Solomon took one look at the movement patterns of those fast-moving red dots and immediately judged that they were armor-piercing torpedoes.
Those torpedoes had almost completely sealed off every direction the Spear of Destiny could move in. It was obvious they had been lying in wait for a long time and had come fully prepared.
"Full speed ahead, straight forward! Ignore the torpedoes!"
After a quick glance at their distribution, Solomon gave an order that sounded utterly insane.
Because there were more than ten torpedoes directly ahead, coming straight at the bow.
"If you want to live, do exactly what I say!"
With his second roar, the Spear of Destiny charged forward almost suicidally, heading directly into the incoming torpedoes.
Gaia's pupils contracted. She could not imagine what Solomon was about to do.
"Swing the macro-cannon hard to port and fire as fast as possible! Port-side torpedoes, continuous salvo! Engines, starboard turn!"
With the thunder of cannon fire, the Spear of Destiny tilted sharply to starboard at a bizarre angle. Most of the torpedoes heading directly for the prow narrowly missed because of the ship's sudden, unexpected shift, and only two hit the front.
Boom!
A violent tremor ran through the ship. Although the ram at the prow blocked the torpedo strike, the impact still sent huge vibrations through the vessel, and many crew members were thrown bodily into the air.
Solomon would have gone flying too if Gaia's big hand had not caught him in time. Even so, his hat flew off somewhere into the distance.
Besides the two torpedoes that struck the bow, the Spear of Destiny was also hit along its flank.
Fortunately, the void shields that had been raised in advance could not stop the torpedoes outright, but they still absorbed part of the explosive energy.
Combined with the reinforced side armor of the Cobra-class destroyer, the Spear of Destiny suffered no truly serious damage.
That was thanks to Solomon's split-second decision. His seemingly suicidal maneuver had avoided most of the strike.
Once the first wave was dodged, the attackers revealed themselves.
Three Infidel-class raiders.
On the lead ship, the Darkstar pirates were cursing furiously:
"It's that destroyer! They're working with Black Shark! Our boarding brothers got wiped out on that transport because of those dishonorable bastards from Black Shark!"
This was an ambush unit prepared specifically for Black Shark.
As an old pirate group in this sector, the Darkstar pirates knew every inch of the region by heart. They were especially good at using the bizarre geography of the Warp to launch surprise attacks on passing ships.
When they had attacked House Hayek's transport, they had used a Warp vortex in that region to separate the escort vessels from the transport.
This graveyard of dead ships was another one of their favorite ambush sites.
After repeated exploration over the years, they had already mapped out many safe positions among the drifting wrecks.
Relying on that information advantage, they had no idea how many brand-new moving tombs they had added to this region.
Still, they were surprised right now.
Normally speaking, under that first torpedo barrage, an ordinary ship should have lost the ability to resist.
They had used that tactic to cripple no fewer than three light cruisers larger than their own ships.
Yet this destroyer had dodged most of the strike in a completely unexpected way.
The experienced pirates immediately realized that there was a formidable captain aboard that sleek, beautiful vessel.
That was bad. Since the enemy had macro-cannons, their ship's firepower was stronger than the pirates' to begin with, and the torpedo strike had failed to meaningfully weaken their void shields.
In void combat, the difference a captain could make had an enormous impact on the battle, especially when the other side also had superior firepower.
That meant there was only one way to make the most of their numerical advantage.
"No matter how you look at it, three against one means the advantage is ours."
"We surround them and board. Kill them all!"
The three Darkstar raiders quickly reached a consensus. While dodging incoming macro-cannon fire, they closed in from multiple directions.
Unfortunately, the boarders on the Hayek transport had never gotten the chance to tell anyone what had happened to them.
Otherwise, these pirates might have reconsidered boarding the Spear of Destiny just a little more carefully.
Under the coordination of the three raiders, they pushed through the incoming fire and successfully entered close-range entanglement with the Spear of Destiny.
Then a large number of assault craft filled with Darkstar pirates charged brutally toward what they saw as a helpless prey ship.
From behind the smoke created by melta-cutters, a pirate with a bloodthirsty grin burst out first.
Licking his lips, he showed a cruel smile.
"This is going to be a massacre..."
But when he led his men rushing toward the upper deck, he found that someone was already standing there on the only path leading to the bridge.
The figure looked at the wolf-like pirates coldly, a trace of mockery in those long, elegant features.
The contempt on that beautiful face instantly ignited fury in the boarding team leader's heart.
"I'm going to peel that face right off you!"
He roared and charged forward with his men, ready to tear apart this fool who did not know their place.
Then he saw the other person slowly draw a strangely shaped longsword from behind their back.
That was the last thing he saw before an icy chill flooded through him.
While the upper deck was descending into a one-sided slaughter, the lower decks also saw some pirates successfully board.
These were the ones who had offended someone higher up and could only fight over scraps.
"Damn it, the lower decks are the worst place for loot, and the killing isn't even fun. The pigs down here just squeal and run. Even when there are a few hard bones, they still aren't enough to make this entertaining."
One pirate was grumbling to his companion when, in the next instant, a precise las-shot blew his head apart.
The pirate next to him, suddenly splattered with blood and brain matter, blankly wiped at the mess on his face, not yet understanding what had just happened.
"You wretches have received the Emperor's grace, yet you turn your guns on your own kind. You have stained the light of His mercy. You are not fit to call yourselves human."
"Brave souls, for the Emperor, for your families, for everything you hold dear, charge with me!"
"Let us deliver the Emperor's punishment upon these scum!"
The pirates looked toward the source of the passionate speech and found a tall man in a commissar's coat and peaked cap, wrapped in bandages, leading a mass of lower-deck workers and sailors straight at them.
They were dumbfounded. Normally, the lower decks were the weakest point of resistance.
So why was this ship's lower deck even harder to crack than most upper decks they had fought on before?
They roared and tried to launch a desperate counterattack, but they had been far too confident. Too few of them had come down to the lower decks, and they were soon surrounded by a crowd dozens of times their number under Commissar Horne's thunderous battle cry.
Looking at the endless sea of people before him, the pirate leader forced out an awkward smile.
"Can we negotiate?"
The only answer he got was a loyal las-shot.
...
While the entire Spear of Destiny had dissolved into chaos, one figure followed the boarding party onto the destroyer.
He did not participate in the fighting, and no one noticed him at all.
Hidden in the shadows, he silently admired the three raiders still exchanging fire with the Spear of Destiny outside the hull, and his mouth split in a grotesque grin all the way to his ears.
As the flashes of fire burst across the void shields, his shadow was cast against the wall behind him.
A half-human silhouette with feathers and the head of a bird...
(End of Chapter)
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