From cannon fodder to sweeping across thousands of stars.

Chapter 834 The Very Powerful Detective

A considerable amount of time has passed since the return beacon of Eldaram was activated.

In Amber's and the Alliance's initial expectations, a brutal contact war should have already broken out.

Just when everyone thought this peace would continue, an unexpected event finally arrived in the most unpredictable way.

At the Alliance's highest command center, a piercing alarm suddenly shattered the silence of the night.

A communications officer on duty suddenly stood up from his seat, his face pale and his voice trembling with tension.

"Report! The 7th Patrol Fleet of 'Sentinel', which is stationed in the outer perimeter of Eldram and conducting tactical training, has completely lost signal!"

The piercing alarm echoed through the supreme command center, shattering everyone's drowsiness. Amber and Sallyh were among the first high-ranking members of the Alliance to arrive at the command center. When they saw the alarm coming from Aldara, they immediately realized:
The pioneers have finally arrived.

Holographic images of Franklin and Agnes were projected onto the command center. Franklin looked sleepy, clearly having just been awakened from his sleep. The relaxed expressions on their faces had disappeared, replaced by solemnity and suspicion.

"What do you mean by completely disappearing?" Amber's voice wasn't loud, but it carried an almost tangible pressure as it pointed directly at the pale-faced communications officer.

"Sir, it means completely disappear."

The communications officer stammered as he explained, his fingers flying across the control panel to bring up a star chart.

"The Seventh Fleet's last routine communication was sent twenty minutes ago, and everything was normal. But at the scheduled time for the next signal handshake, they did not respond!"

"We tried all encrypted channels, including the highest priority quantum entanglement communication, and all of them went unanswered! Their warship signals, life support system signals, and even shipboard AI response signals were all interrupted at the same time."

"It's like someone pressed the delete key."

A technical officer in charge of data analysis added, his voice tinged with a hint of bewildered incomprehension.

"It's not signal jamming, it's not communication interference, and it's not equipment failure. Based on our analysis of the last received data packet fragments, their signal wasn't 'blocked,' but rather 'absent'? It's as if this fleet, along with the space they were in, was completely ripped out of the real universe."

The conference room fell into a deathly silence.

"Dug it up?"

Franklin muttered to himself, trying to explain the phenomenon with his knowledge of physics, only to find that his understanding was completely inadequate.

“The Pioneers!” Agnes’s voice was cold and certain. “It must be them!”

"But there were no alarms at our outposts."

The head of the command center, one of the few experienced veterans from the New Federation, immediately shook his head in rebuttal.

"The 'Cerberus' deep space monitoring array, deployed inside the Eldaram system, is scanning all possible space anomalies and faster-than-light tracks 24 hours a day. Just now, I confirmed that all the data is normal, without even a ripple of gravitational waves."

This contradictory information caused everyone to frown.

The scene immediately split into two factions.

One group believes that this was likely not the work of the pioneers. Perhaps the Seventh Fleet encountered some unknown and extremely rare spatial anomaly, such as a miniature black hole or a spatial rift; after all, the universe is vast and full of wonders.

Moreover, no matter how bizarre the attack methods of the pioneers are, it is impossible for them to completely bypass the monitoring of the "Hellhound" array.

The other side firmly believes that this was the work of the pioneers.

Their inability to be monitored is itself proof of their incomprehensible power.

Instead of engaging in the argument, “Salih” Amber directly called his most trusted advisor.

Salih's hologram also appeared in the command center. Although she was still wearing the psionic shield helmet, Amber could still sense a fearful solemnity emanating from her that he had never seen before.

“Amber, I’m afraid... the worst has happened.” Her voice was a little hoarse. “The Jerams have a special unit specifically for infiltration and sabotage, which we call ‘Ghosts’.”

"ghost?"

