The renegade Dreadnought-class Light Cruiser fled in disarray.
Her hull was slightly tilted, as the gravity field fins used for balance had been blasted into ruins by the Macro cannon under Horatio's command in the previous engagement.
At this moment, the renegade ship was like a limping old man whose injured leg had been severely kicked, staggering and desperately fleeing forward.
Bang! Bang!
Two high-explosive shells, much larger than standard caliber, flew straight towards the Dreadnought-class Light Cruiser's ten tightly clustered, massive plasma engine arrays.
Their trajectory was aimed precisely at the very center of these ten rose-petal-like engines.
If only they could hit...
The shells flew straight, but to everyone's dismay, the Dreadnought-class Light Cruiser's Void Shield began to activate, wrapping itself inwards from top and bottom.
Horatio and Farida's eyes were fixed on the shells.
[God Emperor protect us! They must get in before the Void Shield fully deploys...]
Whoosh!
The shells splashed a ripple of fiery light across the Void Shield.
Just when everyone thought they would have to watch the renegade ship escape.
A shell from Unyielding's portside No. 3 Macro cannon, personally calculated by Horatio, successfully slipped in just as the Void Shield fully enveloped the ship.
It exploded right in the middle of the plasma engines, erupting into a huge and dazzling ball of blue light.
The explosion was so powerful that it instantly overloaded the Dreadnought-class Light Cruiser's fully deployed Void Shield again.
It became a lamb to the slaughter, completely unprotected.
"Report!" Captain Peru stood up directly, watching the explosion from the Dreadnought's engines, and shouted to the officers in the observation deck.
"Enemy ship's 5, 6, and 9 plasma engines are destroyed! The explosion forced their technical personnel to emergency-cut the promethium fuel valves. God Emperor, their speed has slowed down."
"Close in quickly! Get the armed forces to board at a suitable distance and angle!"
"Yes, sir!"
The Unyielding closed in from the Dreadnought's starboard side, while the Diligent Class and Endurance-class light cruisers engaged their engine afterburners, rapidly approaching from the dreadnought-class's port side.
They also had two fully-loaded Navy Breachers ready.
When the Imperial Navy's three warships sandwiched the renegade Dreadnought, thousands of Shark Assault Boats launched from Unyielding's port side and Diligent and Endurance's starboard sides.
The assault boats spewed out ghostly blue flames and plunged into the light cruiser's armor.
The dreadnought-class, for the sake of speed, had not adopted a domed armor design in its deeper decks.
Even Shark Assault Boats could easily penetrate into the most core compartments.
The interior of the renegade Dreadnought-class Light Cruiser instantly erupted into chaos.
Approximately 6,000 fully-armed Navy Breachers from the three ships surged out of the assault boats' ramps like a deep blue tide.
They wielded various close-quarters weapons of mass destruction, striking down every enemy they encountered.
Even if these renegade Sailors wore Imperial Navy armed forces armor, or even Navy Breachers' boarding armor.
They were, after all, not experts who had undergone true professional anti-boarding combat training.
Their opponents, the Imperial Navy Boarding Team, 6,000 strong, each having received at least 500 hours of boarding training.
The six thousand professional soldiers, like cutting melons and dicing vegetables, made these traitors pay a heavy price with their blood and lives for their acts of betrayal.
The Breakers stormed into the power compartment, slaughtering everything that could breathe and could not breathe inside.
A brave axeman charged onto the promethium pipeline control console, hacked the operator to death with an axe, and then, with his comrades, manually twisted the red valves with brute force, completely cutting off the entire warship's fuel supply.
Aboard the Unyielding.
"Captain, the attack is going smoothly. This dreadnought-class is completely crippled."
"Never mind her, Communicator! Raise the fleet signal flags. Lieutenant, take command of the Unyielding. I will command the battle fleet."
He looked at the three battered, spindle-shaped warships, like hyenas, encircling the Avenging Blade battlecruiser.
"Yes, Captain. All units, attention! The Unyielding's Lord Captain is now in command of the entire ship. Repeat, the Unyielding's Lord Captain is now in command of the entire ship!"
The Unyielding's highest observation deck used a kilowatt-class searchlight to send lamp signals to the three approaching Voss-class cruisers:
'Flagship changed to Unyielding, strike the flagship's sailing flag!'
The'Supreme Mission' Diligent Class light cruiser, serving as the fleet's flagship, replied with lamp signals.
Soon, the holographic signal flags on the warship's spine and belly extinguished.
This symmetrical design, with flags both above and below, was to ensure that warships on all combat planes could continuously see the fleet commands issued by the flagship.
Aboard the Unyielding battlecruiser.
The Lieutenant, serving as the flag officer, used holographic signal flags, placed behind the sailing flag, on the Unyielding's spine to the top of the bridge, and on the symmetrically corresponding position on the warship's belly, to hoist the Commodore's flagship flag.
In this most classical and enduring naval manner, it was officially declared to all Imperial Navy fleets engaged in this part of the void:
The Unyielding will serve as the fleet flagship, and all capital ships are to immediately join the battle line formation.
Those who could become Imperial Navy Captains were exceptional individuals; the clumsy and inept had already been eliminated through layers of selection.
The Captains needed no superfluous communication.
The Fleet Liaison Officers in each ship's communications department began to busily coordinate combat positions and spacing.
The warships quickly formed a 'train' centered around the Unyielding, advancing vertically like a thick wall.
Their void plane perfectly aligned with the combat plane of the three enemy cruisers, and each ship had its own target for concentrated fire.
