At that moment, the Skrull commander on the bridge stood before a holographic projection, reviewing the latest assessment report on Earth's defensive capabilities.
He looked like a human man in his sixties, but that was merely his shapeshifted form.
His true form was a tall Skrull dressed in a dark blue uniform, with the emblem of the Skrull Empire on his chest.
"Commander," a Skrull officer approached from the other end of the bridge, looking somewhat uneasy.
"We detected spatial fluctuations three kilometers from the mothership."
"Spatial fluctuations?" The commander turned around. "What type of fluctuations?"
"Unclear. It isn't warp travel, nor is it any known spatial propulsion technology. It resembles a hyperspace jump."
"A hyperspace jump?" The commander frowned.
He walked over to the sensor console and stared at the flickering numbers and waveforms on the screen.
Sure enough, those waveforms did not belong to any known spatial technology.
It was as though space itself had been folded, torn apart, and then stitched back together.
The entire process had produced no excess energy leakage, no residual heat signatures, and no gravitational wave signals.
"Activate external surveillance," the commander said.
The bridge's main screen lit up, displaying a real-time view outside the mothership.
A black asteroid belt stretched outside, with sparse starlight in the distance. Everything looked perfectly normal.
Then, right in the center of the screen, space began to distort.
There was no explosion and no flash. Instead, space itself bulged outward, like a sheet of cloth being pushed from behind.
The bulge grew larger and more distinct, eventually forming a blue portal roughly two meters in diameter.
The commander's eyes widened as two people stepped out of the portal.
The first was a young blonde woman in a black jacket and jeans, her expression as calm as if