Four hours later, a small leviathan from the Swarm arrived near a gas giant on the outskirts of the system.
Aside from the home planet, this was likely the most heavily defended place in the system.
In its entirety, it appeared as a rectangular base forty-two kilometers long and five kilometers wide.
Massive numbers of electromagnetic cannons lined both sides of the base. Aside from eight giant main cannons, the rest were relatively small in caliber. Though they numbered in the tens of thousands, the velocity of the shells they fired was likely less than thirty kilometers per second.
Evidently, these weapons had been built long ago, perhaps shortly after the civilization first left their home planet. Their purpose was clearly to defend against extraterrestrial threats.
For a planet-bound civilization, building even one of these cannons would require a massive investment of resources, and the technology involved would be leagues ahead of anything else.
But for an interstellar civilization that had mastered hyperspace, continuing to use such outdated technology was truly somewhat inexcusable.
However, it was understandable. After leaving their home planet, the Sausage People civilization had only encountered two primitive civilizations that had ventured into space around the same time. Relying on these weapons, they had secured an overwhelming advantage.
Furthermore, a speed of thirty kilometers per second was indeed not slow, and considering the cost factors, they felt these weapons were still useful enough to keep.
Faced with these weapons, the Swarm's solution was simple. While the enemy's shields were not yet activated, they launched an antimatter missile.
Boom—
After a burst of blinding light, the view was instantly obscured by a sphere of radiance.
Once the shockwave dissipated, ten thousand bugs were dropped.
According to the brain bug's calculations, this number was sufficient to completely seize the spaceport. The Sausage People had stationed very little defensive force here, and their ground combat capabilities were even worse than those of the Dulu they had encountered before. Meanwhile, the current Swarm was far stronger than it had been then.
On the ground of the spaceport, a large number of Sausage People had barely begun to react.
The explosion had nearly destroyed a fraction of the base.
The base commander rushed to the command tower and looked out through the glass on the side, taking in the scene outside.
There was a massive crater from the explosion.
With the crater as the center, nearly ten kilometers of the surrounding area had been completely destroyed, and even further out, the landscape had been ravaged by the shockwave.
The missile the Swarm had dropped was of low yield, as it wasn't intended for total destruction, which was why the scene didn't look too gruesome.
But in the eyes of the Sausage People, the sight was still far too shocking.
To achieve this with hydrogen bombs, it would likely take a yield of billions of tons, as many of the alloys used in this spaceport were of extremely high strength.
“The enemy is above us! Activate base defenses and attack!”
Instruments revealed that the Swarm's fleet was within two thousand kilometers—this was far too close.
Four thousand electromagnetic cannons on the outer side of the base activated simultaneously. Metal projectiles with an initial velocity of thirty kilometers per second left the muzzles, flying toward deep space at speeds the biological eye could not possibly track.
This included the three giant main cannons.
As the shells drew closer to their target, the Swarm fleet suddenly vanished after a ripple of distortion.
All that remained in space were hundreds of drop pods, flying downward.
...
An hour later, a second base encountered the same event.
Another hour passed, and the Swarm arrived above the Sausage People's home planet. Densely packed drop pods, looking like tadpoles, swarmed toward the largest aviation base on the planet's surface.
To capture this port intact, Xia Jin deployed one million bugs.
Among them, a small number of modified zerglings had their interiors completely replaced with hydrogen bombs. Their purpose was simple: if they encountered resistance from force field shields during the attack, they would charge in and detonate.
As millions of bugs fell via tens of thousands of drop pods, the ground defense base was clearly prepared to respond.
However, the Swarm was not so easily dealt with.
An even greater number of scourges, acting like space rockets, trailed long streaks of fire as they dove downward at speeds of over a hundred kilometers per second.
Boom, boom, boom—
Intense flashes of light continuously erupted above the base.
Each flash represented a scourge intercepting an incoming electromagnetic shell or detonating against the outer force field shield.
Generally, the scourges that made contact with the surface of the force field shield contained small hydrogen bombs, capable of producing yields in the tens of thousands of tons.
It might not seem like much, but Xia Jin had dropped millions of scourges. This quantity was enough to exceed the base's load capacity and destroy all its outer defenses.
This precisely calculated offensive was designed to preserve the majority of the base's resources, allowing the Swarm to consume it in its entirety later.
Thus, although the scale of the Swarm deployed in the short term was larger than what would be needed to simply vaporize the target with a single shot, the final yield would be many times greater.
...
Boom, boom, boom!
Explosions were happening everywhere.
The Sausage People station manager frantically issued orders while sending signals down to the surface.
The entire home planet of the Sausage People had fallen into a state of panic.
Although the Swarm had not yet begun attacking the ground, the battle in space was clearly visible to individuals on the surface in real-time. Not to mention, many people had space telescopes in their homes, allowing them to witness the battle in space as it happened.
“Quick, contact the combat units! Arm everyone and prepare for battle! The enemy is about to land!”
Seeing the scourges blanketing the sky and bombarding the force field shields, the station manager knew they were in trouble.
Never mind the scourges in front; those spheres behind them likely contained the landing forces.
At this moment, the Swarm's massive fleet was almost entirely visible to the Sausage People. They had never seen such terrifying creatures.
If the Sausage People were delicious little cuties, then those things in space were demons that had crawled out of hell.
Small pods continuously flew out from the pockmarked surfaces of the Zerg ships.
Although the individual pods were not small, they seemed insignificant compared to the structures that spanned over eight hundred meters.
The most terrifying part was that those Zerg ships did not look like traditional spacecraft at all; they looked like some kind of horrific biological entities.
The electromagnetic cannon defenses were practically useless, as the fired shells were almost all intercepted.
As tens of thousands of impacts occurred, emergency alarms began to sound within the ship.
“Warning: Force field shield is operating at overload. Activating backup functional devices.”
“Reactor Cluster No. 2 activated.”
“Backup force field shield generator activated...”
The AI's reaction speed was fast, but its limits were being pushed time and time again.
The large screen now monitored various areas of the space station. The station manager discovered that hundreds of thousands of troops had already armed themselves and were heading to their stations.
But looking at the enemy deployment numbers calculated by the AI, he knew that this small amount was far from enough.
“How can there be so many?”
The scale of the Swarm's deployment clearly exceeded the capacity of their fleet.
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