novelraw Chapter 153: Another Hope
Chapter 153: Another Hope
"Professor Hao Yu, you are hereby placed in absolute command of the Tetrahydrogen Nuclear Warhead manufacturing and the deployment of its heavy-lift rocket vehicle. You have three months to complete assembly and prepare!"
"Chief Engineer Isaac, your entire industrial complex will assist Professor Hao in this endeavor. Divert all necessary resources immediately!"
"...The Apex Supercomputing Center will handle all intercept trajectory calculations!"
Orders were issued with rapid-fire precision, all focused entirely on the desperate plan to intercept and destroy the Viridian spaceship.
Although Jason maintained a clear, commanding demeanor, a deep chill ran down his spine. Issuing these orders offered him little comfort; no one actually knew if humanity’s desperate interception plan would work.
Damn those Viridian bastards! he cursed inwardly.
The technological gap between the two civilizations was simply too vast. What if the ballistics calculations were slightly off and the missile missed its target? What if the Viridians possessed point-defense systems capable of shooting the warhead down before it detonated? There were far too many catastrophic "what ifs," and humanity couldn’t afford to fail a single one.
Meanwhile, the massive, unknown Annihilator fleet tracked by the Gravitational Wave Telescope continued its relentless advance, showing absolutely no signs of slowing down.
Jason found the situation grimly amusing. The Federation hadn’t wanted to send out any hostile signals or invite a war. In fact, this approaching Annihilator fleet was the true culprit responsible for the panic. If the Sun really did explode and take humanity with it, it would be a small comfort knowing the Annihilators would be caught in the blast as well.
But they couldn’t just rely on mutually assured destruction. The Annihilators were currently 0.24 light-years away. If humanity tried to signal them to explain the Viridians’ trap, a round-trip transmission would take nearly half a year. They didn’t have that kind of time; the Sun would have already detonated by the time the Annihilators received the warning.
Damn it all! Jason grew angrier the more he thought about it. Humanity was truly suffering an undeserved calamity, collateral damage in a war they had nothing to do with.
This was the brutal reality of war between interstellar empires. It was bad enough that they were fighting, but their battles involved casually detonating stars! How could mere humans, insects in comparison, possibly fight for a chance to survive?
He felt the crushing inadequacy of their technology. No matter how brilliantly successful the grand bluff had been, it couldn’t change the underlying physical truth: humanity was still far too weak.
Just moments ago, the Astronomical Observatory had sent an update: the Gravitational Wave Telescope had detected a faint, secondary anomaly. The Viridian escape shuttle was leaving the Solar System at sub-light speeds, and its velocity was gradually increasing...
Those cowardly Viridians had literally packed up and run, leaving behind a bomb to detonate the local star! What was humanity supposed to do? Jason couldn’t help but mentally curse the Viridians and their entire evolutionary lineage.
Even if humanity’s nuclear strike somehow managed to bring down the Viridian spaceship, what were they supposed to do about the incoming Annihilator fleet? How could they deal with a planetary spaceship? And if the nuclear strike failed and the artificial supernova actually occurred, could humanity possibly survive the blast?
His head throbbed. Jason desperately wanted to avoid thinking about such heavy, apocalyptic scenarios. He just wanted to take things one step at a time, but the universe refused to give him a moment to breathe.
After a long, heavy silence, Jason finally addressed the council again: "Everyone, I have a hypothetical question... If we fail, and the Sun actually detonates, can the Precursor Ark withstand the blast?"
His voice was terrifyingly low and hoarse. If he had a choice, he would never have voiced such a pessimistic question out loud, but as a leader... he had to face the consequences of the interception plan failing.
Could the Noah survive a supernova?
This was the ultimate question!
"We don’t fully understand the physics behind a degenerate matter explosion, nor do we know the exact yield of an artificial supernova. We can only prepare for the absolute worst-case scenario."
Jason slammed his fist on the table, his composure cracking slightly. "I understand that! Now... can anyone tell me if the Noah’s hull can withstand a supernova blast wave?"
The entire conference room fell into a deathly silence. Perhaps only the ancient Precursors who forged the vessel knew the true limits of its durability.
Felix, a senior theoretical physicist, was the first to speak. "...Even if we assume the Noah’s hull can miraculously withstand the multi-million-degree thermal shockwave, the intense burst of gamma radiation would instantly sterilize everything inside. The Noah has massive, open airlocks and hangar bays. Gamma rays have immense penetrating power; an outburst of that magnitude could physically strip the atmosphere from a planet!"
"Furthermore, the blast would release an ocean of neutrinos. While neutrinos are usually harmless and pass right through normal matter, multiplying their density by several trillion would cause enough microscopic collisions to turn a human body into Swiss cheese at the cellular level."
Felix’s face was grim, fully aware of how pessimistic his analysis sounded.
However, good medicine often tastes bitter, and honest advice is hard to hear. If the Sun actually exploded, humanity’s chances of survival were effectively zero.
