Hu Xiner looked at the interstellar holo-table before her.
All around the rim of the holo-table, scattered red signals could be seen; faint as they were, their number was growing at an astonishing rate.
By that trait alone, it could be all but certain that this was the interstellar hive-race!
And the place where Hu Xiner now stood was a military star port.
It was charged with this stretch of the Hive Nest defense line.
But by rights, this place lay some distance behind the front edge of the line.
Even if the enemy had slipped in, how could it have closed a ring around this military star port in so short a time?
None of this was right at all.
Unless!
A certain possibility came to Hu Xiner.
She knit her brows!
If it truly was so, then the front-line battlefield here was in grave trouble!
"Have we reached the rear?" Hu Xiner looked to the secretary officer at her side.
"The comms signal is jammed; we cannot reach headquarters in the rear!" Beads of sweat had already appeared on the secretary officer's brow.
Hu Xiner said nothing.
If this truly was a military operation the enemy had prepared, it would surely have accounted for all this.
In that moment she seemed to feel an unseen great hand already closed over this battlefield.
"Keep trying. At the same time, send out several interstellar stealth scout ships to find a way to slip out unseen. I will give them a document. The moment they are clear of the jamming, they are to send it home at once," Hu Xiner said in a low voice.
"Yes."
Hu Xiner opened the command channel.
By good fortune, though long-range quantum communication was jammed, the short-range communication network could still be used.
"Fourth Legion of the Owl Dragon Third Legion Fleet Group, all hands, hear my orders. The interstellar hive-race has attacked our defense line, but how many the enemy number, we do not know. By some means the enemy has also cut our communications with home. And by some means, too, it has already surrounded our hive-line Military Star Port No. 3. What we know of the enemy at present is next to nothing. But one thing I do know: the enemy has come to devour us." Hu Xiner clenched her fists; in her eyes she seemed to see that figure.
The figure she had been chasing all along.
Hu Xiner said in a low voice, "This is our legion's first stand since it was placed in the Owl Dragon Third Legion Fleet Group. It may also be the Owl Dragon Interstellar Empire's first battle since its founding. Whatever happens, the last order we received is to hold fast here; these bugs must on no account break through this line. Every fleet in the legion, prepare for battle. Make ready to meet the enemy!"
"Understood!"
The fleet commanders answered over the command channel.
Some may have been tense, some anxious, and some perhaps afraid.
But when the thing was truly before them, who they were, and the uniforms they wore, bound them to do what they must!
For that was the duty of a soldier of the Owl Dragon Interstellar Empire.
Hu Xiner watched the interstellar holo-table, where a ring had already closed right around this military port!
Not a breath could pass through it.
How many of these bugs there were, there was no longer any telling.
The eerie situation on the Hive Nest defense line soon became known at the Owl Dragon base as well, and was reported up to Zhao Chen.
"Still no contact?" Zhao Chen looked to Lilith, his secretary.
Lilith shook her head and said gravely, "Strong signal interference and spatial interference have appeared in the target area. Not only is long-range quantum communication impossible, even space jumps cannot be made!"
Zhao Chen fixed his gaze on the northern end of the interstellar holo-table before him, the Hive Nest defense line.
"How many places have lost contact?" Zhao Chen asked.
Lilith tapped lightly at several points on the interstellar holo-table.
"Along the hive line we built thirty-odd T3 Storm Fortress-class large star ports before now, placed specially under the Owl Dragon Third Legion Fleet Group. At present, five of the Storm Fortress star ports have lost contact. And all of these areas have gone dark to communications." Lilith turned several areas gray, marking them as areas out of contact.
"Lost along with these five Storm Fortress star ports are nearly 100,000 interstellar warships, chiefly the Fourth Legion's fleet under the Owl Dragon Third Legion Fleet Group, commanded by Hu Xiner, and part of the Third Legion's fleets under Wei Shishi. Commander Medusa of the Third Fleet Group has already sent the nearest interstellar fleets around these dark areas to find out what is happening. But it will still take a little time. Even so, we can roughly infer that the interstellar hive-race has made its move."
Zhao Chen said in a low voice, "We all know the interstellar hive-race has made its move. But how it moved, how many hive fleets there are, and how it means to fight, of these we know nothing."
He paused, then said, his gaze sharp, "What is more, this whole deployment feels nothing like the interstellar hive-race's way of fighting. The interstellar hive-race of before used the sea-of-bugs tactic most of the time, pressing straight on the whole line, a great host bearing down on the border! But like this — surprise attacks aimed at a few points, while jamming communication signals and blocking space jumps — this is nothing like the interstellar hive-race of the past."
"It is eerie indeed. But for now we have no choice. We can only wait for word from the front-line battlefield," Lilith said.
Zhao Chen looked to Charlotte, who had said nothing all this while.
"Charlotte, what do you think?"
Charlotte raised her head and said in a low voice, "I think we cannot wait. If no space jump can be made into the target area, then one of the Owl Dragon Empire fleet's trump tactics, sending support straight in by T4 Lucent-class Interstellar Jump Ship, is gone. That being so, all we can do is make our deployments in advance. If we wait until everything is clear, I think the hive line may already be more than half lost."
"But we have no intelligence at all right now. We of the Owl Dragon have never fought a battle so wholly without certainty!" Lilith said, somewhat worried.
Charlotte said plainly, "Before, we relied on our edge in intelligence and the few aces in our hand, and could make our deployments early. That was because we stood in a different place then. Now we are the Owl Dragon Interstellar Empire. We are a target. The enemy is Order, mysterious and powerful, which means it has a great many petty tricks it can use on us. So there will be more and more battlefields like this one, set against us, in the future. In other words, the wars to come will be harder to fight. All we can do is grow used to it, and adapt." She looked to Zhao Chen, her gaze firm. "I suggest we do not wait for the details from the hive line, but send reinforcements straight away. The people within the Empire are already somewhat unsettled because of the undead crisis. Nothing more can go wrong on the northern border!"
