Yet in Viola's underground command center, Shadowsun merely watched coldly as the points of light representing Imperial warships on the star map went from an orderly sphere to a scattered mess.
"Phase one's assessed effectiveness exceeded projections by twelve percent," she concluded in an utterly emotionless voice. "The enemy commander's caution only exacerbated their confusion. Once command was lost, their compact defensive formation became a field of catastrophic chain collisions."
"Now," she said, raising her hand and pressing the second button, "it is time for this nebula to sing its true requiem. Initiate phase two."
Aun'Ve watched it all in silence, watching this "vessel of war" drive the once-arrogant Imperial Fleet step by step toward the abyss of destruction with a ruthlessness and efficiency that chilled even him. For the first time, a flicker of doubt stirred in his heart about the future of the Greater Good. What would they have to sacrifice for victory? And what would they have to become?
But there was no turning back now.
At Shadowsun's command, hundreds of enormous Orbital Mirrors scattered throughout the Viola System, hidden in every corner, adjusted their angles simultaneously.
These immense constructs, like metal flowers blooming among the stars, were among the Viola System's greatest engineering marvels. They had originally been civilian facilities used by the Air Caste to regulate planetary climates and channel stellar energy.
But now, in Qingxi's mind, filled with cold murderous intent, they became the deadliest of weapons.
Like an enormous, precisely calculated array of lenses, the hundreds of mirrors focused every ray of starlight they captured onto a single point.
That point was an immense, exceptionally unstable sunspot on the surface of the Viola Star, one the Air Caste's scientists had marked long ago.
The star was already in an active, unstable phase. Now