Type XI. Currently, the most commonly equipped model across the fleet was the Ultimate Destroyer Type VI.

This represented the newest generation of widely deployed weaponry following the shield ships.

While these weapons might be considered somewhat dated in the present context, Odinxis found them to be incredibly, almost overwhelmingly, powerful.

Even the energy cannon he once believed to be an invincible weapon was, within this grand fleet, merely a minor component of a single main weapon system.

The sheer destructive power of that primary weapon could only be imagined.

What was more, that wasn’t even the strongest. The mere thought that the Empire possessed five more generations of equipment beyond the Ultimate Destroyer Type VI made Odinxis utterly convinced that the Empire now held the power to sweep across the entire universe.

Beyond these two primary combat types, the remaining two categories of warships included Odinxis’s personal flagship, which he used for command. This vessel’s overall specifications were in no way inferior to the shield ships stationed at the outermost perimeter.

In essence, it was a magnified version of a shield ship. However, while defensive and combat capabilities were strong, the flagship’s main enhancements focused on communication and search functions.

As the veritable brain of the entire fleet, the flagship wasn’t intended for direct engagement in combat. Yet, to prepare for unforeseen circumstances, designers had installed low-power, lightweight secondary weapons that, while not exceptionally powerful, were adequate.

These auxiliary weapons were primarily suited for engaging targets akin to the Alliance’s former ‘cutting-edge’ mechs.

The final type of warship represented the very lifeline of the entire fleet: the damage control fleet.

These vessels were smaller in stature, typically forming squadrons of five to ten ships. Their sole purpose was to repair heavily damaged warships, enabling them to return to battle as part of a specialized damage control team.

A damage control fleet with robust repair capabilities could boost the sustained combat effectiveness of the main fleet by nearly fifty percent. This was a conservative estimate.

If the disparity in strength between opposing forces was visibly immense, the presence of a damage control fleet could allow the entire fleet to emerge victorious virtually unscathed.

It was this formidable armada, comprised of nearly ten thousand diverse warships, that now rested in Odinxis’s hands. The immense responsibility filled him with profound tension, forcing him to meticulously guide every vessel.

He carefully orchestrated their movements according to the basic formation manual, leading them to their designated Quantum Anchor Point.

The fleet’s formation itself was intricate. The flagship served as the central point of the entire fleet’s spatial arrangement. From this core, lines of varying lengths radiated outwards in all directions.

Each warship occupied a fixed position along one of these lines. As the supreme commander, Odinxis’s task was to constantly manipulate the configuration of these lines based on battlefield conditions, thereby ensuring the optimal combat alignment of the entire fleet.

Based on their past experiences, all the pilots, upon receiving Odinxis’s directives, immediately recognized their commander as an absolute novice.

With a truly skilled commander, their hands would barely keep up, as five to six distinct formation change orders could be issued within an hour. Often, after a battle, their hands would ache from the exertion.

But a greenhorn commander was different; they could reach their designated positions with effortless ease.

This was because every command adhered strictly to the basic fleet formation manual.

Over the past few decades, despite being granted command of this nearly invincible fleet and personally leading several real-world engagements, Odinxis had never truly had to deploy a complex formation. Their opponents were either crushed by long-range attacks or surrendered outright.

Consequently, Odinxis had never fully mastered the art of commanding such a fleet.

Now, facing an enemy that was likely their equal, he could only manage to arrange a textbook-perfect offensive formation as a temporary measure.

As the enemy mother organism gradually approached the range of the warships’ close-quarters weapons, a massive battle was poised to erupt!