The bridge lights turned deep purple. The unmaking frequency was bleeding back into the ship. "Zero cannot hold it much longer!" Su Qing screamed. Gray blood leaked from the young girl's closed eyes. Zero was vibrating, her body resisting the Loom's deconstruction on a quantum level. General Thorne chambered a fresh Sun-Round. "I am going in." Thorne said. "If the frequency touches my robotic arm it will melt instantly. I have maybe ten minutes." He looked at Su Qing. He looked at Zero. "We need the Glass Hammer operational." Thorne said. "You must stabilize the core without Zero. When I cut the tether the Architects will try to crush you. Fire point-blank if you have to." Su Qing nodded. She took the pilot's seat. ... The Incursion. Thorne formed his breaching team. Five soldiers. The finest veterans of the Great Zhou. They checked their pulse rifles. They did not speak. They were re

The mirror pulled the trigger. Its dark matter rifle made no sound. It fired a solid black spike of compressed energy. The spike hit the soldier to Thorne's right. It pierced the man's heavy chest armor effortlessly. The soldier dropped dead instantly. Thorne did not blink. He fired his heavy rifle. The bright orange Sun-Rounds hit the mirror's chest. The dark matter absorbed the heat. The bullet holes sealed instantly. The blue-faced copy stepped forward. "Cover the General!" The two surviving soldiers yelled. They charged the mirror. They raised their pulse rifles. They wanted to draw its fire. The mirror moved. It moved exactly like Thorne. It stepped inside their guard perfectly. It grabbed the first soldier's rifle and snapped the barrel. It drove its dark matter fist through the man's helmet. The second soldier swung a combat knife. The mirror caught his wrist, broke it, and kicked him into the bottomless abyss.<

The dreadnought hit the dry dock hard. Su Qing did not wait for the landing gear to lock. She kicked the airlock ramp open. She carried Thorne on her shoulders. The heavy General dragged her down. His blood coated her hazard suit. "Zero." Su Qing yelled. "Where is the medical bay?" Zero stood at the bottom of the ramp. She pointed to a massive silver tower in the distance. "Sector Four." Zero said. Her voice was totally flat. "But it will not help." "He is dying." Su Qing snapped. She kept walking. "He is already dead." Zero replied. Su Qing stopped. She looked at the young girl. Zero walked closer. She pointed at the massive hole in Thorne's chest armor. The wound was not just bleeding. The edges of the flesh glowed with a faint purple light. "The mirror punched him." Zero explained. "It left the unmaking frequency inside his body. The dark matter is eating his cells. The Navigator medical mac

The red wall arrived. It was not a fleet. It was a tide. Millions of black ships dropped out of hyperspace at the exact same time. They filled the entire visual spectrum of the local sector. They blotted out the distant stars completely. They did not fire lasers. They did not launch missiles. They simply pushed forward in absolute silence. Their collective mass created a physical hammer. They smashed directly into the local spacetime fabric. The sheer weight of the dark matter hulls crushed the vacuum. The local gravity warped violently. The thin silver atmosphere of the Cradle began to burn. The friction of the displaced space ignited the upper thermosphere. It looked like a halo of pale fire. "Shields at maximum." Su Qing yelled. She slammed her hands onto the navigation console. The giant transparent dome covering the shipyard activated. It turned deep purple. The ancient energy barrier met the crushing weight of the black ocean. The shield groaned immediately. It was built t

The first pyramid was dust. Millions of perfectly square black fragments floated in the cold void. The command ship was completely erased. Thorne pointed his heavy iron finger at the tactical map. "Next target." Zero highlighted a second massive command node. It was a hundred miles away. The red icon pulsed on the black stone table. Su Qing pushed the throttle fully forward. The dreadnought vanished. It crossed the vast distance in a single microsecond. The Glass Hammer struck the flat black hull perfectly dead center. The singularity inside the crystal rejected the ordered dark matter instantly. The second pyramid shattered completely. It exploded into a massive cloud of dead geometric shapes. Thorne did not pause. He did not celebrate. He commanded a machine of absolute destruction. "Again." Thorne ordered. The massive iron mountain became a blur of white light. They rammed a third command ship. They broke a fourth. They pulverized a fifth. The Architects could not tra