Meanwhile, aboard the Unyielding.
Horatio led his guard detail towards the nearest medical bay, knowing full well that this battle could drag on for who knew how long.
He needed to get some stimulants from a Medical Officer and attend to the minor aches and pains on his body.
As he walked, he looked out a porthole and saw another wave of the massive Space Marine Thunderhawk bombing squadrons launching.
These enormous, crimson war machines were first deployed at the end of the Great Crusade, as replacements for the Stormbird Gunship, the sixth variant of the Thunderhawk.
The diverse array of weapons carried by the Thunderhawk allowed this super bird, which traversed both void and atmosphere, to be armed to the teeth.
Horatio recalled from his previous readings that many Space Marines, upon their first flight, found her lighter and more fragile compared to the reliable Stormbird, and thus felt uncomfortable.
However, Horatio did not feel that way after his last ride, because even the most fragile of Astartes vehicles were more resilient than those of mere mortals.
Under similar impact conditions, a starhawk might immediately lose control and plummet into a heap of scrap metal.
But a Thunderhawk, even with a damaged engine, could often hold on, and even if it couldn't break through the atmosphere to return to the battleship, it could still manage to fly to a ground airfield.
Even if it unfortunately became a 40K 'Lao Da' and crashed, the excellent shock-absorbing suspension and armor plating would most likely preserve the lives of the two Space Marine pilots.
As a result, the Thunderhawk, with its cheap, powerful, and versatile characteristics, became increasingly widespread in its deployment, and by the end of the 41st millennium, it had become the iconic vehicle of the Space Marine air power.
Moreover, the enormous Thunderhawk guns were assisted by advanced machine souls for their electrical transmission, resulting in smooth operation and extremely fast rotation speeds.
Last time, the Blood Angels used a Thunderhawk to bring Horatio back.
The enthusiastic Blood Angels gunner even let Horatio sit in and experience it, taking him to an area densely littered with derelict ship wreckage, where, under the guidance of the Blood Angels gunner, Horatio used the powerful Thunderhawk guns to destroy many wrecks as if target practicing.
Some of the derelict shipwrecks even concealed one or two Death Guard Plague Marines, and after the wrecks were shattered by the Thunderhawk guns, observers saw their bloated corpses floating in the void.
Although the systems carried by the Thunderhawks were complex, they were robust and reliable, and all were controlled by M33 'Cygnus'-class machine souls.
Utilizing aetheric, phlogiston feed coils, purification shields, and pseudo-synaptic relays, the 'Cygnus' was capable of a cognitive speed of 40,000 co/s and a maximum thinking capacity of 10,000 brains, even comparable to the powerful machine souls of The Despoiler Titans.
Three Thunderhawk squadrons dove down from a higher void plane, and with the assistance of their machine souls and the extraordinary precision control of the two Astartes pilots, the Blood Angels' Thunderhawks, like hellish dive-bombers descending from the heavens, deftly evaded incoming point-defense lasers and shells.
The Thunderhawk guns above roared, bombarding the gun decks of the Murder-class Cruiser. A salvo from 18 Thunderhawk guns instantly destroyed three broadside gun emplacements, along with the Evil Cultists crew inside, blasting them into void foam.
As these soaring falcons rapidly approached the ship's spine and bridge sections, the Astartes bomb operator pressed the release switch.
Six plasma bombs from beneath the wings whistled out, tearing and melting a long section of armor on the ship's spine.
The pilots immediately pulled up the nose, charging towards the enemy ship's bridge.
They disregarded the intercepting gunfire from the bridge; one Thunderhawk from the first squadron was unfortunately shot down, crashing onto the lower bridge and igniting a raging fire.
However, the crew inside, protected by their tough armor, did not perish; instead, the lightly wounded Blood Angels crewmen jumped out of the Thunderhawk Gunship that had crashed into the lower bridge, raised their Chainswords and boltguns, and immediately transformed into a strike team, commencing a bloody slaughter and retaliation.
