Chapter 517: The Gravitational's Counterattack! The Hybrid Antimatter Shell!
In the eyes of the Trisolaran civilization, Paul's decision to keep the Infinity-class carrier stationed on Earth happened to confirm their suspicions.
The Asian Fleet was nothing more than a pitiful sacrifice. If the goal were truly to intercept the droplets, then the Infinity-class carrier, which possessed a far higher level of technology, should have been sent instead.
Not left sitting idly like it was now.
By humanity's own strength alone, it was utterly impossible to defeat the droplets. That was why the Trisolarans became all the more certain: this Asian Fleet was merely a pawn to buy time. The Infinity-class carrier left on Earth was the true threat.
It wasn't only the commanders and soldiers of the Trisolaran fleet who thought this way—many within the Asian Fleet itself shared the same belief.
Otherwise, how could they explain why Paul had not gone to war alongside them? Why was the one and only Infinity-class carrier capable of destroying droplets absent from this mission?
The thousand-plus high-energy particle accelerators that had already been built on Earth were struggling desperately to break through the technological blockade of the sophons. Was their sacrifice meant only to buy time for some breakthrough? Did that even matter?
In such a short time, even if some kind of theoretical advancement was achieved, converting that into practical technological productivity was unrealistic.
The only reasonable guess was that Paul had another plan arranged. But to complete it, more time was needed.
The Asian Fleet's mission was to fight for that last bit of time—at any cost, to slow the droplets' advance.
Facing a foregone fate of sacrifice, Lin Yun, instead of despairing, appeared calm and composed, as if he too were hiding another plan of his own.
As for sacrificing the Asian Fleet—this was within the rights of a Wallfacer.
Two hundred years ago, Wallfacer Tyler had even attempted to use macronucleus fusion to attack humanity's own fleet, turning them into a quantum-ghost army.
A fleet of quantum ghosts, hovering between life and death, to resist the Trisolaran armada.
Though that plan ultimately failed, it still reflected a truth: when necessary, a Wallfacer could sacrifice anyone, even humanity's most precious spaceborne military forces.
Yet even as pawns doomed to be abandoned, most soldiers of the Asian Fleet still carried out their orders without hesitation.
They would never see the day truth burst free of the sophons' prison, nor the dawn of civilization rising once more. But their names would be etched in history for their heroic sacrifice.
Bearing this resolve of self-sacrifice, the Asian Fleet stood unyielding in the droplets' path forward.
If humanity could endure, their souls would accompany this civilization to the end of the universe.
"They're coming!"
Guan Yifan's eyes widened as he watched the nine droplets ignore the Asian Fleet's formation, plunging without hesitation into range of their warships.
At that instant, the Asian Fleet's supreme commander issued the order: "Open fire, all forces!"
In a flash, the fleet's seven hundred stellar-class warships, together with the satellite bases in Jupiter's orbit, unleashed a storm of firepower upon the droplets.
As the deluge of rounds poured in, the droplets assessed the situation instantly. Given humanity's current antimatter production, it was impossible for them to have manufactured so many antimatter penetrator shells in such a short time.
It simply didn't add up.
Therefore, these must be conventional electromagnetic slugs instead. Since high-energy laser beams would only be reflected off the droplets' perfectly smooth mirrored surface,
That left electromagnetic kinetic shells as the only viable option.
Though incapable of destroying the droplets, such weapons could indeed slow them down. This only reinforced the Trisolaran commanders' certainty that the Asian Fleet's purpose was to delay.
For the droplets, dodging would only waste time and play into humanity's ploy. Better to smash through head-on, letting the shells strike harmlessly against their strong-interaction material hulls.
After all, those weapons could not harm the droplets in the slightest.
Soon, the first shell struck true. Just as the soldiers expected another futile outcome, the shell was suddenly deflected away the instant it touched the droplet.
The droplet never altered its course, simply absorbing the impacts and hurtling past the formation. Through the barrage it pressed on, treating the hail of fire as if it didn't exist.
