Chapter 166: In Five Years, a Powerful Enemy Will Arrive!

Nicholas had two massive dark circles under his eyes. His hair was a mess. He was hunched over a large high-dimensional analyzer.

The workbench beside him was littered with over a dozen empty bottles of concentrated nutrient solution.

On the sterile operating table in the center sat a charred, irregular metal plate.

War Ghost had pried it out of the ruins of the Saren control console on the moon a few days ago.

The heavy metal door of the bunker swung open. Osiris walked in with long strides.

"You've been sleeping in here this whole time?" Osiris frowned and waved a hand at the sharp smell of machine oil hanging in the air.

Nicholas didn't look up. His ten fingers left blurring streaks across the virtual keyboard.

"Save it. You done dealing with that old financial cartel mess?" Nicholas asked.

Osiris dragged over a metal chair and sat down. "Not even close. Those old foxes from 'Omega' are slippery as hell. They've scattered their funds across hundreds of shell companies worldwide. Shadow Reaper is tracing the trail right now. I came to borrow two quantum computers to map out their cash flow."

"Not available." Nicholas shut him down flat. "I'm in the middle of analyzing this motherboard. This is base-level data from a high-dimensional civilization. Worth a hell of a lot more than any money on Earth."

Osiris leaned in and looked at the blackened metal. "It's burned to a crisp. You really think there's anything left to pull out of it?"

"What do you know." Nicholas let out a cold snort. "When Saren triggered the self-destruct sequence, the backup power module on this board got locked down instantly. There's definitely core secrets buried inside."

Nicholas slammed the enter key.

The analyzer let out a low hum. A pale blue scanning beam swept across the metal plate.

A wall of garbled code exploded onto the screen.

"Heavy encryption." Nicholas rubbed his chin. "Multi-dimensional geometric algorithm. Every computer on Earth working together couldn't crack this in a hundred years."

Osiris stared at the code without understanding a word of it.

Nicholas reached into the temperature-controlled safe nearby and pulled out a small piece of high-dimensional energy crystal, about the size of a fingernail.

It was a fragment chipped off the main crystal in the Abyss cargo hold.

"Let's give it a boost." Nicholas slotted the crystal into the analyzer's energy port.

The machine erupted in a flash of bright light. The garbled code on screen began to flicker wildly, then slowly reorganized and fell into place.

Three minutes later, the progress bar hit a hundred percent.

"Decryption complete!" Nicholas slapped his thigh in excitement.

An audio waveform appeared on screen, along with several lines of translated text in Earth script.

The grin on Nicholas's face froze.

Osiris sensed something was wrong. He stood up and fixed his eyes on the screen.

"What is that?" Osiris asked.

Nicholas swallowed. His voice came out a little tight. "It's a directional shortwave signal. Sent at the exact moment before the lunar portal exploded."

"Sent to who?"

"The Hunter civilization's home world." Nicholas typed rapidly and pulled up the full contents of the signal.

A backup file of military orders appeared on screen.

Osiris read it out loud, word by word. "Annihilation Vanguard Fleet... conventional propulsion formation... departed on stardate 3492... target coordinates, third spiral arm of the Milky Way, Earth."

The temperature in the lab seemed to drop to freezing in an instant.

Osiris grabbed Nicholas by the shoulder with stunning force.

"They have another fleet?!" Osiris snapped.

Nicholas winced in pain and slapped at Osiris's hand. "Let go! You're going to break something!"

Osiris released him. His face had gone iron-gray.

Nicholas rubbed his shoulder and ran through the data quickly. "The Hunter civilization isn't stupid. Spatial portals are fast, but they're incredibly expensive to maintain and vulnerable to high-dimensional energy interference. They ran a two-track strategy to make sure they got the core inside Miss Garcia."

"This Annihilation Vanguard fleet isn't equipped with a jump drive. They're running on conventional sub-light propulsion." Nicholas pointed to the route map on screen. "They left their home world three years ago."

"Sub-light travel..." Osiris stared hard at the screen. "When do they arrive?"

Nicholas's hands flew across the keyboard, running the numbers.

A few seconds later, a red countdown figure appeared.

"Five years." Nicholas's voice trembled. "Without a portal to guide them, they have to cross the galaxy on conventional thrust. At their current speed, that fleet reaches the edge of the solar system in five years at the most."

Osiris's knuckles cracked as he clenched his fists.

In the battle on the moon, the Demon-Hunter Corps had thrown everything they had. Earth had drained its entire industrial power grid just to barely destroy one portal and one high-dimensional priest.

And now a full conventional fleet was on its way.

"Contact the Commander immediately." Osiris said.

Nicholas hesitated. "The Commander finally gets a break, and Miss Garcia just finished recovering..."

"Contact him!" Osiris growled. "This can't be buried. Five years is not that long. We have to start preparing now."

Nicholas let out a long breath and opened the highest-level encrypted channel.

......

Hawaii. A private beach.

Bright sun. Rolling waves.

Ryan was stretched out in the shallows wearing a pair of board shorts printed with coconut trees.

Ella was in her pink swimsuit, riding on his back, grabbing fistfuls of his hair and laughing so hard she could barely stay upright.

"Swim faster, Daddy! The big shark is coming!" she yelled.

Ryan paddled with both hands, throwing up huge splashes on purpose, sending Ella into a burst of screaming.

Sophia had changed into a black bikini. She was lying back in a beach chair, sunglasses on, sipping cold coconut water. She watched the two of them splashing around and smiled.

Ryan carried his daughter back to shore on his back.

Ella hopped off, grabbed her little bucket from the sand, and took off chasing a crab walking sideways along the waterline.

Ryan walked over to Sophia and grabbed a towel, giving his wet hair a quick, careless rub.

The black communicator on the table began to vibrate.

A red skull icon flashed on the screen.

This was the Demon-Hunter Corps' highest-level emergency line. It only rang when everything was on the line.

Ryan's smile faded.

He picked up the communicator and walked behind a cluster of rocks nearby.

He pressed the answer key.

Nicholas's voice came through, urgent and clipped.

Nicholas laid out everything — the cracked data disk, the intelligence about the Annihilation Vanguard fleet arriving at the edge of the solar system in five years. No spin, no dramatics. Just raw data and straight facts.

Ryan listened without saying a word.

The sea wind moved across the rocks, carrying the sharp bite of salt.

Ryan turned his head and looked out.

Ella was crouched on the sand, carefully poking at the little crab with one finger. Sophia had taken off her sunglasses and was smiling, waving Ella over.

This was the peace he had fought for with his life.

The peace he'd held onto while carrying a micro black hole through hard vacuum, while spatial tears carved off half his body.

And now a pack of alien bastards were burning through space at full speed, planning to show up in five years and take all of it away.

Grab his daughter.

Kill his wife.

"Commander?" Nicholas had been waiting in silence on the other end and finally said something, feeling him out.

Ryan pulled his gaze back.

"Got it." Ryan's voice was steady. No trace of anything underneath it.

"Do we need to call an emergency global defense council right now?" Nicholas asked. "With five years to work with, if we pool every resource on the planet, we might be able to build a second defensive line in low Earth orbit..."