Seraphs of the Emperor’s Judgment

Chapter 147: The Fall of the *Farsight*

After annihilating the Greenskin resistance forces on the surface of Gachis, the detachment fleet was finally able to concentrate its strength to deal with the suddenly appearing Greenskin fleet.

The enemy in this naval battle was not in their intelligence reports, which somewhat surprised Soshyan.

Because prior to launching the expedition, the Excoriators Chapter had already conducted comprehensive reconnaissance on the Greenskins in the Vorenus System, marking their primary strongholds and fleets, and even charting the respective movement trajectory for each fleet.

Yet, this suddenly appearing fleet was not in the records.

Either this fleet was a fish that slipped through the net during the reconnaissance intervals.

Or, other Greenskin factions from outside the sector had involved themselves in this war.

Soshyan hoped it was the former.

Because if it were the latter, then it meant one thing—

The duration of this war would likely be much, much longer than expected.

But regardless of what happened later, the most important matter at hand was to swiftly rout and annihilate this group of Greenskins.The intensity of this space battle was not the slightest bit inferior to the previous one.

On the bridge of the Starfire, the massive tactical panel presented the battle situation clearly and chillingly before him.

The enemy fleet had already breached high orbit and was engaged in a slaughter with the escort fleet in low orbit. They were still trying to prevent humanity from landing on Gachis and had not realized in the slightest that the planet's surface had already been swept clean by blazing flames.

Those crude warships formed a jagged cone shape, with large numbers of fighters and heavily armored Cruisers wrapping the largest warships at the core.

In Soshyan's eyes, it was like a worm bearing venomous fangs constantly gnawing toward the center of a ripe fruit.

Ugly, yet effective.

In response, twenty-four Heavy Cruisers formed the spearhead of the detachment fleet. Their primary classes were Lunar-class and Gothic-class. Centered around the Avenger-class Grand Cruiser Divine Retribution, they formed a uniformly aligned, dense formation.

They drove straight over the wreckage of destroyed warships, their prows smeared with traces of raging flames and molten iron, swiftly aiming their muzzles at the Xenos fleet.

With just a single contact, the battle situation was swiftly pushed to extreme intensity.

Lasers, Macrocannons, and Plasma Cannons washed the surrounding void. Bombers and attack craft swarmed the damaged vessels like locusts, killing them with thousands of tiny explosions.

Viewed from afar, the opening of this battle was like flickering firelight scattered in the dark night.

But when magnified, the scene before them turned into swarms of faintly glowing debris dancing in classified pairs like fireflies. The brilliant flashes of explosions where they intersected were even more dazzling than distant stars.

However, the objectives of the two sides were different.

Humanity dedicated itself to annihilating the Greenskins' large warships, while the Greenskins fixed their sights on the Transport ships in low orbit, as well as the Astra Militarum embarked upon them.

The escort fleet, composed primarily of small warships, was shattered under the Greenskins' fierce offensive. Sword-class and Cobra-class Frigates entwined in blazing fire continuously retreated, attempting to distance themselves from the Greenskins' firepower.

The various Transport ships they escorted hobbled along, but were hit one after another, turning into fragmented wreckage after brief flashes, casting swathes of corpses into the icy void.

The faster Dauntless-class Light Cruisers shuttled back and forth, attempting to cover the large Transport ships in disengaging from the battlefield.

But the Greenskins' main fleet ignored the fleet that had been battered into fragments and continued to push forward.

Smaller warships bit into targets, and then the larger warships completed the kill.

Fierce, brutal, cold-blooded, and merciless.

Not long after the battle began, over fifty thousand Astra Militarum had died without seeing a single enemy or firing a single shot.

They died on the way to the Escape Pods, they died on the flight decks, they died in panic and unease.

Many of them had just escaped from a planet full of toxic gas, yet didn't even have time to rejoice over surviving a disaster.

Such a situation made Soshyan clench his fists tightly, but he didn't have a better solution either. The commander of the detachment fleet coldly wanted to preserve the safety of the large warships within the fleet and was unwilling to throw the fleet into a close-quarters melee to intercept the Greenskins.

He ordered the capital ships to bombard the enemy from a long distance, prioritizing concentrated fire to take out those large warships.

This was a cold exchange.

