The Pale Crest's hundred-ship gambit barely lasted an hour out of the Void rift. Jarek's Third Fleet—two thousand strong—swarmed them like a steel tide.
Pale Crest radars lit up, blips multiplying: five hundred, a thousand, two thousand. "They sent two thousand to Crestfall already!" a captain choked. "And two thousand more here? This a nightmare?"
Fighting spirit? Gone. A hundred against two thousand wasn't a brawl—it was a burial.
"We surrender!" the first ship broadcasted, and the rest chimed in, a chorus of ninety-nine "We surrender!" calls. Despair +1, over and over, like a broken machine.
They didn't dare twitch—any move would've triggered a storm of Pulse fire, no gaps, no mercy. The Third Fleet's commander, a Rib with cold logic, didn't flinch.
"Efficient," he noted. No chase, no mess—surrender saved the cleanup hassle.
The Pale Crest ships weren't even packed for a real fight—just enough crew to haul their doomsday cargo: an Atmospheric Purge Torpedo. No landing gear, no boarding teams, just a delivery run.
Five hundred thousand Pale Crest troops got scooped up, hands bound. Interrogation cracked fast.
"Purge weapon—air burner?" the Rib commander muttered, processing. "Why not frontline? Why Redstone?"
The "God's Wrath" label didn't compute—emotional nonsense. He flagged it for Jarek. Big news, weird news, king's call.
Back at Edgehold, the First and Second Fleets—seventeen hundred ships—spent ten days refitting, Living Steel patching the dents. The Third Fleet rolled in, two thousand fresh, and Jarek got the briefing.
"God's Wrath, huh?" he said, flat. If that torpedo had hit Redstone, his colonies—years of grind—would've glassed over.
The Pale Crest hadn't learned. Time to hit harder. "No waiting," Jarek ordered. "Strike now."
Screw their mother's house—enough games. No more planet-by-planet slog. The new plan: gut their space force, then ram straight for Crestspire, their core. Quick, brutal, done.
The Pale Crest was bleeding—two big losses left them fifteen hundred ships, scattered across seven worlds. Outnumbered, outgunned, outmaneuvered.
Jarek dropped a hundred ships to hold Edgehold; the rest—over seventeen hundred—surged deeper into Crestfall. No fleet could stop that.
On Crestspire, Rageclaw got the reports, patchy and panicked: "They're hitting Shatterpoint—blasted our ports and bases, then peeled off!"
"Heading for Duskwind next?"
"They're not holding Shatterpoint—just bombing and running. Straight for us."
"They're mad! Don't they fear us regrouping at Shatterpoint, cutting 'em off or retaking Edgehold?"
Hidden bunkers on Shatterpoint still had teeth—give it time, and they'd claw back. Rageclaw marveled at Jarek's speed and fire, but then it clicked.
"The Wrath worked," he grinned, first real joy since the war kicked off. "They're pissed—rushing blind."
He was half-right. Jarek was pissed—but not blind. The Pale Crest's desperation just ran out of rope.