While the rest of the council remained in stunned silence, a voice suddenly broke the tension. It was Dr. Ravi, a brilliant physicist. He furrowed his brow and spoke up. "I think... it might not be entirely impossible to survive."
"Even if the artificial supernova occurs, we might still have a fighting chance!"
Everyone turned to stare at Dr. Ravi in sheer disbelief.
He cleared his throat and spoke calmly. "First, let’s assume that the Noah’s exotic hull *can* withstand temperatures in the hundreds of millions, or even billions, of degrees. We have strong evidence for this... We’ve conducted direct nuclear detonations against the Noah’s exterior plating in the past, and it didn’t even leave a microscopic scorch mark."
"If the Noah’s hull remains structurally sound during the supernova, its strange material properties should naturally reflect or absorb the vast majority of the gamma rays and neutrinos... What actually breaches the interior might be less than one in a hundred million, maybe even only one in a billion!"
The Noah’s outer shell was forged from a bizarre, exotic substance that seemed to lack a standard atomic structure. It was unimaginably dense. It did not absorb light, nor did it emit thermal radiation. Any kinetic or energy-based matter that collided with it was simply deflected or absorbed, including highly penetrating gamma rays and neutrinos...
Furthermore, the material could not be heated; it existed in a state of perpetual, magical zero-point energy. Even when bathed in the fires of a nuclear blast, its baseline temperature remained completely unchanged. Therefore, the crew wouldn’t have to worry about being roasted alive inside the ship like an oven.
According to Dr. Ravi’s hypothesis, if the Noah miraculously survived the initial kinetic shockwave of the supernova, the hull itself would act as an absolute radiation shield, reducing the neutrino and gamma density to non-lethal levels.
For biological lifeforms, the most immediate threats were the extreme heat and the gamma rays. These high-energy electromagnetic waves possessed terrifying penetrating power; even a microscopic dose could shred human DNA and cause instant cellular death.
"The only vector for gamma rays to enter the ship is through the open airlocks and hangar bays. If we construct massive, ultra-thick lead and water radiation shields to seal those specific openings, could we block the remaining percentage?" Dr. Ravi proposed.
Upon hearing this, another scientist immediately stood up to retort: "Dr. Ravi, you are vastly underestimating the sheer volume of gamma radiation produced by a supernova! Even if our local Sun has a relatively small mass, the focused gamma burst from its detonation would instantly vaporize our shielding bulkheads!"
He was right... these were gamma rays forged in the death throes of a star; a simple lead shield would be utterly useless!
"...Yes, you’re correct!" Ravi wasn’t discouraged; he leaned forward, his eyes bright. "But we wouldn’t just rely on our own shields. We can hide the Noah behind Mars, and let the entire planet absorb the brunt of the gamma burst for us!"
"We need to use the planet as our primary ablative shield! Mars will absorb the vast majority of the lethal radiation."
"Then, we let the Noah’s exotic hull deflect whatever bleeds past the planet!"
"The physical area of the Noah’s airlocks makes up roughly one ten-thousandth of its total surface area; they are just tiny pinpricks in the armor. Between the planetary shield and the hull, the radiation dose that actually reaches the airlocks might be one-billionth or one-hundred-billionth of the original output! We should be able to engineer localized shields to withstand *that*, shouldn’t we?"
The room fell silent once more. Was it possible? They didn’t know...
Dr. Ravi’s desperate theory did boost the morale of everyone present, but only slightly, because the entire premise hinged on one massive, unproven assumption: the Noah itself had to survive the main blast!
A supernova... It was almost impossible to comprehend the sheer kinetic violence of a dying star.
To put it simply: what would be more physically destructive to the Noah? Taking a direct, point-blank hit from a modern hydrogen bomb, or getting hit by a supernova shockwave from 1.6 astronomical units away (the distance between the Sun and Mars)?
The answer was terrifyingly obvious: the supernova. Even at a distance of 1.6 AU, the sheer kinetic and thermal energy washing over the Ark would be nine orders of magnitude more powerful than a point-blank hydrogen bomb. That was... a hundred million times stronger!
In other words, for the Precursor Ark to survive, it would have to absorb a kinetic bombardment equivalent to one hundred million hydrogen bombs detonating simultaneously against its hull and it would have to endure that continuous bombardment for several hours, perhaps even days!
For the first time since discovering it, humanity seriously doubted the invincibility of the Precursors Ark...
Frantic murmurs broke out, quickly escalating into heated arguments. This was their final, desperate lifeline, and no one wanted to admit it might snap. But it was clear that no one actually knew if the Noah could survive...
"Quiet! Everyone, quiet down!" Jason slammed his fist on the table again, his voice roaring over the din. "If it comes to it, we will put our faith in the Noah, just as we did when we left Earth!"
"If all our interception plans fail, and the Noah itself is vaporized, then we die. In less than a microsecond, we will all be instantly annihilated. There won’t be any pain!"
"But... if the Noah holds... I absolutely will not allow humanity to perish inside it!"