The Martial Unity

Director Selvin grew solemn as he turned back towards the giant planetary lifeform, regarding it with a measure of respect. “Once Sage Ceeran was rescued by teleportation, the planet shifted its attention towards the Pioneer and the reinforcement fleets.”

BZZZT He shifted to the next set of images and footage from a gravitational sensor. The footage focused on Garg as the planet’s gravity began increasing at an alarming rate. The gravitational force that it began exerting on the Pioneer and reinforcement fleets began growing at a precipitous rate. RUMBLE…

The omni-ship and the warships surrounding it began creaking as the force of gravity exerted on them began growing stronger and stronger.

“The planet appears to possess the ability to manipulate the gravitational fields generated by its body,” Director Selvin remarked. “And that too, by rather extreme degrees. The goal of this attack was to pull the ships towards it and have them crash into itself, where it would be able to crush them with much greater force, we suspect. Pioneer and the reinforcement fleets promptly placed an even greater distance between themselves and Garg to counter this solution.”

“It certainly does seem to have mastered the esoterics it does possess,” Rui remarked with a calm tone of voice. “Manipulating one’s gravitational field to that extent is rather impressive, and something that we will have to keep in mind when we lay siege upon the planet. What else can it do?”

“Beyond that, it has also attempted to attack us by warping us to its position,” the director remarked, switching to other footage that showed the very fabric of space and time warping to try to form a bridge. Perhaps it would have succeeded, if not for our anti-warp measures.”

Rui was hardly surprised by this, of course. “It has negatron matter, and it has undoubtedly mastered it. It’s not going to be easy to fight against such a colossal creature that has also mastered the power of negatron matter.”

“Beyond its spatial manipulation, it also has the ability to inflict more direct attacks upon its enemies,” Director Brenner took over. “For instance, when we kept our distance from the planet, it tried to reach us by releasing extremely intense and potent lasers from within the depths of its body and towards our direction. We believe that it has the ability to precisely target ships from light minutes away, while the energy intensity is enough to potentially destroy our warships if it strikes our ships in a direct collision.”

The footage switched to a feed showing probes picking up on a violently powerful laser beam light flinging itself towards them. Thanks to the probes, however, they managed to detect and evade the attacks in time.

It wasn’t easy, of course.

The width of the laser beam was a shocking thousand in diameter, possessing a tremendous amount of volume and power. It was enough to completely annihilate a planet and reduce it to dust.

“Our reading of the thermal and other forms of potential energy didn’t change significantly,” Director Brenner continued. “Thus, we suspect that these kinds of attacks are not particularly difficult for it to unleash. Thus, if we conduct an operation to either capture or destroy the planet to some extent, we can expect to run into severe long-range laser beam retaliation.”

That certainly made the problem more challenging than would have been ideal. But he expected nothing less from a civilization that had managed to spread across a good portion of the Milky Way. There was no way that a planet that could easily be conquered for all of its treasures could have spread that far and become a dominant species in a part of the galaxy.

“Anything else?” Rui raised an eyebrow. “Not yet, Your Majesty,” Director Selvin replied apologetically. “The Pioneer VIII and the reinforcement fleets have retreated to the edge of the solar system to keep their distance away from Garg and avoid triggering its self-defense mechanisms. For now, the planet has returned to a docile state and does not appear to be doing anything. Thus, we have not been able to gather information on other forms of offensive or defensive measures that it may have.”

Rui fell into thought as he pondered the information supplied to him by the director of the space force. Indeed, there was a limit to the amount of information they could gain from direct engagement. It was too risky to constantly provoke it with the relatively limited defensive measures of the Pioneer and the reinforcement fleets. The former was not equipped with the mission to engage with hostile targets in such a manner, although it certainly is prepared for it.

“What about information gathered from passive recon?” Rui asked with a curious tone. “Pioneer VIII has a lot of surveillance and sensory equipment. It should be able to passively gather information on Garg, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Director Brenner eagerly replied. “We have detected something rather interesting about the planet from our long-range surveillance with infrared sensors.”

He featured a feed of live data of the planet, switching to a sped-up infrared feed. Immediately, a rich spectrum from blue to red covered the screen, overlapping different objects with different temperatures. Rui’s ethereal eyes focused on Garg, however, immediately noticing exactly what the director wanted him to see.

He wasn’t the only one, of course.

“Is that…” Mother Alicia’s eyes widened. “Is that a heartbeat?”

The infrared feed showed a strange anomaly. At a periodic rate, the planet’s internal temperature spiked, before rapidly cooling down and returning to normal temperatures. At a sped-up rate of playback, even Rui had to agree with Mother Alicia’s thoughts.

It resembled a heartbeat.

“What is that?” Rui leaned forward with a curious expression, more than anything. “Why is its temperature spiking at such a frequent periodic rate?”

“Based on the analysis that we have conducted, sir, we believe that this strange infrared heartbeat that you’re seeing is actually the planet generating tremendous amounts of energy through nuclear fusion at the very core of its body.”