Lina stared expressionlessly at the image on the projection screen.
It showed a corner of the battle zone on the planet's surface that they had captured.
The beam had descended from the sky. Its energy had been weakened by the atmosphere during the first few microseconds, but once it reached the surface and established a channel, the energy it continued to deliver suffered almost no loss.
That figure had been vaporized.
Its molecular structure had been destroyed by a high-energy Ion Beam.
It had...
Lina's ears were ringing.
The moment she had witnessed Hanton being vaporized, she had heard nothing else—only the relentless ringing in her ears.
"Ma'am... Ma'am!"
The young intelligence officer jolted Lina back to her senses.
"Speak."
"Target Number One has been confirmed killed by the pirate ship's main cannon! The information we've just obtained is a little chaotic. The pirates clashed over the treasure Kolev had hidden, and Target Number One got caught up in it. It seems he killed Gimo, the current leader of the Black Dragon Pirate Group, during the conflict. The group retaliated by firing their main cannon at Target Number One... just now."
Lina took half a step back and gripped the nearby safety railing. Her face was pale, drained of color.
"Ma'am? You need to rest."
Lina abruptly said, "The biological sensors! Use them to gather information from that area!"
"The biological sensors aren't responding. The energy from the pirate ship's main cannon destroyed everything."
"Ma'am, according to the records we stole from the other pirate ship, Target Number One really did provoke those pirates."
"And, Ma'am... we've picked up a faint signal from the tracking device... It seems to have come from a tracker that remained in Target Number One's body and wasn't metabolized. Our proprietary device sent out a weak signal just before he was destroyed..."
Silence settled over the battleship for about half a minute.
"They destroyed Hanton. They destroyed Hanton... They ruined over a year of my work," Lina murmured. "Take them out."
The captain asked, "Ma'am, which target are we attacking?"
"The pirates! Attack those damn pirates!"
Lina's expression was slipping out of control. A little color had returned to her pale cheeks, and her slender body trembled continuously.
"Don't let them get away! Break through their shields! Turn them into space dust right now, immediately! Even if we only earn credit for wiping out a pirate gang, at least we won't have wasted these three months waiting!"
The captain shrugged slightly. "You've made the wisest decision you've made in the past three months."
Then the captain's voice rang out, rising in pitch, crisp and full of masculine force.
"All ship guns, charge! Shields to twenty percent! Prioritize locking onto the enemy flagship!"
"Release electronic interference! Make those primitive pirate ships sit still!"
"Fire at will!"
The entire ship sprang to life almost instantly. The bridge erupted into activity, and more than a dozen laser beams appeared outside the windows.
The beams were only meant to drain the enemy's shield energy.
The battleship's main cannon charged!
All battleship weapons began their firing sequence!
Inside the Stealth Boat, which had just entered the high-altitude cloud layer, Yang Ming watched the projection screen flicker in front of him and exchanged a glance with Kolev.
Before he could say anything, his attention was drawn to the beams appearing beyond the atmosphere.
More than a dozen laser beams struck the two pirate ships with the greatest firepower at once.
"Hey!" Kolev shouted, eyes wide. "They're attacking my ships! Oh, damn it! Why aren't the rest of those bastards running?"
"There must be electronic interference," Yang Ming reminded him. "The battleship is too close to them."
As soon as they finished speaking, one of the pirate ships' shields was breached.
Yet that battleship had only just finished allocating its energy.
The curved armor along the front half of the battleship turned pockmarked. A hundred-meter-caliber cannon, surrounded by an intense magnetic field, rapidly extended from the center of the ship's forward hull, its segments lighting up one after another.
Around the cannon, a ring of slightly smaller barrels advanced in sync. It was the Dawn-class Battleship's main-and-secondary-cannon configuration.
Charging complete: thirty percent.
Minimum firing standard.
The main and secondary cannons fired particle beams at the same time. Like streaks of brilliant blue lightning, they illuminated the sky beyond the planet.
"Don't do that! Oh, no! No, no! My ship!"
Kolev roared, trembling all over.
The three-hundred-meter pirate flagship was pierced by the blue beam almost instantly!
Seconds later, a violent explosion spread outward from the point of impact. The pirate ship tore itself apart, and a fusion reaction ignited where the hull had been struck. No figures could be seen amid the explosion.
Kolev covered his eyes in despair.
"The Guer Alliance is using its actions to persuade you to quit while you're ahead," Yang Ming said.
The Stealth Boat sped toward the horizon, concealed by the clouds.
Kolev kept muttering, his old eyes gradually losing focus. On the projection screen before him, a battleship was hunting down several pirate ships.
"This is a massacre! A massacre carried out by the Guer Alliance!
"Oh, my ships. The ships I spent half my life working for. They're old, sure, and I've earned several times what they're worth, but... oh, what can I leave Milili? She wants so badly to become as successful a pirate as I am, sailing freely across the vast Milky Way Galaxy.
