The Destroyer had no mercy to offer. No such data existed in its concepts or thoughts. Warships of every shape made faster-than-light jumps and surrounded the three inhabited planets in the blink of an eye.
An interstellar fleet nearly forty thousand strong appeared in the void, filling the Stellar System, from rectangular warships at least five kilometers long to crescent-shaped attack ships measuring twenty-five kilometers.
The sleek warships, their hulls gleaming silver-white, fired rays straight at the paltry defensive systems orbiting the planets and destroyed them. The Destroyer did not simply reduce the planets to cosmic particles with a few shots from its Beam Cannons.
It merely needed matter to survive.
The planetary data it detected baffled the Destroyer. Densely packed individuals formed communities on the surface, their numbers so great that each individual occupied an average of no more than ten square meters. It was hard to imagine life surviving in such crowded places.
Yet the small groups in the orbital cities possessed plots of land measured in hundreds of meters, with an average of fifteen hundred square meters per individual. They clearly belonged to the same species, all with large heads, small bodies, short, thin limbs, and gray skin.
The administrators on the surrounded planets panicked. What civilization was this? Or was it a pirate fleet? Where was the Coalition fleet?
Ignoring the warnings, the Destroyer's fleet began approaching the fifth planet. Particle weapons deployed on the surface opened fire, but their offensive technology had all been developed by the civilization itself. These ray weapons could not inflict substantial damage on the Destroyer's fleet.
The surface batteries that had revealed their positions were easily destroyed by columns of energy from deep space. The Destroyer was no fool that would take a beating without fighting back.
Scans indicated that