The big battle, coming up!

Hawke's current flagship is the USS London, as the original flagship, the USS New York's central computer, was severely damaged by a logic lock attack from a water drop. Hawke did not intend to repair the New York's central computer, but to equip the New York with this new generation of computers directly after the development of the trinary computer.

In the meantime, Hawke was still working on a projection of the other side's level of technology and their way of warfare.

After a lot of calculations, Hawke concluded that the hallmark of a second-tier civilisation and a third-tier civilisation would be shield technology. The shield technology, which already existed in Hawke's theories and which Hawke was confident would be implemented within thirty years, meant that the shield technology was no longer far away. With a deeper understanding of the nature of high-energy photons, Hawke would be able to develop a primary energy shield immediately.

Of course, in order to enter into practical application, a series of issues such as energy systems, maintenance systems, material processes, etc. still needed to be resolved.

The water droplet's voyage log classified itself as a peak Tier 2 civilisation, and that spoke volumes.

"Shield technology, simply put, is the binding of high-energy photons through a strong magnetic field to form a protective layer on the surface of the ship, which will reach temperatures of several hundred million degrees within the range of the force field and can vaporize any approaching entity, as well as defend against all forms of energy attacks. This would suggest that high velocity machine guns, in the face of energy shields, are largely useless. This is because the physical attack of a solid body is simply too small in terms of the amount of energy it carries. So ... my ship, the weapon system is going to have to make a major upgrade."

For this reason, Hawke conducted a lot of research and developed a new type of weapon, this weapon, still based on the high velocity machine gun, but Hawke installed a super miniature nuclear bomb in it, in the moment of approaching the other ship, the nuclear bomb instantly exploded, within a few cubic decimeters of a small area erupted up to 100 million degrees of heat. Such bullets, cheaply built and, in Hawke's reasoning, would be extremely efficient in draining the energy of the opposing ship's shields.

In addition to the nuclear bomb, which would be used on a large scale as Hawke's conventional weapon, Hawke also constructed medium-sized weapons, mainly high yield hydrogen bombs and high-energy laser cannons, which would be the main offensive force in an interstellar war to destroy opposing ships.

The high-end weapons that Hawke deployed were energy weapons that he had obtained from the Lizardman civilisation to create. In the meantime, Hawke has made many improvements to these energy weapons, making them more powerful in their explosions and faster to fire. In addition to this, Hawke developed small energy weapons and equipped all village and village ships with these weapons.

Hawke also developed a new type of weapon, a laser cannon-like weapon, which was not mounted on a ship, but orbited around the Epsilon Eri system, powered by stellar light energy.

This weapon, with a giant solar sail of several thousand square metres, will provide sufficient power for this weapon and, in times of war, the energy provided by the solar sail will be transformed into a high-energy beam that will be launched and directed at the enemy ship, causing it direct damage.

The solar sail weapon was less powerful and less flexible, but it did not require direct control by Hawke, and its large numbers and the fact that it did not require additional energy. Hundreds of thousands of these weapons were built and placed in orbit only 10 million kilometres away from the Epsilon Eri system. In Hawke's tests, the range of these solar sails reached a staggering 200 million kilometres. In other words, before the Lucca fleet breaks through the ε Eri b defences and reaches the asteroid belt, it will first face the solar sail weapon's attack.

Under the pressure of the terrifying pressure to survive, Hawk's construction speed, reached an astonishing point.

A year after the Water Drop incident, Hawke built a new City ship. This ship was named the Xingtai after his hometown.

The Xingtai had the same attack and protection power as the New York and four other ships, if not more. This is largely due to the technological developments that Hawk has made during this time.

The Large Particle Collider of the Ring Epsilon Eri system has also been restored to its original condition and is undergoing intensive collision tests. These experiments will not lead to technological advances in the short term, but the data from these experiments will support Hawk's scientific development for thousands of years after his escape from the ε Eri system.

Hawke is preparing in every way, in every way. Of course, all of this preparation is contingent on victory in the war against the Lucan civilisation.

The research on the material for the water droplet shell has been intense. After two years of research, Hawke still hadn't been able to grasp the exact parameters of this material. But he had made another achievement.

