Chapter 333: Into the Heart of the Fleet

After recalling several classic battles, Du Qiu began further probing the vessel’s database, hoping to uncover information on warships.

Perseverance pays off—he quickly discovered the classification of warships within the Dominant Civilization.

In the Dominant Civilization, warships are ranked from top to bottom as Space Fortresses, Flagships, Main Battle Ships, Cruisers, Frigates, and Transport Ships.

The fleet he was examining was a second-tier fleet led by a flagship, the most frequently deployed fleet category in the Dominant Civilization.

During the tens-of-thousands-of-years-long conflict between the Dominant Civilization and the Ge Ya Civilization, a first-tier fleet headed by a Space Fortress was deployed in only 28 battles.

Countless other battles were fought by second-tier fleets in pursuits, interdictions, annihilation, and sweep operations.

From this account, Du Qiu was stunned to realize that the Ge Ya Civilization was nearly crushed by the Dominant Civilization.

According to the vessel database, for more than 500 years this second-tier fleet had rarely engaged in major battles with the Ge Ya Civilization.

Ambushes like today’s by the Ge Ya fleet were routine for this second-tier fleet.

In other words, such ambushes were merely guerrilla raids by the Ge Ya, aimed at destroying a few Transport Ships or Frigates at best.

Du Qiu immediately recalled the vessel 4220253129 he had encountered earlier—it was clearly a Frigate, two levels below the current Main Battle Ship.

Knowing that this warship was a Main Battle Ship from a fifth- or sixth-tier civilization like the Dominant Civilization, he was even more eager to find more detailed information on it.

He rapidly combed through the data, and with the vessel’s computational power, he finally unearthed the basic details on this Main Battle Ship from a sea of records.

The information included schematics, weaponry and equipment details, maintenance manuals for each section, and more.

Du Qiu was ecstatic—armed with these details, he now had the perfect blueprint for designing his own warship.

Initially, he had planned to deploy several vessels to safeguard against enemy attacks, but once he realized that a Main Battle Ship was virtually impervious in today’s skirmish, he confidently decided to stay.

After all, he had already tweaked the vessel’s core, so there was no worry of it exposing his presence.

Had he deployed another vessel, its usual responsiveness might have led it to directly report to the Flagship unless engaged in combat.

So Du Qiu figured it best to keep a low profile here and thoroughly analyze the Main Battle Ship before taking further action.

With that in mind, he used the vessel’s whole-ship sensing system to check if the intelligent life aboard the Dominant Civilization’s warship resembled the humanoid models in the Custodian’s archive.

He began by scanning the ship’s command room, its cramped quarters almost making him doubt that it belonged to a Main Battle Ship.

What struck him most was the absence of any alien beings—instead, he saw two or three Soldier Units occupying a few seats.

A sense of foreboding rose as Du Qiu proceeded to inspect the weapon bays, engine rooms, navigation centers, and other compartments.

Throughout his survey, he encountered not a single live alien being; aside from the Soldier Unit robots, nothing moved.

Good heavens—could this civilization actually be a mechanized society composed entirely of artificial intelligence?

It now made sense why he had never seen any sentient aliens before; after all, the alien civilizations in Dreamland were worlds entirely driven by AI.

Du Qiu couldn’t help but recall the Pleiades Civilization, which apparently descended into chaos due to AI, causing the pioneers stationed on Earth to retreat back to their home planet, never to return.

He had long assumed that the Pleiades Civilization was extinct—if they were still advanced, they would have already reappeared on Earth.

Recalling the connection through the crystal cube between the Pleiades and Dreamland civilizations, Du Qiu was nearly convinced that the Dominant Civilization had evolved from that very rebellious AI.

Although he couldn’t fathom why the Dominant Civilization had migrated from the Pleiades to this corner of the universe, the fact that the Ge Ya had clashed with them for tens of thousands of years suggested that after an AI exterminated the Pleiades, it encountered the Ge Ya and sparked an endless conflict.

Thus, one could infer that the Ge Ya Civilization was indeed a civilization of sentient beings.

With that thought, Du Qiu used the ship’s external sensing system to scan the battlefield, curious to see what the Ge Ya warships looked like.

Soon, he observed that the Dominant Civilization’s second-tier fleet, centered around a Flagship, had formed a spherical defensive formation.

His own Main Battle Ship occupied the upper-right quadrant of the sphere, from where he could see that beyond the formation, roughly ten astronomical units away, 200 Main Battle Ships accompanied by 500 Cruisers were arrayed in a spearhead formation, locked in fierce combat against a fleet of over 300 warships.

Both sides raced across several astronomical units in a high-speed pursuit, the area illuminated by dazzling flashes and beset by unseen attacks.

The unseen strikes were evident—cruisers on the Dominant fleet sometimes exploded into brilliant, firework-like displays in the void.

Clearly, these explosions resulted from attacks by the Ge Ya warships, though Du Qiu’s sensors couldn’t fully decipher them.

Moreover, outside the defensive formation and near its lower edge, several Ge Ya warships were darting in, launching sudden attacks on ships within the formation.

Although the Dominant fleet consistently sent Main Battle Ships to intercept or repel these moves, some Transport Ships or Frigates within the formation still fell to the unseen strikes, erupting in fiery bursts.

Even though the Ge Ya warships were fewer than the second-tier fleet, they were roughly as large as the Main Battle Ships.

Their design was distinct from the rectangular warships of the Dominant fleet—they were all cigar-shaped.

While the overall battlefield gave the impression that the Ge Ya were on the offensive, in reality, the Dominant fleet maintained complete control.

After all, within the Dominant fleet’s defensive formation, 300 Main Battle Ships remained in reserve, not to mention several hundred Cruisers and Frigates.

Du Qiu deduced that the Dominant fleet was deliberately stalling the Ge Ya; with those 300 reserve Main Battle Ships launching a pincer attack, they could eventually annihilate the Ge Ya fleet.

For some reason, Du Qiu began to feel sympathy for the Ge Ya fleet.

He couldn’t fathom the true motive behind the Ge Ya’s assault on this second-tier fleet in the inter-civilizational war.

Fewer than 400 warships of Main Battle Ship caliber were simply no match for a fleet equipped with 500 Main Battle Ships plus thousands of Cruisers and Frigates.

Fighting with such odds would only result in needless loss of life.

At this point, the Ge Ya fleet had gradually distanced itself from the Dominant fleet’s defensive formation.

Suddenly, the Dominant fleet’s formation shifted—the remaining 300 Main Battle Ships burst from the formation, charging at high speed in one direction.

This maneuver included the vessel Du Qiu was aboard.

In an instant, Du Qiu’s sensors detected that the warship had entered superluminal flight!

Du Qiu was instantly exhilarated; indeed, an advanced civilization could achieve faster-than-light travel—otherwise, how could one traverse the endless void from one star system to another so swiftly?

Before long, the warship dropped out of superluminal mode. The sensors promptly relayed images, and Du Qiu couldn’t help but admire the flagship’s AI for its precise command.

At that moment, the Main Battle Ships were perfectly positioned to cut off the Ge Ya fleet’s retreat, and the ensuing battle erupted in a flurry of fireworks.

It was then that Du Qiu finally identified the nature of the attack launched by the Ge Ya warships through his sensor system.