Not every god pilot was available to defend the border regions.
Crucial star systems such as Bridgehead One also needed strong protectors to guard against sneak attacks and prevent any human rebels from plunging the rear of human space into chaos.
The intervention of dreadnoughts such as the Reign of Frost urgently relieved the pressure and allowed the defending star systems to hold out a little longer.
Even if an even larger second wave of alien assault fleets were on the way to overrun the human fortifications that managed to defend their positions for the time being, any progress was better than nothing!
As millions of humans and aliens perished across the border zones of human space, more dreadnoughts intervened in their own ways.
In one star system, another multi-racial fleet of advanced puelmer and orven warships abruptly began to malfunction on a large scale!
Their sensor systems became blinded while the targeting systems of the gun batteries aimed the weapons at their own warships!
The multitude of phasefighters that briefly gave the opposing human mechs a lot of grief all began to glitch out or lose power for whatever reason!
The mechs that opposed the phasefighters instantly recognized the opportunity and began to focus all of their attacks against the defenseless alien craft and wipe them all out with much greater ease than before!
Although only a part of the enemy forces suffered a severe degradation in functionality, this was already enough to turn the tide!
If not for the fact that the puelmers reacted quickly and utilized their formidable intellect to hastily patch the most obvious vulnerabilities to their hardware, more of the alien vessels would have succumbed to this mass cyberattack!
"How come the alien ships and phasefighters malfunctioned all of a sudden?"
"Isn't the answer obvious? Only one ship can do all of this. The Throne of Lies has arrived!"
The dreadnought never bothered to make an appearance, but her presence was most certainly felt.
Without firing any of her armaments, the Throne of Lies utilized her exceptionally powerful ECM and hacking systems to continually pummel the virtual security defenses of the enemy vessels.
Although the puelmers strangely managed to shield their technologically advanced heavy cruisers against most subsequent cyberattacks, the orvens were not as fortunate!
There were much less orvens serving aboard the vessels that possessed expertise in this field. Their proficiencies also weren't as exceptional as that of the puelmers, so their fleet and phasefighters were steadily beginning to suffer one mishap after another.
Hundreds of phasefighters spontaneously exploded after their transphasic missiles detonated while remaining attached to their frames!
Several orven warships began to lose control over their propulsion systems, causing them to fly away from the rest of their fleets and subsequently getting targeted by the vengeful human mechs.
Other orven warships began to spin around their axis while shutting down a part of their inertial dampeners.
This caused every orven crew member regardless of their caste to get flung into the bulkheads as if they were laundry in a rapidly rotating tumbler!
Due to the excessive rotational speeds, most orvens only had a short moment to scream before their bodies collided against solid metal surfaces!
The blood and chunks of furred flesh stained the interior of many compartments!
Eventually, the unceasing cyberattacks ceased. The stealthed dreadnought responsible for terrorizing the invading alien fleet had already slipped away without any announcement.
Although a lot of partially functional enemy phasefighters and warships remained in the field, the puelmers and the orvens had become utterly broken.
"Kill them before they regain their balance!"
"Destroy as many of them as possible! The more we kill today, the less we have to fight against the next day!"
"Kill the aliens!"
The power of dreadnoughts clearly exceeded the level that more ordinary alien fleets could cope with. This was a surprise as the massive capital ships did not display as much combat power during Operation Jazz!
Of course, anyone who took a closer look at the dreadnoughts would notice that their hulls had changed considerably.
The Red Fleet continually invested in new technological and material upgrades. The fleeters spared no resources in order to apply the latest advances in both phasewater technology and hyper technology to their precious flagships.
Even if they lacked the heaven-defying upgrade that the Dominion of Man had received in the recent past, dreadnoughts such as the Throne of Lies had become much more confident in dealing with the enemy armadas than before!
Elsewhere, the antithesis of the Throne of Lies was leading the defending warships and mechs in a massive counterattack against the invading alien forces.
The Grail of Eternity utilized her extremely powerful support link technology to form brilliant golden energy links with dozens of warships and tens of thousands of mechs.
Despite providing additional boosts of power to a humongous amount of human assets, the Grail of Eternity exhibited no strain at all as she led the charge and utilized her powerful defenses to weather the initial enemy strikes.
"Charge forward! Let us kick the aliens out of this star system!"
As the aliens tried to destroy the smaller human warships, the enemies found to their dismay that the Grail of Eternity was so good at providing remote support that it was practically impossible to harm any linked vessel!
The aliens needed to bring in an ancient phase whale or a lot more warships in order to break apart the defensive network of the human dreadnought!
Elsewhere, the Guns of Armageddon dealt with the enemy more directly. She did not bother to coordinate with the local human defense forces, but boldly approached the hostile alien fleets and shattered them to pieces with an unrelenting barrage of fiery hyper energy beams!
All in all, the dreadnoughts of the Red Fleet performed so well during the start of the alien offensive that many people began to regard them in a much better light.
"I always heard that dreadnoughts suck in comparison to god mechs. I don't see that much of a difference. The RF's dreadnoughts might not be able to kill the invading aliens as fast, but they are just as invincible in doing so. It's clear that the fleeters have done their best to close the power gap by installing a lot of new technologies. If the god pilots aren't careful enough, maybe the dreadnoughts will overtake them one day!"
If the goal of the fleeters was to gain more prestige and have their dreadnoughts get taken seriously again, then they certainly succeeded!
The RA and RF working in tandem to slow down the overwhelming alien offensive certainly played a crucial role in propping up the 5 defensive bands, but it was ultimately not enough!
To the top human leaders who had access to the complete intelligence collected by many human scouts and spies, they all knew that the initial wave of attacks was just the setup.
It was the second and third wave of alien assault fleets that threatened to collapse the border regions and completely break open the interior of human-occupied space!
This was why it became more and more important to stall the initial advance by any means necessary.
Red humanity desperately needed to reduce the enormous gap in numbers!
Fortunately, there were certain individuals that had thought hard on how they could make this happen.
The Evolution Witch had a plan.
She had many plans, but one of them was especially relevant to the situation!