A heavy, suffocating silence descended upon the command center. Humanity refused to fail this easily.
Simultaneously, the mainfras flagged another critical anomaly. The astrophysics team was frantically analyzing the curvature bubble surrounding the Viridian vessel, trying to map its localized spatial distortion.
Just as Professor Hao Yu had warned, humanity understood almost nothing about warp chanics, where the very fabric of space is drastically manipulated.
When light passes from air into water, it refracts due to the change in density. The curvature bubble operated on a similar principle, but its dium was space itself. Whether light or solid matter, anything entering the bubble was violently warped, its trajectory completely altered.
This distortion was likely the byproduct of a massive gravitational shear or so other exotic force field entirely unknown to human science. Crucially, however, it didn’t seem to alter the physical properties of the matter itself. A nuclear warhead that successfully penetrated the field could still detonate, and a probe could technically still function.
The problem was that once inside the bubble, all teletry from the probes was subjected to extre interference. The incoming data streams were a chaotic ss, packets were duplicated, inverted, or completely fragnted, rendering it impossible to decipher the tactical situation inside the field.
The raw data was garbled beyond recognition; even the optical feeds were heavily warped. It beca agonizingly clear that deciphering this information required extensive reconstruction by the quantum mainfras.
The data could potentially unlock the secrets of warp travel, but they were in the middle of a desperate firefight. They didn’t have the ti to sit down and do the math!
"Commander, we don’t have the requisite algorithms to parse this anomalous data. Reconstructing it will take too long!" a computer science expert reported, his voice tight with panic.
"This is the first ti we’ve encountered spatial distortion. We need to build new models and run simulations; an hour isn’t nearly enough!"
"Do your best. Don’t worry about the clock..." Jason replied, his voice calm, but internally his stomach had plumted. Without clean data, they had no way of knowing how the curvature field twisted the incoming missiles, which ant they couldn’t calculate the necessary course corrections.
Worse still, the Viridian point-defense grid could intercept over two thousand targets a second. In the ten seconds it took a missile to cross the bubble, the alien ship could easily swat down twenty thousand projectiles...
How were they supposed to fight this? Were they really just relying on blind luck?
Jason rubbed his throbbing temples, his brow furrowed in frustration.
Humanity’s utter helplessness was laid bare. Faced with a true interstellar empire, they were nothing but infants throwing stones. No matter how ticulously they planned, they were completely out of their depth, blind to the fundantal physics governing the battlefield.
This was the source of an advanced civilization’s absolute arrogance!
Even if I don’t fight back, what can you actually do to ?
Fortunately, the Viridian spacecraft seed to be operating on autopilot. While its onboard AI was highly advanced, it didn’t appear to possess true consciousness. It rigidly followed its pre-programd directives, flying straight toward the sun, entirely ignoring the frantic attacks launched from Mars.
Jason licked his dry lips. It wasn’t over yet. They hadn’t lost.
The main strike package was still in transit. It would cross the engagent threshold in ten minutes...
Co on, humanity. Show them what we’re made of.
Fundantally, nuclear weapons harness the binding energy within an atomic nucleus. In the 20th century, brilliant minds... Einstein had practically single-handedly formulated the theory of relativity, centing mass-energy equivalence as a cornerstone of physics.
According to the famous equation E=mc^2, mass and energy are interchangeable. Mass can beco energy, and energy can beco mass, without violating the laws of conservation. This is the core principle of a nuclear detonation.
Calculations dictate that if just one microgram of matter is perfectly converted into energy, it yields an explosion equivalent to 21.5 tons of TNT.
To achieve a yield of one trillion tons, a nuclear warhead must theoretically convert 46.51 tons of solid mass into pure energy. The mass-to-energy conversion efficiency of their tetrahydrogen bomb was only about 3%, aning the fissile core alone weighed 1,150 tons. Combined with the massive laser ignition array and secondary systems, the single warhead tipped the scales at over two thousand tons.
This colossal weapon carried the weight of humanity’s survival.