"Oh, God, your little lover is a vicious one!"
Yang Ming could only give him a sympathetic, rueful smile.
But they never let the Stealth Boat stop.
Feinan wasn't stealth-capable. They had to get away from Orhaifu as quickly as possible in this Small Boat. Whether they could use the planet to evade the battleship's radar had become the key to their escape.
The battle in outer space ended within a little more than ten minutes.
The silver-white battleship slowly retracted its cannons, revealing its elegant curved armor once more. The thick guns beneath the hull, however, remained extended.
"What are they doing?"
Yang Ming asked softly, keeping his eyes fixed on the surveillance view Kolev had obtained with a drone.
Kolev slumped in the copilot's seat as if all his dreams had been crushed. He kept muttering, "I really should retire. I could buy a manor, invest in real estate, and collect rent. That wouldn't be so bad."
On the projection screen, two landing craft, wrapped in flames, rapidly descended to the surface and began gathering information around the lava fissures in the ground.
More than ten minutes later, the landing craft returned to the battleship. Before they could enter the ship's Tail Compartment, a blue beam descended from the sky and struck the city ruins below.
The impact point was exactly where the Bionic Robot had been vaporized.
Then a series of beams rained down in a dense bombardment. The battleship unleashed its firepower on the city ruins below, and vast rain clouds quickly formed in the sky.
Were they using the cannons to perform an autopsy?
The muscles in Yang Ming's face twitched slightly, and he felt a wave of relief.
That meant he had been completely written off as dead in the Guer Alliance's eyes. All he needed to do now was get cosmetic surgery—restore his original appearance—and change his name from Hanton back to Yang Ming. Then he could finally be free!
His elderly companion, though, had suffered some heavy losses.
"The plan worked, Kolev."
Yang Ming spoke gently. "We're out of danger now. We don't have to worry about our lives anymore. All evidence has been buried by this battleship. No one will suspect we faked our deaths."
"That's right," Kolev sighed. "So all I've lost is nearly a hundred million Federal Currency in assets."
"I still owe you a million. That's enough to see you through retirement," Yang Ming said, watching the sky draw ever closer. "As long as you're alive, anything is possible. Don't lose heart, my wise First Mate."
Beep. Beep.
Red dots suddenly appeared on the projection screen in front of Yang Ming.
"Captain," Molly Two's cold, synthesized voice rang out, "an abnormal gravitational fluctuation has been detected."
"What gravitational anomaly?"
Kolev frowned and leaned over to study the instrument panel.
His old face changed rapidly. He growled,
"A large ship's making a jump! A large ship is making a jump! We're near the end of its Jump Channel! It's going to jump straight to the planet! That's insane!"
"A jump? Near a planet?"
Yang Ming frowned slightly as the knowledge he'd acquired over the past few months rapidly came to mind.
Generally speaking, the starting point and destination of a jump both had to be in a stable gravitational environment.
But some large ships equipped with the technology of a powerful nation didn't follow that "general" rule.
Yang Ming made his decision quickly and decisively.
He wrenched the rudder down. The Stealth Boat, which had quietly climbed into the upper atmosphere, plunged toward the surface like a diver.
Ripples of gravitational waves, impossible to observe, spread through space.
The colossal object suddenly "appeared" in the planet's synchronous orbit.
Kolev's pupils trembled violently. He hurriedly held his breath, barely able to contain himself.
Yang Ming had already leveled out the Stealth Boat and shut down its forward and reverse engines, leaving only its outer coating powered. He stared in shock into the depths of the sky.
Night had fallen on the surface below, and a faint white glow tinged the edge of the sky.
A battleship shaped like a "memory stick" now stretched across the depths of space, blocking the Guer Alliance's Dawn-class light battleship.
The two ships were now at the same altitude above the planet's surface.
This battleship was three or four times longer than the Dawn-class Battleship!
Its entire forward half was practically one enormous main cannon. The barrel, which took up half the ship's length, was lighting up section by section!
A Dreadnought!
The Empire's Dreadnought-class Heavy Battleship!
A Dreadnought-class Heavy Battleship, with an astonishing length of 3,600 meters and a hybrid-energy cannon that could shatter a tightly packed fleet with a single shot. It was known as a flagship killer!
The brightly lit emblem of the Sherman Empire on the ship's stern nearly snapped Yang Ming's nerves!
Kolev's mouth went dry as he swore under his breath.
His trembling hands produced a square, glass-like Network Terminal. He opened a radio-like interface and kept adjusting it.
"Their communications might be on an open channel," Kolev explained in a trembling voice.
Cold sweat kept beading on the old pirate's forehead.
The Network Terminal crackled with static.
"...Your vessel's targeting of my ship will be considered an act of aggression against an administrative planet of the Guer Alliance."
It was Lina's voice!
Soon, a deep, aged voice sounded. It was probably the captain of the Empire's colossal ship.
