Super Mothership
“In confusion, one slowly falls into despair; in despair, one struggles bit by bit; and in that struggle, death finally arrives… this is the beauty of war…”
Kloros rested his chin on his hand, watching with a look of intoxicated satisfaction as the fleet under his command gradually tore apart the stubborn battle star that dared to resist them.
He relished the enemy’s struggle in despair—it brought him immense pleasure.
Within the Wolf Empire, Kloros had a nickname: “The Catacomb Lord.”
He excelled at weaving traps for his enemies, then slowly tightening the net once they had fallen in, harvesting the final fruits of victory amid their despair.
The self-detonation of the white dwarf had been his handiwork, wiping out the massive fleet of Gemini in one fell swoop.
As the chief strategist of the Locke Consortium, he had known from the very beginning that, given the scale of Gemini, even if the Consortium managed to swallow them, it would come at the cost of heavy losses.
Only by unexpectedly annihilating Gemini’s main fleet could they then occupy their territory with superior forces and digest it at their leisure.
After all, the Consortium were merchants—what they pursued was profit. Only in this way could the war be truly beneficial to them.
“Heh heh! My lord’s strategy is flawless—how could these lowly races possibly be a match for you?
How could they have imagined that our constant expansion of wormholes, creating overwhelming pressure, was merely to force them to continuously gather their forces?
Foolish of them to think that their infiltrating fleet could roam freely within our territory. If not for your deliberate restraint—allowing only the Fifth Fleet to engage them—did they really think they could retreat unscathed?
Letting them carry back some information was only to show them the Empire’s might, so as to lure them into committing even more forces to this battlefield.
As expected, everything has unfolded exactly as you predicted!” The adjutant immediately showered him with flattery.
“Heh heh!”
But just as Kloros revealed a confident smile, believing everything to be under control, the radar on their side suddenly began blaring with a piercing alarm.
“Warning! Warning! Unknown high-speed object approaching! Warning! Warning! Unknown high-speed object approaching…”
Almost at the very instant the alarm sounded, Kloros inexplicably noticed that within his tightly ordered fleet formation, a… “void” had suddenly appeared?!
In the once orderly ranks of the fleet, it was as if a straight gap nearly a hundred kilometers in diameter had abruptly punched through, piercing the entire formation.
What was terrifying was that along this cylindrical path, nearly a hundred warships—along with parts of the dreadnought battle star’s wreckage—had vanished without a trace, as though they had never existed, leaving behind only faint, scattered points of light that slowly dissipated into the distance…
Kloros’s smile froze on his face. He even rubbed his eyes, thinking he must be seeing things.
“Warning! Ship 165, Ship 676, Ship 1097, Ship 834 have lost signal! Warning! Ship 735…”
Only when the AI began reporting a series of lost contacts did Kloros and the officers finally realize… they were truly under attack!
“Where is the enemy?! Find it! Return fire!” Kloros roared.
But before his words had even finished, silently and without warning, another straight “void” appeared within his fleet. Wherever it passed, dozens of warships vanished as if erased by an invisible hand.
What remained was, once again, only a trail of slowly fading specks of light.
This time, however, everyone saw the lone survivor…
It was a standard warship at the edge of the attack path. Its two-kilometer-long hull was now reduced to half—its other half simply gone. A torrent of internal gases and debris was venting into space.
Everyone could clearly see that the cross-section at the break was smooth as a mirror, as if some colossal spatial beast had taken a single bite and devoured half its body.
“What the hell is this thing?!” Faced with the bizarre, invisible attack, a chill suddenly ran down Kloros’s spine.
“Activate all radar and anti-stealth systems—find it!” Kloros immediately ordered.
“N-no… it’s not working. The radar keeps blaring, but we can’t lock onto it—its speed is too fast!” the adjutant said, drenched in sweat.
“Damn it! What kind of craft can move so fast that even our radar can’t lock on? Faster than light?!” Kloros roared.
If Gemini had already reached faster-than-light civilization, then had they just been playing with them all this time?
Forget the Jinlok Consortium—even the Wolf Empire’s royal family and the Machine Race would be scared out of their wits!
And even as they spoke, the unidentified object had already looped back, carving out a third void—silently taking away nearly a hundred more warships.
Only then did the adjutant stare at the analysis data on the screen in disbelief. “N-no… not faster than light… b-but close to the speed of light!”
His voice trembled.
“Whether it’s optical radar or gravitational wave radar, our detection speed is the speed of light—but the target’s speed is already approaching light speed!
That means… by the time its signal reaches our radar, it has already arrived in front of us…”
“What?! How is that possible?!” Kloros’s face was filled with disbelief.
Near light speed meant a relative velocity of nearly 300,000 kilometers per second…
At such terrifying speeds, any warship struck would be flattened into scrap—whoever got hit would be wiped out instantly…
Shields might be powerful, but they still have limits. An object over a hundred kilometers in diameter crashing in at near light speed would overload any shield in an instant!
At that speed, even the explosion of a warship would be swept away immediately—there wouldn’t even be time to witness the “art” of destruction…
It was like a grim reaper hidden in the shadows—once it struck, everything in its path was harvested without exception!
“No… that’s impossible! At such extreme speeds, how can it still change direction so quickly? That defies physics!”
Kloros instantly grasped the biggest flaw in this possibility.
If Gemini had expended astronomical amounts of energy to accelerate an object to near light speed, he could barely accept that—the Wolf Empire had conducted similar experiments before.
But instantly changing direction, with no apparent loss of speed or kinetic energy—that completely violated the fundamental laws of physics!
What about inertia? Was it just… gone?!
…
On the final fragment of the dreadnought battle star, Girard—blood flowing endlessly from his head—watched the scene outside with a faint smile, before gradually being swallowed by flames…
His wish had been fulfilled. Kloros’s fleet had been torn apart, scattered like dismembered limbs…
No matter how the enemy panicked or struggled, before Gemini’s trump card, everything was futile!
“Use me as the coordinate… fire at me…”
This was the final command Girard gave in his life.
Then, among Gemini’s three battle stars, the most mysterious one—“Reaper”—was activated.
And what it carried… was a secret treasure possessed by Gemini.
A cosmic artifact…
The Vector Engine!
TL Note- Vector Engine....
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