As a predator that had roamed the Abyss Nebula for countless eons, the Silent had indeed begun its hunt.
Her prow armor was opening layer by layer, like a beast baring its bloody maw. And the strangely intricate yet wondrous ring-shaped accelerators were, of course, the claws meant to tear through its prey's hide and flesh.
Within the opened armor surged energy vortices beyond comprehension. Though they contained a terrifying destructive force, even the most precise detection equipment—and the sight of psykers—could catch only the occasional faint ripple.
There was still no brilliant flash from any conventional energy weapon. There was still only the intense energy signature detectable by high-dimensional equipment, and the dimensional ripples that came with the distortion of space.
Then, after a flicker in the next instant, an invisible energy serpent, its diameter comparable to that of a small warship, broke free of the ship in a heartbeat and lunged at its target.
In theory, there should be no lightning in the void. Yet lightning flashed here all the same.
Eleanor's perception had not been mistaken. After hurling that deadly torrent of energy away, the enormous Silent immediately began maneuvering again. The inertia naturally set the warship trembling.
As for the arcs, they did not shoot in straight lines. They writhed and leaped eerily through the vacuum of space, like predators summoned from the Warp and made purely of energy.
And such monsters should not have been able to exist in the material universe.
Before the ion and lance batteries at Chenxiao Fortress could unleash their roars, the invisible spatial arc had already slammed into the fortress's thickest layer of liquid-metal armor.
That was right: the defensive field, which had calmly withstood dozens of bombardments from Titan main guns, seemed not to exist at all. The writhing