The command room fell deathly silent.
Everyone stared, dumbfounded, at the signal representing the space station disappearing from the screen. For a moment, they were incapable of thought.
The general staggered, his face drained of color.
"Heh... hehehe..." He let out a laugh more painful to hear than crying. He leaned against the console to keep from collapsing. "What have we done? What will become of the Empire?"
He murmured a few words, then suddenly drew his pistol. Before anyone could react, he pressed it beneath his chin and pulled the trigger. His body slowly slumped to the floor against the console.
The general, born into an ordinary civilian family and not even a psychic, had ultimately chosen not to blow up the fortress. It was unclear whether he had lost the authority to do so, or simply lacked the resolve.
On the screen behind him, the fortress began another round of main-gun bombardment. A beam from its positron cannon stabbed toward another space station of the same class in the outer orbit.
Meanwhile, the target it should have attacked began moving toward the dense cluster of space cities.
The people of Earth seemed utterly uninterested in the largest Sky Domain fortress of them all.
Inside the fortress's main-gun control room, the floating Overlords, shaped like scorpions, waved their powerful, nimble tail pincers. Like children sweeping toys aside, they brushed the human limbs left on the control panels out of the way and continued operating them.
Their cold compound eyes reflected the complex control interfaces.
This kind of complex data was beyond the understanding of ordinary members of the swarm. But as information-receiving units and operating terminals, they were more than sufficient.
As the swarm's "mage units," the Overlords were now acting as gunners under the direction of a