"Yes. They are not fleets in the conventional sense, but a kind of self-sustaining, highly intelligent unmanned armed reconnaissance unit. They can fold and travel in higher-dimensional space, and then emerge at a certain coordinate point in the target universe! This process does not generate any gravitational waves, does not leak any energy, and is completely unobservable to us who live in three-dimensional space."

Salih's words caused a collective gasp to fill the conference room.

If this is true, it means that their costly, border-wide early warning network is as useless as a piece of paper in the face of the enemy.

"What is the size and combat capability of this 'ghost' fleet?" Amber pressed, needing to know what he was about to face.

"The size varies, but it is usually small, perhaps only a few ships, or even just one ship. Their mission is not mass destruction, but to eliminate threats in a targeted manner, translate detailed coordinates, and provide a stable 'warp zone' for the subsequent large force."

Salih paused, seemingly organizing her thoughts.

"As for combat power, it is difficult to measure it by conventional standards. Their main attack method is not energy weapons or physical ammunition, but to directly interfere with space and physical laws themselves, such as instantly 'formatting' a space and erasing all matter and information in it. This is very consistent with the way the Seventh Fleet disappeared."

"."

Amber fell silent. His biggest fear was encountering an enemy capable of interfering with the laws of physics, which was utterly unreasonable for humanity at present.

Sallyh noticed Amber's concerns and added to her:

"Only these unmanned reconnaissance units possess these capabilities, because even for us Jerams, the ability to interfere with the laws of physics is extremely dangerous and uncontrollable."

"So at least for the time I know, these technologies have only been used in these types of unmanned reconnaissance units, and even then, they have many limitations."

"If my assessment is correct, these unmanned reconnaissance units should enter a temporary rest and refit phase immediately after launching the attack, to confirm the normal operation of all systems."

"Do we have a way to deal with them?" Franklin asked eagerly.

Salih's face showed a bitter expression: "The Jerams deal with them by using more advanced spacetime weapons to set up 'logic traps' along their 'dimensional navigation' paths. But we... don't have that technology."

"So, we can only passively take the beating?" Agnes's voice was filled with resentment.

"Do not."

Amber suddenly spoke, his gaze sweeping over everyone present before finally settling on the coordinates on the star map that represented the Seventh Fleet's loss of contact, flashing with a scarlet light.

“We don’t know when they will arrive, or where they will come from, but we do know that they have just ‘eaten up’ one of our fleets and need to rest and regroup, so they will definitely still be in that area for some time.”

Amber stood up, radiating a cold decisiveness.

"We can't just sit here and wait. Since the early warning system is useless, let's use our own eyes to see. Since we don't know how many enemies there are, let's prepare for the worst."

He turned to the head of the command center. "Order! First, Third, and Fifth Combined Fleets, immediately lift standby status and enter the highest level of combat readiness! All personnel must board their ships within one hour to complete system self-checks and ammunition loading! Target, SG-1774, the area where the Seventh Fleet lost contact."

This order took everyone by surprise: three fully-equipped combined fleets, one of the most elite mobile forces currently in existence.

Now, are we going to risk everything just to find out where a missing fleet is?

“Mr. Amber, isn’t this too risky?” Franklin hesitated. “What if this is an enemy trap?”

"If we can't even defeat a reconnaissance fleet, then we don't need to wait for any decisive battle with our main force. We might as well just disband here, go home, hug our kids, and wait to die!"

Amber's tone was authoritative, and her eyes were extremely serious.

“Salih, you come too. I need you on the bridge to provide judgment at any time.”

“Understood.” Salih replied without hesitation.

The order was given, and the entire Crown Fortress and even the military ports of several surrounding star systems instantly awoke from their slumber.

The massive dock gates slowly opened, and one after another, ferocious yet elegant steel behemoths, guided by beams of light, sailed into the cold universe.

On the bridge of the flagship 'Endless', Amber, dressed in a black Atlas Group custom-made combat suit, sat quietly in the seat behind the captain's seat.

