Chapter 153: Orders for the Fleet’s Secret Operation

“This time the mechs and heavy orbital drop troopers will not participate. Absolutely no communication of any kind with the opposing side is allowed.”

As soon as the Sixth Fleet’s operations meeting began, groans echoed through the room.

After all, they’d finally gotten another chance to go to war and earn some military merit, but now…

Both the mechs and heavy infantry were banned from going into battle.

“Alright, enough with the whining. The mechs and heavy infantry units can’t guarantee zero casualties, and if anyone gets taken prisoner, it risks exposing the Federation’s involvement in this war.”

Watching Si Rong and the others exaggerate their reactions, Lin Yu could only shake his head.

“Let’s get to the assignments. The Ninth Sub-Fleet stays at Proxima, Seventh and Eighth guard Alpha Centauri, while the First through Sixth Fleets follow the Houyi and move through the current to Tianyuan IV.”

Before he even finished speaking, a few more groans filled the room.

Anyone could guess who it was without even looking.

It was the commanders of the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Sub-Fleets.

But there was no helping it. They couldn’t send the entire force and leave no one behind, right?

——

With the operations meeting over, the entire fleet got busy with preparations.

Everyone was rushing to get ready.

A long-range expedition called for a ton of work before departure.

But since Lin Yu always kept the Sixth Fleet on high alert, there wasn’t much left to do.

If they only needed to act within their own star system, they could launch at a moment’s notice.

Now, if anyone in this operation was the most excited…

It had to be the newly appointed captain of one of the Third Sub-Fleet’s Seawolf-class warships, Lin Feng.

And don’t get it twisted—this was the Federation’s own Seawolf-class general-purpose warship, not the export model.

Although they looked identical from the outside, in reality…

The difference was worlds apart.

First up, the armor. The Federation version used the same deflection armor as the Zhulong-class cruiser and the Houyi Warstar.

Of course, this deflection wasn’t for energy weapons but for kinetic damage.

To put it plainly, as long as the impact didn’t exceed the armor’s upper limit,

It could deflect over ninety percent of the damage.

And this so-called limit…

Not even a typical railgun shell could reach it—unless you hurled a massive asteroid or rammed the thing with a warship.

So, within the scope of a level-two civilization, the Federation’s deflection armor was basically next-level tech.

That’s because this type of civilization mainly used kinetic weapons like railguns.

And besides the armor, the weaponry was a whole other story.

Sure, both versions had identical numbers of railgun batteries and ion beam main guns, but…

The Federation’s railguns could fire shells thirty percent heavier and accelerate them fifty-seven percent faster than the export model.

When it comes to kinetic damage, mass and speed are everything.

With both stats ramped up, the difference is massive.

No further explanation needed.

As for the ion beam cannon main gun, the export version had an eighty-thousand kilometer range and a one-minute charge time.

The Federation’s version? A hundred and twenty thousand kilometers, and a thirty-second charge.

The guns themselves weren’t any different. The real gap was in the power supply.

Export models ran on the Federation’s sixth-generation controlled fusion. The Federation’s own ships used the eighth generation.

For a level-two civilization, controlled nuclear fusion was already top-tier power tech. But in the Desolate Star Region, most were stuck with the Federation’s third or fourth generation.

So, even with export Seawolf-class ships running on tech two generations behind, they were still overpowered for the region.

With the eighth-generation generator, the Federation’s version could power bigger guns with longer range and faster charge times.

Even if it lagged behind a Zero-Point Module, this latest tech still gave energy weapons a huge boost.

So, all in all, while the two versions looked the same on the outside…

Inside, the difference was at least a full generation apart.

At twenty-five, Lin Feng—still just a major—had only recently been assigned as a Seawolf-class warship captain.

Now, with a fresh foreign operation cropping up…

Anyone would be excited in his shoes.

Especially since he’d always admired Lin Yu, who had faced the Klein invasion just after adulthood and, in three short years, rose to the rank of Federation major general and fleet commander.

Lin Feng had never beaten Lin Yu in even a single mock battle, but he never thought he was any less capable than his father.

He just lacked real combat experience and rank—otherwise, he’d have kept up with Lin Yu’s pace back in the day.

At least, that’s how Lin Feng saw it.

So this deployment had him more excited than anyone else.

It was his shot to fix his weaknesses and catch up to Lin Yu!

——

Three days later.

Just as the fleet was fully prepped and ready to leave,

Lin Yu got a call from Lu Bo, telling him that Lin Yun had put in for a long vacation.

How long, exactly?

“Three years?”

“Yeah. She said she wants to visit Earth’s sphere and look around.”

“Earth’s sphere?”

Lin Yu froze.

Lin Yun was a total research fanatic—he’d even gotten headaches from how much she obsessed over her projects.

He’d always hoped she’d slow down, go out, and meet some friends.

Maybe even bring someone home someday.

But now, after she’d suddenly ditched research and vanished without even telling him, Lin Yu had a bad feeling about all this.

“Where is she now?”

“She’s already left Proxima, entered the current!”

“What happened?”

Lin Yu was stunned. From Lin Yun’s lab to the flow toward the Solar System took over a month.

So his daughter had taken off over a month ago, and no one noticed?

“My fault, really. I’ve been buried in a project and didn’t check on Lin Yun’s experiment. Only after I finished and went to see her progress did I realize she wasn’t in the lab. All she left was a scheduled leave request.”

“Alright, leave this to me. I’ll handle it!”

As soon as the call ended,

Lin Yu used his clearance to search every recent flight to Earth.

He quickly pinpointed Lin Yun’s location and, checking the surveillance feeds, confirmed she hadn’t been kidnapped.

But what puzzled him was why his daughter would drop everything to rush off to Earth’s sphere. She’d even hacked the admin system to give herself a fake ID to slip past both him and Mu Qingxue.

And now that her ship was already in the current, there was no way to intercept her.

With departure imminent…

He finally decided to let Mu Xingchen know about it.

Since she was headed for the Solar System, as long as Mu Xingchen was there…

Her safety wasn’t something to worry about.