Chapter 186: The Alliance Armada and the Quantum Payload

How many warships can the entire Wasteland Alliance field for maximum external intervention?

The answer is about two hundred thousand warships.

Of course, this refers to intervention forces, not the Alliance’s total military strength.

After all, you can’t expect every civilization to send off all their warships and leave nothing at home, right?

Not to mention, no civilization can guarantee that all their warships are always in perfect condition and ready to mobilize.

So, once you exclude the Ziyang Empire, the Xitoris Kingdom, and the already-destroyed Totran Kingdom, the Wasteland Alliance, even when fully mobilized, can only muster about 140,000 warships for external intervention.

Why did the number suddenly drop by sixty thousand?

Well, that’s because three secondary civilizations have been lost—one wiped out, two rebelled.

In fact, the Ziyang Empire just took out twenty-five thousand of them, leaving us with the 140,000 total.

But that’s only counting the secondary civilizations. The Alliance also includes a large number of primary civilizations.

Their warships lag way behind the secondary civilizations—in firepower, armor, even speed.

Still, you can’t just write them off.

They might only have basic railguns, slower projectiles and older tech, but those are still capable of damaging a secondary civilization’s warship.

If each civilization contributes a few hundred or a thousand ships, all the primary civilizations together can scrape together forty or fifty thousand vessels. That’ll make for plenty of cannon fodder.

In the end…

With the Alliance’s general mobilization order…

The secondary civilizations mustered 143,000 warships, and the primary civilizations managed 47,000 more, adding up to exactly 190,000 warships.

As for gathering the fleet and reaching the front lines, it’ll take about fifteen years.

But in reality, they’ll likely get there sooner, because…

Before they even arrive, Parlo and Tuoba’s fleets will definitely keep pushing forward, and as a result…

The Alliance fleet’s distance from the front lines will keep shrinking.

So, the timing for the final showdown could get brought forward to twelve years, eleven, maybe even ten…

None of that would be surprising.

——

After destroying twenty-five thousand Alliance warships,

the Ziyang Empire’s fleet swung into full conquest mode.

They split their forces and advanced rapidly on several fronts, capturing territory at breakneck speed since no one could mount any real resistance.

And just six months later,

a fresh batch of ten thousand Seawolf-class ships arrived. With nearly thirty thousand Seawolf-class ships now at his disposal, plus ten thousand older kingdom warships, Tuoba launched his own offensive.

Naturally, Lin Yu wouldn’t miss out on such a major battle scene.

There were still plenty of tactics he wanted to try out.

Sure, he could run endless simulations—either virtually or just in his own mind—but…

Even after ten thousand simulations, nothing beats real combat.

There are problems that only show up when the shooting starts.

This time, Lin Yu was ready to put new tactics to the test, using the improved quantum bombs that Earth had developed based on his last report and suggestions.

It was a new device designed specifically to attack interstellar currents.

Right now, a dozen or so Seawolf-class warships were dragging an asteroid nearly 300 meters across, steadily building up speed.

After a moment, they released their grip and the asteroid, moving at 280 kilometers per second, shot straight toward the interstellar current.

Ten minutes later…

The Xitoris Kingdom’s fleet set off, also entering the interstellar current in an orderly fashion.

A little over a month passed.

As alarms blared through every defending warship, the 300-meter asteroid, newly emerged from the interstellar current, was immediately detected.

But the defenders didn’t fire on it.

They simply calculated its trajectory and had every warship in its path move out of the way.

That was it.

After all…

It was just an asteroid, not one of those terrifying weapons the enemy had unleashed on other battlefields.

No sense wasting energy and ammo.

So the asteroid kept hurtling forward, smashing into the defense fleet’s formation 150,000 kilometers ahead about nine minutes later.

But every ship in its path had already cleared off, so it never did any damage.

However…

Before anyone could breathe a sigh of relief,

cracks began spiderwebbing across the asteroid’s surface and it started to break apart, as if the structure had suddenly collapsed, splitting into countless fragments.

At first glance, it didn’t look like much of a threat. But then…

A closer scan of the fragments revealed something odd.

Inside, it was all metal.

Each chunk that broke away turned out to be some sort of device with an unknown function.

As soon as the fleet commanders realized something was up, they ordered all asteroid fragments to be destroyed as fast as possible.

But…

It was already too late!

Those fragments—

or rather, the devices inside the asteroid—turned out to be a space-adapted version of an omnidirectional submunition bomb.

They were all spherical, about a meter across.

Each had a core ejection device surrounded by dozens of quantum bombs.

Once the core triggered, the quantum bombs would all launch in different directions at high speed.

Basically, the whole effect was like a deadly firework burst.

A thousand of these devices were packed inside the asteroid, totaling 38,000 quantum bombs.

And these were the big ones.

So, at that moment, all 38,000 hefty quantum bombs shot out at once.

Each bomb was guided by smart controls. They didn’t have propulsion to chase targets, but once ejected, their detonation time was intelligently managed.

Pretty much all of them could pick the best spot to go off.

About a minute later,

the bombs started detonating one after another, blowing up waves of warships.

Right then, the Xitoris Kingdom’s fleet finally broke through the interstellar current and arrived on the scene.

But the crews of the five lead warships—who thought they were headed to their deaths—

were left completely dumbstruck.

Strange, blazing blue bubbles appeared everywhere ahead of them, vanishing in less than a second.

Any enemy warship that touched one of these bubbles vanished instantly, as though it had never existed.

The entire defensive formation had collapsed into chaos. No one spared a thought for the five newcomers.

Instead, everyone scrambled to turn their ships around and run.

With so many quantum bombs flying around, the only thing on their minds was dodging whatever might explode nearby.

Anyone foolish enough not to run would be courting disaster.

Meanwhile, on the other side, with no one standing guard, more and more Seawolf-class warships poured out of the current.

The crews arriving out the current seemed just as stunned as those first five ships.

All they could do was stare in awe at the crumbling enemy formation.