Chapter 165: Look, a Shooting Star! |
"Initial route imported."
Kahurangi's psychic whispers echoed within the minds of the Sharks.
Clang!
Tyberos's Lightning Claws scraped a trail of sparks against the metal bulkhead. He tilted his head slightly, the sensors inside his helmet rapidly scanning the corridor's structure.
Following the Librarians' guidance, he began to advance.
Having undergone the Primaris Space Marine surgery, his towering frame, standing nearly four meters tall, cast an oppressive shadow down the dimly lit corridor. The joints of his customized Terminator armor emitted a deep, hydraulic hum.
At the far end of the passage, the T'au defenders were still in a state of chaos. With their communication systems paralyzed, they remained completely unaware of the approaching crisis. Suddenly, an abnormal tremor shuddered through the alloy floorboards—
Slash!
An Air Caste commander's body was torn apart like a ragged cloth, spraying fresh blood across the control panels.
The Fire Caste warriors clad in XV8 Battlesuits reacted with the utmost speed. The azure glow of their Ion Cannons illuminated the corridor in rapid succession. Even without the aid of their AI systems, these elites displayed an astonishing level of marksmanship.
However, the Carcharodons scattered preemptively as if they had foreseen the trajectories. The deafening roar of their Bolters instantly drowned out the hum of the ion weapons.
The T'au widened their eyes in disbelief. In the very next second, their facial armor was shattered by Bolt Shells, their expressions of sheer shock forever frozen amidst the splattering gore and brains.
"Left."
The Farseer apprentice's voice echoed in Kahurangi's mind once more, carrying a hint of resignation as it transmitted a series of Prophecy sequences.
Beneath his helmet, the Chief Librarian frowned slightly. After a brief silence, he spoke in a deep voice:
"...To the left."
Tyberos charged in absolute silence, and the pack of Sharks immediately pivoted like a tide of black water.
The muffled thuds of armored boots striking the metal floor merged into a continuous, rolling thunder. This torrent of death surged down the main thoroughfare at high speed, leaving nothing in its wake but twisted metal wreckage and mangled Xenos corpses.
As the Farseer apprentice relayed the prophetic operational procedures, every route they guided the squad through flawlessly bypassed the heavily guarded checkpoints, driving straight into the Starfort's most vulnerable Heart.
Frantic metallic clangs reverberated inside the command center as the Air Caste fortress commander slowly raised his head.
A young military officer maintained a perfectly standard, upright posture, yet his trembling body and contracted pupils betrayed the sheer panic consuming him from within.
The commander's gaze swept across the control panels that were still flashing streams of garbled code. He lightly tapped the controller at his waist. With a soft click, the magnetic locks disengaged, and he turned to face the newcomer—
Clack!
His magnetic boots reactivated, firmly anchoring his slender frame to the floor.
Having spent their entire lives in zero-gravity environments, the bone density of Air Caste members was vastly inferior to that of their T'au peers, rendering them exceptionally fragile under standard gravity.
"The aliens calling themselves humans are attacking the Starfort."
The young military officer's voice was tight with tension.
"The outer perimeter... barely lasted ten minutes. In truth, that was simply how long it took them to march through. Our forces offered virtually zero effective resistance."
The commander widened his eyes in utter disbelief.
The tech-officers attempting to repair the terminals all stopped what they were doing, their bodies trembling uneasily.
It was not that they did not understand humans. Three decades of trade and a year-long conflict in the Damocles Gulf had provided them with a clear understanding of this species:
They were a powerful yet fanatical civilization, brimming with hostility toward Xenos, and equally ruthless toward their own comrades.
But none of them could accept that the Starfort defenses—considered impregnable ever since the T'au first ventured into Space—were actually this fragile.
"What about the Water Caste diplomats?"
The commander's voice suddenly sounded incredibly exhausted.
"Did they attempt to negotiate?"
The orderly's compound eyes flickered slightly as he rapidly accessed his memory logs. "Sir, the diplomatic vessel was destroyed the moment it left the perimeter of the Grav-Shield."
The commander's arms fell limply to his sides, the metallic wall reflecting his hunched silhouette.
The enemy clearly possessed overwhelmingly superior electronic warfare capabilities. Not only had they paralyzed the AI systems, but they also made basic gravity regulation a fleeting luxury. Even more fatal was the fact that all communication channels had been severed, rendering it completely impossible to contact surface command.
"Sir, what should we do?"
The orderly's body shook nervously, his tone carrying obvious panic. He unconsciously tightened his grip on the Data-slate, his knuckles turning white from the pressure.
"Will the enemy accept our surrender?"
The commander silently turned his head back, staring at the still-lifeless control interface. The Holographic Projection cast dappled shadows over his pale face before he finally, slowly, shook his head.
"I do not know, but we can tr—"
Crash!
The ear-piercing screech of shattering metal abruptly tore through the air.
A Fire Caste warrior clad in an XV15 Stealthsuit stumbled into the bridge, fluorescent blue blood constantly oozing from the gaps in his armor.
He staggered and collapsed onto the console, his bloodstained fingers gliding rapidly across the panel.
Activating the automated defense turrets, sealing the blast doors, triggering the escape routes—his series of commands was executed flawlessly.
After issuing the final directive, he could no longer support his own weight and crashed heavily backward.
