Before this, I had been curious about one thing: just how dangerous was the escaped test subject, that the emperor called Harlan had dispatched more than half of his remaining forces to hunt it down, even leaving several of his Border Worlds so undermanned that the Empire Fleet easily broke through their defenses? No matter how I looked at it, our operation had gone too smoothly. Three Research Worlds at the border had suffered devastating blows from the Empire Fleet with practically no suspense—yes, I admitted that those three universes had been severely damaged. The Void rifts that pierced through spacetime had forced the local garrisons to divert most of their energy from defensive installations to mathematical law modification equipment, desperately patching up the breaches. That was why our three detached fleets had managed to destroy the remaining Research Centers in those worlds. But there was no denying that the Empire Fleet's operation had still gone far too smoothly. We had encountered less than half the expected resistance, and almost all of it had come from fixed sentry posts. The ever-cunning Fallen Apostles had actually failed to deploy sufficient mobile forces near their own nests. If it had not truly happened, I would never have believed it.
Now the situation seemed obvious. Harlan had sent out half his forces—forces he had probably cobbled together after the encounter at Ruins World, since every sign showed that these ships were especially new, as new as our Sixth Fleet—because he had no other choice. That miraculous rampaging test subject had actually fled while leading a fairly large fleet.
That was right. As the Empire Fleet carefully approached the optimal firing position under maximum stealth, preparing to ambush the Fallen Apostles, the images sent back by the scanning probes showed two Fallen Apostle fleets