Chapter 48: The Jupiter Breakthrough

“Report! The enemy fleet is launching raiding ships. Their numbers are rising fast!”

“Stick to the plan. Keep up the firepower and begin a slow retreat to sector A7.”

“Aye, Captain!”

“Meng Fei, shoot down every single one of those raiding ships heading our way!”

“Understood!”

During the Battle of Nyx—

Five hundred thousand kilometers was solidly Klein territory.

Human warships had no weapons suited for a fight at that range.

But now—

All 168 secondary guns on the Zhulong were ion cannons.

They could unleash a full barrage every seven seconds, and once they locked on, there was almost no way to dodge.

The distance between both sides was less than 500,000 kilometers this time.

From firing to impact, the ion cannons only took about a second. For a mid- or low-tier civilization at full speed, there was just no way to react in time.

To put it plainly—

You didn’t even have time to give an order, let alone carry out any complicated maneuvers.

Right now, Meng Fei’s fingers danced across the virtual interface, so quick you could practically see afterimages.

Outside the Zhulong, all 168 mid-caliber ion cannons—mounted as secondary guns—swiveled into position, each locking onto its own target.

The next instant—

A cascade of 168 ion beams lit up the void.

They streaked across space toward their separate targets.

In under two seconds, every shot hit home. Not a single one missed.

But these raiding ships—classic Klein craftsmanship—were just as resilient as their main warships, boasting high resistance to kinetic damage, heat, and energy penetration.

If Meng Fei hadn’t grouped four or five guns to focus fire on each target—

Not a single ship would’ve gone down in that first volley.

“First strike complete! Confirmed destruction of 27 enemy raiding ships, 49 damaged!”

“Keep going. Don’t stop firing until I give the word!”

“Aye, Captain!”

So far, so good!

Brimming with confidence, Meng Fei launched the second wave, then the third, and the fourth…

The Klein’s three attack columns—about 900 warships—dispatched roughly 1,500 raiding ships in total.

Of course, those ships were meant to hit the entire Federation fleet along the Jupiter defense line.

Only around a hundred or so ended up heading toward Lin Yu’s group of fifteen ships.

So about a hundred, maybe a bit more.

Back in the Battle of Nyx, even the entire Fourth Fleet had only intercepted a little over a hundred of these ships—

So honestly, that’s a pretty hefty number.

But thanks to the constant pounding from all 168 secondary guns on the Zhulong—

In less than a minute, every single small raiding ship charging the special operations unit had been blasted apart mid-route.

Now, Meng Fei re-targeted and started helping the surrounding fleets intercept their attackers.

The admirals aboard the Qiongxiao couldn’t help but sigh: if only the Klein had shown up a few years later and given humanity more time,

once the mass production of zero-point vacuum energy was solved, fighting the Klein wouldn’t be nearly this one-sided.

“Transmit to all fleets: in five minutes, move to phase two operations!”

“Yes, Supreme Commander!”

——

At this speed, raiding ships could cover five hundred thousand kilometers in under eight minutes.

In the first four hundred thousand kilometers, only the Zhulong could really do significant damage. And since there was only one Zhulong—

By the time the raiders reached eighty thousand kilometers, they’d only lost a little over five hundred ships.

That sounds like a lot, but compared to the 15,000 launched across all three attack columns, it’s a drop in the bucket.

But as they breached the eighty-thousand-kilometer mark—

The Federation’s other warships finally joined in. Their ion cannons could reach out from here, too.

Now, the battlefield flared even brighter than before.

Azure beams ripped across the void, cutting down ship after ship. Klein casualties spiked.

Down to the last ten thousand kilometers—

In just over a minute, more than three thousand raiding ships were taken out in that seventy-thousand-kilometer gauntlet.

Even with the Zhulong’s tally included, fewer than four thousand enemy ships had been destroyed.

Still a long way from making a real dent in their numbers.

On the human side—

They had no more time left to intercept!

For the first hundreds of thousands of kilometers, the raiding ships managed near a kilometer per second just by using their launch velocity,

without engines to save energy. Only in these last ten thousand kilometers did their true destructiveness come into play.

The Klein’s unique physiology let them withstand wild maneuvers at high speeds—making last-second course changes and charging full-bore once they had a lock.

Even so—

The Federation fleet didn’t pull back just yet.

They held their ground, still firing nonstop.

Every single phase of the Mars campaign was crucial. There wasn’t room for even the smallest error.

If so much as one phase fell apart, the entire operation could veer off course,

put simply—

Every step had to look believable, even if it meant some sacrifice.

Still, the Federation did everything possible to keep casualties down.

Over 1,500 ships from the Solar System Defense Command were assigned across each fleet for this phase.

When the Klein breachers hit the ten-thousand-kilometer line, about a third of the Federation ships on every front quietly shifted positions, slipping behind others for cover.

With range shrinking fast, every Federation warship brought its electromagnetic rapid-fire cannons into the fray.

The barrage was so dense it seemed to choke the very air.

Those guns barely scratched the raiding ships, but—

It was an awesome sight.

Like humanity’s final elegy.

Throwing everything they had, yet unable to halt the Klein.

Finally—

Half a minute later, the slowing raiding ships began slamming into Federation warships one after another.

That thick outer armor didn’t mean anything when pitted against raiders equipped with ram prows.

Dozens, sometimes over ten raiding ships would impale a single frontline warship,

so deeply embedded that only part of their hulls stuck out.

Then each raider disgorged over a dozen Klein warriors, spreading chaos across the ship.

But before they got far—

A Federation warship, its hull riddled with enemy raiders, exploded without warning, taking a hundred Klein boarders with it.

Soon, other ships began to follow suit.

In just two minutes,

over three hundred ships self-destructed.

At that moment—

The Federation flagship Qiongxiao broadcast the latest order to all fleets.

All ships were to pull back from the defenses in good order, then, as per command staff’s plan, slip around Jupiter to dodge the enemy’s main force!

Thus, the Battle for Jupiter officially entered phase two!