In front of the Imperial aircraft group, those Venom soared at incredible speeds, weaving around various formations and easily breaking through the defensive line formed by these fighters, heading straight for the Imperial flagship.
Naturally, the aircraft themselves understood that it was improbable to stop these Venom and did not pursue. Instead, they took advantage of the three enemy aircraft chasing the unknown Valkyrie to head directly towards the main Drukhari fleet.
These airships were composed of several Ravagers equipped with Storm Vortex Projectors, several Voidravens with strong firepower, and more than twenty Raiders for troop transport, accompanied by a dozen Reaver Jetbikes serving as escorts.
In theory, a Raider could carry about ten personnel, plus the Venom in front, which meant there should be around four hundred enemy troops altogether.
However, if their intention was just to raid slaves, they generally wouldn't keep those airships fully loaded to maintain speed or leave space for their captives. Some ships might even have only two or three Aeldari aboard, thereby reducing the actual enemies the fleet had to face by nearly half.
The approaching aircraft groups quickly appeared on their respective horizons.
Since the battle was taking place within atmospheric space, the curvature of the planet came into play—using a lasgun, for example, the farthest distance you could hit a target on a planet the size of Earth is about five thousand meters.
Because the planet is round, beyond this distance, human-shaped targets will be entirely below the horizon, blocked by the planet itself.
This brings up a counterintuitive situation: under the Imperium's technological level, solid ammunition weapons used in atmospheric combat can actually shoot further than beam weapons.
This is because the former can flexibly adjust the charge or the launching method to control the initial velocity, allowing the projectiles to arc around the curvature of the planet and strike enemies beyond the horizon.
Returning to the two sides, the planetary curvature also had an impact at high altitude. This eliminated the otherwise advantageous range capabilities that the Drukhari's technology provided, as both sides' beam weapons had ranges that far exceeded that curvature.
For practical engagements, the excess distance was meaningless; thus, it did not matter if one had a greater range than the other.
However, because of the pilots' own reaction speeds and the sensitivity of their weapon systems, the Drukhari still gained the advantage of firing first.
The first group to enter engagement range were the Valkyries. Each aircraft's avionics system was calculating and warning based on the direction indicated by the enemy's weapons, and the cockpits of the aircraft targeted by the enemy were flashing with shrill and urgent alarms.
Despite having long anticipated this disadvantage, the speed of the enemy's strikes was still beyond the pilots' imagination. The group barely had time to make preliminary maneuvers before beams from those airships' small Lances arrived in an instant.
Dozens of rays shot through the air, enveloping them in unbearable temperatures. At atmospheric combat distances, as long as the crosshairs were on the enemy at the moment of aiming, the attacks could not miss.
The so-called maneuvers only increased the difficulty of the enemies' targeting; they could not evade these lasers after they had been fired.
This resulted in the aircraft group, which had just begun to maneuver, suffering the full brunt of the attack. Under the guidance of the enemies' Target Array System, extremely deadly lasers struck the hulls of each aircraft, causing several Valkyries that had drawn concentrated fire to explode mid-air in fiery bursts and flying debris.
Most of the remaining fighters were heavily damaged, trailing flames and black smoke.
It was hard to imagine that these weren't even the enemy's specialized air combat vehicles.
Rockets? They wouldn't have hit them; Hellstrike Missiles? Those were anti-tank missiles.
After enduring a round of strikes, the pilots found that all they could rely on was that Multi-laser.
However, clearly, retreating was not the Imperial military's way.
Countless red lasers traced the incoming enemy fire paths in retaliation; the laser gun barrels rotated and blasted out beams at maximum power, weaving together a red net in an instant.
Yet the enemy was simply too agile. In contrast, what once was considered fast Valkyries now felt like clumsy fat men.
Those Drukhari airships, elegantly and efficiently maneuvering through the sky according to the direction of the enemy gun barrels, avoided wave after wave of enraged laser fire.
Of course, there were also some unfortunate ones who, in seeking the thrill of life and death, forgot their own fragility and got torn in half by red beams that they should have just barely missed.
These airships, which essentially had no armor, meant that getting hit by just one or two lasers could mean destroying the ship and killing everyone on board.
The exchange of fire continued, and the distance was further closing.
The Valkyrie fighters had already lost more than half, yet their inflicted losses on the enemy didn't even exceed five ships.
However, this didn't mean that their sacrifices were in vain.
Because the Thunderhawk Gunship and Archaeopter that had been shielded behind them had approached the enemy.
At the distances for air combat, even aided by optical targeting, it was difficult to differentiate between enemy aircraft with the naked eye.
The Thunderhawk Gunship and Archaeopter's camouflage could completely fool the various airships that weren't designed for aerial combat, causing their scanning systems to misidentify these aircraft as Valkyries.
Therefore, amidst the beams of Lances, the dozen or so aircraft silently and rapidly closed in on the enemy, surrounding friends exploding all around while still not showing any losses—finally reaching effective strike distance.
Breaking the silence first was the Smart Heavy Stubber mounted on the Archaeopter. Although there were only twelve of them, the storm of metal they wove made the Drukhari suddenly realize that something was amiss.
Those projectiles were too precise, even more accurate than the lasers.
When they directed their attention, they discovered further that the avionics on the airships could not effectively judge the attack trajectories of those red aircraft.
This was naturally the result of the Archaeopter actively controlling it.
The two Smart Heavy Stubbers on the front of the aircraft were aimed at different directions, constantly fine-tuning their barrel orientations, projectile charges, and types, even using the vibration from each recoil to make the trajectory of the next round even harder to predict.
Most of the time, even projectiles fired at the same airship were jointly released from various areas under the coordinated calculations of several Archaeopters. No matter how evasive they tried to be, they would inevitably collide with some of the projectiles.
As fragile vessels, these airships couldn't effectively defend against the projectiles from these Smart Heavy Stubbers, causing their losses to rise sharply.
And what was even more deadly wasn't just this.
The Thunderhawk Gunship, which seemed clumsy yet approached with unmatched speed, darted directly into the midst of the airship swarm.
The beams fired by the small Lances only managed to tear a small hole in its armor but couldn't inflict any effective harm at all.
This gunship was heading straight for the most ornate of the enemy vessels, which was precisely where the leaders of these Drukhari were located.
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