In this large-scale ship upgrade, the three ships already in service with the 'Endless-class' super flagship, as well as the new ships launched later, have also undergone modification and upgrades.

Through the enormous panoramic porthole, Amber could see the silhouettes of two other fleets, forming a formidable array in space.

The new warship's smooth and aesthetically pleasing bio-armor reflected an unusual luster under the light of distant stars.

"Reporting, sir! The First, Third, and Fifth Combined Fleets are all assembled and ready to depart at any time!"

Amber looked at the scarlet coordinates on the star map and nodded.

"Set off."

Three massive fleets, totaling over seven hundred warships, simultaneously spewed out scorching plasma from their engines. From a distance, these exhaust plumes eventually converged into three blue torrents.

The next second, the space in front of the fleet began to distort, a huge hyperspace window was torn open, and the fleet rushed in without hesitation, disappearing into the distorted light and shadow.

Whatever awaits them ahead—whether it's a trap, a ghost, or a slaughterhouse meticulously prepared by the pioneers—is uncertain.

Just like Amber said, we have to go and see for ourselves to have an explanation.
-
When the three combined fleets broke away from the hyperspace route and arrived at the SG-1774 area, everyone was bewildered by the scene before them.

Because there's nothing here.

There were no warship wrecks, no energy fluctuations, no distress signals, and even the cosmic dust was much thinner than the surrounding star field, as clean as if it had been carefully erased with an eraser.

There was only a desolate, empty void.

"Full fleet, deploy to maximum search range! All detectors at full power! Lilith, compare this area with star map data from one hour ago and identify any anomalies."

Amber sat on the bridge command seat of the 'Endless', calmly issuing orders.

Soon, Lilith's voice rang in Amber's mind, her tone carrying a hint of solemnity.

"Master, data comparison complete. All parameters of background radiation, high-energy particle stream, and gravitational field in this region exhibit an extremely small but absolutely uniform decay, specifically 0.0013%, just like the 'reality' here, which has been thinned out."

“Thinned out?” Amber frowned; the adjective was beyond his understanding of physics.

"Yes."

Salih's voice rang out beside him, her face even more grim than when she was in the command center.

"This is 'formatting'. They transformed this space and everything in it into the most basic, meaningless energy and then dissipated it. The soldiers of the Seventh Fleet probably didn't even leave behind a single atom."

These words sent a chill down everyone's spine on the bridge; they were beyond human comprehension of 'combat'.

Just then, the tactical information coordinator on the bridge suddenly cried out in alarm.

"Spatial distortion detected! Directly in front of our fleet!"

Before he could finish speaking, Amber had already seen the terrifying scene through the flagship's external sensors.

Directly in front of the three fleets, in that empty void, space itself began to violently distort and boil, like water being boiled.

Immediately afterwards, a ship—or rather, something indescribable—seeped out from that distortion.

It has no fixed form, like a flowing geometric shape composed of pure darkness.

Its surface is constantly generating and annihilating countless incomprehensible sharp angles and curved surfaces, like a constantly changing and crazy projection of an object from a higher dimension in three-dimensional space.

As soon as it appeared, the alarm systems of all the warships went into overdrive, screaming like madmen.

"Warning! Strong gravitational distortion detected!"

"Warning! Space structure is unstable!"

"Warning! Energy level abnormal!!"

"Open fire, all fleet!" Amber gave the order to attack without hesitation.

More than 700 warships simultaneously aimed all their cannons at the monster in the center.

Thousands of heavy metal particle jets, plasma projectiles, and charged particle beams formed a devastating barrage that instantly engulfed the 'ghost'.

However, a desperate scene happened.

All the attacks, after getting a certain distance from the black geometric object, strangely slowed down, and then disappeared silently on its shapeless surface as if sucked into a bottomless pit.

There was no explosion, no fire, not even a ripple of energy.

"Attack ineffective! Our weapons are useless against it!"

"It's devouring our attacks!"

(End of this chapter)