When the countdown reached five seconds, the two Plasma Bugs on the Main Screen suddenly lit up from head to tail.
It was not the blue glow of an attack charging.
Beneath their black-purple carapaces, sesame-sized, translucent jet sacs swelled simultaneously, densely covering their heads, flanks, and backs like countless coldly glowing eyes opening.
The next instant, countless Plasma Beams shot from the sacs, sweeping across the airspace toward the two incoming missiles.
Blue-white light instantly filled the orbital feed.
It was not one beam, nor ten, but an entire fan-shaped web of fire, as though someone had unleashed a storm of needles in space, sealing off every route for the missiles' terminal penetration.
Inside the Tianshu Command Center, several staff officers' expressions changed sharply.
"The targets have short-range anti-missile capabilities!"
"The coverage is too extensive! The missiles don't have enough room to evade!"
The two hypersonic interceptor missiles had already entered their final impact window and were extremely close to their targets. Their onboard AI immediately initiated terminal evasive maneuvers.
Their thrust-vectoring nozzles made continuous fine adjustments, tracing slight curves through space as the missiles tried to slip through gaps between the beams.
But that web of plasma fire was too dense.
Just as the first missile completed its second change of course, three blue-white beams struck its casing simultaneously.
The intense heat instantly burned through its thermal insulation, forcing its warhead to detonate prematurely.
On the other side, the second missile also plunged into the beams' coverage. Its body shuddered violently in the dazzling blue light, then became an expanding burst of white fire.
The vacuum lacked sufficient medium to transmit a shock wave. The explosions did not produce the sort of blast wave that tore through everything in an atmosphere; only high-speed fragments, thermal radiation, and streams