The serene, otherworldly hum of the Nyxwing navigating the songline was instantly replaced by a cacophony of urgent, though still melodic, Aethelgardian chimes as they transitioned back into normal space.
Red and amber lights pulsed softly across the bio-luminescent control panels, casting stark shadows on Bolt's and Eva's grim faces.
"Report!" Eva snapped, her hands already a blur across the unfamiliar, intuitive controls, which seemed to respond as much to her focused intent as her physical touch.
"Multiple high-energy discharges detected, bearing three-one-zero, mark five," Bolt rumbled, his transformed body thrumming with a low-grade anxiety that mirrored the ship's alarms.
His enhanced senses were being assaulted by a chaotic wave of distant emotions: fear, rage, pain, and a chilling, disciplined aggression.
"Looks like… a battle in progress. Small scale, but intense."
The main viewport, moments before a tranquil starfield, now showed distant, angry pinpricks of light flaring and dying – the unmistakable signature of starships tearing each other apart.
But that wasn't the primary threat that had the Nyxwing's systems singing their warning song.
"And that," Eva breathed, her voice tight with disbelief as a vast, holographic tactical display materialized above the central console, "is Krell's welcoming party."
Dominating the display was an immense, crimson-flagged armada.
Hundreds of Felid Dominance warships, from sleek, predatory cruisers to colossal dreadnoughts that dwarfed anything in Earth's historical experience, moved with a terrifying, unified purpose.
Their trajectory was a clean, unwavering line pointed directly towards the swirling, jewel-toned heart of the Orion Nebula.
Warlord Krell was not just making a move; he was launching an invasion.
"By all the lost gods," Bolt whispered, the sheer scale of the fleet a suffocating weight.
The cold, disciplined intent he could now sense emanating from that collective force was a chilling counterpoint to the hot, chaotic emotions bleeding from the nearby skirmish.
The Ahna'sara within him recoiled from the sheer magnitude of projected hostility.
"That skirmish…" Eva zoomed the display on the smaller conflict.
"Looks like a Canid Confederate patrol, heavily outnumbered.Trying to run a picket, maybe a desperate delaying action."
The tactical icons showed the Canid ships being systematically picked off by a smaller, faster wing of Krell's fleet. "They don't stand a chance."
Bolt felt a pang of anguish. The fear of those Canid crews, their desperate courage, resonated sharply within him.
Coria's lessons on projecting harmony felt a universe away from this brutal reality. How could his fledgling abilities possibly touch, let alone soothe, a firestorm of this magnitude?
He tried to shield his core self, as Coria had taught, to filter the overwhelming psychic noise, but it was like trying to cup his hands against a hurricane.
"We can't help them, Bolt," Eva said softly, her eyes meeting his, reflecting his own pain but also a grim resolve.
"Not if we want to have any chance of reaching the Heart before Krell does. Our mission is too critical."
He knew she was right. The cold logic of it warred with the empathic surge of the Ahna'sara.
"They're dying, Eva."
"And countless more will die if Krell corrupts the Heart," she countered, her voice firm but not unkind.
"The Nyxwing's stealth is our only advantage. We have to try and slip past his main fleet. The battle out there…" she indicated the skirmish, "…might actually provide some cover.
Their sensors will be focused on the immediate engagement."
It was a desperate gamble. The Nyxwing, for all its Aethelgardian artistry, was not a warship.
Its strength lay in evasion, in its ability to tread the unseen paths.
"Their sensor nets will be tight," Bolt said, forcing himself to analyze, to think strategically.
He focused his empathic senses, trying to "feel" the attention of the Felid fleet, to find the gaps, the momentary lapses in their vast, sweeping scans.
It was a faint, almost imperceptible skill, but he thought he could sense the primary focus of their detection arrays.
"There… to port. Near that asteroid cluster. Their long-range scanners are probably getting a lot of interference there, and their escort wings are concentrated starboard, dealing with the Canids."
"Risky," Eva muttered, studying the proposed vector.
"It'll take us close to their flank. But it might be our only shot."
Her fingers danced across the controls, the Nyxwing responding with a silent, graceful shift in orientation. "Alright, hold on. Going dark."
The internal lights of the Nyxwing dimmed further, its energy signature dropping to an almost undetectable level.
Eva expertly guided the small ship towards the tumultuous asteroid field, using the larger planetoids as cover, the distant flashes of the doomed Canid patrol a grim backdrop to their own perilous run.
Bolt kept his senses extended, a fragile net of empathic awareness, feeling for the cold touch of Felid sensor sweeps, the disciplined thoughts of their crews.
He could feel the distant, arrogant confidence of Krell's flagship, a chilling certainty of victory.
They slipped past the first few picket lines, the Nyxwing moving like a ghost through the void.
The asteroid field offered more cover than Eva had hoped. For a moment, a sliver of hope ignited. Perhaps they could actually do this.
Then, Bolt's internal alarms, the ones tied to the Ahna'sara, screamed a silent warning an instant before the ship's own sensors blared.
"Heavy energy reading!" Eva cried. "A Felid destroyer, detached from the main fleet! It's changing course… directly towards us!"
On the tactical display, a new, menacing icon peeled away from the crimson tide of Krell's armada, its projected path intersecting theirs with lethal precision.
It wasn't a random patrol. This ship knew something was there. Its advanced, military-grade sensors, perhaps, had caught the faintest ripple of their passage, an anomaly that Aethelgard's subtle arts couldn't entirely conceal from a determined, technologically superior foe.
The firestorm had found them.