In his umbral form, his senses were heightened to the extreme. Even though he was hundreds of kilometers away from the main enemy fleet, he could sense the presence of two ‘players’ amongst the fleet.
These two players were still onboard their own trash-tier ships, safely surrounded by the Alderaanian forces.
Six Apostle-class Corvette ships broke away from the main fleet’s formation and accelerated towards Jiang Fei’s direction. Apostle-Class ships were extremely lightweight ships that possessed the fastest speeds, second only to observation drones.
The main fleet had dispatched them to deal with the lone observation drone sent by the Fifth Hybrid Fleet. Even now, they had yet to detect Jiang Fei’s presence, as his cross-section radius was too small to be detected by any radar system.
“Oh? You’re approaching me?” muttered Jiang Fei.
A flash of black light glowed and in the next instance, all six Apostle-Class ships halted in place, as if they were frozen in time.
…
“Captain! We’ve suddenly lost control of the ship!”
“What?”
“All systems are down, sir! Nothing is responding!”
…
Chaos quickly ensued.
Jiang Fei reached out his hand and clenched his fist. As if he had control of their movements, all six Apostle-Class ships began to move towards each other.
“Emergency evasion maneuvers now!”
The captains of all six Apostle-Class ships quickly tried to do what they could, firing every single impulse engine they had to get themselves away from an imminent collision course with each other.
Unfortunately, all systems were unresponsive to any sort of command. Impulse engine or not, they could not break away from accelerating towards each other. Depending on the ships’ speed and sizes, collision would cause devastating damage, and maybe even death.
“Captain! We can’t do anything! All systems are down and judging from our current course, the ship is being moved by an external force! We are not stopping!”
“Nothing is working! Engineering has tried to manually trigger impulse engines and they would not fire!”
…
The last moments before the ships’ collision were filled with nothing but panic. When all six ships finally collided with each other, a massive fiery explosion erupted, followed by complete silence.
“What the hell is going on?” said the Fleet Commander of the Alderaanian force.
All six ships had suddenly lost communication with the main fleet. Not half a minute later, they collided with each other and turned into space debris. As nothing was working in the ships, no information could be relayed back to the main fleet.
“Commander, do we proceed?” asked the helmsman of the commanding ship.
After all that had happened, he could not decide whether or not to steer the ship forward.
“No. It must be a gravity-well trap. Send one more fleet to sweep the area for traps,” said the Fleet Commander with a stern expression.
As a Fleet Commander of the Alderaan United Space Force, she had her fair share of participating in many wars. The destruction of six Apostle-Class ships was a loss that she could not be bothered about.
“Aye, Commander Aurelia!” said the First Officer.
A fleet of Seekers were dispatched to the site of the incident to investigate the reason for their demise, as well as to search for traps. Knowing they were coming, Jiang Fei remained close to the wreckage. When the fleet was nearby, he once again reached out his hand and destroyed all the Seekers, lumping them together into one metal clump.
Aurelia frowned when she saw what happened to the ships. “Dammit! Did the Trade Federation invent an undetectable gravity-well trap?”
If that was true, there was no way she could proceed, knowing that there were invisible mines scattered about the area. She would have to call off the attack before they could actually destroy anything! Brute-forcing their way through the mines would be akin to going through a shredder hoping to get out in one piece.
Concurrently, Jiang Fei was now literally floating next to the main commanding ship. The funnel behind him was coming closer and was about to enter the enemy’s firing range.
“Commander! Look over there!” cried the radar operator, displaying video footage on the main screen.
The image taken was incredibly wide. It took more than 400x zoom before an image of Jiang Fei floating next to the ship could be seen.
“Is that… a man? Who is he?!” bellowed Aurelia.
No living being would dare to face an entire fleet of Hypercruisers. He had to either be mad or a member of the legendary League of the Hidden Ones.
Jiang Fei’s entire body was wrapped in a thick, black smog, with only a part of his face revealed. As Aurelia stared at him with such intensity, Jiang Fei turned to her and smiled. It was like he knew that she was looking at him through an optical camera.
Jiang Fei’s voice rang clearly in her ear even though he was floating in the vacuum of space, “You want to know who I am? Very well. I shall grant your wish!”
“He could hear me?!” shrieked Aurelia.
Terror filled her heart at having experienced such a supernatural event. Panicked, she turned around to seek her assailant, only to be greeted with curious stares from the rest of her crew.
“What was that? Was it just me? Was it nothing but a delusion?” Aurelia thought to herself.
It was impossible for someone as strong as her to experience some kind of imaginative terror. She turned to the screen once more and had the shock of her life when she saw that the black figure who had been floating next to the ship was no longer there.
Hastily, she tried to order the crew to start searching for the mysterious man. However, before she could even open her mouth, Jiang Fei was suddenly there, pressing his fingers against her lips as his thumb traced downward to her chin.
“Didn’t you want to know who I am?” said Jiang Fei, lifting her chin.
Aurelia grunted, “Ugh!”
Never in her life had she been on the receiving end of such demeaning treatment. Her cold demeanor had earned her the moniker of ice queen, and no man could come as close as Jiang Fei had.
When he extended his other hand, Aurelia instinctively wanted to deliver a lethal slap, but she could not move her body! Like being trapped in a tractor beam, her entire body was frozen in place.
Everyone in the bridge was affected as well. They just stood there, unmoving, like inanimate statues. Unlike Aurelia who could still move slightly as she tried her best to overpower Jiang Fei, the others were simply frozen in time.
Trying her best, Aurelia managed to mouth a sentence, “I thought the Hidden Ones would never interfere with other civilizations!”
Given the situation and her inept ability to jump to conclusions, she determined that the man in front of her was part of the League of the Hidden Ones. Then again, there weren’t many who could stand against an entire fleet of ships alone.
“Interfere? No, my sweet lady. I have no interest in war or battles. However…”
Jiang Fei paused. His eyes scanned every inch of her slender body and when he was done, his eyes locked with hers. “You, on the other hand…”
The way he spoke was incredibly suggestive and repulsive… yet she couldn’t help but feel embarrassed. Blood rushed to her cheeks, dyeing them vermillion red, the color of carnal shame.
Aurelia had no idea how she could have felt that way. She, the ice queen, could not have been swayed emotionally. Yet, this man managed to make her feel… make her experience a plethora of emotions that she could not understand. It was the blissful emotion of being dominated.
Having been discovered by the military and trained to be part of the United Space Force from a young age, Aurelia was the best in the field. Despite being a female, her strength and abilities far exceeded that of any man in the same field.
However, after being crowned as the strongest soldier in the USF, she had gained a too-bright halo that rejected and repelled any weaker men, a.k.a all the men in the army.
Today her halo had finally proven itself to be fallible. How was it possible for a young Terran to dominate her so easily? Her heart, frozen and immune to any sort of feelings, was being thawed by Jiang Fei’s sudden impulsive invasion.
The presence of weak men had always disgusted her. She had never been with someone stronger than her, nor had she ever been defeated. Until this moment. Now, she would learn what it meant to fall for someone. To have her heart stolen by a man.
