The two events, from the explosion of the gravity bomb to the arrival of the Ghosts, happened almost simultaneously. Then, without the slightest hint of stopping, the Ghosts flew directly past Hawke's fleet and towards the rear of Hawke.
As if Hawke's fleet did not exist, the Ghosts did not show any interest in Hawke.
Through the Ghost Detector, Hawke saw that the Ghosts had rushed within the Lucan fleet within fractions of a second after leaving his own fleet.
Hawke saw a shocking sight, the light ink shield of one of the Lucca country class ships closest to the Ghosts suddenly glowed brightly and turned pure white, then the luminosity rapidly dimmed and eventually disappeared, and in that instant the ship stopped moving at all, just hovering silently in space, as if incapacitated.
Hawke watched the scene in awe and made a guess in his mind, "Perhaps, all the Lucasians inside this country class ship, are dead ..."
Hawke received a broadcast message from the Lucca fleet commander: "What the hell is going on here? All ships, gather around, shields to maximum power! Maximum! Damn mechanical civilization! What are you doing? Attack now! Attack!"
Faced with this incredible scene, Hawk sent a message with some trembling, "You'd all be better off dead at the hands of the Ghosts! I don't give a damn about you!"
"Don't you forget that the Ghosts are the mortal enemies of all technological civilisations, and after they kill me, they will deal with you next!" The Lucan fleet commander yelled.
Hawke did not doubt the truth of this message. But this Ghost Race that he was currently facing seemed to have some special relationship with the solar system, and so far it seemed that they had not shown aggression towards Hawke, so naturally Hawke would not take the initiative to provoke them. As for what the Lucca fleet commander said, Hawke pretended not to hear it.
"I am a mechanical civilization! The Phantoms will not lay a hand on me! Lucca civilization, you have a class 4 civilization's great killing weapon, I have high hopes for you, go deal with the Ghost Race yourselves!" After sending a message, Hawk immediately organised the ships that still had the ability to move and pulled away from the battlefield, running to a distance of about 20,000 kilometres, where he watched in silence.
Hawke did not choose to run away, because Hawke did not think that by relying on his own speed he could outrun the Ghosts who flew at the speed of light. In that case, it was better not to run and see what these Ghosts, who most likely had a deep connection with him, wanted to do.
Thousands of years after hearing the name of the Ghosts, Hawke saw the way they fought for the first time. The Ghosts were invisible in the visible wavelengths, and could only be spotted by ghost detectors, or Geiger counters. Hawke saw that the Ghosts, after approaching the Lucan fleet, scattered violently into thousands of individuals and lunged at different ships.
Each of the 60,000 Lucca ships had shields on the outside. These shields were of a dark green colour and stood out in the darkness of the universe.
Hawk saw a miraculous sight.
These 60,000 Lucca ships were like 60,000 light bulbs floating in the void of the universe, converging together to form an ocean of light that stretched for perhaps tens of thousands of kilometres. However, this ocean of light was going out from one direction at a speed visible to the naked eye. It was as if an invisible, dark cosmic hand had quietly covered them with a curtain.
Hawke detected an extremely strong gravity wave, and even though the eruption point was tens of thousands of kilometres away, Hawke's fleet was still being pulled forward a little.
"They're detonating gravity bombs inside the fleet." Hawke understood.
The moment a gravity bomb exploded, the acceleration of gravity in the vicinity of the blast point could even reach sublight speeds, and the area of influence could reach hundreds of kilometres in circumference. Hawke had accurately measured the power of a gravity bomb, which was roughly equivalent to the sudden appearance of a moon-mass star, but only the size of a ping-pong ball, at the point of explosion. This implies extremely strong tidal gravity.
Detonating a gravity bomb inside their own fleet means that they are in a complete panic. Based on a kill radius of a few hundred kilometres, this one gravity bomb would probably have damaged around two hundred Lucca ships.
But this one gravity bomb did not stop the frenzied attack of the Ghosts, and Hawke saw that the extinguishing of the Luca's shields did not slow down.
In just ten minutes, more than 10,000 ships in the Lucan fleet had already lost their energy shields, and they were suspended in space, incapacitated. The Lucanians inside, in the usual style of the Ghosts, were 80% dead.
"We agreed to fight together against the Ghosts, and halfway through you shanked me, and now you deserve to be in this situation." Hawke sneered, watching all this with a watching attitude.