Using the lives of the Astra Militarum soldiers in exchange for the capital ships of the Greenskin fleet.

Soshyan even suspected whether the Greenskin fleet's appearance without any warning was due to certain people deliberately ignoring the alarms, just like some extremely patient yet cruel hunters using their own livestock to bait even more valuable beasts.

But he could only hide such speculations in his heart.

Because the only things he had on hand were one flagship and a Frigate, and this was out of the entire fortune of the Astral Knights—until the new fleet finished construction, they had absolutely no say in the void.

Even if they were Astartes.

Suddenly, Soshyan noticed a solitary warship blocking the Greenskin fleet's path of advance.

Looking up the organizational structure, Soshyan found that it was a Dauntless-class Light Cruiser named the Farsight. It had served in the Imperial Navy for over three hundred years.

With the passage of time, it had accumulated many honors and scars, but its performance gradually failed to keep up with the pace of new warships, so it could only be tossed into the Reserve Force, until it was incorporated into the escort fleet right before the war.

However, just like the name of its class implied, it was an indomitable, aging tough guy.

Even facing the sky-swallowing, earth-devouring Greenskin fleet, it still turned its bow and faced the enemy head-on, brilliantly filling the space between itself and the enemy with artillery fire.

While firing, it was also overloading its Engine, pushing its speed up to the absolute limit.

And its target was a Greenskin capital ship pieced together from various warship wreckage, its size approaching that of a Grand Cruiser.

That capital ship had already been battered into staggering by the distant human capital ships; its Void Shields continuously peeled off as it advanced amidst the firestorm, but it was still a long way from being destroyed.

The Farsight unleashed a volley of Lance Weapon beams. In an instant, the Greenskin capital ship's already severely overloaded shields could hold on no longer, completely collapsing amidst violent combustion.

Subsequently, a glowing gouge mark ran from its square prow all the way to its dorsal fin, peeling off large patches of armor plating.

The Farsight's good luck ended there.

Three Greenskin capital ships noticed it and fired at it simultaneously.

Various solid projectiles and energy beams exploded like boiling water bubbles on the Farsight's Void Shields. Subsequently, the entire shield collapsed, and artillery shells and rockets smashed into the aging warship's hull.

The Farsight began to flicker and tremble. Armor plating over a hundred meters long fell off, and Lance Weapon arrays plummeted from the hull, leaving a trailing cloud of metal fragments.

Even worse, fires raced through the compartments deep within the hull, suffocating the crew who didn't have time to evacuate.

Obviously, its fall was only a matter of a split second.

But the Farsight remained dauntless. Trailing a wake of debris behind it, it continued to approach the Greenskin capital ship while firing.

For a moment, it seemed capable of surviving a head-on clash with an entire fleet.

But then, a string of Plasma beams and lasers sliced its superstructure in half. Massive amounts of debris and crew were blown flying by the impact of secondary explosions at the wound—

"Cough, cough..."

A white-haired military officer stood upon the nearly shattered bridge of the Farsight, his face and chest soaked in fresh blood.

He turned and looked at the corpses littering the bridge. The old first mate, who had been diligent and responsible for decades, still had his hands tightly gripping the armrests of the control console when he died; the Tech-priest, who had followed him for many years, still strove to hang himself at his post despite half his body being torn open.

The Farsight was their home, and it would also be their grave.

The captain raised his head, gave an Aquila salute to a being that was not present, and then issued a simple order to the surviving crew.

"Overload the Warp Engines! We shall fulfill our duty to the utmost! Ram the enemy ship! For the Emperor!!!"

Riding its momentum, the Farsight used up its last ounce of strength and viciously rammed into the Greenskin capital ship that could no longer evade.

It struck right into the belly of that colossal monster, its prow like a long spear piercing through the behemoth's spine.

The Greenskin capital ship shuddered sluggishly as gases and fuel spewed from its hull.

Subsequently, the Farsight's severely overloaded Warp Engine erupted with a flash like a nova.

Accompanied by this nova-like eruption, massive amounts of debris were torn from the hull of the Greenskin capital ship, as if its internal organs had been dragged out.

They drifted and spun in their death throes, and then the wreckage of the two ships vanished with a boom right where they were amidst the contraction of the nova, sweeping several surrounding Greenskin warships into it as well.