Horatio's command of the port side, with its superb gunnery, quickly tore open the rebellious Dreadnought-class Light Cruiser's Void Shield.
While closely coordinating the entire gun crew, he observed every detail of the enemy ship's movements, contemplating potential enemy tactics and his possible countermeasures in his mind.
He squinted, judging from the ship's trajectory captured by the peripheral cameras, that this Dreadnought-class Light Cruiser must have fallen due to a mutiny of corrupted crew members.
Because her sailing operations were not smooth, sometimes even exhibiting yawing and swaying, as if several factions were at odds, each insisting on their own views.
He was the only Midshipman who perceived the enemy ship's anomaly, a fact even many junior Lieutenants failed to notice.
And Horatio's judgment was correct.
The command bridge of this rebellious ship, adorned with corpses and skulls, was now filled with endless quarrels.
Rather than a command bridge, it was more like a Lower Hive black market.
Crew members with blasphemous symbols painted on their faces accused each other of their operations, slandering the commands of members from other clans.
Deceived by the Evil Gods, they had, in their bloodthirsty mutiny, almost slaughtered all the Naval Officers on the bridge.
A small number who were imprisoned and tortured still refused to cooperate with them, and were executed or tortured to death one after another.
There were no Chaos Astartes above to serve as a spiritual pillar of leadership; it was all fallen mortals.
These crew members, none of whom submitted to another, found it impossible to form a unified, coordinated command chain, and they disliked each other.
In the eyes of those clan leaders, what others said was wrong, and only what they said was right.
As a result, although this Dreadnought-class Light Cruiser participated in the battle, its combat efficiency was even worse than some heretical attack ships.
At least the commanders on those attack ships were once Void Pirates or slave owners, far more professional than this makeshift crew.
With this judgment, Horatio changed his mind.
He ordered the gun crew to change their target from the bridge to first dismantling its gun decks to reduce the threat to surrounding frigates.
Then, they would target the engine power system, completely paralyzing the entire ship, maximizing the recoverable parts of the rebellious vessel.
Since the enemy ship's command was already so chaotic, keeping the command bridge would bring more negative effects to the enemy ship than destroying it.
Under the fierce broadside firepower of the Unyielding, two out of six of the Dreadnought-class Light Cruiser's light Macro cannon arrays quickly went silent.
The design philosophy of the Dreadnought-class Light Cruiser was inherited from Ancient Terra light cruisers, serving as the flagship of reconnaissance fleets.
At the same time, she played the role of a hunter of smaller vessels such as destroyers and frigates.
She was equipped with a light rapid-fire Macro cannon array of smaller caliber but faster firing rate, with as many as six guns.
The immense thrust from her ten engine nozzles allowed this slender and graceful light cruiser to perform excellent maneuvers like a frigate.
Her surging power allowed her to easily catch up with enemy destroyers at maximum acceleration.
Her spacious hull, 4.5 kilometers long and about 0.5 kilometers wide at the fins, extremely nimble handling, and high speed made her very popular in the Imperial Navy and enduring.
She was recognized by Captains as the most comfortable warship for escort and hunting missions, without equal.
However, line-of-battle gun duels were her weakness.
As a reconnaissance cruiser, she could never engage in a one-on-one duel with a true cruiser like the Doomsday-class, let alone being a model without torpedoes.
Her light Macro cannon, the same size as those on frigates, felt like a mere tickle to the Unyielding.
Although their firing rate was fast, they could only penetrate the shallow decks of the Unyielding.
Several shells struck the Macro cannon shields commanded by Horatio, blasting out some fragments, and although the deck of the command platform occasionally vibrated annoyingly, it never effectively penetrated.
As Horatio's shout to fire was relayed to the two massive gun launch decks.
The enormous shells fired by the Mars IV Macro cannon, with their massive caliber, could cause more than three times the damage of light Macro cannon.
In just a blink of an eye, the golden explosion directly tore open one of the Macro cannon emplacements on the Dreadnought-class Light Cruiser.
The rebellious ship was riddled with scars, and only two light Macro cannon on the side engaging the Unyielding barely clung to life.
The Unyielding's Lance weapons caused severe damage to her inner side, and a large area of the midship deck collapsed, crushing many people.
The morale of this warship, piloted by fallen Sailors, was completely lost; even though the command bridge was still shouting to turn to one side and continue engaging the Unyielding to satisfy the Scarlet True God they served.
But the people of the steering clan did not think so; their clan members picked up their guns, not allowing anyone near the helm. The fallen clan leader began to turn the ship around, intending to escape.
At the same time, the Imperial Navy's Endurance-class and Diligent Class light cruisers entered the line of fire.
