Saturation fire was directed toward the hazy areas marked on the Phantom Map, where Imperial vessels might be lurking.
These projectiles required no precision guidance. With their extremely high muzzle velocity and probabilistic coverage, they formed a deadly Metal Storm within the confined space.
Close behind were Heavy Torpedoes launched from the Universal Launch Units.
After separating from the hulls, they glided silently through the mist along pre-programmed Inertial Paths, like vipers in an undercurrent.
An Imperial Guangming-class Battleship was slowly turning in the thick fog. Officers on the Bridge were futilely trying to pierce the churning silver-gray barrier outside the windows with their naked eyes.
Suddenly, the fog on the port side was violently parted by something!
A sharp-eyed officer caught a glimpse of the silhouette.
Sleek, cold, and exuding an aura of death—a torpedo body!
It was already less than a hundred meters from the Viewport!
"Port side! Torpedo! Evade!!"
The captain's scream was heart-rending.
But any evasive maneuver was already too late.
The torpedo's Armor-Piercing Warhead effortlessly shattered the Reinforced Observation Window.
Carrying unstoppable momentum, it drilled straight into the Bridge interior!
It hung there, abruptly and coldly, before the panicked crew, its Thruster at the tail still spewing blue Tail Flame.
Time seemed to freeze for an instant.
The next moment.
BOOM!!
A violent explosion filled the entire Bridge space. The sturdy structure, under the force of the internal blast, expanded and tore outward like paper!
Flames and shrapnel erupted from every Gap in the Bridge observation windows and upper structures!
With just one strike, the brain and command hub of the Guangming were utterly obliterated.
Similar scenes played out repeatedly within the mist.
Many Imperial warships didn't even see the enemy before their hulls shuddered violently, struck by Railgun Projectiles from an unknown origin.
Thick armor was blasted open with terrifying holes edged in molten material, triggering chain destruction inside.
Some vessels were struck by multiple torpedoes simultaneously, torn apart into burning wreckage by successive close-range explosions.
The Federation Fleet's path forward was thus brutally cleared by the Metal Storm of Railguns and the hunts of torpedoes.
They did not pause, not even decelerating.
Ahead lay floating wreckage of Imperial warships, still undergoing Sympathetic Detonations or silently splitting apart.
The Federation Fleet charged straight into them!
Wreckage was forcibly smashed aside and crushed amidst flying sparks!
The Fleet, like a steel tide breaking through ice, sped resolutely at full throttle toward the gravitational boundary of Danube Star, through a passage littered with death and destruction.
Behind them, they left only a Death Wake paved with the wreckage of Imperial vessels, gradually swallowed once more by the churning gray mist.
The gray fog ahead of the Fleet abruptly thinned.
The Pluto Fleet and the Tiankui Star Fleet, like giant whales breaching the waves, surged violently out of the Jamming Cloud's range.
The view opened up before them, but it was no safe zone.
A sizable Imperial fleet group lay directly ahead.
Nearly a hundred starships, primarily Destroyers and Cruisers.
Clustered around were less than twenty massive but clearly outdated T4-Class Battleships.
These were evidently secondary alert or rapid reaction forces from the outer perimeter of the Stargate Defense Perimeter, not the most elite core main force.
Qin Bei Wang's command was concise and icy.
"Entire fleet, free fire. Clear the navigation route."
The next second, the Pluto Fleet demonstrated its suffocating multi-layered firepower projection capability.
Hatches on the broadsides and vertical launch units of each ship opened in unison. There was no sound, only silent flashes of cold light.
Thousands of medium multi-purpose missiles, like a disturbed swarm of bees, shot out from the warships, propelled by silver-blue plasma exhaust.
They formed a dense death meteor shower, blanketing the Imperial light ship group.
The missile swarm automatically submunitioned as it approached the target airspace.
The first wave to arrive released intense blue-white electromagnetic pulses from their warheads, detonating precisely on the fragile energy shields of the Imperial Escort Ships.
The pulse energy frantically eroded the shield generators. Those pale blue barriers flickered violently.
Like water struck by a stone, they instantly cracked, then completely collapsed and dissipated.
The moment the shields vanished, the following armor-piercing warheads ruthlessly drilled into the hulls through the breaches.
Muffled explosions echoed from within. Orange-red flames violently erupted from hatches and cracks, turning the hundreds-of-meters-long Escort Ships into briefly burning fireballs.
Amidst sympathetic detonations, their hull structures rapidly disintegrated, fractured, and turned into countless metal fragments mixed with internal debris.
Scattered by inertia, they became the first batch of space debris.
Before the Escort Ships' collapse was even complete, the railgun arrays on the broadsides of the Federation Fleet's Cruisers and Destroyers began their low, resonant charging hum.
There was no muzzle flash, only the faint ion trails left by tungsten alloy projectiles accelerated to extreme velocities tearing through the vacuum.
These sub-light speed metal projectiles were the nightmare of Destroyers and Cruisers.
They crossed distances of several light-seconds, slamming hard onto the target shields.
The relatively weak shields of the Destroyers merely rippled violently before shattering. The projectiles penetrated the hulls, tearing open massive gashes.
A projectile struck an engine room. Out-of-control fusion plasma surged out like a purple fountain of death, instantly tearing the vessel in two.
The primary shields of the Imperial Cruisers were sturdier, but they too could not withstand the sustained concentrated fire from multiple railguns.
Several projectiles struck the same spot consecutively. The shield flickered, shattered, and the projectiles embedded deep into the armor, blasting open charred, twisted craters.
Almost simultaneously with the shield collapse, the Stinger Heavy Laser Arrays fired.
Light-speed attacks. No delay.
Dozens of dazzling bright white beams erupted from the Federation Fleet's multi-barrel launchers, like the silver needles of death, precisely stabbing towards all Imperial warships with failed or severely damaged shields.
The focused energy burn of the high-energy lasers instantly melted and vaporized the warship armor, leaving behind glaring bright red molten scars.
Some beams directly pierced through the bridges of the Cruisers. Reinforced observation windows shattered, spilling internal lights and sparks from control consoles through the breaches.
The Cruisers, having lost their command hubs, immediately went out of control, drifting and spinning helplessly in the void, becoming lambs for the slaughter.
At this moment, within the Federation Fleet's formation, the giant main cannons of the flagship Kunlun Mountain - Modified and several main force Battleships had already condensed terrifying cyan-blue energy spheres, causing subtle distortions in the surrounding space.
The charging reached its peak.
Several massive Heavy Particle Beams, thick as Stellar Colossi, tore through the darkness, carrying an aura of absolute destruction as they shot directly towards the most conspicuous old-model Battleships within the Imperial Fleet!
The instant the beams made contact with the Primary Shields of the Imperial Battleships, the pale golden Energy Barriers erupted with blinding light, their energy readings plummeting like an avalanche.
The Particle Torrent continued to impact the same area. In mere seconds, the shields emitted a groan of overload, became covered in spiderweb-like cracks, and shattered with a thunderous crash!