Chapter 535: Hyperion — Advance Four! Boarding Operation!
In the eyes of the Singers, the true "galactic war" was the one between their Motherworld and the civilizations of the Edge — a war that stretched across an entire spiral arm, spanning tens of millions of light-years.
When that battle reached its peak, the fleets on both sides had grown so vast that their starship formations formed a colossal vortex nebula the size of the entire Trisolaran star system.
At the final moment of the campaign, the Singer civilization decisively threw every remaining warship and vessel into that high-speed spinning nebula, causing its total mass to surge.
When the inward pull of gravity finally exceeded the centrifugal force, the vast nebula of warships and ships collapsed under its own gravity, forming a massive, unprecedented star.
Because this newborn star contained an abnormally high proportion of heavy elements, it quickly transitioned into an explosive supernova after ignition.
That "stellar bomb" illuminated the entire Milky Way, annihilating the fleets of both the Edge civilization and the Singers alike.
But that battle belonged to an age long past.
Those brutal, primitive tactics had long since been abandoned. The conflicts of today had evolved into struggles of spatial dimensions and the philosophies of cosmic survival.
Unfortunately, the Singer civilization still lagged behind the Edge in these fields, gradually losing ground under the assault of their "mathematical law weapons."
Forced to the brink, the Singers could only resort to dimensional-reduction strikes and lightspeed-lowering weapons to buy time, retreating into the safety of the two-dimensional realm.
The Edge chose the present, while the Singers placed their faith in the future.
Even so, the victor now was undeniably the Edge civilization. Yet, in the vast universe, there would always be civilizations stronger still — there was always someone beyond, and skies beyond skies.
In the end, every civilization was doomed to confront its own mortality. None were truly superior; none could escape oblivion.
As for what the civilizations standing at the apex of the universe faced — the Singers neither knew nor wished to imagine. Such unknowable terror was not something every being could endure.
Sometimes, dying in ignorance could almost be considered a mercy.
Just as the Singer pondered where to continue its "janitor's task," an alarm flared from the Seed Ship's main core.
From nowhere, a fresh wave of enemies had appeared, surrounding it completely.
The core display lit up with countless red blips — the swarm of AI drones launched from Infinity-class carriers. Though each individual drone's combat power was limited, the sight of their number alone was overwhelming.
They filled space like locusts in a cosmic plague, unleashing a rain of antimatter missiles, proton torpedoes, and hard-light cannon fire toward the Seed Ship.
Faced with this apocalyptic onslaught, the Singer remained utterly calm. No matter how many came, it had its ways of dealing with them — such attacks were meaningless.
A mere glance told it that these drones lacked even basic curvature drives; clearly, they came from a backward civilization, incapable of posing any real threat.
The Seed's defense systems reactivated. Around the ship, a low-lightspeed black domain formed — a shroud of darkness that enveloped the vessel.
Everything that entered the dark mist — hard-light beams, antimatter warheads, proton torpedoes — vanished without a trace, as though cast into a bottomless sea.
Noticing that this starfield had no nearby stars, the Singer abandoned the idea of using photon strikes. With enemy numbers too large to count, it decided instead to deploy a two-dimensional foil.
It applied to the Elders for a few pieces — once you used one of these, you never stopped wanting to. And since the Motherworld was already preparing for full dimensional descent, using them sooner or later made no difference.
Soon, a sheet of two-dimensional foil, driven by a powerful curvature engine, streaked out beyond the black domain and dove into the swarm's heart.
The rapidly unfolding foil expanded like a devouring black hole, drawing in all surrounding drones into its flat, two-dimensional surface.
The dense formations of fighters were compressed like swatted insects, forever imprinted onto the vast cosmic scroll.
Lacking lightspeed travel capability — and designed as cheap carrier-borne craft that didn't need interstellar range — the AI drones had no hope of escape. One by one, they were crushed into zero-thickness paper.
And yet, despite the annihilation, the swarms continued to surge forward — now reinforced by squadrons of TIE fighters — diving toward the Singer's ship like moths into flame.
Whether erased by the black domain or flattened into the two-dimensional field, they attacked endlessly, heedless of cost or consequence.
At first, the Singer thought a single foil would suffice. A few stragglers didn't matter; janitors didn't need perfection, only rough efficiency.
But soon, it realized something was wrong — no matter how many vanished into the black domain or were compressed into the foil, the total number of drones remained steady.
They just kept coming — wastefully, irrationally, endlessly.
Such behavior was far from normal.
The Singer wanted to open the Great Eye to see what was really happening out there, but the Elders had already forbidden such privileges for its rank.
For its role, merely "observing from afar" was enough. It didn't need the luxury of the Great Eye.
Resigned, it used the Seed Ship's core analyzers to trace the swarm's source. Though not as efficient as the Great Eye, it didn't take long to locate it.
Hidden within a nearby interstellar dust belt was the Long Night, a missionary vessel. Using the dense dust to mine raw minerals, it was running internal production lines to churn out endless drones for the frontline.
Guarding it were the Infinity-class carrier and the White Whale, maintaining the encirclement.
Now that the Singer had identified their location, it hesitated no longer — it immediately launched another two-dimensional foil straight toward the enemy fleet.
> [Alert: Dimensional-reduction strike detected. Initiate evasive maneuvers immediately.]
The moment the foil exited the low-lightspeed black domain, the AI aboard the Universal Megacorp fleet reacted instantly.
Every warship turned its stern toward the Singer's position. The instant the foil came into view, engines roared to full power, executing emergency evasive burns.
The Infinity and White Whale led the way, clearing a path through the dust belt with precision fire.
Meanwhile, the Long Night, still accelerating, continued deploying drones in a desperate attempt to maintain the encirclement.
