Chapter 163: The Cosmic Tides Recede!

The pale green reversal beam carried the last desperate hopes of billions of people on Earth and slipped without resistance into the singularity of the black hole — that point where even light could not escape.

Space was silent. Absolutely, unbearably silent.

But on the main screen of the Abyss's bridge, the red curve of gravitational peaks — which had already blown past every maximum threshold — plunged off a cliff the instant it touched the beam.

The absolute darkness along the black hole's edge began to flicker and twist violently.

Deep violet Extreme Dragon energy and pale green reversal waves tore into each other inside the singularity, two fundamentally different forms of high-dimensional energy ripping and clawing until they erupted into blinding flares of light.

"The gravitational field is collapsing! Spatial curvature is dropping!" Nicholas screamed with wild joy. "The neutralization worked! The black hole is shrinking! The Commander is holding it down!"

The words had barely left his mouth when the black hole — which had been large enough to swallow half the moon — caved inward, collapsing to less than half its size in an instant.

That savage gravitational pull, the kind that felt like it would drag your soul right out of your body, vanished without a trace.

Then the energy readouts on the main screen let out a piercing shriek, and the entire display flooded with blinding red.

"No — singularity collapse! The rebound from the compression is going to blow! All hands, evasive maneuvers now!"

The miniature black hole, now shrunk to just fifty feet across, had reached the final moment before total annihilation. It released every last bit of the spatial energy it had compressed to the absolute limit — all at once, holding nothing back.

BOOM.

A semi-transparent ripple of energy detonated from the point of origin, moving faster than light.

The shockwave made no sound. But it carried kinetic force capable of shattering the comprehension of any carbon-based life form. It swept through the wreckage of Tranquility Fortress like a cosmic scythe, showing nothing mercy.

The degenerate-state armor plating, the supposedly indestructible high-dimensional load-bearing columns, the mechanical debris scattered everywhere — pieces weighing thousands of tons — all of it lasted less than a second after contact. Molecular structures simply disintegrated, dissolving into drifting grey-white powder in the vacuum.

The shockwave shaved an entire layer of rock right off the floor of Tranquility Basin.

"Shockwave inbound! All hands, brace for impact! Grab something and hold on!" Osiris's eyes had gone bloodshot, veins bulging across his forehead. He seized the control stick with both hands and hauled it all the way down.

The few remaining thrusters at the Abyss's stern fired to their limits, spewing overloaded exhaust flames twisted with blue and red, fighting to angle the hull away from a direct hit.

The heavy gravity anchors were ripped clean out of the ground, taking massive chunks of torn rock with them as they flew off into the deep of space.

The Abyss lost its last fixed point. The enormous warship became a leaf in a hurricane — the sheer destructive force of the shockwave sent it tumbling wildly through space, spinning end over end as it hurtled toward the crater wall in the distance.

"Attitude control system total failure! Engines are down!" The violent shaking sent Nicholas flying across the bridge. He slammed hard into the titanium alloy bulkhead and coughed up a mouthful of blood.

In that split second when the Abyss was about to be torn to cosmic dust by the follow-on shockwaves —

A streak of deep violet light shot out from the exact center of the black hole's annihilation point, blazing like a meteor tearing through the dead of night.

It was Ryan.

He looked like he'd been through hell. There wasn't a patch of undamaged flesh on him.

The tissue of his left arm had been completely stripped away by the spatial shearing force. Bare white bone was exposed directly to the cold vacuum, with only a few scraps of flesh still clinging to it.

But he didn't fall back.

Behind him was the Abyss. Behind the Abyss was Earth — the Earth he'd given everything to protect. Sophia was there. Ella was there.

"You want to touch my family? Not a chance!"

"I said... stop!"

The shockwave crashed into the energy barrier like a collapsing mountain.

Crack —

A web of dense fractures spread instantly across the surface of the deep violet shield.

Both of Ryan's arms filled with the sound of shattering bone. The massive force drove him and the shield straight into the Abyss's bow, pushing the enormous warship into a wild backward plunge deep into the far side of the moon.

He held the shield. He ground his teeth until they cracked. Blood poured freely from the corners of his mouth.

With nothing but his own body, he covered the Abyss behind him — and smashed straight through the hard rock walls of three enormous craters one after another.

Debris scattered. Dust billowed in every direction.

After absorbing that final lethal impact, the energy barrier shattered.

Ryan's massive frame dropped straight down and crashed hard into the bottom of a wide, deep impact crater, buried under countless fragments of rock. He went completely still.

As the shockwave swept through and passed, the jagged spatial rifts across the lunar surface finally lost their energy source. They began to seal, rapidly and without drama.

The wreckage of the Reaper, lodged in the portal, collapsed along with the pale blue vortex of light in one last low, muffled spatial detonation — erased completely, as though it had never existed.