Hawke received a message from Luca Two, whose voice seemed a little shaky, "Master, you, why are you not under attack from the Ghost Nation?"
Hawk grunted and said, "I am a mechanical civilisation, the Ghosts would naturally not be interested in me."
"You, how can you be a mechanical civilisation? Mechanical civilizations can't have an emotional intelligence like yours, they're just a bunch of cold programs ..." said Luca II.
"See, the Ghosts are on a killing spree of your people." Hawk didn't answer Luca Two's question.
"I saw it." Luca Two's expression was a little gloomy, "But Master, you have one more problem to consider. Even if the Ghosts don't come after you, the news that they have wiped out a Level 3 civilization fleet here will definitely not be concealed, in other words, some time after that, there will probably be a high-level civilization fleet coming over to probe, and with your speed, you won't get far."
Huo Ke's heart tightened, but then he was relieved: "Let's listen to God's fate, it's already a great luck to survive under the Ghosts, after that, we will take one step and see what happens."
Ahead, the Lucca fleet was in complete chaos. Over the radio waves, Hawke picked up the hoarse yell of the Luka fleet commander: "Hold formation! Stay in formation! Do not fire gravity bombs! The ships with the strongest shields, above the county level, go forward! All remaining ships attack with full force! Attack!"
But it didn't seem like any ships obeyed its orders. Hawk saw that there were countless search Lucca ships flying around in a panic, laser cannon blasts everywhere, energy shells exploding everywhere, and every now and then a gravity bomb flew out, each one emptying all matter for hundreds of kilometres around, no matter if it was an intact warship or the wreckage of ships flying around.
The Lucca fleet, had fallen into the most complete chaos.
Hawk saw that one of the Luca City ships seemed to be in a frenzy, wandering around in the middle of space like a ferocious beast, and a few smaller ships were too late to avoid it, and were even destroyed by this City ship. Not only that, but the hundreds of energy cannons on top of it were still blasting away with all their might, although they had no specific target, as if they were simply firing to vent their fear.
In the midst of the chaos, even Hawke's fleet was affected, with some stray bullets flying around that coincidentally reached Hawke and, with a violent explosion, blew up more than a dozen of Hawke's village-class ships. Hawke cried out and steered his fleet back another 30,000 kilometres.
It was only a matter of time before the Lucca fleet was extinguished. Hawk was secretly shocked at the battle prowess of the Ghost Race.
The way the Ghosts fought was very simple, they just swiftly pounced on the energy shield, taking only a few seconds to break it, then they rushed inside the ship, harvesting all the lives within a few seconds, and then left to start attacking the next target.
And after the attack, the ship with the broken shields, like the core of an abandoned apple, hovers alone in space, and no one cares about them anymore.
An hour had passed. Hawk saw that the number of Lucca ships that had lost their shields had reached more than 40,000. At this rate, it would only take another twenty minutes for the entire Lucca fleet to be wiped out.
Faced with this irresistible and powerful force, Hawk, along with the tens of thousands of Lucanians who had been captive to themselves, kept silent, only to secretly begin to worry about their future fate.
"Hahahahaha! I've already sent the coordinates back to the Guardian Alliance, and it will only take two months for the Guardian Alliance to send its own fleet to check this place out... damn the Ghosts, damn the mechanical civilisation, you won't get away with this! Blow yourselves up! Self-destruct!"
Hawke, who was silently observing, heard the cocky laughter of the Lucan fleet commander through the radio frequency. Then, Hawk saw a shocking scene.
The largest provincial ship in the Lucca fleet suddenly turned red, like a boiled prawn, and after a few seconds, the whole ship disintegrated with a loud bang, and a powerful energy beam erupted, destroying at least a few hundred other ships in its vicinity. Even Hawk was affected, with dozens of country and village class ships, destroyed by the fallout from the ship's explosion.
The self-destruction of this provincial ship, the flagship of the Lucca fleet, represented the destruction of the Lucca fleet.
After that, there were just under a thousand Lucca ships left, the largest, a City ship. It was not intact, its shields had taken an extremely severe hit in the fallout from the provincial ship's self-destruction, and its strength was estimated to be less than 30 per cent of its peak.
The Ghosts swooped swiftly towards the City ship. Half a minute later, the City ship's energy shields went out.