"Ti to test the depth of the water, then," Hye commanded.
Instantly, his hidden assets began to move. He didn’t commit his full force yet; instead, he activated the clusters of dormant little ships he had prepositioned around the Torank fleet.
He kept his primary "small ship trap" from the previous battle in reserve, unwilling to show his full strength until the nature of the black hexagons was revealed.
As for the galactic broadcast, he kept the feed tightly focused. To the billions of viewers watching across the universe, the screen showed only the relentless, terrifying efficiency of the Soulers and Reapers.
He showcased the slaughter, the precision, and the power of his vanguard, ensuring that not a single fra of the mysterious Torank weapon reached the public eye.
Since Olana could offer no insight into the nature of the strange artifacts, Hye decided there was only one way to learn: he would force the Toranks’ hand.
It was becoming glaringly apparent that they were in the middle of a massive tactical deploynt. Their goal was to completely encircle Hye and his grand fleet within a periter of those jagged, obsidian shapes.
At his ntal command, his hidden small ships accelerated. They burst from their cold-running positions, suddenly flaring to life on the Torank sensor grids like a thousand newborn stars.
Even though the Toranks had deployed their new weapons, the hexagonal pieces were currently oriented toward the centre of the battlefield—toward Hye’s main fleet. They were not positioned to defend against a swarm of gnats stinging them from outer space.
"Let’s see how serious you are about these toys," Hye murmured.
He aid his manoeuvre with precision, intending to gauge their panic levels. If these black pieces were truly the silver bullet ant to crush his Soulers and Reapers, the Toranks would be willing to pay any price to prevent his small ships from touching them.
The response was instantaneous and violent.
"What are they doing?!" Olana cried out, her eyes fixed on the direct feed from one of the advancing scout ships.
The mont the Torank commanders spotted the incoming vessels, they didn’t just peel off a few squadrons for intercept duty. They acted with terrifying decisiveness, detaching two entire, massive fleets from their main formation to intercept the intruders.
The sight of those two fleets shifting their montum was breathtaking. The sheer scale of the power they were diverting just to stop a collection of small ships—a force that didn’t even equal half a fleet in total tonnage—confird everything Hye suspected. No one protected a "toy" with that much desperation.
"Ti to see what this weapon is all about then," Hye said, a cold grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.
At the exact mont the outer Torank fleets moved to intercept his scouts, he signalled the small ships nested within his own grand fleet. While the enemy was distracted by the threat from the exterior, his inner ships accelerated from the heart of the battle, drawing close enough to threaten the weapon platforms from the inside out.
By the ti the Torank tactical officers realised they had been baited by a classic double-feint, it was already too late. They couldn’t pull their interceptors back, and they couldn’t redeploy their heavy cruisers fast enough to stop the inner ships from closing the distance.
"You have no way out of this but to use the weapon, or watch it burn!"
Hye’s eyes shone with a predatory light. He could practically feel the frantic pulse of the Torank leadership through the void. He had placed them in a logical vice. The choice was simple: let the weapon be destroyed before it could fire, or activate it prematurely.
They did exactly what he expected.
The massive black pieces began to glow with a sudden, haunting luminescence. Curiously, the Toranks didn’t just arm the units closest to the incoming threat. Instead, they activated the entire hexagonal net in perfect unison.
Hye narrowed his eyes, analysing the data. He couldn’t tell yet if they had triggered the entire array to ensure all hidden traps were cleared, or if the weapon had a fundantal design flaw—a chain-link activation system where one could not fire without the others.
Regardless of the "why," he didn’t linger on the mystery. He focused every sensor array he controlled onto the glowing pieces that now ford a cage of light around the battlefield.
"Isn’t it better to withdraw? We need to create distance!" Olana said, her voice tight with restlessness. The way those black pieces shimred with that sickly, dangerous light made her skin crawl.
"No point," Hye countered instantly. "If this weapon is designed to threaten my forces, then the safest place is right in the middle of the enemy. We cling to the Toranks’ main bulk. We don’t panic, and we don’t run."
He was completely unfazed by the encroaching threat. He knew that any other commander in the universe would be doing exactly what Olana suggested—burning their engines to slag to escape the periter. But Hye understood the psychology of his enemy better than they understood themselves.
The fact that the majority of the Torank grand fleet was currently entangled in a chaotic lee with his own forces was his strongest shield. Even if the Toranks wanted him dead more than anything else, they wouldn’t risk vaporising their own elite fleets in a fit of friendly fire.
And then there was the matter of the broadcast.
Hye realised that the Toranks would try to claim any "accidental" destruction of their own ships as a heroic sacrifice or a tragic mishap. He wasn’t going to give them that luxury. With a flick of his mind, he shifted the galactic broadcast.
He moved the caras away from the close-up slaughter of the Soulers and Reapers and opened the view to a wide-angle perspective of the entire battlefield.
If the Toranks planned to open fire at their own fleets, then he wanted the universe to see that.
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