Adrian's hand lowered slowly.
But it was not a signal to sink us.
Instead, his icy voice resonated through the Imperial fleet's communication network.
"Neutralize them. Capture the ship intact."
At that moment, the formation of Glaive-class interceptors surrounding the Lumina Rip opened fire in unison.
It wasn't massive main cannons. They were sharp, precise beams of red energy designed solely to cut the ship's lifeline.
Bound by the Aether Dampener, the Lumina Rip couldn't even raise its shields.
The ship was literally defenseless.
Boom! Kaboom!
Explosions erupted in succession, but they were not random. It was a cold, systematic 'dismantling operation' that resembled Adrian's personality.
The red beams precisely pierced the mechanical mast connections of the 'Aether Sail' that Leon had worked so hard to repair.
Other beams melted the ship's external sensors and auxiliary thruster nozzles with surgical precision.
The Lumina Rip wasn't being bombarded; it was having its wings torn off and its claws pulled out while still alive.
"Argh!"
The entire ship lurched violently.
I slammed my head hard against the control stick, and Leon was thrown from his console to the floor. Lilia screamed as she collapsed onto the deck.
Red warning lights burst like strobes across the bridge, and system alarms shrieked ear-splittingly.
Leon stumbled and crawled back to his console.
His face was white with terror. He typed frantically on his data pad and shouted.
"Control systems damaged! Right auxiliary thruster not responding! Mast connections severed! Jayn... maneuverability has dropped by over 70%!"
The rumbling of the bridge paused for a moment.
I pushed away the debris of the broken console and barely managed to stand up.
The hologram on the front screen flickered, projecting Adrian's face again.
He was observing our mangled ship with an expressionless face, like a scientist watching the results of an experiment—or perhaps, with satisfaction.
"Maneuverability reduced by 70%, Colonel. But... they are still resisting."
It must have been his adjutant's voice. Adrian tilted his head slightly.
His icy eyes turned toward us. He wasn't satisfied yet.
"Next."
His voice was still calm.
"Sever both main stabilizer fins completely."
"Main stabilizer fins?"
I looked at Leon. His face had turned even paler than before.
"No..."
The mast and auxiliary thrusters were a matter of 'speed.' But the main stabilizer fins... those were the 'wings' themselves that allowed the Lumina Rip to balance and turn within the sky's currents.
If those were destroyed...
"Break even the last wings of that rat."
Adrian's cruel whisper flowed through the comms. He was reading our thoughts exactly.
"Block it! Leon, do something!"
"There's nothing I can do! We have no Aether!"
Once again, the Glaive interceptors rushed at us like a school of starving sharks.
This time, the red energy rounds didn't target the bridge, but focused on the massive stabilizer fins attached like wings to both sides of the ship.
Crash—!
A horrific impact, different in quality from the first attack, struck the ship.
It wasn't just a hit. It was the shock of the wings holding onto the sky being torn away, collapsing the balance of the entire vessel.
The entire ship tilted sharply to the right, and we were hurled to the floor.
I screamed as I grabbed onto the console.
A terrible scene unfolded on the external screen. Our right stabilizer fin was completely torn off amidst a massive explosion.
"Starboard! Starboard stabilizer completely destroyed!"
While Leon screamed, the interceptors circled to the other side and fired another precise volley.
Ka-boom!
Even the left stabilizer fin was smashed into unrecognizable pieces.
The screen clearly captured the two massive steel wings becoming burning debris, spiraling down into the distant sea of clouds below.
Everything stopped. The ship didn't even lurch anymore.
It simply floated in the void like a dead scrap of metal, held only by inertia.
"Main stabilizer control lost! No response!"
Leon slammed his fist onto the broken console and wailed.
"Both sides completely destroyed... It's over. It's finished now..."
He began to laugh like a man who had lost his mind.
"Jayn... even if power returns now, it's meaningless. It's like a boat with its rudder ripped out. Steering is impossible!"
I understood what Leon meant. If the engine was the heart, the stabilizer fins were the limbs.
Even if our heart beat again, we were now in a state where we couldn't move a finger.
I intuitively realized that this ship, which had saved me 10 years ago, would now become my coffin.
The Lumina Rip had become a steel coffin drifting in this cold firmament, unable to even turn its nose even if the engines restarted.
The Lumina Rip drifted like dead scrap, having completely lost its mobility.
Only the red emergency lights grotesquely illuminated the disastrous scene of the bridge.
Leon sat slumped before the shattered console, groaning, and Lilia was trembling faintly with her eyes closed.
Clutching the broken control stick, I glared at the holographic screen.
Adrian Valentine in the screen seemed to savor our despair for a moment.
He opened his mouth like an actor reciting his final lines on stage, or a conductor waving his baton to silence a discordant instrument.
"The game is over."
There wasn't a shred of emotion in his voice.
"Neutralize the bridge. I do not care if they live or die."
His flagship, the Fenrir, glided out of the pitch-black darkness like a ghost.
Its matte black armor, absorbing all light, approached right in front of our broken bridge.
I swallowed my breath.
The prow of the Fenrir, shaped like the jaws of a beast, began to split open with a mechanical hum.