Seeing this, everyone's hearts sank. The droplets remained terrifyingly invincible, their fate no different from the United Fleet before them.
All their efforts were nothing more than futile struggle.
Witnessing the first shell bounce off the droplet, every soldier in the Asian Fleet felt grief surge within. As they braced themselves for a glorious death,
The comms channel suddenly resounded with Lin Yun's cry: "Keep firing! Don't stop! Every last shell, fire it all!"
Lin Yun didn't know what Paul's plan truly was. At this moment, the only thing he could do was interfere with the droplets as much as possible. Every second they could delay was worth it.
Seeing their commander so frenzied, so determined to fight to the death with the Trisolarans, the blood of the soldiers boiled. With defiant roars, they launched every electromagnetic weapon they had, unleashing all their firepower.
At once, the Asian Fleet, abandoning all maneuvers, abandoning all repositioning, created an overwhelming curtain of fire. A dense wall of steel engulfed the droplets' path.
Yet when the shells struck the droplets' strong-interaction hulls, it was like waves crashing against stone—utterly without effect.
Lin Yun knew his fleet's weapons couldn't harm the droplets. But he didn't care. The only purpose of the kinetic shells was to slam into the droplets with sheer momentum, disrupting their flight speed.
Even if a single shell delayed a droplet's arrival to Earth by half a second, it had value.
And in this moment, these martyrs of human civilization could make their contribution.
The droplets pressed forward, unmoved, like trains hurtling through a storm at sea, charging through the barrage with brute force. Empowered by the vacuum Valsex electric vortex fields, they ignored the momentum of most incoming shells.
Even when colliding with blocking warships, the droplets simply barreled through, carving holes five or six meters wide through stellar-class vessels.
Some ships, by luck, avoided fuel-core ruptures, sustaining only side-hull breaches—still reparable.
Others were less fortunate: struck directly in their fuel compartments, they exploded in violent nuclear blasts. Thankfully, the warships' wide spacing spared nearby vessels from destruction.
Yet the droplets weren't intentionally targeting these stellar-class ships. Their true destination was Earth. These obstacles mattered little.
Kinetic shells battering strong-interaction matter were nothing but eggs against stone, shattering themselves to pieces.
At that moment, one of the nine droplets veered straight toward the Gravity, the Asian Fleet's flagship—where Lin Yun himself was aboard.
The Gravity's shipborne weapons were useless against a droplet. Even attempting evasive maneuvers was too late. No matter how fast they moved, they could never outpace a droplet.
At this moment, every corner of the flagship Gravity was flashing with alarms. The piercing sirens, mixed with the blinding red lights, pounded like a muffled drum against everyone's heart.
The young Guan Yifan clenched his fists, desperately suppressing the fear inside him. He was only a fresh university graduate. Unlike these battle-hardened soldiers, she still lacked some measure of courage.
Even so, Guan Yifan still stiffened her neck, wearing the expression of a man ready to face death calmly.
As a scholar in the field of human astronomy, Guan Yifan could not operate electromagnetic cannons, nor did he have any extraordinary combat skills. The only thing she could do now was stand tall and meet the end of his life with composure.
Commander Lin Yun, however, looked remarkably calm, as if it were not the Universal Gravitation about to be destroyed by a droplet.
The soldiers on board kept roaring in rage, manning the electromagnetic rapid-fire cannons to sweep at the droplet.
"Go to hell, Trisolarans!!"
The dense storm of shells surged toward the droplet, only to be bounced back by its strong-interaction material. This droplet had already endured countless shells and cannon fire, yet still showed not the slightest trace of damage.
Even the toughest metal has a day when it weakens and breaks. But the droplet's indestructible body was so hard it drove people to despair. Its perfectly smooth surface not only repelled those kinetic shells—
It also repelled humanity's burning unwillingness. No matter how much humans cursed and roared, the droplet remained as calm and flawless as ever.
Lin Yun's jaw muscles tightened, his teeth unconsciously clenched. In front of Trisolaran civilization, humanity was so insignificant it had been humbled to the level of dust.