A horrific gash stretching from his abdomen to his chest was seeping copious amounts of bodily fluids, and the XV15 armor's emergency sealing system blared an overwhelmed warning klaxon.
"Captain Zhuoyuan!"
The orderly cried out and lunged forward, only to be shoved away by the wounded warrior.
The Fire Caste warrior struggled to prop up his upper body. The respirator beneath his faceplate hissed, expelling a mist tinged with blood.
"Hurry, escort the commander and evacuate..."
He endured agonizing pain with every single word he spoke.
"Take the news... to Aun'Va."
Suddenly, he erupted into a violent fit of coughing, fluorescent blue blood spilling over the edges of his faceplate. When he spoke again, his voice carried a bone-deep chill.
"Tell them... these humans are pure butchers. They won't even spare unarmed personnel."
A dead silence instantly fell over the command room. The air seemed to freeze solid, leaving nothing but the heavy, ragged gasps of the Fire Caste warrior echoing in the quiet.
"They... won't even give us a chance to negotiate?"
The commander's voice was as faint as someone speaking in their sleep.
"That is correct."
Seeing the commander remain entirely motionless, the Fire Caste warrior suddenly surged up, using his last ounce of strength to grab the commander's arm and drag him toward the escape passage. His ruined armor scraped against the metal deck, producing an agonizing screech.
"Go! Hurry! The Starfort has already fallen."
"But the data core!"
The commander shouted as he was dragged along:
"We must destroy it! If these humans truly are butchers, we absolutely cannot let them obtain the coordinates to other worlds!"
"I will handle those—"
Boom!
The commander's words were violently cut short. A tremendous explosion detonated right beside his ear, instantly deafening him, and he only felt a splash of warm liquid coat half of his face.
Beside him, the Fire Caste warrior was struck as if by an invisible, gargantuan hammer. His XV15 Stealthsuit disintegrated in the blink of an eye—
Flesh and Blood, shattered armor fragments, and glowing blue blood splattered in a radial spray across the command room's bulkheads.
A pitch-black metal claw punched straight through the half-meter-thick alloy door, jagged metal scraps still clinging to its serrated edges.
With a teeth-grinding screech of tearing metal, the entire blast door was ripped open by brute force, unleashing a torrential downpour of blinding electrical sparks.
From amidst the dust and smoke, the silhouette of a four-meter-tall giant gradually came into focus. The Chainfist mounted on his gauntlet was still revving loudly, its whirring teeth tangled with chunks of organic matter that looked horrifyingly like viscera.
"This..."
The commander's pupils shrank to pinpricks. In the next instant, the howling shriek of Bolt Shells completely filled the room.
The shockwaves whipped up by the barrage blasted the consoles into a storm of shrapnel. The flying metal shards acted like scythes, ruthlessly harvesting lives.
The Air Caste members huddled behind the Instrument, bearing witness to a hellish tableau through the narrow gaps in the machinery.
A Fire Caste warrior barely managed to raise his ion rifle before a Power Axe cleaved both him and his weapon cleanly in half.
The XV8 Battlesuits were torn apart like wet paper under the roaring chainswords, their pilots crushed into paste right along with their cockpits.
The bloodstained Power Weapon glinted with a cold, harsh light. The very moment it was pulled back, it swiped across the head of an Air Caste member, brutally snuffing out any hint of resistance before it could even begin.
This was no battle.
It was a slaughter.
The heavy, grating breaths echoing from beneath the giants' faceplates sounded like the Grim Reaper running a whetstone over his scythe. Every step they took was accompanied by the agonizing groan of the metal deck yielding under their weight.
They advanced in absolute silence, delivering finishing blows with surgical precision, ensuring that even the corpses were entirely stripped of any lingering signs of life.
Slumped in a growing pool of blood, the commander finally understood the Fire Caste warrior's dying words.
Death had come to collect its due.
---
Nothing but silver-gray wreckage remained in The Void.
Massive starships prowled back and forth around the Space Fortress. Crimson Lances sliced into the disc-shaped Starfort as easily as a needle popping a blister. Wreckage began continuously spewing outward from the Rifts, blooming into rings of phantom-blue ripples across the silent depths of deep space.
The Space Fortress was disintegrating. The overlapping layers of The Dome shattered in rapid succession. Countless gallons of circulatory coolant flooded from the ruptured chambers, instantly freezing into dazzling clouds of ice crystals. Caught in the gravitational pull of the Planet, they began to plummet alongside the endless barrage of metal debris.
Plasma generated by atmospheric friction wreathed the falling wreckage, resembling blazing spears hurled down from the heavens. The silver-white ring that had once gazed down upon the Planet was now utterly shattered. Burning metal husks tore through the atmosphere, and the trailing Plasma Flames painted their descent in magnificent, blinding streaks of brilliant gold.
"Teacher! Teacher!"
A little Earth Caste girl, out on a field trip led by her instructor, suddenly broke away from her group. She pointed up at the dazzling trails streaking across the sky and cried out.
"Look, a shooting star!"
Amidst her pure, innocent laughter, a torrential rain of burning metal tore countless brilliant golden wounds across the Stratosphere.
The largest chunk of wreckage violently broke apart the moment it plunged into the Troposphere. The sheer brilliance of the resulting explosion illuminated the entire facing hemisphere of the world, turning the dark surface as bright as day.