A final Umojan marine lost his head at the hands of a purple psionic blade.

Viper kicked the headless body and knocked it over. As the piece of dead flesh hit the ground, she found herself facing a wall of steel.

A squad of Warden units have arrived.

“Forward. Terminate all hostile terran units.”

The sound of mechanical Warden Command Units brought some old memory back to the female spectre, but she immediately overcame her emotions. She told herself that these units weren’t the ones her loved one made. Instead, they came from people who plagiarized the work of her love.

Warden marines started shooting. Viper tossed an EMP grenade into the middle of the mechanical marines as she covered herself with a psionic shield and got behind a wave of Special Forces marines and marauders that came to reinforce. Bullets hit either the psionic shield or the combat shield and did nothing.

The EMP went off. Within the tight halls of the ship, it was extremely successful. Half the Warden flank collapsed. They were modified to handle normal EMP shockwaves, but against the Special Forces gadget, they were disabled nonetheless.

Now the Special Forces and the Warden units were in equal numbers. As powerful as the machines were, the Special Forces were the best in the Dominion while the Wardens were modified from normal marine and marauder gadgets. Even without the intervention of Viper and two other Specs Ops ghosts, the result was clear.

Under the command of a Command Unit, the Warden units held the ground until the end. Their sacrifice decreased the unit count of the Dominion boarding party by another half a dozen.

“Push forward!” Viper ordered, and the experienced Dominion soldiers walked past both their fallen comrades and the destroyed Warden units and continued to advance toward the bridge.

Jean saw it in the cameras of the Warden units.

“Seal off all blast doors between the Dominion soldiers and here. All Warden units converge on the bridge.” Jean realized the Dominion soldiers were heading straight here. It was reasonable. There were thousands of Umojans on this ship, plus a couple more thousand Warden units. Several hundred Special Forces couldn’t kill them all. The Dominion spectre wanted to take down the bridge. As soon as that was done, she could jump the ship back to Dominion territory and the Umojans in the rest of the ship could be easily dealt with.

Smart plan.

Jean didn’t recognize Viper. For one thing, she has pretty much forgotten about the ghost. When she first left Viper, the female ghost was powerful, but not that powerful. Several dozen legionnaires could easily kill her. When Jean was by herself and had nothing but a couple hundred warbots in her watch, she needed Viper’s help. Now, with entire fleets at her command, she no longer found Viper as worthy of her attention, so she simply forgot about the former ghost now spectre.

Viper went through great length to avenge Jean, but the cold fact what that Jean practically forgot about Viper. She still knew Viper, but she never made any intention to track Viper down. The amount of value the ghost could provide wasn’t worth the risk of being noticed by the Dominion and constantly having attack groups and assassins sent after her.

Also, after becoming a spectre, Viper’s psionic energy turned purple. Her suit also changed. Overall, her general appearance was completely different.

“Pzzzzz”

Viper slammed her psionic blade into a sealed blast door. The entire blade went through, and Viper turned the weapon. In just seconds, she has already formed a circle. Pulling the blade out, she tapped the meters thick of blast door, which fell over and hit the ground, making a loud bang.

A Special Forces marine wanted to move across, but Viper stopped him. She closed her eyes for two seconds before suddenly raising her hand. Immediately, two Umojan marines who hid in the corners of the other side of the door were lifted into the air.

Viper closed his fists, and the two marines were literally crushed.

“I can sense an entire army on the other end. They’re also mechanical units. Warden units.” She whispered. Her psionic energy screamed danger, but she put it down. Instead of immediately making a move, she took out a syringe of terrazine and jammed the needle into her neck.

As the spectre pushed the gas into her body, the fellow Dominion Special soldiers checked their weapons one last time. Most of them have worked with ghosts, even Spec Ops ghosts, but they have never seen someone as powerful as Viper. Compared to Viper, who could duel with the Queen of Blades with several rounds, the Spec Ops ghosts looked like fools.

If even Viper said the situation in front was dire, then the chance for these Spec Ops soldiers was even dimmer.

Viper inhaled deeply. A cloud of purple remained in her eyes for several seconds before disappearing. “Let’s go.”

She charged forward with all the fury in the world.

The rest of the soldiers followed. They had no choice. Win, and they might live long enough to return to the Dominion. Hesitate, and they would’t stand a chance.

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“Terminate.” A Warden Command Unit stated concisely.

The small bridge obviously couldn’t hold thousands of Warden units. In fact, it could barely hold fifty. The rest were piled in the halls between Viper and the bridge.

Dozens of gauss rifles took aim at Viper and started spitting bullets. The ghost formed a shield in front of her. The terrazine she just took gave her an extra boost. The shield was more than enough to take the bullets for two full seconds.

Two seconds was all Viper needed.

The marines kept on firing, but Viper slashed her weapon around, and Warden units fell one by one.

A marauder fired a pair of grenades in close range, but Viper, with the help of psionic energy, darted to the side with menacing speed. The grenades flew by Viper and landed on top of the combat shield of a Special Forces marine. The blast destroyed the combat shield and maimed the marine. In this situation, maimed was equal to death.

