A disc of iron less than three meters thick, its surface embedded with the blurred wreckage of a viewport, its edges glowing a dull red after molten cooling.
Two iron discs, stuck to the surface of the meteorite like shreds of meat between the teeth of a giant beast.
Then, the meteorite continued forward.
Carrying these two discs that were once flagships.
Carrying the wreckage of Imperial warships that had been torn apart by gravity, crushed by rock, and swallowed by dust clouds.
Carrying that armored shell welded with the corpses of Imperial warships.
Crashing toward the Stargate.
The Stargate.
One of the most magnificent artificial structures in human history.
Thirty thousand kilometers in diameter.
At this moment.
It hung motionless in the void, silently awaiting that javelin of death cast from the shadow of the Loba Star.
The impact made no sound, but there was a light.
That light came from within the meteorite.
A zero-point energy bomb!
Detonated.
Boom—!!
Not an explosion, but a release.
Energy equivalent to one hundred thousand nuclear yields awoke simultaneously within an eighty-two-kilometer-diameter sealed rock shell.
The armor welded with Imperial wreckage shattered, tore apart, and vaporized from within, like a cardboard box stuffed into a furnace.
Half of the Venom Fang's wreckage melted in the billion-degree heat, turning into a wisp of metallic vapor that vanished in an instant.
The meteorite's main body, a mixture of ice and rock.
Completely annihilated.
Not shattered, not blown apart, but utterly erased at the atomic level.
Billions of tons of matter transitioned directly from solid to energy in a thousandth of a second.
Then violently released.
A halo of blazing white, almost blue, swept outward in all directions from the point of impact.
Wherever the halo passed.
The Stargate's thirty-thousand-kilometer ring structure cracked, flaked, and disintegrated from the impact point like a glass sculpture struck by a giant hammer.
Hundreds of millions of fragments, swept up by the halo, shot outward at sub-light speed, each one a lethal fragment capable of piercing battleship armor.
The halo continued to expand.
Space within a million kilometers was cleared.
Matter, energy, wreckage, dust.
All tangible and intangible things vanished before that annihilating halo.
Directly annihilated.
Then, the light vanished.
At the center of the halo.
Where the meteorite, the Stargate, countless Imperial warships, and tens of thousands of Imperial officers and soldiers once were.
A point appeared.
Tiny, pitch-black, so dark that no viewport, no sensor, no naked eye could gaze upon it directly.
That blackness was not the absence of light, but light that entered and never escaped.
The point grew, measured in milliseconds.
One thousand kilometers, ten thousand kilometers, one hundred thousand kilometers, one million kilometers.
It devoured!
Devoured the wreckage of Imperial warships not yet annihilated by the halo, devoured the surviving ships that had narrowly escaped the first wave and were fleeing frantically.
Devoured the scattered fragments of the disintegrated Stargate, devoured the wreckage of a nearby asteroid, devoured starlight.
At the boundary of that black region, the light of all stars was distorted, stretched, and sucked in.
Like an infinitely expanding, insatiable maw.
The outer defense perimeter of the Stargate.
A surviving Imperial Destroyer was fleeing at maximum combat speed.
The captain stared fixedly at the rapidly expanding darkness behind them.
Three seconds later.
The darkness caught up to the ship's rear.
The destroyer was directly captured by the darkness.
The destroyer's speed dropped from ten thousand kilometers per second to zero in 0.01 seconds.
The destroyer came to a complete stop.
Then, it began to move backward.
As if pulled by an invisible rope, inch by inch, it was dragged toward the abyss.
On the bridge.
No one screamed.
Everyone was watching through the viewport as that absolute, pure blackness drew closer and closer.
Then, the destroyer vanished into the edge of the darkness.
The final burst of plasma exhaust from its engines, before that blackness, was like a spark flung at a giant beast.
Instantly extinguished.
The entire warship, along with the more than three hundred officers and soldiers inside.
Vanished, as if it had never existed.
Farther away.
Those Imperial starships that had narrowly escaped annihilation by the halo, avoided capture by the black hole, and were fleeing this death sector at maximum speed.
On their bridges, the alarms had already screamed themselves hoarse.
No one paid them any attention, because there was no need.
The darkness behind them was expanding at a speed they could not comprehend.
Ten million kilometers.
Twenty million kilometers.
Thirty million kilometers.
It didn't care whether the fleet had scattered, whether the engines were overloaded, whether you were an escort ship or a battleship.
It was simply devouring.
Like a beast that had been starving for a long time.
At the edge of the Loba Star.
The gas giant planet was being torn apart by the black hole's gravitational pull.
Its dense atmosphere, like juice sucked by a giant mouth, stretched into a million-kilometer-long, spiraling stream of matter, interwoven with orange-red and white.
That stream of matter was slowly disappearing into the endless darkness.
If anyone were watching, they would surely be startled.
A planet was being drunk dry.
At the same time.
The Blood Locust Fleet.
General Knight's flagship, the Iron Blood Sovereignty, was leading the remaining thousand or so warships, clinging stubbornly to the rear of the Pluto Fleet.
Their course was straight, heading toward the Danube Star.
But at that very moment, the starscape behind them changed.
It was a light.
A halo of blazing white, almost blue light, sweeping across from the direction of the stargate.
Even from hundreds of millions of kilometers away, the light was so blinding that the optical sensors automatically dimmed the filter layer.
Immediately after.
The light vanished.
Replaced by a patch of black.
A patch of pure darkness that was rapidly expanding, devouring all starlight.
General Knight abruptly stood up from his command chair.
He stared at the tactical screen.
In the lower right corner of the screen, the friendly signal blips from the direction of the stargate—
One by one, in clusters, they were extinguishing.
Not sunk.
Vanished.
Completely, from the sensors, from the cosmos.
The adjutant's voice trembled.
"C-Commander… the stargate… the flagship's signal…"
He couldn't finish, because there was no need.
That darkness was expanding.
At a speed visible to the naked eye, ten million kilometers, twenty million kilometers, thirty million kilometers.
As if it would catch up at any moment.
On the bridge, no one made a sound.
Everyone was watching that darkness.
General Knight watched too.
His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed.
That swallow was dry and bitter, like swallowing a piece of iron.
He wanted to say something.
Turning back to provide support was absolutely impossible.
He had no desire to be swallowed by a black hole.
And Admiral Scott's previous death order had undoubtedly become the perfect excuse!
He opened his mouth.
Then, that piece of iron turned into a roar.
"Damn Federation Fleet!"
His voice was ground out from his chest, hoarse and distorted.
Even with a tremor he himself did not notice.
"Creating something as utterly inhumane as a black hole..."
"It is absolutely unforgivable!"
He abruptly turned around, facing the Fleet-wide Communication Channel.
His face flushed crimson, blood vessels even rupturing at the corners of his eyes.
He did not know what he was shouting.