novelraw Chapter 162: A Feast For Scientists
Chapter 162: A Feast For Scientists
Jason was extremely nervous, cold sweat beading on his forehead. His hands were clenched so tightly into fists that his knuckles had turned white and his fingernails dug into his palms, yet he was completely oblivious to the pain. His eyes were glued to the main monitor.
Everyone else in the command center was in the exact same state, paralyzed by tension as they stared at the screens. Although the tetrahydrogen bomb had successfully detonated, no one knew if the strike had actually been effective.
Jason had a sinking feeling in his gut.
The colossal, blue-white nuclear fireball had completely swallowed the Viridian spacecraft, but its actual destructive yield against the hull... was probably severely limited.
The bomb hadn’t detonated directly against the armor; it had been forced to airburst nearly a hundred kilometers away from the target.
A hundred kilometers was simply too far.
Because space is a vacuum, a nuclear explosion doesn’t generate a concussive shockwave. It can only inflict damage through radiant heat and electromagnetic radiation. The peak output of this process lasts only a few seconds before the nuclear fireball rapidly collapses and extinguishes.
While the core temperature of the blast reached billions of degrees, that thermal energy dissipated exponentially over distance. At tens of kilometers out, the temperature dropped to the tens of millions. At a hundred kilometers, it might only be a few million degrees...
Despite the sheer, terrifying size of the fireball, the outermost edges, spanning 600 kilometers across were likely only registering in the tens of thousands, or perhaps even just a few thousand degrees Celsius.
Command had no idea if those temperatures were enough to melt the spacecraft’s main drive, especially since the thermal wash only lasted a few seconds.
It was a long shot, an incredibly desperate gamble... but until the telemetry cleared, humanity still clung to hope.
Even though the tactical mainframes had aggressively filtered the optical feeds, the sheer brilliance of the blast still stung the operators’ eyes, making them tear up. But no one blinked. They held their breath, waiting for the final verdict.
A heavy, suffocating dread hung in the air.
The titanic explosion had vaporized everything in the surrounding sector, thousands of missile fuselages, standard nuclear casings, and countless tons of aerogel and foam decoys. The vaporized metals and compounds coalesced into a sprawling, dark red metallic nebula. It looked like a macabre, glowing face fading in and out of the cosmic dark.
The radioactive cloud expanded rapidly, eventually stretching over 10,000 kilometers wide.
Dozens of seconds later, the primary fireball of the tetrahydrogen bomb completely burned out. The sector fell eerily silent. Stripped of the nuclear glare, the metallic cloud quickly cooled in the freezing void, fading into absolute darkness.
A moment later, the primary radio telescopes on the Martian surface pierced the interference and relayed the truth.
The Viridian spacecraft was still moving.
Humanity had failed.
Well, it wasn’t an absolute failure, the spaceship’s velocity had been reduced by a third. It was safe to assume the blast had destroyed some of its external propulsion or navigational arrays.
If they had been able to drop two more tetrahydrogen bombs, it might have stalled the ship completely. But in war, there are no "ifs."
At its current, reduced speed, the spaceship would still reach the sun in exactly three days.
A crushing wave of despair washed over the command center, dragging Jason down with it. Heavy sighs and even faint, muffled sobs echoed through the room.
To have witnessed such an apocalyptic battle, to have thrown the absolute limit of humanity’s destructive power at the enemy and exhausted every single option, only to fail anyway... it left everyone feeling hollow and profoundly helpless.
This was the reality of the gap. The insurmountable chasm between a fledgling species and a true interstellar empire.
Humanity still had a very, very long way to go.
Jason gripped the edges of the command console, took a deep, shuddering breath, and shook his head violently to clear his mind.
"Everyone, activate the backup protocols!" he roared, his voice cutting through the despair.
The backup plan: brace for the supernova. Humanity no longer had the arsenal or the time to launch a second strike.
Jason’s shout snapped the crew back to reality. There was still a monumental amount of work to be done. They had to bury their grief and immediately transition to the survival phase.
"I’m issuing the final work assignments right now!"
Jason didn’t give them a moment to wallow in their fear. He immediately began rattling off a series of rapid-fire, critical directives. He believed in the resilience and the raw survival instinct of these hand-picked elites.
Within three days, every single automated excavator and mining rig had to be recalled. If the sun exploded and humanity miraculously survived, they would be adrift in a dead system with zero access to raw materials. While the mining drones were cheap to mass-produce, they were forged from thousands of tons of refined metal. Every ounce needed to be salvaged and recycled.
Furthermore, the final external dismantling operations and the last sections of the blast shielding had to be completed before the Noah initiated its final burn to hide behind Mars.
It wasn’t an impossible workload, it could be finished in a day or two but it required absolute focus.
Slowly, the groans of despair faded. For Federation, every scar made them tougher. As long as they drew breath, they would keep fighting.
Surprisingly, it was the astrophysics teams who recovered first. A manic energy swept through their ranks, and soon they were loudly debating the optimal telemetry angles to record the sun’s destruction!
For these obsessive researchers, it was the ultimate scientific feast.
A stellar detonation is the universe’s greatest teacher. In a fraction of a second, it strips away the mysteries of advanced nuclear mechanics, offering a front-row seat to the rapid fusion of light nuclei and the violent forging of heavy elements beyond iron.
This data would be unimaginably valuable. Artificially inducing a supernova was an exceptionally rare anomaly in this sector of the Milky Way. Documenting this event would grant humanity an exclusive, god-like insight into stellar physics, the sun’s final, parting gift to its children.
"Alright, people, look alive!" Professor Hao Yu exclaimed, his face flushed with a feverish, almost fanatical excitement. He looked like a man who couldn’t wait another second.
The sun was about to bare the deepest secrets of the atomic nucleus. Swepped up in his fervor, a large group of younger scientists enthusiastically rallied behind him.
Dozens of heavily shielded probes had already been pre-deployed toward Venus and Mercury specifically for this worst-case scenario, positioned to capture close-range telemetry of the stellar collapse.
To witness the ultimate truth for even a moment is a life well-lived. This perfectly encapsulated the mindset of these fanatical researchers.
The most precious thing a person possesses is life, and it is given to them only once. Why do we live, and what is the meaning of our existence? These are the philosophical burdens every human mind must bear.
A life should be lived so that, looking back, one feels no regret over wasted years, nor shame over a path of inaction. So that in their final, dying breath, they can truthfully say: I have dedicated my entire existence to the greatest pursuit in the cosmos.
What was that greatest pursuit? It varied from person to person. But for this cadre of driven scientists, they had found their answer: unraveling the fundamental truths of the universe.
The ocean of knowledge was infinite. Humanity was no longer content to act like children picking up pretty shells on the shoreline; they wanted to dive into the crushing depths, even if it meant drowning.
Now, a cosmic tsunami was rushing toward them. They were all about to drown. But they weren’t afraid. They simply wanted to keep their eyes open and marvel at the breathtaking beauty of the wave before it crushed them.
Just one glimpse of the truth was enough...
If these people had lived on the old Earth, they would have been locked away as lunatics. Ninety percent of the old population would have found their behavior abhorrent, assuming it was a coping mechanism or sheer mental illness.
But this was Federation. Their culture and philosophies had fundamentally evolved. To the rest of the crew, the scientists’ fanatical pursuit of knowledge in the face of death wasn’t crazy, it was deeply, profoundly honorable.