The vacuum of space groaned under the sheer gravitational momentum of the charging dreadnought.
The Crimson Extortionist was a nightmare of dark engineering. Spanning one hundred kilometers from prow to stern, its armored bulk was larger than most planetary moons.
Its forward ramming prow was cast from solid neutron-star matter, so dense that light itself bent around its jagged edges. Twelve colossal sub-light chemical thrusters burned with white-hot atomic fury, accelerating the titanic warship toward the Sovereign Karma Wall like a runaway iron meteor.
Inside the command bridge of the dreadnought, Chairman Sovereign Harkon gripped his command throne with both spiked gauntlets.
His demonic face twisted in feral, bloodthirsty madness.
“All forward thrust!” Harkon screamed into the shipboard array, his six horns leaking black hellfire. “Let them hide behind their golden lotus wall! One hundred kilometers of neutron-star armor will shatter their shield into glass! Ram them into oblivion!”
Beside Harkon, his fleet navigators scrambled across the console, their faces bathed in green emergency lights.
“Target distance: eight thousand miles!” a navigator shouted over the roar of the thrusters. “Velocity approaching point two percent of light speed! Forward kinetic energy exceeds ten billion megatons! No defensive barrier ever recorded in imperial history can withstand this impact!”
