In the empty darkness of deep space, rectangular spacecraft appeared one after another. The largest were twenty kilometers long, and even the smallest escort vessels measured two kilometers.
The fleet of three hundred thousand ships emerging from faster-than-light jumps was the Alta Civilization's reserve force. The moment it returned to conventional universe space, it emitted countless rays, generating innumerable intersecting streams of information.
Various detection systems began mapping everything within this region of space in detail. Every warship became a hive, and swarms of drones spread into space like bees leaving their nests.
They scanned the conventional universe inch by inch, guarding against advanced stealth equipment concealed in the region that might launch a surprise attack on the fleet.
The enormous cellular information network established through hyperspace communication could synchronize every instruction across the ships. With its overriding communications authority, the flagship could monitor the entire battlefield and compile a three-dimensional, four-dimensional information display, distributing every piece of collected information throughout the fleet.
Lanuoqi's body lay quietly in a protective pod, his brain linked to the Forerunner's mainframe through an overclocked consciousness connection.
"Forerunner F117 has reached the designated region," the warship's system reported automatically.
The warship's pilot, Lanuoqi, had merged his consciousness with the systems of the ten-kilometer-long Forerunner. The silver warship's smooth exterior absorbed cosmic rays while radiating an invisible force field.
All the information collected by the Forerunner warship's observation equipment flowed into Lanuoqi's brain. The entire ship was like an enormous auxiliary brain and body extending from him.
More than ten million bytes of data passed through Lanuoqi's brain every second. Above, to his left, and below him, fleet warships stood two hundred million kilometers away, forming a vast network of nodes in space. Another warship waited in combat readiness behind the vessel he piloted.
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