Xie Zhixing's voice continued, calm and clear.
"Find your own targets. Pick the isolated ones, those on the edges of the formation, or those turning."
"Break off immediately after striking. No prolonged engagement."
"Circle around and come back."
"Understood?"
Seven crisp responses echoed through the channel.
"Understood!"
Two Swift fighters traced two smooth arcs through the void, diving straight toward the lower axis of the Tiger-class Heavy Cruiser.
Ma Xiaoyuan stared intently at the leviathan growing ever larger ahead.
Only up close could its true form be seen.
This was not a ship, but a moving steel fortress.
Its nearly kilometer-long hull was pitch black, with only the twin-linked main cannon at the bow gleaming with a cold metallic luster.
That was the Tiger-class's signature weapon.
The Starbreaker Superheavy Nuclear Railgun.
Ma Xiaoyuan had seen its specifications in the pre-battle intelligence.
800-centimeter caliber, depleted uranium armor-piercing shells. A single shot could blast a five-kilometer diameter hole in the armor of a warship of the same class.
If that thing targeted a fighter craft...
He dared not think further.
Xie Zhixing's voice sounded in his headset, carrying its usual calm.
"Watch out for the medium ion scattering cannons on its underside."
Ma Xiaoyuan shifted his gaze from the main cannon to the ship's bottom.
There, several uniquely shaped turrets were slowly rotating.
Their muzzles, unlike the smooth barrels of ordinary laser cannons, were covered in rings of electrodes.
That was the mark of ionization weapons.
Xie Zhixing continued.
"Our fighter's multi-layered composite armor has an anti-ionization buffer layer."
He paused, his tone turning serious.
"But that's meant to withstand one or two hits."
"If you pass through strongly positively charged ion clusters multiple times, the buffer layer will be eroded."
"Once eroded, the next shot will fry your circuitry directly."
Ma Xiaoyuan took a deep breath.
"Received."
The two fighters continued their dive.
Distance to the cruiser: 500,000 kilometers.
300,000.
150,000.
80,000.
The Tiger-class had clearly detected them.
The densely packed sensor arrays covering its hull could not possibly miss two small, high-speed approaching targets.
Almost simultaneously, its close-in defense systems activated.
The rapid-fire pulse laser cannons on the broadside opened fire first.
Those turrets swept the void with frantic, 800-times-per-second barrages, weaving dense fire nets of azure laser beams.
Beams intersected, overlapped, and entangled, forming shifting bands of light.
Like countless glowing tentacles flailing wildly around the warship.
Next, the laser cannons on the lower axis joined in.
Positioned lower, with more treacherous firing arcs, their sweeping laser beams surged upward from below, attempting to seal off all approach angles for the two fighters.
Ma Xiaoyuan's vision was filled with light.
Laser beams streaked past his viewport, some so close he could see the energy fluctuations at their edges.
Alarms screamed wildly in the cockpit, red warning lights flashing blindingly.
But his speed did not decrease.
180,000 kilometers per second.
This was the Swift fighter's maximum speed, their only reliance at this moment.
The fire nets woven by those laser beams seemed impenetrable, but against a speed of 180,000 kilometers per second.
They were too slow.
Ma Xiaoyuan gripped the control lever, his eyes fixed on the shifting band of light ahead.
The trajectories of the laser beams reflected in his pupils as his mind raced to calculate their next points of impact.
In three seconds, that band of light would shift twenty thousand meters to the left.
He nudged the control lever slightly, and the fighter craft tilted a minuscule angle to the left.
The light band swept past, fifty meters to his right.
Another beam arced up from below. He gently pressed the lever, and the fighter dipped slightly, letting the beam skim past its belly.
Not far ahead, Xie Zhixing was doing the same.
That Stinger moved like a darting fish, weaving nimbly through the dense net of lasers.
Its movements were more seasoned, more composed than Ma Xiaoyuan's.
Sometimes it even seemed to taunt the laser cannons, waiting until the last possible second before a beam would hit, then shifting just enough to let it graze the very tip of a wing.
A soft chuckle came through the headset.
"See that? Their fire net is all for show."
He paused.
"No matter how high the frequency, they still have to catch us first."
Ma Xiaoyuan didn't reply.
All his focus was on those constantly shifting bands of light.
And on the ion cannons that still hadn't fired.
Those things didn't glow.
No glow meant—
You never knew when they would fire.
He stared at the gun muzzles of those ion cannons, his palm sweating slightly around the control lever.
Xie Zhixing's voice came again, this time with a hint of seriousness.
"Prepare to cut into the lower axis."
"The ion cannons are probably coming."
Ma Xiaoyuan took a deep breath.
"Received."
Eight Medium Ion Scattering Cannons roared simultaneously.
A blue curtain of ionized light surged outward from the lower axis of the Tiger-class Cruiser like a tidal wave.
This wasn't a beam—it was a dense, wide-area spray of ion clusters, almost indistinguishable from one another.
Each cluster carried a powerful positive charge, enough to paralyze any fighter craft's electronic systems in an instant.
The light curtain blotted out the sky.
No blind spots.
Xie Zhixing watched the approaching blue sea of light, his pupils contracting slightly.
Then the corner of his mouth lifted.
"Now."
His voice over the communication channel was calm, as if he weren't being targeted by eight ion cannons at once.
"Chick, follow me."
As the words fell, the Stinger moved.
The fighter's Attitude Control Thrusters emitted short bursts of blue flame, and the Vector Engine's nozzles pivoted at an impossible angle.
The entire craft twisted sharply in mid-air like a startled bird.
Banking.
Ninety degrees.
The thrusters continued adjusting, each movement precise to the millisecond-level.
The fighter traced an erratic path through the Void.
A route composed of countless tiny, unpredictable zigzags.
Blue ion clusters brushed past its sides.
Some as close as a dozen meters.
But none struck home.
Ma Xiaoyuan followed behind, every movement of that fighter reflected in his pupils.
Gritting his teeth, he pushed the control lever, trying to replicate Xie Zhixing's maneuver.
The fighter's attitude thrusters fired frantically, the engine's vector nozzles constantly shifting.
His body was pressed into the seat by the overload, his pressure suit inflating wildly to resist the force threatening to crush him.
His fighter also banked.
Also twisted.
And also slipped through the Gaps in that blue sea of light.
But he knew his movements were far more rigid than Xie Zhixing's.
Far from it.
Xie Zhixing's voice sounded again, carrying a hint of amusement.
"Not bad, you kept up."
Then his tone shifted.
"Now!"
"It's our turn."
The two fighter craft simultaneously passed through the final gap in the ion cluster, colliding head-on with the web of light woven by the Rapid-fire Pulse Interceptor Cannons.