The Provocation-class Light Cruisers were on the relatively safe outer right side, with the Unyielding's tall hull providing her cover.
Her plane was slightly higher, allowing her to use the lance batteries on her spine to fire over the Unyielding at the enemy ships.
A 100% hit rate without worrying about friendly fire to the Unyielding.
Meanwhile, around the enemy ships, Imperial Naval Aviation and Space Marine fighters continuously launched dive bombings.
These 'flies' greatly disgusted Khorne's servants.
The Astartes commanding the Slaughter Class cursed, wishing they could pilot an aircraft themselves to chase down the flies and tear them limb from limb.
Unfortunately, there were no aircraft on any of the Khorne's fleet ships present.
Among all Chaos factions, only Tzeentch's servants were the most fond of and skilled at using carriers.
Khorne's personal favorite weapon was the Macro cannon.
In His eyes, only the inferno created by massive explosions and surging flames was the only way to please Him.
He was always watching the person who performed best in artillery during this void war.
"Ah-choo!" Horatio sneezed.
"Caught a cold?" Farida glanced at him, pulled a handkerchief from her officer's uniform breast pocket and handed it to him, but quickly refocused on her work.
The battle line was collectively engaging the enemy on the same heading with a line-abreast bombardment from their port sides; every second was crucial and could affect the outcome.
"No, I'm fine. Probably just sweating a bit too much, thank you." He took the fragrant handkerchief, blew his nose, and had an orderly take it to be cleaned and dried.
Shells streaking through the void crisscrossed like raindrops, forming sheets of fire.
Scorching lance beam energy illuminated every corner of the hundreds of kilometers of void, dispelling the shadows in the darkness.
The ripples of the Void Shield were like gentle raindrops falling on a mirror-like lake.
The loud'siren' hum announcing the dissipation of Void Shields came one after another.
Warships trembled, warriors roared, cannons bellowed, and lance batteries hummed.
Flashes of fire erupted like scattered stars on the hull, and lance beams left shocking death brands on each other's ship bodies.
Deathwing fighters weaved through the hail of gunfire; constantly, void fighters, 40 or 70 meters long, were hit and crashed into the hull, crushing unprepared crew members below into pulp.
Every minute, every second, lives were vanishing, and the medical bay was overflowing.
Decks and corridors were filled with people awaiting treatment; the ship's doctors were completely overwhelmed, not to mention the Medical Sisters.
Even assistants with insufficient skill had to improvise and begin treating the wounded.
Those in the midst of intense combat paid no heed to the casualties and screams; everyone, like machines, commanded and operated the void behemoths they were on.
They knew full well.
The more chaotic the environment, the more crucial it was to remain calm and rational.
But even if the mind could endure, physically, under such high pressure, not everyone could hold up.
A young Midshipman, barely twelve or thirteen years old, in a lance battery turret, was too nervous to calmly calculate void formulas.
He felt a wave of exhaustion, dizziness, and his vision began to blur.
"My heart is beating so fast... It feels like it's going to burst out," a young Midshipman said to a slightly older Midshipman next to him, who was about the same age as Horatio.
No sooner had he finished speaking than the boy weakly knelt to the ground, grabbing the older Midshipman's swallow-tail coat hem.
"Doctor! Doctor!" the older Midshipman yelled, telling the Warrant Officer nearby to call the Medical Officer.
The Medical Officers were aware of the various illnesses that officers might suddenly experience.
He checked the heart rate of the red-faced, sweating young Midshipman, then measured his blood pressure.
Then he handed him a beta-blocker tablet.
This was an emergency medication for hypertension, heart disease, angina, or arrhythmia.
For these young people, such terrifying void battles often caused sudden heart problems.
The boy's hands trembled as he swallowed the tablet whole, then was helped by the Medical Officer to the officers' lounge behind the command platform to rest.
Bang!
The Unyielding's entire port side shuddered.
The Medical Officer abruptly turned his head; a skin-stinging blast of hot air shattered the porthole glass in the lounge, and then he heard screams from the command platform.
"Ah! Ah! My eyes!"
Two portside lance battery turrets were hit by the enemy ship's heavy twin-barreled lance batteries; a massive energy beam swept across the entire lance battery turret array.
The lance battery turrets were not of the Macro cannon array's embedded design and lacked such sturdy and thick gun shields.
Although the thousand-ton alloy steel completely enveloped the command platform and blocked the ray energy, the surface was deeply and terrifyingly scarred by the passing energy beam.
But the observation porthole could not withstand such high-temperature energy; the thick glass shattered.
Some degummed fragments, along with collapsing armor debris from within the ship, flew inside.
A piece of shattered steel unfortunately killed the Warrant Officer assisting the young Midshipman.
Countless small, blade-like fragments that flew in lacerated the young Midshipman's body all over.
His entire dignified officer's uniform instantly became blood-soaked.
Fragments had pierced one of his eyes.
His face, body, and hands were covered in scratches.
The young officer knelt on the ground screaming, blood continuously dripping from his face onto the floor.
"Officer wounded!" the ship's doctor immediately shouted: "Assistant! Medical Assistant!"
Soon, a medical assistant, carrying a stretcher, jumped over the broken gangway and ran into the lance battery turret command platform.
Those in the nearby officer's guard who could still move lifted the injured young officer onto the stretcher and transported him to the medical bay.
Just the many small, fine fragments embedded in his body would keep the Medical Officer busy for quite some time.