145: The Birth of a Ghost

"We're sitting ducks!"

The scream of "quick hand" Fili was shriller than all the alarms on the bridge combined.

That giant net made of pure energy was like a god's butterfly net, descending with a crushing sense of destruction. In its light, Fili's four eyes held nothing but pure despair.

"Shut up!" Chen Feng's voice was as cold as the vacuum of space.

His gaze was locked onto the external monitors, his brain working at an unprecedented speed. Reno's dying appearance, the two corpses consumed by fire, the last soldier exploding into a mist of blood... scenes flashed before his eyes, finally settling on a corner of the monitor where several Alliance patrol ships, also hit by Hecate's indiscriminate fire, were billowing black smoke.

A thought, like a flash of lightning, pierced through the darkness of despair.

He turned abruptly and grabbed Eve's thin shoulders, his grip so hard she cried out in pain.

"Eve! Look at me!" Chen Feng forced her empty, unfocused eyes to meet his. Her pupils were filled with fear, like a frightened little beast.

"Please... I need you!" For the first time, Chen Feng's voice carried a hint of a plea, though his tone sounded more like a command. "Calculate the energy frequency of that electromagnetic net! Get all its data! Can you do it?!"

"I..." Eve trembled at his shout, her gaze falling on the giant net on the screen. Fear instantly overwhelmed her. "No... I don't know... it's too much... the data stream is too massive..."

"You can!" Chen Feng clamped her shoulders with both hands, practically roaring at her. "Think of Reno! He's dying right now because he saved you! If you can't calculate it, all of us, including you, will become space junk! I spent 260 million credit points to buy you back, not to have you shivering here!"

"Reno..."

This name was like a needle, stabbing deep into Eve's chaotic consciousness. The image of that man, covered in blood but still clutching the datapad, flashed through her mind. A strong mixture of suffocating guilt and fear acted as an unprecedented catalyst.

She screamed, shoved Chen Feng away, and rushed to another backup console.

"Aaaaaah—!"

What she uttered was no longer human language, but a roar mixed with sobbing and shrieks. Her hands became a blur on the virtual keyboard, and countless data streams surged frantically across her retinas.

"The main frequency is... at 1.77 terahertz! No! It's a composite frequency!"

"Harmonics! There are seventeen fake harmonics! They're using gravitational lensing as a disguise!"

"Found it! Its reverse resonance waveform... is here!"

Eve looked up abruptly, her face covered in tears and sweat, and shrieked a string of incredibly complex data: "...Reverse resonance... match the shields to this frequency! Fast!"

"Fili! Did you hear that? Do as she says!" Chen Feng immediately relayed the data to the stunned Fili.

"What? Use the shields for resonance? That'll tear our shield generator apart!" Fili screamed. This was an operation that completely went against the textbooks.

"Execute the order!" Chen Feng's muzzle pressed against the back of his head again.

"Yes! Yes! I'll do it!"

Fili's hands trembled as he input the long string of data Eve had called out into the shield adjustment matrix.

The energy shield of the lucky dice emitted a tooth-grinding noise, as if metal were being torn apart. The light flickered unsteadily, looking as if it could collapse at any moment.

The next second, the ship slammed into the giant electromagnetic net.

There was no earth-shattering explosion, no being torn to pieces.

The ship seemed to turn into an ethereal ghost. The moment it touched the electromagnetic matrix, it... miraculously passed through!

Silence filled the bridge, broken only by everyone's heavy breathing.

"We... we're through?" Fili looked at the giant energy net left behind outside the viewport and stammered, as if in a dream.

But this brief stroke of luck brought no safety.

Hecate's fire and Shadow Chaser-J's lock-on didn't stop. Just as they passed through the net, a tracking main cannon shot roared past the ship's tail, accurately hitting another small Alliance patrol ship nearby that had also been damaged by Hecate and was leaking air.

"Boom—!"

That unlucky patrol ship exploded into a brilliant and deadly firework in space.

Looking at that blinding flash, a plan even crazier and bolder than passing through the electromagnetic net instantly formed in Chen Feng's mind.

"Fili!" he roared at the captain.

"Here! Boss!" Fili jumped.

"Shut down all active signals! Disguise our ship's identification code as the Alliance patrol ship that just exploded! Now! Immediately!"

"What?!" Fili was scared out of his wits by this idea, which was as genius as it was devilish.

"Fast!"

"Yes!"

Fili's fingers flew across the console at an unprecedented speed. At the same time, Chen Feng seized the piloting controls and steered the ship headlong into the fog of debris and energy created by the explosion, which was enough to block all conventional scans.

Just as the lucky dice vanished into the smoke, Fili completed the operation.

On the radar screens of all factions in Tartarus, the red hostile signal representing the lucky dice abruptly disappeared.

In its place, within that cloud of explosion, an allied signal belonging to the Omni-Dimensional Trade Alliance patrol ship, marked as "Killed in Action," flickered weakly a few times before falling completely silent.

In the temporary command center of the D-7 Port Area, Shadow Chaser-J watched the target signal disappear completely from the screen. He glanced at the nearby firepower report from Hecate's fleet, a cold curve appearing at the corners of his mouth.

"Target confirmed destroyed in Hecate's fire." He made the final judgment into the communicator in a soulless tone. "Withdraw."

At almost the same time, on the bridge of Hecate's flagship, the Queen of a Thousand Hands received a similar report. She only spared it a glance before losing interest, turning instead to deal with the more practical economic losses caused by the riot.

In the eyes of all their enemies, Chen Feng's group, along with that battered smuggling ship, had turned into cosmic dust.

No one knew that in that slowly expanding graveyard of metal and fire, a ship disguised as a "ghost" had shut down most of its systems. Like a real corpse, it mingled with other damaged Alliance ships retreating, quietly and slowly... sailing into the deep darkness.