...3...
The ship's hull groaned under the strain of maximum acceleration.
...2...
Therille held his breath—an instinctive, useless act against the vacuum.
...1...
An eternity in the span of a blink.
EXECUTE.
His thumb slammed the button on the console. Not a press—a strike. An act of blind faith.
The Mite twisted beneath him, a metal beast in agony. A violent jolt hurled him against his restraints. The sound of thirty tons of scrap being forcefully ejected from the cargo hold wasn't an explosion—it was a deep, guttural grind. A metallic vomit.
He wasn't alone.
Out there, the darkness of space was suddenly filled with a silent choreography of expulsion. Hundreds of Mites and freighters, in perfect unison, vomiting their guts of scrap into the void.
A colossal cloud was born. A storm of garbage, advancing with the inertia of an indifferent god toward the immaculate beauty of the Apex wall.
For a moment, nothing happened.
The debris drifted. The wall shimmered. The universe watched in silence.
"Zero threat," the Apex analyst repeated, his voice laced with boredom. "Just… debris."
On the bridge of the Glory of Enlil, Alexandre watched the shapeless cloud approach. It was ugly. Chaotic. The most Ishtar thing he had ever seen.
"Sir, point-defense cannons are set to ignore low-priority targets, per Commander Ninsun's directive," his officer reported.
"And what exactly defines 'low priority'?" Alexandre shot back.
"Absence of energy signature, non-threat profile, lack of—"
"Fire at what, exactly? Trash?" a destroyer commander cut in over the tactical channel, his tone a mix of confusion and disdain.
"Orders are orders," another replied. "Hold formation. Let it pass."
A knot tightened in Alexandre's stomach. Ishtar didn't throw garbage. She used the rules of the game. And the fundamental rule of any automated defense system was: identify, prioritize, annihilate.
By throwing something that defied identification itself, she wasn't attacking their weapons.
She was attacking their logic.
"Arrogance is a system flaw," Khepri said, his avatar flickering under the torrent of data he was processing. "Ninsun refuses to believe a threat could come from something she deems inferior."
From her command chair, Helen studied the same map. The cloud of debris—thousands of gray points—closed in on the golden line. "She's not wrong," Helen said. "It's not a threat."
"Not yet," Khepri corrected.
Helen didn't smile. War wasn't a place for smiles. But a current of cold satisfaction ran through her.
The bait was in the water.
Then the wall responded.
To Therille, it was like watching a statue come alive.
Blinding needles of light—point-defense lasers—lanced out from the golden barrier. Not with the fury of main cannons, but with the irritated efficiency of someone swatting flies.
An empty container, drifting harmlessly moments before, was struck by a beam. It didn't explode.
It simply… ceased to exist.
Vaporized in an instant.
Another beam struck a chunk of asteroid, turning it into a cloud of shimmering dust.
Suddenly, the space between the fleets became a silent light show. Apex's defense systems—the most sophisticated weapons in the galaxy—locked and fired with relentless efficiency.
Pulverizing empty containers.
Vaporizing scrap.
Annihilating garbage.
On his squad channel, someone started laughing. At first, a choked sound. Then another joined in. Within seconds, the channel—once a well of terror—filled with laughter. Hysterical, desperate, but unmistakably joyful.
"They're shooting at trash!" one pilot shouted, his voice breaking with laughter. "They're actually shooting at trash!"
Therille laughed too. The madness of it hit him—but this time not as fear. As a cosmic joke.
They were forcing the most powerful fleet in the galaxy to wage war against its own garbage.
"Status report!" Sally's voice cut like broken glass. The boredom was gone, replaced by cold irritation.
"Ma'am," an analyst replied, voice trembling. "Targeting systems are registering thousands of contacts. Automated protocols are engaging."
"I ordered minimum priority!" she snapped.
"Yes, ma'am. But system doctrine—any object on a high-velocity collision course is classified as a potential threat, regardless of energy signature. The system is… functioning as designed."
On Sally's display, fleet performance graphs began to shift.
Energy Expenditure (Point Defense): +12%
Average Cannon Temperature: +8%
CPU Cycles (Targeting Calculations): +340%
They weren't dangerous numbers.
They were irritating.
Inefficient.
Ishtar wasn't attacking her.
She was insulting her—polluting her perfect equation with useless data.
"Anya," Sally said, her voice dropping to something dangerously soft. "Authorize fighter sweep squadrons. Clean up this mess."
"Yes, ma'am."
But as Anya moved the cursor, a new wave of sensor data flooded in.
"It's working," Therille whispered to himself. The hysterical joy faded into stunned fascination.
Silent bursts bloomed in the void like flowers of fire. Each flash of light was proof of their success. Each vaporized container, a small victory.
"Khepri, give me the numbers," Ishtar's voice cut through the noise like a scalpel.
"The wall is heating up," the hacker replied. "Every shot generates heat that needs to be dissipated. The debris field is reflecting energy, creating pockets of sensor interference. Their accuracy will start to drop."
"And most importantly…" Khepri added.
"The dust," Helen finished.
Every object vaporized didn't vanish. It became a cloud of superheated particles. Ionized gas. Metallic dust.
The garbage storm was becoming a sandstorm.
A haze Apex sensors couldn't see through.
Therille watched it unfold. The beautiful, terrible golden wall was now partially obscured by its own fury—firing blindly into a fog it had created itself.
A symphony of useless annihilation.
They weren't throwing garbage at the enemy anymore.
They were blinding a titan.
A new voice—his squad leader's—burst through the channel, filled with a new energy. A new hope.
"They took the bait! The fog's forming! Prepare for phase two!"