The more indifferent the droplet was, ignoring human attacks, the more it lashed at humanity's once-proud technology.
When the droplet closed into the right range, Lin Yun finally gave a new order, instructing his men to switch to another batch of shells. Then he silently raised his right hand and saluted Earth.
Yes—he had loaded a batch of anti-matter armor-piercing shells. Whether they could actually hit the agile droplet was still uncertain. If they missed, then this would be the last military salute of his life.
As the new batch of anti-matter penetrators was loaded, the droplet hurtling toward the Gravity suddenly exploded violently less than a hundred kilometers away.
When the sparks died out, the droplet had simply vanished into space.
That shot had hit the droplet.
Seeing the droplet vanish into thin air, Guan Yifan didn't react at first. His mind went blank, unable to process what had just happened.
Lin Yun let out a long breath of relief. The anti-matter shell, hidden among countless ordinary ones, had slipped through unnoticed. The droplet never realized the danger until the instant it was struck—by then, it was already too late.
For even the sharpest turn of a droplet could not be faster than the onset of matter-antimatter annihilation.
Witnessing this, the remaining eight droplets immediately executed emergency evasive maneuvers, dodging in panic from the Asian Fleet's concentrated fire.
Like startled birds, they no longer dared to barrel straight through under the fleet's firepower.
At last, Commander Lin Yun allowed himself a faint smile. He had finally managed to trick the Trisolarans.
"It worked," Lin Yun murmured.
This was the Asian Fleet's countermeasure.
In fact, ever since Fleet International learned at the Wallfacer conference that the sophons had been destroyed, those thousand-plus particle accelerators had secretly been refitted into anti-matter production facilities.
The accelerators had run day and night not to break through the technological blockade, but to produce as much anti-matter as possible, stockpiling it for this very battle.
Once rational, the Trisolarans—after learning some of humanity's emotional expressions—had also picked up the bad habit of arrogance.
They assumed, of course, that humanity could never produce enough anti-matter in such a short time to actually restrain or intercept droplets.
It was precisely because they believed humanity's anti-matter stores were critically insufficient that the Trisolaran fleet commander had ordered droplets to barrel forward through the shells, saving precious time.
In the old days, the Trisolarans would have destroyed these obstructive stellar-class warships first before moving on. Slower, perhaps—but leaving no loose ends.
Now the Trisolarans faced a simple problem: should they keep charging through the fire for speed, dodge the fire at the cost of efficiency, or first divert their time and effort to eliminate these seven hundred warships?
If they chose the first option, sooner or later a second droplet would be lost to an anti-matter shell.
If they dodged, the dense web of fire would seriously slow their advance.
And remember—those anti-matter penetrators were outwardly identical to ordinary electromagnetic shells. Faced with such an enormous set of variables, only a sophon could instantly distinguish which one was lethal.
But the sophons had already been destroyed by Universal Megacorp. Relying only on the droplet's onboard supercomputers, they could at best order evasive maneuvers; picking out the anti-matter rounds was far too difficult.
This blending of real and fake, of truth and deception, was a kind of strategic thinking the Trisolarans simply could not grasp. They only knew how to line up possible outcomes and choose the optimal solution.
When one droplet was destroyed before their eyes, the Trisolaran fleet commander felt a flash of fury. They were not emotionless machines—they could feel anger too.
Up to now, humanity had already used various stratagems to destroy two of their droplets. That was equivalent to wiping out the power of two of their space fleets.
At this rate, they would not reach Earth anytime soon.
The longer time dragged on, the more variables arose—and the worse it was for the Trisolarans.
Over two centuries, the Trisolarans had grown used to seeing everything through the sophons' eyes. Now suddenly blind, they truly found it hard to adjust.
How to act? How to plan? Without the sophons' information, the Trisolarans could not devise any brilliant counter-strategy.
All they could do was rely on the most primitive method: brute force to break through all resistance.
What they did not know was whether Universal Megacorp's power might already surpass their own.
The only entity that could have answered this question was the sophons. But the sophons could no longer answer anything at all.
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