Ahead lay countless Tyranid bio-ships blocking the way. Behind them were the Necrons locked in battle with the Sosa Navy, while in the distance, endless enemy fleets were rushing in.
The captain stared at the living battleships attacking them nonstop. Behind his back, his hands clenched again and again. His heart was filled with unease—he had no idea where the reinforcements Lord Alexei had promised were.
Looking around, enemy ships filled every direction. All the crew members' eyes were resolute. Even without reinforcements, they would not retreat a single step. They knew they were the last hope for the surviving ground forces.
Countless Tyranid fleets engulfed them. Massive biological plasma cannons hammered wildly against their void shields.
"Warning! Warning! Void shields are about to overload!"
"Prepare to activate the defense matrix!" The captain's voice was calm and steady, betraying no emotion.
Moments later, the void shields dissipated like bubbles, and green defensive matrix barriers instantly rose over the surface of every ship.
However, this defense lasted nowhere near as long as the void shields had. The captain prayed silently. All they could do now was trust in the ship's regenerative steel technology.
"Warning! Warning! Defense matrix is about to overload!!!"
Just as everyone thought they would soon have to take the attacks with their hulls, the Tyranid fleet on their flank suddenly exploded. Countless bio-ships were reduced to endless fragments.
Everyone stared blankly through the observation deck toward the distance. There, a five-kilometer-long golden warship hovered silently. Its multilayered, pyramid-like structure was covered in unknown dark-gold alloy armor. Arc-shaped energy wings extended from the upper decks, flowing with blue energy, while a massive Khaydarin crystal floated beneath its hull.
All the humans looked at this alien warship in confusion. In the next moment, from the faintly distorted energy field around it, countless golden interceptor drones poured out, covering the battlefield. Their numbers even exceeded those of the Tyranids. Endless high-energy plasma cannons blasted toward the swarm.
The Tyranid encirclement formation was instantly sliced apart by the massive swarm of interceptors. Although the Tyranids could easily destroy these drones, more and more were continuously flying out from the transparent force field in the distance.
For the first time, the Tyranid hive mind realized that it was outnumbered. The next moment, their main bio-ships gathered together and charged toward the dark-gold mothership, intending to rely on their formidable defenses to break through the drone swarm.
Reality soon taught them what wishful thinking meant.
In the next instant, countless blue energy beams shot out. The tremendous power burned straight through the thick chitin armor of the main bio-ships. Energy accumulated inside them—
Boom!
With silent explosions, the living warships were reduced to ashes.
From beginning to end, no one saw what ships were actually attacking the swarm. In their vision, there was only the massive golden mothership floating quietly in space.
"Don't just stand there. Keep moving!" The captain's voice snapped everyone back to reality.
The human fleet continued advancing through the battling swarms. With complicated expressions, they watched the golden drones. The distant golden warship was already moving toward the battlefield where the Sosa Navy was fighting.
---
On the ground battlefield, all humans were slowly boarding medical transport ships. They would evacuate in three waves.
"Tell them to speed up!" Brand urged with a frown. A message from Lord Alexei had informed him that they had very little time left. They had to move faster.
In the sky, battlecruisers hovered silently above the defensive positions. The enemy was no fool—large numbers of Tyranid aerial units began swarming toward them.
Fortunately, the fleet's void shields had been recharged. Combined with the battlecruisers' terrifying laser point-defense arrays and the supporting Wraith fighter squadrons, countless Tyranid corpses kept falling from the sky.
Just as everyone thought the evacuation would proceed smoothly, a furious roar echoed across Sosa:
"Stop them! Stop these vermin stealing the dynasty's wealth! Tear them apart!"
As the voice fell, dozens of figures streaked in from the horizon, trailing green contrails. Invisible fear once again enveloped everyone.
Death rays tore through the sky, sweeping over everything in sight—living beings and vehicles alike. All attacks aimed at the Scythes of Doom were evaded by their inertia-less engines with terrifying agility.
"It's over…" Anna murmured inside a medical transport. Endless fear spread through the cabin. Some people even began crying unconsciously.
The transports had already taken off. The Hell Angels had long since fallen. They had no way to resist these horrifying alien fighters.
Just as humanity fell into despair, large numbers of unknown objects plunged into the atmosphere at extreme speed. Standing atop one transport, Kaidel barely made them out with his enhanced vision.
They were nearly a hundred golden alien fighters. Their swallow-like, silver streamlined bodies were coated in dark-gold alloy. Their terrifying speed was no less than that of the Scythes of Doom.
The twin plasma cannons mounted on their wings automatically locked onto the Scythes. Just as one Scythe was about to evade with its inertia-less engine, an invisible gravitational beam struck it from a tricky angle.
In the next moment, it seemed frozen in midair. All movement commands failed. Countless plasma blasts hit it directly.
Bang!
Amid a thunderous roar, it turned into the brightest firework in Sosa's skies.
Seeing this, all human medical transports sped toward the cruisers.
"Faster! Faster!" Brand kept urging. He would be the last to evacuate this position.
Alexei stood on the distant plains, quietly watching this battle like an aerial ballet. Both sides possessed terrifying maneuverability, and their pilots could completely ignore the negative effects of such speed. Blue and green lights intertwined, their contrails rapidly covering the entire sky.
"High-speed fighters… as if I don't have those too," Alexei muttered. The Phoenix fighters' inertia engines were no inferior to the Necrons' inertia-less engines.
Suddenly, in the distance across the desolate plains, countless Necrons broke through the Tyranid blockade and rushed toward Alexei and the human positions. Clearly, the dynasty's ruler had completely lost his reason. Abandoning the struggle with the Tyranids, it gathered all its forces and charged at humanity. It could not tolerate these 'insects' escaping from its grasp.
Alexei calmly turned to face the terrifying tide of living metal. Alone, he stood before it. The Zerg at his side were eager to act.
"Alright, alright… let me play one last round with you," he said softly.
In an instant, countless white pillars of light appeared across the plains behind him. Accompanied by several enormous roars, the massive maws of tunnel worms emerged once more on the battlefield.
"Face my tide."