Moments later, the two-dimensional foil expanded violently — an ever-growing plane that devoured everything in its path, consuming matter and engraving it forever onto a weightless, zero-thickness tapestry.
The warships of the Universal Megacorp naturally possessed faster-than-light engines—but completing acceleration in such a short time was no easy task. The piece of two-dimensional foil was moving at terrifying speed, clearly aimed straight at them.
At that moment, vast stretches of space were flowing toward the two-dimensional foil like collapsing quicksand. Aside from accelerating with all they had, the Megacorp's warships had no other choice.
Countless interstellar dust particles were frozen midflow, turning into motionless grains of sand. The Preacher and his crew dared not underestimate the threat—for in the face of dimensional reduction, all defensive measures were meaningless.
Even their neutron-star armor offered no protection against the two-dimensional foil.
The Preacher ordered Long Night's engines to maximum output. The roaring thrusters spat out a tail flame stretching hundreds of kilometers long.
With Infinity-Class and White Whale clearing a path ahead, Long Night finally achieved full acceleration, breaking free of the two-dimensional foil's pursuit and bursting out of that deadly zone.
Once he confirmed that everyone had escaped unscathed, the Preacher immediately commanded the warship to turn and resume its assault on the Singers' vessel.
Dense waves of AI drones once again poured out from Long Night, sweeping in from a different angle.
The Singers' ship was still unable to break free at high speed and had no choice but to hide within the low-light-speed dark zone, seeking an opening.
Meanwhile, a new dark matter wormhole had formed elsewhere on the battlefield—Hyperion was waiting on the other side.
Led by Jim Raynor, the Raiders strike team was preparing to board the Singers' ship and deliver the final, fatal blow.
"Hyperion, ahead four!"
Raynor ordered full speed and stealth mode, surging rapidly toward the target.
At this moment, the Singer was still watching the data feed on the main core display. When it realized that the two-dimensional foil it had deployed hadn't wiped out the enemy fleet, it finally sensed that something was wrong.
The fact that those three warships not only survived but even turned around to continue attacking baffled the Singer completely.
Did these low-entropy lifeforms not understand fear? After narrowly escaping a dimensional reduction strike, they were coming back to die?
It began to wonder whether the enemy might be silicon-based lifeforms—only such beings could be so suicidally fearless.
A massive swarm of AI drones once again surged forward, forcing the Singer to shrink back into the low-light-speed dark zone.
With the protection of that region, the drones were useless—such wasteful tactics only deepened the Singer's confusion.
It longed to use the "Great Eye" to survey its surroundings, to see how many enemy ships there really were. With full-map vision enabled, no amount of trickery could hide from it.
Unfortunately, it didn't have that authority.
The Great Eye was already occupied observing far more critical battlefronts in the ongoing war between the Homeworld and the Fringe. This small skirmish simply wasn't worth its attention.
Resigned, the Singer prepared to hurl its remaining pieces of two-dimensional foil toward the Megacorp's fleet, intending to drag them all into a two-dimensional tapestry.
Even a single piece of two-dimensional foil caused a collapse effect comparable to a black hole; escape was possible only by fleeing in one direction.
But with multiple foils deployed at once, their gravitational pulls would clash chaotically, like three stars in a trinary system—no escape would be possible.
The Megacorp's ships were already struggling against one two-dimensional foil. If several more appeared, it would mean certain death.
Just as the Singer was about to swing its energy tendrils and hurl the rest of the foils, an alarm sounded from the main core.
An unidentified object was about to collide with the Seed Ship!
"What… what's going on?"
The Singer was stunned. It was inside a low-light-speed dark zone—how could anything be rushing toward it?
At that instant, a dark matter wormhole had appeared nearby, unnoticed. Hyperion emerged from it, piercing through the outer edge of the dark zone and hurtling toward the Seed Ship like a bullet.
Before entering the wormhole, Hyperion had already accelerated to tremendous speed; upon exiting, its momentum carried it forward with unstoppable force—its trajectory was a suicide charge straight at the Seed Ship.
Faced with such madness, the Singer had no time to react. It had never encountered an enemy closing in this recklessly at point-blank range and was at a complete loss.
The Seed Ship was unmatched in offense and defense—but its armor plating was barely reinforced, as if it were a fragile walnut shell.
Compared to it, Hyperion was smaller—but against such a feral ramming assault, the Singer could do nothing.
Hyperion's prow drove into the Seed Ship like a blade, slamming into its central hull. Half the vessel buried itself inside the alien ship with a thunderous explosion.
In an instant, the shattered hulls intertwined, cables sparking violently as both crews were rocked by the intense shockwave.
It was risky—such a collision might damage the Seed's core and destroy valuable data—but it was still the best way to seize the enemy vessel.
Capturing it intact was nearly impossible.
The impact had caught the Singer completely off guard. It never imagined that such a primitive, low-entropy civilization could breach the Seed Ship's low-light-speed barrier and strike its exact location head-on.
It was as if a fully armed modern soldier had been blinded by a stone thrown by an ancient ape—utterly humiliating.
And this was only the beginning.
The moment the collision succeeded, Astartes warriors aboard Hyperion began their boarding operation.
They swarmed out through the breach, landing on the mysterious alien vessel known as the Seed Ship.
Just as V had predicted, in such close-quarters combat, the Singers dared not deploy two-dimensional foil—using it now would annihilate Hyperion and themselves alike.
Though the Singers' Homeworld had prepared for dimensional reduction, the Seed Ship still carried critical missions—it couldn't be lost.
That gave theUniversal Megacorp its long-awaited chance.
From this moment on, their soldiers no longer needed to engage in elaborate space duels—
they would fight the oldest, most primal form of warfare there was: boarding combat!