"Does your vessel have a member of the Central Intelligence Agency of the Guer Alliance aboard? She was formerly known as Lina. Her biometric data has been sent to your ship."
Yang Ming's eyebrow twitched slightly.
"I am," Lina said quietly.
"You stole Imperial secrets," the Imperial captain said in a low voice. "You used your charms to deceive a loyal Imperial officer, then faked that officer's death, didn't you?"
"That's all nonsense," Lina replied.
"Charge the main cannon," the Imperial captain said. "Release gravitational interference."
A man's voice came from Lina's side. "Are you trying to start a war with our nation? We are a ship of the Guer Alliance!"
The Imperial captain's laugh was openly contemptuous.
"You can contact your superiors right now. Tell them your ship has been targeted by mine and ask them what you should do.
"Hand over Captain Hanton. You listed him as Target Number One. He was Professor Gigrov's final creation, wasn't he? Dr. Lina, one of your superiors leaked this information."
"Hanton is dead."
Lina's voice was low. "It happened just now. I can provide proof."
"Oh, you killed him?" The Imperial captain's voice grew even lower. "The damage on the surface was your doing, wasn't it? You fired on an Imperial soldier."
"I didn't kill Hanton directly. He was a precious specimen I wanted to obtain," Lina said. "He got caught up in the pirates' dispute."
"So you wanted to destroy the last of his biological data? Desecrate his corpse?"
The Imperial captain seemed to have seen the video. A trace of anger entered his voice. "Oh! Even if he was only a Captain, he was an Imperial Captain! You fired your main cannon at him twice!"
Lina's side fell silent, but their main engines had begun to start up. Their smooth, curved hull once again turned pockmarked.
"You are the ones declaring war on the Empire."
The Imperial captain spoke coldly. "You orchestrated all of this. You tried to steal a treasure that belonged to the Empire... Enough talk. Destroy them."
Lina spoke firmly. "You'll pay the price for starting a war! This is a barbaric and despicable act of war!"
The Imperial side fell silent.
Static!
The Guer Alliance ship cut off the communication.
Yang Ming leaned forward, watching the two warships facing each other.
The Imperial ship didn't shut off its communications. On the open frequency, it continued transmitting the captain's steady breathing, along with calm reports from various stations.
The Dawn-class light battleship released a dense cloud of dust, like ink from a squid. It poured all its energy into its shields, giving the ship a hazy halo.
The Alliance ship was trying to escape the planet's gravitational field.
The Imperial Dreadnought did not pursue.
It emitted ripples invisible to the naked eye. Its outrageously enormous and terrifying main cannon had already lit up halfway.
"Ah, Professor Gigrov was too stubborn," the Imperial captain said quietly. "He was a friend of mine. Twenty years of experiments, and not a single sample or file left behind. They say he was close to success, that he'd created a powerful individual combat unit."
"But, General, the experiment ultimately failed, and we gained nothing," a clear female voice asked. "Are you really going to attack a ship of the Guer Alliance directly? They're the fourth-largest power in the Milky Way Galaxy. This will create significant diplomatic pressure."
"Your Highness," the captain said with a laugh, "would the Guer Alliance start a war with us over one light battleship?"
"No," the female voice replied. "They don't have the strength to stand against the Empire's mighty forces."
"So what do we have to worry about?"
The captain spoke slowly:
"We have to warn those who like to make trouble behind the scenes. This battleship is valuable enough to make them regret it. I can assure you, Your Highness, tomorrow they'll claim their invincible ship encountered a strange gamma-ray burst."
A technician shouted, "Main cannon fully charged!"
"Fire."
The Dreadnought fell silent for three seconds.
Most of the lights on the ship went out at once. Its enormous hull shuddered faintly and continuously, and a beam of deep-red high-energy ions violently tore through the thick cloud of dust ahead, engulfing the entire battleship.
Seconds later, the shield melted away.
A few microseconds later, the hull disintegrated.
Yang Ming seemed to see the female doctor standing on the bridge, her skin and bones melting away under barrage after barrage of ion fire.
As the deep crimson beams gradually faded, the Dawn-class Battleship began to erupt in violent explosions. The light they produced was bright enough to outshine the star, if only for a moment.
"Beautiful, isn't it, Your Highness?"
The Imperial Captain spoke gently.
"You must understand: weakness and retreat will only make you a target for hyenas. Only by always being prepared to fight at any cost can you make the weak understand their place.
"One experimental specimen isn't worth getting this angry over, but we must uphold the Empire's dignity. This is a warning to the Guer Alliance, and it may make them reconsider the consequences of standing with the New Federation.
"There is no balance among the stars."
Beep!
Kolev deliberately switched off the receiver in his hand. His face was deathly pale as he asked in a low voice, "Will they find us? They..."
Yang Ming simply lay there, silently watching what lay ahead, lost in thought.
"Don't worry."
Yang Ming's voice faltered. He said quietly, "The dreadnought isn't targeting me."
Before you continue