The sudden and inexplicable appearance of the Astartes stunned the traitorous officers on the bridge, who were cut into chunks of flesh by the charging crew-monks before they could even call for reinforcements.
Other crews continued their combat missions.
'Target Lock: Mid-Bridge'
'Lock Complete'
'Hymn of Wrath Activated'
Melta missiles mounted on both wingtips sped forward, 30 melta missiles leaving dense trails in the void, striking directly at the bridge.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Successive massive explosions caused the skull-studded outer structure of the bridge's top to teeter, countless giant alien monster skeletons and fangs shattering and collapsing from above, crashing onto the hull below, causing another round of collapse that crushed many damage control crewmen heading to the bridge to extinguish fires, blocking the subsequent path.
After firing all their anti-ship weapons, the three Thunderhawk squadrons elegantly departed, with their top-mounted combat guns swiveling backward, continuously inflicting explosive damage on the enemy ship's hull as they left.
[A perfect void bombing.] Horatio couldn't help but applaud the Blood Angels' bombing squadron.
A nascent idea formed and sprouted in his mind: the Imperial Navy did not place much emphasis on the use of aircraft carriers, primarily because carriers would affect a battleship's gunnery prowess.
But if numerous inexpensive small warships were used as escort carriers, integrated into the rear fleet, wouldn't that allow the vanguard, main, and rear fleets to all be utilized?
After all, naval warfare in the 41st millennium universe, from every aspect and dimension, resembled a broadside exchange between sailing warships.
However, as long as a certain number of carriers were assembled, they could still perform well, even playing a crucial role in the entire naval battle.
But Horatio quickly sighed, for the resistance to proving this tactical idea was simply too great.
Although the Imperial Navy was considered a relatively tolerant branch of the military within the Imperium regarding new ideas, it was notoriously conservative and rigid when it came to tactical innovation.
The rationale of the Navy Department high command was simple and direct: We don't have enough production capacity, there's a shortage of warships everywhere, and we have more reserve personnel than ships require. Where would we get so many resources for carriers? We might as well build more classic, reliable, and tough Brightmoon-class Cruisers instead.
Furthermore, the use of carrier-based aircraft was generally considered by the Imperial Navy high command to be an ineffective and dishonorable engagement tactic.
It was precisely this prejudice that led to Imperial Naval Aviators generally not being taken seriously, a lack of research into the application of aircraft, fleets lacking carriers, fighter aircraft unable to be concentrated, individual air squadrons being reduced to one-time suicide bombers... and so on and so forth.
All these circumstances led to the lives of naval aviators in combat being almost calculated by the hour, effectively becoming like the Void IG (Astra Militarum), with an average lifespan of only 15 hours.
Horatio could understand the thinking of the Navy high command: caliber was the sharp sword determining victory in naval battles, and capital ships with large guns were the cornerstone of the Imperial Navy.
Most naval generals also disapproved of main battleships trying to be everything, like the Obelron-class battlecruiser, which wanted everything but excelled at nothing.
They believed that a battlecruiser should properly fulfill its duty of engaging in a battle line, and if it couldn't do that, it wasn't a good battlecruiser.
While Horatio didn't entirely agree, releasing carrier-based aircraft to seize air superiority and entrusting that task to dedicated light carriers, thereby freeing up the battleship's flight deck, was indeed a good option.
Moreover, the Imperial Star Sea was vast, and the deterrence range that a light escort carrier could cover was even broader compared to a warship with only onboard weapons, its range potentially doubling, effectively curbing pirates and protecting transport routes.
A seed of experimental conception was planted in Horatio's mind.
However, the road to exploring a suitable path remained long and arduous.
From hull selection, construction difficulty, squadron size, tactics, and changes to existing cruising modes, there were many areas that needed further refinement.
Many details still needed to be polished through the actual conditions of various Imperial sectors and the practice of future void battles.