The Rikens stationed on Planet Raze felt deeply uneasy.
Their location ant that in the event of an unfavorable battle situation, evacuation would be nearly impossible.
In other words, if the Riken forces were defeated, they would be abandoned. The Rikens would prioritize preserving their warships and other critical assets rather than risking them to retrieve those left behind.
Thankfully, while listening to the radio broadcasts, the soothing voice of the announcer continued to deliver encouraging news.
The alien Swarm’s combat units were being countered effectively by the Rikens’ new weapons. The tide of the battle was turning in their favor, and if things continued on this trajectory, the war would soon end. They would successfully complete their tasks in safety.
If the alien Swarm wanted to launch another war of this magnitude, it would likely take them another ten or even several dozen years to rebuild. By then, these Rikens imagined they’d have been promoted and received pay raises. Even if another war broke out, they’d at least be stationed aboard warships or in rear positions, far away from such dangerous and nerve-wracking posts.
However, at that mont, the detector suddenly sounded an alarm. Everyone’s hearts sank. Why now, of all tis? The timing was far too coincidental.
It was difficult for them to believe it was just a fluke.
“Captain Ryder, what’s going on? Is it an earthquake?” one of the engineers asked hopefully.
Of the Rikens present, only Captain Ryder and two security team mbers could interpret the instrunt readings. The others were engineers tasked with maintaining the nuclear power plant.
The engineers stared at Captain Ryder with hopeful eyes.
Captain Ryder furrowed his brows deeply, studying the data with a grim expression. He glanced up at the group, aware of what they wanted to hear. But this wasn’t sothing that could be resolved through self-delusion.
He hesitated, not because he wanted to shatter their hopes, but because even he couldn’t fully understand what was happening.
“Just tell us, Captain Ryder. Everyone here knows the nature of this job; we wrote our wills long ago,” one of the engineers said in a somber tone, seemingly interpreting Ryder’s expression as a bad sign.
“It’s not an earthquake, but I’m not exactly sure what it is,” Ryder replied hastily upon noticing the group’s misunderstanding.
“What do you an?” the group asked in confusion.
“An earthquake’s data readings don’t look like this.”
“Then… does that an the enemy is here?”
“This data trend is extrely strange; I’ve never seen anything like it before,” Captain Ryder said gravely, shaking his head.
He had an excellent mory and had retained nearly all the data patterns he had studied during his training—whether caused by excavation tools, animals, machinery, explosives, weapons, or even various magnitudes of earthquakes.
It was his exceptional test scores that had earned him the position of team leader for this three-person squad. Yet the data in front of him sparked no recollection whatsoever.
Ryder handed the data readout to the other two team mbers for their input, but they both shook their heads. This deepened Ryder’s concern, adding a layer of confusion.
The data pattern was unnaturally smooth, as though sothing was moving through the soil without encountering any resistance.
Of course, none of them had seen anything like this before—the Burrowing Worms were making their debut, and their excavation thods were fundantally unlike anything previously known.
“Don’t worry,” one of the security team mbers reassured the group. “We’re wrapped in 20 ters of reinforced barriers. Even if there’s an enemy, it’ll be incredibly difficult for them to break through.”
Before his words had fully left his mouth, the chamber shook. The tremors were minor but unmistakable, and dust from the ceiling rained down on everyone’s heads.
“What’s happening?”
“Not good—sothing’s struck the outer barrier! Sound the alarm imdiately!” Ryder reacted swiftly, shouting even as he leapt toward the alarm system.
“Captain, we still don’t know what’s out there. What if this is a false alarm?” one team mber cautioned.
“Damn it, at this point, even if it’s a false alarm, I’ll gladly accept punishnt later!” Ryder roared as he reached the alarm and pulled the lever without hesitation.
The piercing sound of alarms echoed through the underground base. At the sa ti, news of the nuclear power plant under attack was transmitted to the Riken space fleet.
As the alarms blared, the group collectively exhaled in silent relief. No one cared about potential reprimands when their lives were at stake.
“General, multiple underground bases on Planet Raze are reporting attacks.”
“Is it the Swarm?” General Hamis asked, frowning at his adjutant’s report.
“That’s not confird yet.”
“Hmph. It must be. I’ve said before—there’s no way the Swarm would attack Planet Raze without a specific objective,” said Alcer, one of the three fleet commanders, who had been in continuous video communication with the others to facilitate coordinated battle strategies. He had just received the sa report and was visibly agitated.
“But how did they breach our defenses and infiltrate Planet Raze?” Novaul, another commander, asked in puzzlent.
“Why infiltrate? I think they’re leftovers from the last invasion,” Alcer suggested, his temper montarily yielding to insight.
“I agree,” Hamis said. “Our defenses around Planet Raze are airtight; it’s implausible for the Swarm to approach undetected. It’s far more likely these are remnants we failed to eliminate. Send a special operations team to deal with it imdiately.”
The three commanders had long suspected sothing was amiss on Planet Raze. The Swarm’s prolonged concealnt had left them uneasy—the unknown was always the greatest threat.
Now that the Swarm’s hidden forces had revealed themselves as re “escaped prey,” the commanders felt reassured. Although there was no direct evidence, the sheer number of Space Octopuses that had descended upon Planet Raze during the previous invasion made it reasonable to assu so had escaped.
Even though they had conducted sweeps of various areas, Planet Raze was enormous, and the Swarm was highly adept at hiding. Overlooking a few survivors was unsurprising.
Still, the commanders believed these survivors could do little more than harass energy facilities with minor attacks. The scale of their operations seed too small to influence the outco of the war.
This, they assud, was rely the Swarm’s final struggle. The war was nearing its end, and the Rikens would erge victorious.
Their confidence, however, was dangerously inflated.
Their understanding of the Swarm’s technological capabilities remained fragntary at best, yet they boldly declared these “escaped prey” incapable of posing a serious threat.
The 20-ter-thick reinforced barriers barely slowed the Burrowing Worms. The dense, hardened structure was no match for their terrifying, spiral-arrayed teeth.
Concrete, steel, and debris were chewed apart and swallowed, their remnants processed and transported through the worms’ bodies. Unstoppably, the worms carved a three-ter-wide tunnel from the depths of the earth straight to the nuclear power plant.
Behind the Burrowing Worms ca a dense swarm of larval bodies. These had been lurking underground since their hatching, subsisting on radiation-rich minerals to grow and develop. Now, the ti had co for them to reerge.
Even with their chanical instincts, it was easy to imagine that they, too, longed for the starlit skies and the vastness of the universe.
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