Super Mothership
Boom!
Gustav was jolted awake from his sleep by a violent impact and intense shaking. Strangely, he felt completely refreshed, as if all his exhaustion had been wiped away.
"Haven't slept this well in ages." He rubbed his face, which had gone numb from sleeping too soundly, before suddenly realizing that something was off.
Striding out of his room, he was met with the sight of crew members running around in panic. He grabbed a passing soldier and demanded coldly, "What happened? What was that just now?"
The soldier, upon seeing that it was the commander, quickly saluted and replied, "Commander, sir! I’m not entirely sure yet, but it looks like… we got rear-ended!"
What? Rear-ended?!
Gustav’s face was full of question marks. How the hell does something like that happen to a space battleship? The universe is this big, and you still manage to crash?!
…
Ten minutes later.
After rushing to the bridge and listening to his sweating deputy’s report, Gustav finally had to accept the absurd reality: his flagship had really been rear-ended.
The aft section of his battleship was a complete wreck. The three left-side thruster units had borne the brunt of the impact and were now nothing more than a pile of twisted scrap metal, sparks of blue electricity flickering ominously from the wreckage.
The Hive, the ship responsible for the collision, wasn’t faring much better. As a combat carrier, its primary function was to deploy various carrier-based combat units from the rear, meaning its outer armor wasn’t particularly thick. Now, its bow had been crushed into a deep crater, and its main cannon was clearly beyond repair.
"Have we regained control of the Hive?"
"Yes! But… rather than 'regained control,' it would be more accurate to say the other side voluntarily stopped attacking," the deputy admitted awkwardly.
"A bunch of useless idiots!" Gustav exploded. "What the hell was the captain of the Hive doing?! How do you not realize your own ship has been tampered with? And you—why didn’t you take evasive action the moment you noticed something wrong?!
This time, they just disabled our thrusters with a sneak attack. What’s next? Are they going to snipe me straight off the bridge with a battleship cannon?!"
"Uh… The reaction time was too short. We did try to accelerate and evade; otherwise, the crash would’ve been even worse…" the deputy muttered awkwardly.
"But please rest assured, sir. The AI has already conducted an assessment. In reality, the enemy’s electronic attack capabilities pose little threat to us. Once we’re prepared, they won’t be able to affect our battleships again—let alone our fire control systems, which are tightly secured by multiple safety locks and firewalls!
The biggest reason we were caught off guard this time wasn’t an external threat—it was internal sabotage!" the deputy continued.
"Internal sabotage?" Gustav frowned.
"Yes. Our primary failure was due to an internal breach of the Hive's system ports. The enemy had deliberately planted a Trojan bomb virus in advance.
While this virus wasn’t highly destructive, it caused a brief but crucial disruption to Hive's evasive maneuvers at a critical moment. Essentially, the enemy succeeded because Hive was under attack from both inside and out!"
"Are you saying there’s a traitor on the Hive?" Gustav narrowed his eyes. Could it be that spy again?
"We’re almost certain of it!" the deputy said firmly.
"Have we identified who exactly is attacking us?" Gustav asked. He already had a good guess. In the Proxima system, there was only one faction capable of pulling off something like this...
"No doubt about it—it’s the All Things Return to One cult!" The deputy confirmed Gustav’s suspicion. "This was the forced broadcast that played right before the virus took effect. Look—this silver vortex is undeniable proof!"
The deputy activated the holoscreen, playing a short video. On the screen, a swirling silver vortex spun continuously, deep and mesmerizing, as if it could swallow everything into an endless abyss.
Gustav was no stranger to this symbol. It had first appeared on the Sword Immortal mechas during the wormhole defense battle.
These new weapons developed by the All Things Return to One cult had left a deep impression on Gustav. Although the Sword Immortal mechas weren’t quite on par with the Tsunami-class models, they were still significantly more advanced than the standard-issue Wanderer mechas used by ordinary forces.
Especially with their miniaturized floating cannons—when it came to compact energy weapon technology, the All Things Return to One cult was already surpassing the cutting-edge advancements of the Gemini civilization.
In the interstellar era, mechas held a unique status. If battleships were the equivalent of airplanes, then mechas were akin to cars. They might not always represent the pinnacle of technology, but they were the ultimate embodiment of an industrial ecosystem.
Before Nie Yun’s disruptive black technology emerged, only seven countries on Earth had a complete automotive manufacturing supply chain—showing just how complex the process was.
A traditional car had about 10,000 parts. A traditional airplane had around 3 million. But a mecha? It had tens of millions. Even within the Gemini system, most star systems didn’t have the full industrial infrastructure necessary to build them."
From small clues, great insights can be gained.
The fact that the All Things Return to One cult could develop the Sword Immortal mecha—an advanced model surpassing the Wanderer—was clear evidence that their military-industrial capabilities were not to be underestimated.
Of course, they could never have imagined that Nie Yun possessed something as powerful as mechanical bugs—essentially nuclear-level 3D printers. Industrial supply chains? What did those have to do with him?
The Gemini system also had 3D printing technology, far more advanced than Earth's by at least a century. But even so, their technology was nowhere near atomic-scale precision. Worse yet, their version of 3D printing suffered from slow manufacturing speeds and weak material strength—critical limitations that couldn't be overcome.
Slow manufacturing meant it wasn’t viable for large-scale industrial production.
Additionally, while 3D-printed components worked fine as disposable consumables, using them for mecha parts, which required extreme durability, would drastically increase failure rates and reduce operational lifespan.
Nie Yun’s mechanical bug fabrication, on the other hand, was a high-civilization level of microscopic 3D printing technology—a game-changer for manufacturing.
With such powerful microscopic manufacturing, Nie Yun naturally surpassed the Gemini system in weapon miniaturization.
After analyzing the Sword Immortal mecha in depth, Gemini's military intelligence division theorized that this model was likely an independent new-generation weapon developed by the All Things Return to One cult. And if that were the case, then the silver vortex emblem on the mecha had to be their official insignia.
"Why? These guys just negotiated peace with us—why would they suddenly turn on us?" Gustav was puzzled. "Are they not afraid of reigniting war? Or do they think we won’t dare to strike back?"
He pushed those thoughts aside—there was a more pressing issue.
"Have we traced the origin of the virus?" he asked.
If he could use this incident to flush out the spy who had been sabotaging him all this time, Gustav would be more than happy to pay that price.
"Uh… Many of Hive’s data logs were destroyed by the virus, which has made backtracking extremely difficult…" the deputy admitted awkwardly.
Seeing Gustav’s expression darken, he quickly added, "But! We did discover a pattern in the virus!"
"Oh? What pattern?"
"Our tech team found that the virus’s stealth capabilities weren’t just due to its high mutation rate, which made it hard to detect. More importantly, it spreads downward—from high-level authority to lower-level users.
Because of this, it propagated rapidly and bypassed AI security checks completely.
Following this logic, the virus must have originated from someone with very high clearance—someone outranking even the captain of the Hive!
If we keep running antivirus programs and backtracking the virus spread, we can trace it directly to the source!"
A high-ranking officer…?
Gustav’s eyes gleamed.
So… the fox was finally revealing its tail.
TL Note- Will the fox get hunted?
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