That is, if this material is fired in the same way as an energy cannon, it will explode with ten times the power of a conventional energy cannon. Hawke had about a thousand teardrop shell fragments, which meant that Hawke would be able to fire this energy tier a thousand times.

Within five years, with the original four City ships, Hawke had a total of ten City ships. These precious pieces of teardrop shell were equipped equally on top of these ten City ships, each City ship, divided into one hundred pieces.

At ε Eri a and ε Eri b, two City ships, Xingtai, Handan, Tangshan and Langfang, were equipped, and at the asteroid belt, one City ship, Baoding, was equipped. At the ε Eri a base camp, a total of five City ships were equipped, in addition to the four ships that were there at the beginning, and one Shijiazhuang.

These ten City airships, constituted the top end of Hawke's war effort.

The construction of the Starfortress of the ε Eri c and ε Eri b has also been completed and has been greatly upgraded compared to the period before the Waterdrop incident. Whereas there were eight armed satellites in total, the number has now been raised to fourteen, six at ε Eri c and eight at ε Eri b. In addition to these fourteen armed satellites, Hawke has also installed a large number of space-based turrets in orbit around the two planets, and the overall combat power of the Starfort has taken a great leap forward.

The development of the trinary computer was successfully completed, and Hawke built a total of ten trinary supercomputers, which were equipped on each of the ten City ships. Hawke's computing power has increased by a factor of ten, which represents even greater fleet control. Although Hawke could only stay on top of one, the ten ships in total certainly provided Hawke with more ways to fall back. After the destruction of one City ship, Hawke would have the opportunity to escape to another City ship, thus avoiding death.

The preparations, which had been going on for five years. In fact, if there had been enough time, Hawke would have continued to build new ships and continue to enhance his war effort. But there was not enough time.

After Hawke had built 130,000 solar sail weapons, one of Hawke's satellites in the star system of the ε Eri system detected a strange fluctuation.

Hawke saw an oddly shaped ship appear out of nowhere in orbit 15 billion kilometres away from the ε Eri system. The ship was about thirteen hundred metres in length, a little larger than Hawke's City ship.

The ship was irregularly shaped and dark green in colour. The moment it appeared, it did not accelerate away, but began to move around a point in the void in a defensive manoeuvre, while at this point in the void, new airships continued to emerge.

One, two, ten, a hundred ... spaceships appeared, seven thousand in all.

These airships, large and small, the largest being larger than a City airship, and the smallest, smaller than a village-class airship. Among them, the largest airships were five. Hawk, who saw this scene through the surveillance satellite, deduced that its should be the flagship-class ship of the Lucca civilization.

After all seven thousand ships had appeared, they began to speed up. Hawk saw that a dark green glow suddenly appeared on the surface of these ships, like a hood that enveloped the entire hull. After another moment, Hawke suddenly lost the visuals of these ships.

"They destroyed my satellite." Hawke's mind was clear.

Along the way, Hawke saw no more images of these ships. But by the location of the destroyed satellites, Hawke could still clearly deduce where these ships were at the moment.

"They are approaching at a speed of two thousand three hundred kilometres per second. It is expected that they will reach ε Eri c orbit in two months' time. Here, will be my first battleground."

"There is no doubt that they possess shield technology, I just don't know, apart from shield technology, what other weapons they possess that are beyond my imagination. In my projection, high energy laser weapons, and super energy weapons are on the same level as shield technology, and they should possess both of these weapons. For the rest, matter annihilation weapons, and proton-neutron level decay weapons should not be available yet. In other words, their ships are, on average, between three and ten times more powerful than mine in battle."

"As expected of a level three civilization, a single ship of the same volume and mass can have a combat power that is so much higher than mine." Amongst the slight estimate made, Hawk was secretly surprised in his heart.

"But! They only have a total of five thousand ships, while I, I have a hundred thousand ships! My ships are twenty times more numerous than theirs! Add to that the interstellar fortresses of ε Eri c and ε Eri b, and the solar sail weapons, the weapons of the asteroid belt, and I will have a good chance of winning!"

"Trying to capture me and keep me captive, dream on, you guys." Hawk gritted his teeth and manoeuvred all the ships within the star system of the ε Eri system, ready for battle.

A great battle was coming!