Humanity Is Gone, but I Have Billions of Clones

The armor on these combat ships seemed to be made from some highly advanced material, and was exceptionally sturdy.

Despite being bombarded by a hail of projectiles for three straight days and taking multiple hits, not a single ship was destroyed. At worst, their surfaces were left pitted and scarred, with some external equipment destroyed.

The most heavily damaged combat ship seemed to have had its Thrust Device destroyed, losing all mobility.

The results weren’t spectacular, but they were still enough to satisfy Li Qingsong.

After all, Li Qingsong never expected the torrent of bullets to pose a serious threat to the ships. Heavily damaging one and leaving the rest with varying degrees of minor damage was a pleasant surprise.

He had something else in mind for dealing with these Warships.

By now, the three-day bombardment had concluded. The entire surface of Enemy God Star had been practically scoured clean; not a single man-made structure remained visible.

At that moment, the true Mercury-class Warships were finally ready.

Previously, he hadn’t dared to deploy them for fear of the enemy noticing something unusual. But now that he had shown his hand, there was no longer any need for such caution.

And so, the 500 Mercury-class Warships and 50 of the largest freighters simultaneously began accelerating at maximum power.

Methane and oxygen burned furiously inside the combustion chambers, constantly generating high-temperature, high-pressure gas.

Tightly confined within the combustion chambers, the gases couldn’t expand, so they were compressed and ejected from the engine nozzles in an explosive burst. This provided the ships with immense reactive thrust, propelling them into a rapid acceleration.

In a short time, the ships accelerated from their initial speed of just 1 kilometer per second to their current 11 kilometers per second!

After that, the ships’ engines shut down, and they entered an inertial cruise.

For the remainder of their journey, the ships would only make minor course corrections at most.

It wasn’t that Li Qingsong didn’t want to accelerate to higher speeds; he simply couldn’t.

After all, he didn’t have High-speed Ion Propulsion technology or secondary-stage booster technology, so he had to rely solely on chemical propellants.

Chemical propellants were consumed in vast quantities. If he accelerated any further, he’d run out of fuel, even with the freighters carrying extra.

But it didn’t matter. Even at this speed, it would only take a little over a month to cross the vast distance of over 40 million kilometers and reach the battlefield.

This time, Li Qingsong once again chose not to go to the battlefield himself.

This meant he would still have to contend with a command delay of over four minutes while controlling the Warships. This would inevitably cause the 500 Warships to underperform, drastically reducing their combat effectiveness.

But that was fine. Li Qingsong had a plan.

Besides, this first wave of 500 Warships was not the full extent of his forces for this war.

Remaining at the main base, Li Qingsong, who experienced almost no communication delay there, still controlled a total of some 900,000 Clones, putting them to work on another task.

They were to work at full capacity manufacturing more Mercury-class Warships, and producing more machine gun bullets, Machine Gun shells, fuel, consumables, and Interstellar Missiles!

On the very same day the 500 Mercury-class Warships departed, the first batch of subsequent supplies was already manufactured.

That was ten million machine gun bullets, ten thousand Machine Gun shells, and large quantities of methane, pure oxygen, Interstellar Missiles, and more.

The supplies were packed into ten large containers. A freighter then carried them out, accelerated to the appropriate velocity, established the correct trajectory, and simply released them into space to coast toward Enemy God Star on their own.

The freighter then returned for the second batch of supplies and repeated the process, jettisoning them into space as well.

After three days of this, the first rush-ordered batch of new Mercury-class Warships was complete.

There were five in all. After resupplying at the space base, they too embarked on the journey to Enemy God Star.

And so, a constant stream of supplies—bullets and Warships, shells and fuel—flowed unceasingly from Ceres toward Enemy God Star.

At this point, it was still a little over a month until the first 500 Mercury-class Warships would reach the battlefield.

The surviving enemy mothership and Warships once again found themselves facing a dilemma.

’Our base has been destroyed, and we’ve lost nearly all our logistical support. Meanwhile, the enemy’s Warships, though technologically inferior, are arriving in a constant stream.’

’So, what do we do?’

’Do we try to repair the base and restore our supply lines, or... do we abandon that, head for their planet, and destroy their base first?’

’The most logical choice would be to destroy their base.’

’But... that torrent of bullets they used to destroy our base could just as easily be used for defense.’

’How could our Warships possibly withstand that overwhelming, non-stop barrage of fire from the planet’s surface?’

’That leaves only one option.’

’We have to rely on the superior performance of our ships to fend off the enemy’s relentless attacks, buying time to repair the base and restore our supply lines!’

’And this time, we have to remember to build the base underground!’

’Once our supply lines are restored, it won’t matter how many of their pathetic Warships they send!’

And given the technological gap between the two sides, achieving this seemed highly probable.

So, the several dozen enemy Warships remained at Enemy God Star. Under the watchful eye of Li Qingsong’s spy satellites, they were seen frequently moving between the planet’s surface and their mothership, apparently engaged in a frantic repair effort.

For a time, the battlefield fell silent.

Then, the first 500 Mercury-class Warships arrived.

Half of the enemy’s few dozen Warships charged swiftly toward the Mercury-class Warship fleet.

This time, however, Li Qingsong didn’t command his Mercury-class Warships to meet them head-on.

He held back, even though the enemy Warships were severely short on supplies and mostly damaged.

Li Qingsong simply executed an extremely simple tactical maneuver.

Retreat at full speed! Run! And at the same time, open fire with everything—machine guns, Machine Guns, Missiles—and launch an all-out offensive!

Because the tactic was so simple, it could be executed despite the four-minute communication delay.

Pinpricks of light flared in the vast, dark expanse of space.

As expected, most of his attacks were intercepted, failing to destroy a single enemy Warship. In fact, over a dozen of his own Warships were destroyed by the enemy because they couldn’t retreat fast enough.

Fortunately, the main fleet managed to escape.

Seeing his forces flee, the enemy Warships returned to the mothership to resume their repair operations.

’Not giving chase? That won’t do. If you won’t come to me, then I’ll just have to go to you.’

Li Qingsong sneered, directing his fleet to close the distance once more.

Machine guns, Machine Guns, and Interstellar Missiles once again began a furious bombardment.