In the four-hundred-thousand-year history of the Sovereign Star-Devouring Citadel, no Solar Siphon had ever encountered hydraulic back-pressure.
Commander Xue Long stood on the black-glass bridge of the vanguard flagship Vulture’s Talon. His four red, slit-pupiled eyes gleamed with hungry excitement.
Ahead of the ten-mile dreadnought hung the Second Sun. Sol-Beta burned in its lower lobe, a sphere of golden-white plasma at fifty million degrees. It had split from Austin’s core when that core divided in two, and it still pulsed in time with Sol-Alpha inside his dantian.
“See the feast!” Xue Long hissed, raising his jagged gauntlets toward the armored viewport. “A newborn stellar ember, barely controlled by mortal worms! It lacks the defenses of an ancient star. For four hundred thousand years, our Citadel has harvested three thousand dying stars. We have left whole worlds frozen in darkness while their emperors begged on their knees. Now these insects have condensed a fresh sun right on our doorstep! Extend the Primary Siphon! Fire the Plasma Anchors!”
A three-mile pipe made of abyssal dark-gold slid from the flagship’s armored belly. Its funnel-shaped intake was lined with inverted spatial runes that glowed a sickly green.
THUMMM-KRAAA.
Twin beams of warped gravity struck Sol-Beta’s corona and locked onto its magnetic field lines. Plasma surged into the pipe.