As long as it wasn’t intercepted, even a near-miss detonation would inflict catastrophic structural damage on the Viridian spacecraft.
The tension in the room was suffocating. The initial probing attacks had failed to locate the main drive or map the curvature distortion. They were flying blind. Now, they could only rely on pure luck... or rather, intuition.
Jason, Leo, Calvin, and the others with heightened intuitive instincts sat frozen before their monitors, the crushing pressure making it difficult to breathe.
But intuition wasn’t magic; it couldn’t conjure data from thin air. They simply didn’t know what vector to choose.
Calvin felt a wave of crushing defeat. For weeks, his precognitive visions had been filled with nothing but "endless light"...
It seed his vision was finally manifesting, but whether that light was the blinding flash of the tetrahydrogen bomb or the apocalyptic glare of a supernova, he still didn’t know.
The clock was bleeding away. If they didn’t input the final targeting coordinates now, the heavy payloads wouldn’t have enough ti to complete their orbital correction burns.
Speed was relative. Compared to the Viridian railgun slugs moving at 10,000 kiloters per second, humanity’s missiles were practically standing still.
To cross a 100-kiloter gap, a human missile needed seven to eight seconds. The enemy interceptors covered that sa distance in 0.01 seconds. Interception was effortless.
Jason dragged his hands through his hair. Seeing that the others were equally paralyzed, he made the call himself. He stabbed a finger at the spacecrafts front section on the schematic. "Target lock: ventral quadrant, grid sector four!"
"Copy that, sir! Trajectories locked!" Austin confird, his voice dead serious.
Following the order, the entire remaining arsenal was launched in a single, massive wave. The engagent window would last three minutes, tops.
Over 6,000 nuclear warheads and tens of thousands of decoys and electronic counterasures sward the 150-kiloter target area. It wasn’t a dense spread relative to the ship’s size, but it was everything humanity had to offer.
Everything hinged on this final volley!
A sudden, brilliant flash ignited the dark void.
The horn for the final charge had sounded.
It was a vanguard helium-3 warhead, detonating prematurely, tens of kiloters outside the curvature bubble.
It hadn’t been intercepted; it was a deliberate airburst. The resulting thermal bloom and massive electromagnetic pulse were designed to blind the enemy’s sensor arrays, providing a chaotic smokescreen for the main payload trailing behind it.
In the ensuing seconds, The density of this strike was tenfold that of the probing attack. A chaotic swarm of nukes, conventional missiles, and bulky, low-mass decoys slamd into the curvature bubble, instantly t by a torrential downpour of blinding white interceptor beams.
The EMP burst did its job, severely degrading the alien targeting scanners and allowing a massive wave of projectiles to slip through the periter.
However, the intense electromagnetic radiation also blinded humanity’s own teletry. The probes were useless; command was forced to rely solely on the Noah’s primary optical radio telescopes.
The monitors displayed a terrifying, blurred sphere of overlapping light blooming inside the curvature bubble. It was impossible to tell what was happening, whether the warheads were being intercepted or if they were actually detonating against the hull.
Then, new data parsed through the static, adding to the tactical nightmare. Teletry indicated that so missiles were being cleanly bisected mid-flight, hinting at a secondary defense system.
"High-energy lasers! They’re slicing the missiles apart at the molecular level!" The beams were invisible in the vacuum, only detectable by the sudden fragntation of the incoming ordinance.
The command crew remained deathly silent, their eyes glued to the blinding feed.
It appeared the sheer volu of the human assault had triggered an escalation in the spacecraft’s automated defense protocols. A terrifying grid of high-energy lasers and kinetic railguns activated simultaneously, shredding the incoming swarm and sending countless pieces of debris hurtling into the void.
The debris was a mix of molten slag, shattered nuclear casings, and cleanly severed missile fuselages. The debris, varying wildly in size, was flash-frozen by the cold of space as it drifted away. But while the outer layers hardened, the cores remained liquid and incandescent. As the fragnts collided with one another, they sparked brilliant, secondary flashes, like a cosmic fireworks display...
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