The tactical map in Harry's HUD was a chaotic cloud of red and blue icons, but to his mind, it was a symphony. The Drealius shards were pulsing, their gravity webs tightening around the Tenth Fleet's mid-section. They were trying to "dismantle" the fleet just as they had the colony—segmenting the human ships to be harvested one by one.
"General, the Aegis and the Excalibur are losing hull integrity!" Captain Thorne's voice crackled from the Vanguard's bridge. "Their gravity anchors are snapping. If we don't break the tether, those two carriers are gone."
Harry flipped his mech's thrusters, kicking the Vanguard-One into a steep climb above the main combat plane. "Thorne, tell the fleet to initiate Protocol Orion-Seven. Execute on my mark."
A silence fell over the comms. Orion-Seven was a maneuver Harry had invented at the Orion Gates. It was high-risk, high-reward, and required absolute synchronization.
"General," Thorne whispered, "Orion-Seven requires us to shut down our main shields. We'll be sitting ducks for their violet beams."
"They can't hit what they can't lock onto, Captain," Harry snapped, his eyes tracking a massive Drealius 'Mother-Shard' at the center of the swarm. "The Drealius track us by our shield harmonics. We go dark, we go invisible. For ten seconds, we aren't a fleet—we're ghosts."
The Black-Out
"All ships! Dark-Mode in three... two... one... MARK!"
Across the void, a thousand human starships suddenly blinked out. The bright blue shields that had defined the human formation vanished, leaving the fleet as nothing but cold metal shapes against the backdrop of the nebula.
The Drealius Shards hesitated. Their violet beams flickered, searching the dark for a target that was no longer broadcasting a signature. In that moment of alien confusion, Harry saw his opening.
"Wings Alpha through Gold, ignite emergency boosters! Full burn toward the Mother-Shard! Don't use your sensors—use your eyes!"
Harry led the charge. Without his own HUD active to keep the "dark-mode" total, he was flying by instinct. He watched the starlight glint off the obsidian skin of the enemy. Three hundred mechs, silent and dark, streaked through the gaps in the Drealius formation like a swarm of angry hornets.
The Spear-Tip Strike
As they reached the heart of the enemy swarm, Harry slammed his reactor back to life.
"Shields up! Open fire!"
The Vanguard-One erupted in a blaze of light as its shields flared back into existence. At point-blank range, Harry leveled his minigun at the Mother-Shard's central glowing core—the source of the gravity webs.
BRRRRRRRRT!
The tungsten rounds tore through the obsidian skin, and this time, the "bleed" was catastrophic. A geyser of black oil erupted, coating Harry's cockpit glass in a dark, oily film.
Across the battlefield, a thousand ships followed his lead. They reappeared in the Drealius' blind spots, their railguns screaming. The pincer closed. The gravity webs, deprived of their central source, snapped like dry twigs.
The Cost of Victory
The Mother-Shard groaned, a sound that bypassed the vacuum and vibrated directly into the hull of every ship in the area. It began to fold in on itself, drawing the surrounding black oil back into its center before imploding into a silent, light-drinking void.
"Fleet status?" Harry panted, his sweat-soaked hair sticking to his forehead.
"The webs are gone, General," Thorne reported, his voice sounding breathless. "The Aegis is stabilized. But... sir, we've lost the Caliburn. It was too close to the implosion."
Harry looked out at the wreckage. A thousand ships had survived, but the "Dead Zone" had claimed one of his best. He looked at his hands, still vibrating from the haptic feedback of the minigun.
"Form a perimeter," Harry ordered, his voice cold and professional again. "The Drealius aren't defeated. They're just retreating to regroup. And Thorne? Get a science team ready. I want to know why those ships are bleeding. I want to know if we're fighting a fleet... or a species."