Zhao Chen nodded. "I agree. Then what should we do next?"
"We have no main fleet groups left that we can deploy. And as we know nothing of the enemy, even if we take a risk, we cannot commit too much. So it is best to use our ace fleet groups."
Charlotte named them outright: "I suggest that I lead the Reverse Scale ace fleet group myself, together with Su Lan's Queen of the Starry Sky ace fleet group and Baixue's Hell-Angel ace fleet group, three ace fleet groups going to the northern hive line together. As for how to fight, we will see once we are there. The two remaining ace fleet groups will stand by at home, and be assigned as things develop on each battlefield."
Charlotte had thought it all through.
"Very well, do as you say." Zhao Chen agreed.
"Then I will arrange the combat supplies to follow to the northern hive line. Since it is the hive-race we face, the battlefield will surely consume a great deal. When the time comes, some of the more ordinary battlefield supplies can be drawn straight from the industrial factories in the Demon Race's and Angel Race's lands. I have already done the tallies and drawn up production plans in advance; they need only be sent down to those factories," Lilith said from beside them.
She disliked a battle she could not hold in her grasp.
But once the whole plan was settled, Lilith would give it the best support she could.
"This is Order's opening blow, meant to cow us. It is also the Owl Dragon Interstellar Empire's first great war in the true sense. Do not let those fellows from beyond our realm think little of us!" Zhao Chen said sternly.
"Yes!"
After that, the ace fleet groups began to move out quickly.
Since they could not space-jump straight there, they simply used the Star Gates, heading for the largest Star Gate on the northern hive line to make further arrangements from there.
And Zhao Chen, as Emperor, took passage on his temporary flagship, the T6 Rakshasa-Hades-class Interstellar Dreadnought, and hastened to the northern hive line along with Charlotte's Reverse Scale ace fleet group.
Affairs at home were left in Lilith's charge.
For the matter of the star exploding on the Judgment Angel side, which had widened the undead disaster further, was not yet over.
And so someone had to keep watch over it at all times.
When Zhao Chen, aboard the Rakshasa-Hades, passed through the Star Gate and safely reached the largest Star Gate on the northern hive line, he received the latest word from the battlefield.
It was Medusa, supreme commander of the Third Fleet Group, who reported to him in person.
"Your Majesty. The hive-race attacked several of our key defense-line hubs ten hours ago. At the same time, it laid down communication jamming and spatial interference, so that we cannot keep in timely contact with our own legion fleets within the battle zone. The spatial interference also keeps us from using the Star Gates within the battle area, or from making space jumps. It has hampered our battlefield command enormously. Of the star ports in the five battle zones, we have made brief contact with three. All are under attack by great numbers of the hive-race, but so far all are holding well enough. With our military star ports, the legion fleets garrisoned there, and the combat supplies laid in early, there should be no great problem for at least fifty combat hours."
Medusa also put up several images taken by interstellar stealth scout ships.
They were not images of battle.
They showed several kinds of hive-race creature never seen before.
The first image was a very beautiful scene.
Across a stretch of starry void, glowing points could be seen, one after another.
It was like fireflies in the wild on a late night.
"We found this creature. It is shaped like a firefly, and there are a very great many of them. When our interstellar stealth scout ships drew close to observe, they found this may be the chief culprit jamming our long-range quantum communications. But there are simply too many. And they are spread across a good many star systems; clearing them out in a short time will be very hard."
Medusa then pointed to the second image.
If the first image still held a kind of beauty, the second could only be called eerie.
The second was a video clip.
Its backdrop, too, was a starry void.
At first there was nothing in the void at all, but then, at some moment no one could say, a misty, bug-shaped creature appeared out of thin air!
It flickered in and out of sight, like a fish roaming the open sea.
"This creature, too, our interstellar stealth scout ships happened upon by chance. It is a hive-race unit with no true physical body. Our scout ships attacked it with some of their shipboard weapons, but to little effect, and it soon got away. We suspect it may be a semi-corporeal creature that can pass back and forth between main space and dimensional space. It is because of it that spatial stability is disturbed, so that we cannot make space jumps."
Here Medusa pointed to the third image, and her expression grew graver still: "The hive-race unit in this third image affects us most. Its effect is somewhat like our warp interceptors. If an interstellar warship under ordinary flight touches it, nothing happens. But when an interstellar warship comes near it at warp, it explodes. The blast is strong enough to destroy a T3 interstellar warship and cripple a T4. If there are many of these hive-race units in an area, even a T5 interstellar warship will come off the worse. We learned this only at the price of a whole fleet wiped out to the last ship."
Hearing this, Charlotte was plainly more interested in the hive-race unit in the third image.
Zhao Chen took a look.
It was something like a green lantern, hanging in the starry void.
"It is because of this thing, too, that we dare not send fleets at once to support those star-port battlefields. The least slip could cost us enormously!" Medusa said with a frown.
Charlotte nodded; it seemed she backed Medusa in this.
"Then, as to how this hive-race could suddenly surround those star ports, I have found a lead there too. I suspect this hive-race has a means of delivering hive fleets directly over long distances!" Medusa said, her face grave.
Delivering hive fleets at long range?
In that instant, the pupils of both Zhao Chen and Charlotte contracted.
Compared with the three hive-race methods before it, this last was the most threatening of all.
If the hive-race could deliver hive fleets anywhere it pleased within the Owl Dragon Interstellar Empire's borders, it would be nothing short of a nightmare!