121 Expedition Arc 6: The Lone Defense

Sorry for the worry.

Data extraction complete.

As soon as Kyle’s fleet entered the Dimensional Jump Gate, I immediately sealed and locked it shut.

Gotta buy some time until combat deployment in the 8A system is finished.

I’ll stash the 5,000 ships I used to convince Kyle into the Dimensional Storage Vault.

If the enemy finds out we’ve got a fleet here, they’ll throw everything at us.

I’m going to deploy a shielding field and vanish myself.

If the enemy slips up—whether they’re machine lifeforms or not—I’ll exploit the opening and destroy their flagship.

They’ll likely use their flagship’s dimensional warp ability from the 8B system to target the 8A system, after all.

Once the enemy flagship’s destroyed, they’ll need to take the Hub Dimensional Jump Gate to reach the 8A system.

The Hub Dimensional Jump Gate’s heavily secured—imperial主力 should be able to regroup and reinforce before the gate’s taken.

Now it’s just about minimizing casualties in the 8B system. A razor-thin calculation.

Enemy estimates: 150,000. If we go head-on, we’ll burn through the 5,000 unmanned ships in the Dimensional Storage Vault just to hold them back.

Half a day after the 8H system’s Jump Gate was seized, the enemy arrived in the subspace just before the 8B system’s Jump Gate.

Kyle reached the 8A system. He joined forces with the 100,000 reserve fleet, forming a 120,000-ship fleet to defend 8A.

The Imperial fleet in the 8G system is taking damage, but they're also wiping out fifty thousand enemy units—maybe forty-five thousand, really?

We sent out a distress call as soon as we realized 8B was the target. If we can just buy enough time, reinforcements should arrive.

Probably within half a day.

I decided to interfere with the enemy hacking into the Dimensional Jump Gate by launching a cyber harassment campaign inside the gate's network.

Every second we gain might mean we can save 8B.

I attached myself to the Dimensional Jump Gate, opened its system terminal, and plugged in a network cable directly.

I linked my Personal Ship’s brain, Sub-Computer 1, and Sub-Computer 2 in parallel, adding auxiliary nodes between them.

A virtual screen unfurled before my eyes—cyberspace, real and immediate.

I become my avatar and head straight for the Dimensional Jump Gate's system.

As this is a legitimate account, I arrive at the system's schematic graphic without any interference.

Beyond that, an ant-person emerges from a hole in the wall, desperately attacking the system with a spear.

Probably an enemy avatar.

The system blocks the ant-person's assault with a barrier and shoots it down with a laser.

But the ant-person keeps coming out of the hole one after another, jabbing at the system's barrier with their spear.

This goes on and on.

Then, the barrier—damaged beyond repair—shatters like glass.

One barrier breached. That’s my cue to step in.

My avatar approaches the ant-person and fires the beam cannon in hand.

I push the ant-person back through the hole until it’s fully outside, then unleash the entire arsenal from the opening.

That should’ve hit the enemy’s neural net—assuming it even exists.

I’ve crushed the ant-person’s hole dozens of times, but now more keep appearing, and they’re returning fire.

The system barrier’s down to its last few layers.

My avatar opens fire on the swarm of ant-people, then begins retreating.

The Dimensional Jump Gate’s system is finally being overrun.

I cut the connection, unplug the wired cable, and wrap my Personal Ship in a shielding field to go stealth.

I pull my Personal Ship away from the Dimensional Jump Gate and take up a firing position where I can observe enemy incursions most clearly.

As soon as I’m in position, the Dimensional Jump Gate opens—revealing a circular dimensional boundary surface glowing like a mirror.

The mirror-like surface ripples—and one ship enters. Probably a scout.

The scout ship must’ve confirmed there were no ambushes waiting in the 8B system.

Then, a swarm of ships enters the 8B system.

Once inside, they position themselves around the perimeter, forming a protective ring—avoiding the direct line from the Dimensional Jump Gate.

About fifty thousand of them. As expected—the mothership’s fleet, which was supposed to head for the 8G system, had sent roughly one-tenth of its vessels on a separate mission.

And now, having confirmed safety, the mothership emerges from the Dimensional Jump Gate.

It’s a cylinder, one hundred kilometers in diameter—just barely fitting the gate’s width.

A station-class fortress ship is one hundred kilometers long and wide, twenty kilometers high—also just barely fitting the gate’s dimensions.

But this capital-class vessel was a cylinder—almost identical in circular width and height to the Dimensional Jump Gate, measuring 100 km across and 100 km tall, with a total length of 250 km.

This was probably deliberately aimed at the absolute edge of passing through the Dimensional Jump Gate.

Two capital-class vessels entered the field.

Chance. With no resistance left in the 8B system, the mothership won't deploy its escort vessels.

Going to launch a full-scale invasion of the 8A system via dimensional jump—warp, right?

The weapon I was preparing to fire was the antimatter particle cannon.

No plans to hold back this time, like last launch.

Last time we held back with one antimatter unit, but this time... full charge.

Destroy a battleship-class vessel, and the enemy can't warp in.

I’ve got the antimatter particle cannon on standby, locking onto a capital-class vessel.

Antimatter is extracted from the annihilation reactor, sealed in specialized casings, then transported to the cannon’s chamber.

This time, two casings are prepared.

The antimatter is transferred from the casing into the chamber. A inward-facing Stasis Field seals it, and kinetic energy is applied—acceleration begins.

Using the Stasis Field’s properties—captures at low speed, reflects at medium, and allows passage at high—the antimatter is trapped, reflected along the acceleration track, then released just before it would break through.

A single beam of light is drawn into the enemy capital vessel’s core.

As the antimatter breaches the capital’s Stasis Field and strikes the armor, annihilation occurs instantly, releasing immense energy.

Full charge this time. The capital-class vessel disintegrates completely—no trace left.

Next shot fired. The second capital-class flagship disintegrated without a chance to react.

The explosion engulfed the fifty thousand ships deployed as escorts around it.

I launched the unmanned vessels from the Dimensional Storage Vault to clear the remaining enemy ships.

Shortly after, all enemy vessels were eradicated. Combat ended.

For now, I captured one enemy cruiser-class ship.

"Got lucky this time. Don’t know what’ll happen next. Always keep retreat in mind."

I muttered the words of reflection, then sent a dimensional transmission.

‘This is Prince Akira, sixth son. Enemy forces in the 8B System have been eliminated. Threat neutralized. End.’

I’d just been trying my hardest to protect the people of the 8B System—but it’d take a while before I realized I’d gone too far.

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