The adjutant's face instantly turned deathly pale.
"Are you saying... that battleship, the one that fired such a terrifying shot, is the flagship of a Starfield Core Fleet?"
Wells nodded, the fear in his eyes growing clearer.
"But it must be an elite from a core fleet. Only a starfield-level fleet is qualified to be equipped with weapons of this class. A common border sub-fleet doesn't even have the qualifications to request a look at its parameters."
"We..."
For the first time, a tremor entered Wells's voice.
"We are fighting a Starfield Core Fleet."
This sentence struck the heart of every Imperial officer like a heavy hammer.
A Starfield Core Fleet was the Federation's true strategic power.
Their organization was complete, their equipment was the most advanced, and their personnel were the most elite. Their mission wasn't border patrol or small-scale conflicts, but decisive, starfield-level battles.
And the Wells Sub-Fleet was merely one of the twelve sub-fleets under the Empire's Third Mobile Fleet. Moreover, it was one of the ones with relatively outdated equipment. Their most advanced battleship was only the T4-Class Imperial Glory.
Pitting a sub-fleet against a core fleet was like sending a militia to fight special forces from a regular army.
It was suicide.
"Commander!"
The sensor operator's voice shattered the dead silence.
"The enemy... that battleship's main cannon is charging again!"
On the tactical screen, the blue dot representing the Kunlun Mountain once again showed a blinding energy reading at its bow. Although it was weaker than before, it was still enough to make everyone's blood run cold.
"The target..."
The operator swallowed hard.
"The target might be us."
Panic spread like a plague through the bridge of the Imperial Glory.
Even though they were separated by tens of millions of kilometers, no one dared to take that chance.
"All ships!"
Wells's voice suddenly rose to a near-shriek.
"Full retreat! Jettison all non-essential cargo! Overload the engines! Now!"
The order spread like wildfire via quantum communication.
The Imperial fleet, which had still been trying to organize a defensive formation, now completely lost all order.
The flagship's command was "retreat."
But in their panicked interpretation, it became "flee for your lives."
The few cruisers closest to the Kunlun Mountain were the first to react. They pushed their fusion engines to the maximum, trying to escape the Pluto Fleet's fire coverage area as quickly as possible.
But it was too late.
The Kunlun Mountain's second volley had arrived.
This time, it was again two beams of light.
Evidently, that ship's power system was powerful beyond imagination, with a despairingly short interval between shots.
Two beams of death streaked across deep space.
The first beam targeted two cruisers. They didn't even have time to finish rebooting their shields before their fragile midsections were pierced. The light of the explosions bloomed like two flowers of death within the Imperial fleet's formation.
The second beam flew toward two other cruisers farther away. Those two ships managed to activate their shields at full power in time, barely blocking the direct hit. But the impact of the shield overload still caused their hulls to vibrate violently, leading to widespread internal system failures.
Four ships: two destroyed, two heavily damaged.
The entire process took less than five seconds.
And the Kunlun Mountain's main cannon began its third charge.
"A monster..." the adjutant muttered, his face as white as a sheet. "That's a monster..."
Wells didn't argue.
He just stared intently at the blue flagship on the tactical screen, at the pair of particle acceleration rings at its bow that looked like the eyes of a demon.
Then, he made a decision he had never made in his forty-year career.
"Abandon the rearguard fleet."
His voice was terrifyingly calm, the utter composure that follows despair.
"Initiate emergency warp protocol. Coordinates: Elvira Star System, third assembly point. Now!"
Wells's voice, tinged with a near-hysterical resolve, echoed through the bridge of the Imperial Glory.
On the main tactical screen, the countdown for the Kunlun Mountain's third main cannon charge ticked down mercilessly.
12 seconds, 11 seconds, 10 seconds...
"Commander, an emergency warp is too risky!" the adjutant's voice trembled with anxiety. "Without the support of a stable warp point or a gravity calibration beacon, the probability of us getting lost in the spatio-temporal turbulence is over 20%! And with the entire fleet warping synchronously, if there's a—"
"If there's a deviation, it's still better than staying here and getting blasted to smithereens by that monster!" Wells spun around, his bloodshot eyes fixed on his adjutant. "Don't you get it? That's a Starfield Core Fleet! They're waiting for the main force of the Iron Fist Sub-Fleet to complete their encirclement! Once Yang Shao's fleet arrives, we won't even have a chance to warp!"
On the bridge, the officers' faces were ashen.
Of course, they understood—in a conventional engagement, there was still room to maneuver. But against a monster that could pierce a battleship from two million kilometers away, any tactic was a joke.
"But..." the adjutant still wanted to argue.
"No buts!" Wells slammed his fist on the control console. "All hands, on my command! Abandon all non-essential energy output and divert 80% of power to the warp engines! Shields to minimum maintenance levels! Synchronized warp in ten minutes!"
The order was forcibly transmitted via quantum communication.
All twelve of the still-functional starships in Wells's direct sub-fleet began to adjust their orientation simultaneously. The glow of the shields on their hulls dimmed visibly. In contrast, the warp engine rings at the stern of the Imperial Glory lit up with a blinding blue-white light.
It was the energy accumulation phenomenon before a warp, like a beacon in the darkness, announcing to the entire universe, "We are running away."
In deep space, the twelve Imperial starships began to flicker with the signs of an impending warp, like twenty-three startled fireflies. Space began to distort under the pull of the engines, and the starlight around the hulls was stretched into bizarre arcs.
"Warp countdown: 1 minute."
The hum of the engines transmitted through the hull, low and powerful.
Wells stared at the charging progress of the Kunlun Mountain's main cannon on the tactical screen. It had already reached 45%. In a few more minutes, the third volley would arrive.
"Faster! A little faster!"
"Countdown: 30 seconds."
The flagship's warp navigation system began frantically calculating coordinates, trying to find a relatively safe path through the chaotic spatial parameters. The screen scrolled with dense warnings—unstable gravity source, abnormal spatial curvature, potential quantum turbulence... These were all fatal risks of an emergency warp, but there was no time to worry about them now.
"Countdown: 15 seconds."
At that very moment.
In a patch of void less than five hundred thousand kilometers from the fleet's formation, two areas of darkness that had been completely empty suddenly rippled like the surface of water.
Immediately after, two entirely black, flat-shaped starships appeared without any warning. They were like phantoms surfacing from the deep sea, the optical distortions from their fading stealth camouflage still lingering on their hulls.
Shadow-class Reconnaissance Ships—Ghost Shadow and Dark Shadow.