And if the shields were weak enough, they shattered on the very first strike!!

The mechs quickly rushed toward the now unprotected hulls of the ships, which were desperately trying to keep them away from themselves.

While the captains and people within the ships tried to call for support from nearby vessels, the next thing they knew, the command bridge had been directly pierced by one of the mechs, killing everyone inside.

Another mech tore a massive hole straight through the ship itself, leaving behind a gigantic crater before taking off again alongside the others toward another target.

Like this, both the mech forces and the Star Fighter Corps started laying waste to the fleeing Hegemony fleet, which was unable to mount any proper defence at all!!

Missile after missile, torpedo after torpedo, were launched by the star fighters at point-blank range, followed up by heavy kinetic rounds fired by marksman mechs targeting the propulsion engines of the fleeing vessels!!

"INCOMINGGGGGGG!!" officers shouted throughout every vessel within the backlines of the Hegemony fleet!!

"Fuckkkk!! Pull all shield strength toward the back end right now, damn it!!" ordered the captains of the ships immediately, quickly judging the intentions of the humans.

"Divert all power toward the propulsion engines! We need to rush ahead no matter what!!" the captains continued shouting.

"But, Captain! If we do that, our weapon systems won’t have enough power to function! We won’t be able to attack the human star fighters and keep them away from us!!"

"It won’t matter!" the captains replied. "All we need to do is maintain distance from them and we are set! Do as I say!!"

"Yes..."

Unwillingly, the operators obeyed the orders and diverted most of the vessels’ power toward the propulsion engines and shields, which were now completely focused on protecting the rear ends of the ships.

BOOOOM!!BOOOOM!!BOOOOM!!

Explosion after explosion erupted as the shields constantly trembled under the stress of the incoming heavy fire!!

"Warning! Shield integrity down by 89 percent!!"

And before the captains or officers throughout the various hulls could even react, the last bit of shield integrity vanished and the barriers collapsed completely!!

Inside one of the star fighters, the pilot monitored as their attacks landed upon the Hegemony vessel’s shields, watching them ripple violently before collapsing not long after. He immediately urged his teammates.

"The enemy shields are down! Launch pulse cannons now!!"

And just like that, from more than a couple dozen star fighters, dense pulse cannon salvos opened up and fired forward. The attacks rushed in at the exact moment the shields fully collapsed and struck directly into the now completely exposed propulsion engines!!

Many vessels that had been attempting to accelerate by overloading their propulsion thrusters suddenly lost half of their stern structures, while others were completely obliterated under the combined salvos of the Star Fighter and Mech Corps, which severely damaged or outright hammered apart the propulsion systems until almost nothing was left!!

And after losing their thrust, the ships began to lose speed and fall behind the fleet, which continued rushing ahead without stopping at all.

Even when they all desperately cried out for rescue, what they received in return was only cold replies. And even those who wanted to step in and help were stopped by Pact’s words!!

"Keep moving ahead! We are almost there, almost there!! Don’t stop for damaged ships or rescue operations! Once we regroup with our reinforcements, we can take them back!!" Pact urged.

Hearing this, those who had thought of slowing down and letting those damaged ships board them were quickly discouraged. Many even looked toward their captains and pleaded desperately, but the captains rejected them as well.

"No, we can’t do that. The risk is too great. And as the Commander said, we will return not long after. If they can hold on, then that is their fate. If not... then not."

With that, he ordered the ship to push ahead at full speed and faced forward with a neutral expression, something many other captains and high-ranking officers did aboard their own ships as well.

But be that as it may, while the entire Hegemony fleet surged ahead without caring for anything else, gaps had already begun to form and their formation had fallen into complete disarray, with everyone now running only for their own lives without care for anything at all!!

This created numerous dangerous openings, which the 4th Battle Fleet welcomed with open hands.

As the mech forces and Star Fighter Corps surged ahead, they refused to let the Hegemony fleet gain any solid lead or distance from them at all. No matter what the Hegemony did, the humans remained on their tails and kept closing in once more.

A squadron of star fighters caught up with a battle carrier that had fallen slightly behind the rest of the Hegemony fleet. The star fighters dodged the point-defence weapon systems and swooped beneath the carrier, while two fighters on each port and starboard side moved tightly along the hull of the vessel, constantly avoiding incoming fire as they headed toward the side hangars.

At the same time, almost a dozen others neared the ventral hangars before quickly unloading an entire volley of pulse cannons and antimatter missiles almost simultaneously... before instantly blinking away using their medium-range instant sub-warp modules and reappearing far away from the ship.

The carrier exploded almost immediately in a violent chain reaction!! Fire erupted throughout the vessel as countless internal detonations spread across it. The stored munitions meant for the carrier’s own star fighters detonated one after another, tearing through the carrier’s core itself!!

And just like that, the carrier vanished within a massive sphere of explosions, even dragging some nearby smaller-class ships into the blast while damaging the shields of nearby frigates and destroyers that were barely holding on!!

The mechs following behind arrived there right on time and rushed straight through the spherical inferno before charging directly toward two frigates and one destroyer in one swift assault!!

Two mechs quickly used their pulse cannons to destroy what little remained of the frigates’ shields before landing atop the vessels near their bridges.

Without any hesitation, they drove their energy spears directly into the command bridges, melting through the hard and thick hull plating itself!!

The bridges instantly decompressed before the mechs tossed in antimatter grenades and leapt away a second before the antimatter detonated behind them!!

While another three mechs rushed toward a more heavily damaged cruiser whose hull was already in tatters, with many of its internal structures exposed. Together with the support of several star fighters, they unleashed continuous plasma fire directly toward the massive breach within the cruiser’s hull!!

The concentrated barrage caused clusters of explosions to erupt there within only a few salvos, eventually causing an entire starboard section of the cruiser to collapse inward!! The cruiser instantly lost power and began losing both thrust and speed!!

And like that, the battle had turned more into a chase between cats and mice, where the mice were being brutally hammered without any chance to fight back at all!!

As the Hegemony fleet continued moving ahead without stopping, more and more ships kept falling every minute, being destroyed one after another by the 4th Battle Fleet in relentless succession!! At one point, the distress calls reached such an overwhelming level that Pact had to mute and suppress all of them entirely.

And all this still had little relation to the true strength of the 4th Battle Fleet’s mech and Star Fighter Corps!! They were only getting started after all!

As their attacks intensified further while the fleet drew closer from the rear, every member of the 4th Battle Fleet inside their mechs or star fighters gave it their all in hopes of earning greater merit, causing a hundred times more despair to their opponents without the slightest care!!

The star fighters continued taking the lead with terrifyingly aggressive manoeuvres, weaving through debris, shattered wreckage, and inoperable vessels while targeting the shields and systems of other ships with their payloads!!

The mechs took full advantage of this and directly eliminated ships by taking out their command bridges from the very start before leaving behind antimatter grenades that completely destroyed the bridges, rendering the vessels inoperable while, in most cases, still leaving the ships themselves largely intact... for some reason.

Meanwhile, the fleet advancing from behind did not simply destroy these crippled ships. If one paid enough attention, they would notice shuttles followed by armies of combat bots boarding those vessels and starting bloody battles against the people trapped within those now inoperable ships!!

At the same time, several frigates connected hyperspace towing lines onto the captured vessels and began dragging them along behind the fleet.

And it was precisely this that slowed the main fleet from fully catching up to and completely laying waste to the Hegemony fleet, which by this point had already fallen into utter chaos. Thus, they were unable to fully take advantage of the situation because they were heavily occupied with salvage operations instead.