Hollow Shell Airship

If we talk about the combat power of a single ship, under the same tonnage, Hawke's ship could not beat the other side. However, under Hawke's superior control and with excellent teamwork, the gap in this respect was greatly narrowed, resulting in the opponent's superior firepower and the help of primary energy weapons, but only a disastrous victory in the battle with Hawke.

In fact, even the laser cannon falls within the scope of energy weapons in the broad sense, but the other side's energy weapons have already surpassed the laser cannon and belong to the real sense of energy weapons.

It is well known that photons have no rest mass, so they can reach the speed of light, but at the same time, because they have no rest mass, their lethality is severely limited.

The laser cannon only relies on high temperature burning as a means of killing, it is only suitable for precise strikes and not for facing large volume targets.

According to Hawke's speculation, the energy weapon of this alien civilization was not a pure energy beam like that of a laser, but some kind of special material that carried a large amount of unstable energy in a very small mass of this kind of material, and because of its extremely small mass, it could be accelerated to a speed of up to 90,000 kilometres per second, and because of the large amount of energy carried on it, while having a high speed, it also had a powerful killing power.

In current warfare situations, this type of energy weapon is undoubtedly the most suitable and perfect. Kinetic weapons, laser weapons and even nuclear bombs can be defended against by strong armour, but energy weapons, until shield technology is developed, cannot even be thought of.

Judging from the fact that only the largest flagship was equipped with energy weapons, Hawk could be sure that this type of weapon was only in the preliminary stage of research, otherwise, they would have already equipped all their ships with such weapons, and at that point, Hawk had no choice but to wait for death.

The initial energy weapon was so powerful that Hawke had made up his mind to kill the other side's flagship. Even to snipe off the opponent's flagship, Hawke could pay the price of a county-class ship.

"With my strength at a disadvantage, how should I snipe out the opponent's flagship which is under heavy protection?" Hawke began to ponder this question and began to manipulate the central computer to make a lot of calculations.

"The only feasible way is to concentrate the superior firepower in the area and hit it with all our might to wipe it out. But how do we create a superior firepower in the area when the overall firepower is at a disadvantage? Hey, what a struggle." Hawke sighed and deduced.

Three days later.

"Perhaps, this method can be tried." Hawke thought and began the intense preparations.

Repairing the damaged ship took up ten days of Hawke's time, and within that time, Hawke carried out another task in addition to repairing the warship.

That was to build a large number of empty hulls. A hollow hulled ship is one that has only a shell, a simple computing module and a simple power module. This kind of ship has no function except that it looks exactly like a village ship, has no attack power, carries no ammunition, and has extremely weak defence power.

Hawke had built over a hundred of these empty-shell airships. Because it was only a shell, this kind of airship consumed very limited raw materials. In fact, if it wasn't for the size, if there were more, it wouldn't fit, Hawke would even want to build a thousand of them.

After all the preparations were done, Hawke loaded all these empty shells into the Voyager and led the fleet, heading back towards the outer planets.

"It's time for a second battle." Hawke thought, "Time for the sniper flagship program, too."

Hawke's movement was immediately answered as hundreds of ships took off either from the outer planets or from the docks in planet-synchronous orbit and killed their way towards Hawke.

At a distance of several hundred thousand kilometres from the other side, the flagship Sun, and the Voyager, loaded with a large number of empty hulled ships, stopped with one hundred and seventy village- and country-class ships as a rearguard, and the remaining four hundred or so ships were all thrown into the fray by Hawke.

The other side, on the other hand, had committed more than two hundred and sixty ships, including, among others, the largest one, the flagship, and a warship equivalent to Hawke's county-class ship, the remaining one, Hawke guessed, was left on the planet for defense.

This phenomenon gave Hawke a faint worry. But the plan had proceeded so far that it was no longer possible to abandon it.

It was still the same old routine, Hawke fired giant flash bombs, high speed bullets, micro missiles and micro satellites in succession, acquiring a net of heaven and earth in the middle of the battlefield.

But this time the other side seemed to be experienced, the torrent of bullets and micro missiles did not cause much damage to the other side, and they had a total of twenty ships destroyed by Hawke. Hawke's side, on the other hand, lost six village-class ships in the first wave of the encounter.

The two sides quickly fell into a tangle, with violent fire bursts blooming through space from time to time, each spark representing the complete destruction of a ship.

