Outside the heavy alloy door of the Wildfire Giant Cannon's core command room.
Lieutenant Kane pressed against the side of the door, a miniature receiver in his ear transmitting a brief report from Deputy Team Leader Martin.
"Energy sector targets eliminated, equipment sabotaged, bombs in position."
He glanced at the tactical timer on his wrist—time was ticking down, second by second, toward the fleet attack window.
"Prepare to breach."
Kane lowered his voice, signaling to the team members behind him.
A demolition expert quickly connected a cracker to the access control panel, the cipher lock pattern on the screen scrolling rapidly.
Three seconds later, accompanied by a faint pneumatic sound, the heavy airtight door lock disengaged, and the door slid open a gap to the side.
The moment the opening was just wide enough—
Another team member forcefully rolled a fist-sized canister inside.
A high-efficiency multi-mode flashbang.
Less than a second after release, it detonated violently on the floor at the center of the command room!
There was no fiery blast of a traditional explosion. Instead, a blinding, pure white flash instantly expanded to its maximum intensity.
Simultaneously, a directional sonic shockwave far exceeding human tolerance erupted, along with a powerful electromagnetic pulse strong enough to fry unshielded electronics at close range!
The white light engulfed all vision within the command room.
"Ah—! My eyes!"
"What was that noise?"
"Comms are down!"
Brief cries of shock, pain, and the sounds of chaotic collisions echoed from inside the door.
At the peak of the flashbang's effect, Kane was the first to shoulder his way in!
"Clear!"
Team members poured in behind him, tactical flashlight beams cutting through the lingering, dazzling white light and smoke, quickly locking onto figures in the room.
Inside the command room were about seven or eight Imperial officers and technicians.
Most were now curled up in pain, clutching their eyes, or crouched under control consoles, disoriented by the sonic shockwave and rendered incapable of effective resistance.
But not all.
An Imperial Lieutenant Commander, positioned farther from the entrance, gritted through the discomfort.
One hand pressed hard against his ringing ear, while the other had already drawn the laser pistol from his hip.
Relying on memory and blurred vision, he aimed toward the shifting shadows at the doorway and frantically pulled the trigger!
"Zzt! Zzt! Zzt!"
Several scattered blue laser beams shot out, striking the doorframe and floor, sending up splatters of molten metal.
Kane had already executed a tactical roll the moment the enemy raised his gun; the laser beams grazed just above his helmet.
As he completed the roll, his laser assault rifle was already steadily aimed.
Rat-tat-tat—!
Short, precise three-round bursts.
Crimson beams traced deadly straight lines through the air.
The first shot hit the Lieutenant Commander's gun-wielding wrist; the pistol, along with part of his hand, deformed and fell away under the intense heat.
The second shot pierced his chest.
The third was a follow-up shot to the head, ensuring the threat was completely neutralized.
The Lieutenant Commander's body fell backward, colliding with a control console before sliding slowly to the floor.
Simultaneously, the other Phantom team members opened fire in sync.
Laser beams crisscrossed within the cramped command room. Each brief hum and flash of red light was accompanied by an Empire personnel falling to the ground.
No warnings, no hesitation—pure, efficient killing.
For technicians who had already lost the ability to resist and were curled up on the floor, team members approached and performed confirmatory executions with laser pistols aimed at the back of the head or heart.
The mission requirement was to completely paralyze this location, leaving no survivors who could quickly restore system operations.
The sounds of gunfire, laser scorching, and the dull thuds of bodies hitting the floor fell silent within thirty seconds.
A heavy mix of ozone, the smell of scorched flesh, and the metallic tang of blood permeated the poorly ventilated command room.
"Check all control nodes, destroy them thoroughly!"
Kane commanded, his voice cold and hard.
The team members immediately dispersed, launching destructive fire at all suspected control consoles, server racks, and data storage units in the room.
Laser beams and armor-piercing warhead-equipped bullets turned the precision instrument panels into sieves.
Internal components shattered and short-circuited under high temperatures and impacts, belching thick black smoke and electrical sparks.
Critical data interfaces were welded shut by intense heat, and backup power lines were directly cut and doused with small amounts of thermite.
In less than two minutes, the core command and control hub of the Wildfire Giant Cannon had been reduced to a smoldering, crackling ruin.
"Install the gifts."
Kane signaled.
Two team members retrieved several silver metal boxes, each about the size of a dictionary, from their backpacks.
Miniature nuclear fusion bombs.
They were secured separately under the wreckage of the main console, deep within the server racks, and near a pipeline leading to the cannon body energy main line.
The detonators were set to dual remote and timed mode.
"Setup complete. Timer activated, synchronized to twenty minutes from now."
"Remote signal confirmed operational."
"Withdraw!"
Kane took one last sweeping glance at the deathly ruin they had created, ensuring nothing was overlooked.
The squad swiftly and orderly exited the command room, hurrying back along their entry route toward the Rally Point.
Their figures melted back into the shadows as if they had never been there.
From entry to withdrawal, the entire operation took less than ten minutes.
Inside the Abuja Stellar Ring, internal timers quietly reached zero.
Several miniature nuclear bombs installed in the energy core zone and command hub of the Wildfire Giant Cannon detonated simultaneously.
No sound propagated through the vacuum, but the release of energy was ferociously violent.
First came the blinding, intense light—comparable to the birth of a small star—bursting forth from multiple locations at the cannon's base and the cylindrical section docking zone, tearing outward from within!
Then came the tangible destruction.
The main structure of the Wildfire Cannon, located in the midsection of the cylindrical segment, was crushed like a toy in the hands of a giant under the close-range release of the fusion cores.
Thick armor layers were torn and flung aside like paper.
Internal support frames, energy conduits, and cannon body components vaporized instantly under temperatures reaching hundreds of millions of degrees.
The entire cannon, several kilometers long, along with its base and all facilities within several hundred meters, was completely erased from physical existence by this directional demolition.
Even more devastating was the impact of the explosions on the overall structure of the stellar ring.
One bomb had been cleverly placed at a critical load-bearing node.
The shockwaves and energy shockwaves generated by the explosion rampaged and compounded within the ring's body, ultimately bursting from the inside out.
On the side of the cylindrical docking zone, a terrifying breach over ten kilometers in diameter had been torn open, its edges jagged and twisted!
Massive fragments of metal structures, equipment remnants not fully vaporized, and fleeting clouds of ice crystals formed by the instant evacuation of air gushed out from the breach, like blood and flesh spraying from a giant beast's wound.
Emergency isolation gates inside frantically slammed shut, but the breach was too large. The air pressure in the entire docking zone plummeted sharply, and the piercing depressurization alarm echoed through areas not yet directly destroyed.
The rotation of the stellar ring even trembled slightly but perceptibly as a result.
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