The Singularity Core was not simply a weapon of mass destruction; it was a fundamental violation of the laws of nature.
On the bridge of The Ascendant, the visual reality of space was warping into a grotesque, circular nightmare. The captive micro-black hole suspended in the center of the Harvester mothership drank the surrounding starlight with suffocating greed. The brilliant yellow glow of the system's newly healed sun, the crisp emerald lines of Zenith's defensive grid, and even the faint amber reflections off the Ironwood deck were physically curved, dragged toward the bleeding purple horizon of the enemy planetoid.
Deep within the belly of the dreadnought, the sapphire hydrostatic core thrashed. For the first time since their departure from Oakhaven, the artificial gravity plating inside the cabin flickered and groaned, struggling against an external pull so dense it made the marrow in Orion's bones ache.