On Hawke's side, the largest ship was the Sky Court. On the other side, the flagship was equipped with preliminary energy weapons. Compared to the other flagship, the Sky Court was a notch below the other flagship in terms of size and tonnage and firepower.

The opponent's flagship was a formidable force in the battlefield, and almost every shot from its energy cannons could take out one of Hawke's village-class ships, but fortunately each shot took a long time to prepare so that Hawke's fleet did not collapse.

Hawke watched all this in silence, silently calculating the time.

"Almost there, sniper flagship plan, let's begin."

Hawke gave the order to depart.

Immediately, from among the escorting ships, another hundred or so ships were detached, led by the Voyager in a formation, and began to move in another direction.

This direction was the direction of that alien planet.

There was no mistake, a move passed down from the ancient Chinese art of war.

After splitting off some of his ships to attack the other planet, only about fifty of Hawk's escort ships remained. If the other side launched a surprise attack at this time, all it would take was one more prefect ship, plus a hundred smaller ships, to have an eighty percent chance of wiping out Hawk.

But since Hawke dared to take such a risk, he naturally had his own reasons. The thousands of micro-satellites scattered in space would provide Hawke with plenty of warning time, and if there was a real accident, Hawke could naturally handle it.

Hawke knew that his actions were definitely being closely monitored by the other side. But that was what Hawke wanted. If the other side ignored Hawke, there would be no way for Hawke's plan to proceed.

The planet, which was about five million kilometres away from Hawke. With the ship's mechanical power, it could reach its destination in about three hours or so. And at this distance, the communication delay between Hawke and these ships would also reach a terrifying ten seconds or so. In other words, these ships, even if they reached their destination, would be essentially combat ineffective. The communication delay would be so long that these ships would be easily taken out.

But that was not Hawke's intention, so naturally he did not care if these ships were offensive or not.

Hawke had made an estimate, and that was about the enemy civilisation's space combat power.

Firstly, at the beginning, the other side refused to choose space warfare, instead using the planets as a base to fight Hawke.

Secondly, when Hawke forced the other side to engage in space warfare, the number of ships they sent, was more than 500. When the battle with Hawke entered a stalemate, they did not send new reinforcements.

What did this mean?

Hawk thought that these five hundred ships were probably the majority, or even up to eighty to ninety percent, of the other side's space force.

In other words, there were probably less than a hundred ships left on the opposing planet, and when they faced Hawke's fleet, they would have to rely on these less than a hundred ships, and their orbital weapons, to meet the battle.

But don't forget, this battlefield will be in near earth orbit, Hawke still has nukes, and, Hawke has prepared some special gifts for them ...

The so-called attacking the enemy's must save, until after Hawke took out the surprise prepared for them, Hawke is sure that the other side will draw forces from the frontal battlefield, back to reinforce.

And how much strength would be drawn away? Hawke did a lot of calculations and thought that the other side would pull out the ship that was equivalent to the county level, as well as some of the smaller ships, and its flagship class ships would stay here. For only in this way could they continue to ensure superiority on the frontal battlefield, and at the same time, they would have sufficient strength to face Hawke's assault fleet.

This was the most logical and safest tactic, and there was no reason for them not to choose this option.

"Hopefully, everything is as I deduced it would be." Hawke thought silently, nervously watching the other side's movements.

Faced with this formation of starfighters heading straight for the other planet, there was little reaction from the enemy ships in the middle of the frontal battlefield.

More than an hour had passed, and the battle was at a fever pitch in the frontal battlefield.

"Well, I guess the other side thought that with the prefect ship left on the planet and the various weapons arranged in orbit, it would be enough to stop my fleet ... In that case, I'll give you a surprise."

Hawk gave an order. As this order was given, immediately, the hatch of the Voyager opened, and one by one, the village-class ships flew out! There were as many as a hundred of them!

They were empty shells, they had no combat power, but ... the enemy didn't know that!

Hawke was curious to know how they would feel after finding out that they suddenly had over a hundred more ships, with the total strength of their fleet reaching two hundred ships.

According to the strength that Hawk had shown in the past, two hundred or so ships were already enough to press against a hundred or so alien ships, after all, there was no that flagship here, no energy cannon here. This was their home base again, so a return to help, should be inevitable!

Hawke sensed a succession of enemy ships making mistakes in the middle of the frontal battlefield, and Hawke took the opportunity to take out five ships.

"Shocking, isn't it? Can't figure it out? Then get back to help, you fools!" Hawke shouted in disgust.