They fired a broadside at the fleeing rebels, creating explosions on the relatively intact side of the hull.
Although both were light cruisers, these new type of ships produced by Forge World Worth adopted a completely different design philosophy from the dreadnought-class.
The Diligent Class was a Macro cannon ship, the Endurance-class was a Lance Cannon ship, and the Provocation-class Light Cruisers was an escort carrier.
The three warships each had their specific roles and specialized functions.
As light cruisers, they only had a speed similar to the Moonsilver-class, making them unsuitable for hunting smaller vessels.
Precisely because of this, their battlefield role was that of heavy escorts for cruisers; both had similar speeds, and their armaments were standard cruiser weaponry.
The Macro cannon was the newer Voss V Macro cannon.
Its caliber was similar to the Mars IV Heavy Macro cannon, but its range was not as far as the Mars IV.
However, its higher and faster production capacity compensated for this drawback strategically and logistically.
Seeing the Dreadnought-class Light Cruiser, with its morale collapsed, attempting to disengage and escape, Captain Peru made a decisive decision.
"Dispatch Imperial Navy Boarding Team immediately to execute a boarding strike! We must stop her no matter what!"
"Aye, Captain!" reported the Captain of Arms in the armed command operations room below the command bridge to the Captain.
There are three types of personnel in the Imperial Navy:
Imperial Navy Boarding Team, who enjoy first-class Sailor treatment. Voidsmen-at-Arms, who enjoy second-class Sailor treatment. And ordinary Sailors, who enjoy third-class Sailor treatment.
The duty of Voidsmen-at-Arms is to defend the warship itself, while boarding enemy ships is the job of the Imperial Navy Boarding Team.
The Unyielding's armed command operations room dispatched a Lieutenant of Arms to lead and execute this mission.
He wore not a Naval Officer uniform, but a heavy carapace armor for officers.
A red belt would be tied around his waist, like the Astra Militarum, as an identification of his officer status.
Amidst the drumming, 2500 heavily armored Imperial Navy Boarding Team members stood ready, queuing neatly on the boat deck.
Accompanied by drumbeats and alarms, they boarded rows of neatly moored and waiting Shark Assault Boats.
The Dreadnought-class Light Cruiser initiated a plasma engine overload, and Horatio saw the dazzling golden light in the distance rapidly retreating.
At this speed, she would soon be out of the Unyielding's extreme boarding angle.
And her Void Shield was about to rise, making it difficult to teleport personnel with a lightning strike in such a short time.
To intercept her, they could only rely on Horatio and the efforts of the other gun crews now.
"Double normal ammunition loaded!"
Hot sweat streamed down Horatio's cheeks.
[There's only one chance to stop her!]
At this moment, the thinker array began to frequently flash error messages again.
"Yes, this broken machine just had this situation, and it got better after you came back, but now…"
Horatio stared at the error messages on the thinker array's display screen.
As a professional Naval Officer from the Naval Academy, he understood all the meanings of these error codes.
"It's void junk code, not caused by a virus, it's array disorder (disorder)." Horatio said calmly.
"Then what do we do…"
"Normally, we can only ask a Tech-Priest to handle it."
Horatio looked at the enemy ship attempting to pull away.
"But we don't have time now."
Curved, slender neural tendrils extended from his iron hand, reaching into the tendril slot on the thinker array, which was inlaid with the skull gear of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Horatio explored in the dark vision, and in this state, the flow of time seemed to stand still.
"Damn it…" He cleared the source of the junk code, seeing a bizarre '9' flashing in the binary code that should have contained only '0's and '1's.
Because of this, the thinker array's built-in correction checksum popped up errors and junk code.
Because it simply could not process parameters containing '9' in binary.
Generally speaking, Tzeentch likes to create big problems for warring parties; as long as the combatants are not Tzeentch followers, He will equally set traps for them.
The Khorne warship on the other side also encountered the same situation, or even worse.
Their thinker array began to leak electricity, causing many technical Sailors who understood a small part of gunnery calculations to be electrocuted on the spot and convulse.
'Activate: machine soul Favor'
Horatio broke through the service protocol that only Tech-Priests had the authority to activate and manipulate.
The 'insane' machine soul gradually calmed down, and Horatio performed a restart on her.
The junk code disappeared, and the bizarre blue-purple glowing number '9' in the binary calculator vanished without a trace.
"Alright, correct the parameters!" Horatio said to Farida.
"Parameter correction complete, ready to fire!"
"Fire!!" Horatio, who had precisely calibrated the two Macro cannon with Farida, shouted into the command audio array.