He walked for five minutes.
Until he had mentally prepared himself.
He took a deep breath.
Folded the intelligence report tightly, gripping it firmly.
Then he pushed open the door and headed toward the Commander's office.
Outside the Commander's office.
Crawford stood before the door, pausing for another two seconds.
He raised his hand and pressed the doorbell beside it.
"Ding-dong."
A voice came from inside, not loud, tinged with weariness.
"Come in."
The door slid open to both sides.
Crawford stepped into the office.
Inside the room, General Strauss was seated behind his desk, a stack of documents piled in front of him.
His complexion was poor, his brow slightly furrowed, as if troubled by something.
Chief of Staff Bradley stood to one side of the desk, also holding a document, clearly in the midst of reporting something.
Seeing Crawford enter, Bradley gave a slight nod in greeting.
Crawford nodded back to him, then stepped forward.
He stood before the desk and gently placed the paper intelligence report in front of Strauss.
"Please review this, Commander."
His voice was not loud, but clear.
Strauss glanced down at the intelligence report.
He thought it was just another routine report.
So he casually picked it up and placed it on the pile of already-reviewed documents beside him.
"Leave it there, I'll look at it later."
His tone was flat, as if speaking of a trivial matter.
Crawford did not move.
He stood there, looking at Strauss, silent for a moment.
Then he spoke, his voice still not loud, but with a rare insistence in his tone.
"Commander!"
He paused, then continued.
"It would be better to look at it now."
Strauss looked up at him.
Bradley also turned to look.
Crawford's face showed no expression, but there was something indescribable in his eyes.
Strauss stared at him for two seconds.
Then he reached out and picked up the intelligence report from the pile of documents.
Opened it.
His gaze fell on the first line of text.
His complexion changed in that instant.
Strauss gripped the intelligence report, his fingers turning slightly white from the force.
His eyes scanned the words once, then again, before he suddenly looked up, staring at Crawford.
"This intelligence..."
His voice was very low, but the suppressed tremor was unmistakable.
"Is the source reliable?"
Crawford nodded.
"Encrypted message sent back by the Claw Fleet, verified through triple verification."
Strauss froze for a moment.
"Claw?"
Crawford continued.
"While returning to the Stargate, they remotely observed... something."
Strauss slammed the intelligence report onto the table, his voice suddenly rising.
"A black hole inexplicably appearing near the Stargate?"
He pointed toward the window, as if someone out there could hear his question.
"What about the people at the Interstellar Black Hole Monitoring Agency?
Are they all blind?"
Crawford did not fluster at his agitation.
He merely turned slightly and pointed to the lower right corner of the intelligence paper.
"Commander, look here."
Strauss looked down.
There was a barcode the size of a fingernail, densely packed with black and white stripes.
Crawford explained.
"The Claw Fleet didn't just send a text report."
"They also attached a video encoding to the intelligence."
Strauss stared at the barcode, silent for a second.
Then he pulled open the drawer on the right side of his desk and took out a palm-sized device similar to a barcode scanner.
He aimed the device at the barcode in the lower right corner of the paper.
"Beep."
A soft sound.
A blue light lit up from the micro-projection port at the front of the scanner, rapidly spreading and intertwining in the air to form a fist-sized three-dimensional image.
In the image.
There was a starry sky.
Then, a black hole that was continuously expanding.
Wherever it passed, starlight extinguished, matter vanished, not even leaving behind wreckage.
In the corner of the image, a massive gas giant was being devoured by that darkness.
Its clouds were stretched into a spiral-shaped matter stream millions of kilometers long, slowly disappearing into that endless darkness.
That planet, Strauss recognized.
Loba Star.
The Gas Giant Planet next to the Stargate.
Its very existence proved the location in the image.
That was where the Stargate was.
Strauss's pupils suddenly contracted.
He stared fixedly at the image, at that continuously expanding darkness, at the planet being devoured.
His lips moved, emitting a whisper he himself could barely hear.
"This..."
"How is this possible..."
The image continued to play.
The darkness grew larger and larger.
The starlight grew less and less.
Finally, the entire screen was swallowed by that pure, absolute black.
Then, the image ended.
The office fell into deathly silence.
Strauss stood there, staring at the now black-screened scanner, motionless.
Crawford didn't speak.
He just quietly watched Strauss, waiting for him to digest this fact.
Right then.
A suppressed exclamation came from behind.
Bradley had somehow come over and glimpsed the contents of the intelligence from the side.
His hand suddenly covered his mouth, his Eyes wide as if about to fall out of their sockets.
"Marbas..."
His voice leaked through his fingers, trembling with disbelief.
"Abaddon..."
"Two Joint Fleets... thirty thousand warships..."
He paused, his Adam's apple bobbing violently.
"All gone..."
Strauss sharply turned his head, staring at him.
Bradley didn't look at him, his gaze still fixed on the intelligence, continuing to read, his voice trembling more and more.
"The Angel Fleet... whereabouts unknown..."
"The Blood Locust Fleet..."
He paused, as if to confirm he hadn't misread.
"Twelve hundred Starships..."
"Annihilated at Danube Star..."
After reading the last word, his hand finally slipped from his mouth, revealing his face, pale as paper.
He looked at Strauss, his lips moving, emitting a hoarse whisper.
"Commander..."
"The Stargate... is gone..."
"The two Joint Fleets... are gone..."
"The Blood Locust Fleet... is also gone..."
"The Angel Fleet... drifting who knows where..."
His voice grew lower and lower, almost inaudible by the end.
"All gone..."
The office fell into dead silence once more.
Strauss sat behind his desk, staring at the intelligence, motionless.
The silence lasted a long time.
For so long that Bradley thought he wouldn't say another word.
Then Strauss took a deep breath.
It was a long breath, as if he intended to draw all the air in the room into his lungs.
Then.
He let it out in a long sigh.
That sigh was light, but in the deathly silent office, everyone heard it clearly.
"Defeated."
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