Viper separated the Warden marauder’s arm from its body before beheading it with a second strike.

Half a dozen more Warden marines were knocked off their feet by a purple shockwave. Before they could stand up, Viper was already on top of them. She stepped on the reactor of a Warden marine and crushed it. Several other marines initiated the self destruction sequence, but as soon as that happened, Viper smirked and pushed those marines into the crowd of Warden units that were still firing.

“Cancel self destruction seq…”

These marines exploded before the order could be completed, taking down dozens of Warden marines and marauders with them.

The rest of the Warden units kept on charging, but the advantage that has once helped them in countless occasions have been turned to a disadvantage. In the tight tunnel, dozens of Warden marines could fire at once, but there were thousands of Wardens in the hallway. The Special Forces, on the other hand, lacked in numbers, which meant all of them could fire at once.

The rest of the Wardens continued attacking. This was the advantage of machines. They could never be wavered by the tough situation.

The Special Forces continued to advance, but their losses grew by the seconds. Even those that survived were facing constant fire. Armors and combat shields were ripped apart. Marine after marine fell. Marauders were weakened. Even one of the Spec Ops ghosts took some wounds. Under this dense of firepower, cloaking didn’t matter, and common Spec Ops ghosts weren’t strong enough to constantly maintain a psionic shield.

Eventually, one of the gauss bullets found its way through the eye and into the brain of the wounded Spec Ops ghost. Viper finally realized this couldn’t go on. If all of her forces fell, then there was no way she could slaughter all the thousands of Warden enemies just by herself.

She growled, and purple psionic energy radiated out of her body. All the Warden units in front of her were lifted into the air. The armors themselves were crushed. The AIs inside did their best to calculated a way to counter this situation, but their archive simply didn’t contain a counter.

Viper closed her fist slowly.

All the Warden units in the air folded on themselves. Helmets and leg armors became one. Before long, all the units were reduced into balls of metal.

Viper flexed her arm. All the hundreds of balls of metal were flung at the other side of the hallway, where reinforcing Warden units were. All the metal not just knocked the Warden units over but also formed a small hill, temporarily blocking the path of both the Warden units and the Dominion units.

She turned back to the rest of the boarding squad.

“Hold this position.” Viper ordered as her eyes returned to normal.

“What will you do, sir?” The ghost that survived asked. While he and the other men were explicitly ordered to follow Viper’s orders, Viper was given command to this squad just before this mission. The trust between her and the team wasn’t enough to make the team follow her orders in a situation like this without a single word of question.

“Hold your position. That’s an order.” Viper repeated before enabling her modified cloaking field. With several steps, she leaped onto the mountain of scrap metal.

In front of the mountain stood lines and lines of Warden units. But instead of moving forward, they remained at their position and kept their guards up. Their mission was to defend, and attacking would be pointless and risky.

Viper was cloaked. Previously, she didn’t cloak because it wouldn’t matter. The Warden marines would be firing at the Dominion boarding party anyways and cloaking didn’t mean bullets would fly through her. This times, things changed. Without an immediate threat at hand, the Warden marines merely remained at alert position. Even the Warden Command Units’ detection devices weren’t able to detect her.

The female ghost couldn’t even find a place to set her feet, but she didn’t let that stop her. She jumped, but instead of landing on the floor, she grabbed onto a side wall. Her hostile environment suit was equipped with gadgets that increased the friction between the gloves and the wall, allowing her to virtually climb on the walls and around the Warden units. All the while, she was invisible.

Without a fight, she moved by hundreds and hundreds of Warden units without having to shoot a single bullet.

The common Warden units, even the Warden Command Units, didn’t think anything about it. They were given an order, and that order was to defend.

Jean thought differently.

“All Warden units, advance.” She demanded quickly. She didn’t know why the Dominion soldiers held their ground, and she couldn’t see anything because they took out all the security cameras, but she knew she must deny whatever the enemy wanted to accomplish.

Warden units started marching over the mountain. Dominion soldiers held their ground and fired back. Those who still had their shields intact used their shields while the others did their best to find cover. All of them fired back, hoping to take down as much enemy and hold their ground as long as possible.

But they were fighting an endless wave of foe. The first line of Wardens fell, only to get replaced by a second line. Losses were taken on both sides, but the Warden were endless while the Dominion were falling one by one.

Eventually, all the Dominion soldiers were terminated.

But Jean has already sensed something was very wrong.

“Seal all blast doors! Warden units block all entrances! Leave no gap open! Bring every detector we have online!” She pointed at the blast door that sealed off the bridge from the rest of the ship. If the enemy spectre wanted to get to her, she needed to get past that opening. “Everyone, aim your weapons at that door. If that doors is cut open, open fire whether you see an enemy or not.”

Even as the last Dominion soldier fell, the spectre that once took down nearly a hundred Wardens with a single move didn’t strike again. Not even once. Where did she go? Well, she was a spectre, and everyone knew spectres loved their cloaking fields.

She didn’t think the spectre could find her way into the bridge, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

Unfortunately, it was too late.