From within, multiple energy launch tubes, sharp like wolf fangs, revealed themselves. Adrian's signature weapon, 'Odin's Fangs.'
An ominous red light began to swirl at the tips of the launch tubes.
This was truly the end.
Just like that day 10 years ago, I was destined to lose everything that protected me and be swallowed by the red light again.
It was right then.
"...No."
Lilia whispered, her voice filled not with despair, but with shock.
Sitting on the floor, she pointed with a trembling hand to the corner of the front screen.
"Over there... the sky is...!"
Leon and I raised our heads simultaneously.
At first, we saw nothing.
But soon, we realized that the background of the distant firmament, beyond the red lights of the Imperial fleet surrounding us, was strange.
The darkness was moving as if it were alive.
"The sky is crying!"
Lilia shouted urgently.
"A massive... a massive Aether Storm... is coming this way!"
As soon as she finished speaking, the hull of the Lumina Rip began to vibrate faintly with a low resonance.
Though bound by the Aether Dampener, the massive waves of external Aether had begun to shake the ship.
Adrian's hologram on the screen flickered briefly.
And for the first time, I saw it. His perfectly controlled face, those icy eyebrows twitching ever so slightly.
Adrian was getting anxious.
He vaguely knew reports that the Lumina Rip exhibited abnormal maneuverability within storms.
His perfect plan was to dismantle the Lumina Rip inside the controlled laboratory known as the Aether Dampener.
But an unpredictable variable called a 'Storm,' the 'Chaos' he despised the most, was about to intervene.
He stopped the deployment of Fenrir's weapons.
And for the first time, he commanded the entire fleet with a sharp voice that had lost its composure.
"All ships, do not hesitate!"
His voice trembled with impatience and anger.
"Before that storm swallows the ghost ship, sink it right now!"
At Adrian's command, the dozens of Imperial cruisers surrounding us, excluding the Fenrir, deployed their massive main cannons in unison.
These were not precise weapons like Odin's Fangs. They were lights of massive, overwhelming destruction capable of destroying a city.
All the warning lights on the bridge screamed madly.
External energy readings were skyrocketing explosively past danger levels.
"Jayn...!"
Leon called my name with a trembling voice.
Everything outside the window turned red.
It looked as if dozens of red suns were rising simultaneously toward us.
The main cannons of every ship were focusing their red light to the maximum toward the bridge.
Sinking in 5 seconds, 4 seconds…
The red light reached its peak.
I gritted my teeth.
0.5 seconds. Time remaining until everything ended.
Boom-oom!
Finally, an ear-splitting explosion erupted.
But... there was no impact shaking the bridge.
"What?"
Leon shot his head up.
It wasn't the front screen. The center of the Imperial fleet formation surrounding us, the side screen, was dyed white with a flash!
The explosion had occurred not on the Lumina Rip, but in the middle of the fleet.
In the hologram, Adrian's icy face was dyed with shock for the first time ever.
"What? What is the situation!"
Simultaneously with his shout, a black, ghost-like fighter jet shot out at furious speed from the shadow of the deepest scrap pile in the Grave Airspace.
It was similar to the Empire's Glaive, but much sleeker, a machine painted in pitch-black matte.
Ignoring the chaotic fleet, the fighter poured additional missiles toward only one target: the support ship emitting the Aether Dampener.
Bang!
The damper ship's power core triggered a chain reaction explosion and was engulfed in massive flames.
The function of the damper ceased completely.
Vrooooooooom—!
The veil of death pressing down on the Lumina Rip vanished.
As if waiting for this moment, all the crystals on the ship regained their brilliant blue light, and the darkened consoles came back to life in unison.
The engine restarted with a roar.
"We're back!"
I instinctively grabbed the control stick and shouted.
"Leon, max output!"
"It's no use, Jayn!"
Leon's voice was a scream, not joy. He pointed at the shattered control system.
"The engine is back, but the stabilizer fins are smashed! We can't steer!"
He was right.
I turned the stick frantically, but the ship only shook precariously in place, unable to move a single step.
Just then, the front of the Aether Storm that Lilia had warned about slammed into us.
The storm's powerful Aether currents began to pull the powered-up Lumina Rip like a giant magnet.
The Lumina Rip's Aether Sail deployed automatically, accepting the storm's frantic energy.
"The ship... the ship is being sucked into the storm!"
Lilia screamed.
Regardless of my will, the Lumina Rip began to be dragged at full speed toward the heart of the storm, spinning violently out of control due to the broken stabilizers.
At that moment, a communication mixed with static came in from the black fighter.
"Ghost ship! Don't try to steer! With that ship, the storm is the path! Just let your body go!"
The black fighter fired a final suppressing shot toward Adrian's Fenrir, then disappeared like it was sliding into the edge of the storm itself.
Watching the two ships vanish into the storm, Adrian in the hologram whispered coldly.
"Vent... so it was you."
Inside the bridge, we desperately secured ourselves inside the spinning, out-of-control ship.
We had avoided being sunk, but we were thrown into a grander hell of nature.
"That thing just now... it was definitely Imperial-made. Who on earth is that?"
Leon's shocked voice echoed through the bridge.