The gravitational disturbance in space — the kind that could have unmade a star system — finally went quiet and returned to normal.

......

At the same time.

Earth. The Stellar Alliance's deepest underground command center.

In total silence, a green indicator light blinked on at the main console.

"Gravitational anomaly alert cleared! Earth orbital parameters restored to normal!"

"Atmospheric gravitational tides fully dissipated! Spatial rifts... sealed!"

The head of technical operations stared at the data on the screen as it leveled out. Tears spilled down his face before he could stop them. "We... we made it. Earth is safe."

BOOM —

The entire command center erupted. People were screaming, cheering, crying — all of it at once, the pure release of people who'd just survived something unsurvivable.

Several senior commanders who had been holding themselves together by sheer will alone suddenly had nothing left. Their legs gave out. They sank into their chairs and gasped for breath, their backs soaked through with cold sweat.

But in the middle of all that noise and celebration, one person said nothing.

Sophia stood with both hands braced against the cold metal console, her eyes — usually sharp and unreadable — now shot through with red. She stared at the main screen, at the image of the moon's far side breaking up into static from signal interference.

"Ryan..." Her hand trembled as she reached out and pressed the highest-level encrypted comm key. "The crisis is over... Come in, please respond. You promised Ella you'd come home... Ryan. Answer me."

The comm line gave back nothing but a harsh, crackling electrical hiss. Like a dull blade, working slowly.

The head of intelligence approached carefully and spoke in a quiet voice. "Ma'am, the quantum signal on the far side of the moon was completely disrupted by the energy storm. The relay stations took serious damage. We're working to reestablish the connection. The Commander, he must be..."

Sophia raised her hand without a word, entered her code, and released the forced override of the global power grid.

The lights that had gone dark in the main control hall came back on all at once, harsh and bright against her face.

This was the woman who had just held the entire world in check with an iron hand. As the lights came up, she slowly closed her eyes.

A single tear, burning hot, broke through everything she had been holding back — all the composure, all the control. It slid silently down her face and fell onto the cold metal keyboard, where it broke apart.

"You liar... if you dare die on me, I will chase you all the way to hell and scream at you until you wake up..."

......

Far side of the moon. The edge of the third crater.

The Abyss had come down at a bad angle, crash-landing in the middle of wreckage that looked like the end of the world.

Large sections of the hull plating were caved in. Several main engines were still leaking black smoke and throwing sparks.

"The hatch is jammed! Get it open!"

With a furious roar and a thunderous crash, Osiris kicked the heavily warped metal hatch clean off its frame.

He grabbed his black combat blade — notched and battered along every edge — and charged into the airless wreckage like a predator who'd been pushed past his limit.

War Ghost and Shadow Reaper were right behind him. All three of them had eyes red enough to bleed.

"The Commander's position is at the bottom of the crater! Move! Move!" Osiris pointed ahead at the massive impact crater, his voice raw and cracking.

"Commander!"

The thrusters on War Ghost's back went into immediate overload, blasting a hundred-meter tail of flame.

His massive frame — built like an iron tower — launched off the ground and came crashing down into the depths of the crater below.

The bottom was buried under hundreds of tons of rock fragments and superheated metal debris.

"Commander! Where are you! Say something!" War Ghost was shouting, tears and sweat running together inside his helmet.

He drove both hands into the gap of a rock wall that had to weigh a hundred tons.

"Move."

War Ghost's arms corded with muscle. Using nothing but raw physical strength, he hurled the mountain-sized slab of rock clear across the crater.

The debris settled. The dust came down.

At the very bottom of the wreckage, Ryan lay still.

The dark gold combat armor — supposedly the most indestructible defense ever built — had been reduced to fragments, exposing the skin beneath, covered in deep, terrible fractures. His left arm was wounded to the bone. More than half his ribs were broken, pressing inward in a deep concave hollow. He was completely unconscious.

"Commander..." War Ghost's huge frame locked up. He dropped to his knees with a heavy thud.

This man who had cut down enemies without flinching across a hundred battlefields was now crying like a child who had lost his father, his enormous hand trembling as he reached toward Ryan.

"Don't touch him." Osiris grabbed War Ghost's arm and fixed his eyes on Ryan's body.

There — across Ryan's broken, devastated frame — a faint deep violet light was moving slowly across his skin. Dim, but unmistakably alive.

Wherever that energy passed, the deep wounds along Ryan's body were already responding. Tissue was knitting together at a visible rate — crawling, weaving, reconnecting. Shattered bone was beginning to set and rejoin.

Then, in the silence, Ryan's brow tightened with pain.

His blood-covered lips moved slightly, and a sound came out — barely a whisper, thin as thread:

"Ella... don't be scared... Daddy's almost done... beating the bad guys... then I'm coming home..."