novelraw Chapter 163: Taunts and Insults
Chapter 163: Taunts and Insults
Immediately following the command, Jason and a team of engineers hurried to the Noah’s upper decks. They had exactly one day to dismantle and stow the ship’s massive external astronomical arrays.
The primary focus was the Gravitational Wave Telescope. It was the crown jewel of human astronomy, and there was absolutely no way they were leaving it exposed to a supernova. Assuming, of course, that humanity actually survived...
Jason stood before the main display of the Gravitational Wave Telescope, observing the massive, unknown fleet still burning aggressively toward the Solar System.
Their stealth technology was incredible. Standard radio telescopes couldn’t detect a single anomalous signature... except for some extremely faint gravitational lensing.
However, detecting that lensing required a telescope to be pointed at the exact right coordinates at the exact right time. If humanity hadn’t known they were coming, they would never have spotted them.
But the Gravitational Wave Telescope had completely bypassed their stealth, laying their advance bare. It truly was a marvel of engineering!
Looking at the immense alien armada, Jason felt a sudden, manic urge to laugh. These idiots were sneaking in with obvious hostile intent, completely unaware that they were flying headfirst into a supernova in just a few days!
The Viridian Empire referred to this unknown faction as the "Annihilators/Destroyer Civilization" or "Invaders," using terminology laden with intense hostility. Clearly, there was deep-seated hatred between the two empires; otherwise, the Viridians wouldn’t have abandoned their own spaceship and run away just to launch a kamikaze strike on the sun!
It was unclear if "Annihilators" was a generic classification or the faction’s actual name. If it was a generic term, did that mean the galaxy was teeming with deranged, annihilating civilizations?
The science teams debated the terminology briefly, but couldn’t reach a consensus. Ultimately, it didn’t matter... this unknown fleet was about to be buried alongside the Solar System.
However, the Viridian Empire wasn’t exactly innocent, either. Jason had already sworn a silent oath: if humanity survived this apocalypse, there would be a reckoning. The Viridians had forced their hand, and humanity had obtained the Viridian star map, which clearly marked the locations of their colony worlds...
The unknown fleet had gradually decelerated to 0.4c. At that speed, they were still over a month away from Pluto. That meant in roughly eight or nine days, their sensors would detect the massive, chaotic battle between humanity and the Viridian spacecraft. A few days after that, they would be utterly baffled to see the spacecraft they had been tracking plunge directly into the local star.
And then, their confusion would turn into pure, existential terror as they realized the star was detonating!
Gamma radiation travels at the speed of light. The exact moment they visually observed the supernova, the apocalyptic wave of radiation would hit them. This unknown fleet had absolutely no chance of escape!
Even if their ships possessed faster-than-light capabilities, it wouldn’t save them. Spooling up a warp drive required time they simply wouldn’t have.
Jason, Austin, Marcus, and the science teams were practically giddy as they speculated on the fleet’s impending doom.
In times like these, people with nothing left to lose lost all fear. Surrounded by death, these manic survivors found a dark, twisted exhilaration in knowing they were dragging their enemies down to hell with them.
"How long do you think their shields will hold?" Marcus laughed feverishly, pounding his fists together. He was running on pure adrenaline and didn’t even know why he was laughing.
"The smaller escorts will vaporize in a few minutes; the spaceship might last a few hours," an astrophysicist replied cheerfully. They were deeply invested in the physics of the impending slaughter. An alien ship the size of a moon? Who cares! It’ll melt just like everything else.
This was a supernova! Supernovae are incredibly rare cosmic events; within the Milky Way, they only occur roughly once every fifty years.
Mainstream astrophysics dictates that the energy released during the initial burst of a supernova is equivalent to the total energy that star outputted over its entire multi-billion-year lifespan.
When a massive star detonates, its luminosity can spike to hundreds of billions of times that of the sun, briefly outshining the entire Milky Way galaxy!
In other words, for a fleeting moment, a supernova outputs the combined energy of two hundred billion stars! If the local sun went supernova, it would violently expel ten billion years’ worth of fusion energy in a matter of seconds!
The sheer scale of destruction was beyond human comprehension.
Granted, their sun lacked the mass and volume to trigger a true, galactic-class supernova, but the resulting artificial detonation would still be more than enough to vaporize a highly advanced interstellar armada. Especially an armada blindly charging straight toward the blast zone.
The command crew laughed and joked, sarcastically expressing their "deepest concerns" for the unknown fleet. The mental image of arrogant alien warlords panicking in the face of absolute cosmic destruction filled them with an overwhelming sense of self satisfaction.
Watching the engineers carefully dismantle the Gravitational Wave Telescope, Jason sighed, regretting the loss of their eyes in the dark. "Honestly, if we had managed to destroy the Viridian spacecraft, we’d be the ones dealing with the Annihilators right now, and we’d probably be slaughtered... I guess the sun blowing up saved us a lot of trouble." It was a grim truth, and the only way he could rationalize their failure.
The rest of the crew nodded in agreement. Making first contact with an even more advanced, hostile empire would have been a nightmare.
Now, they didn’t have to worry about it. They were all just going to burn together.
"Hey, what if we broadcast a message to them on the open radio frequencies?" Marcus suggested, an absolutely terrible idea forming in his head.
The thought of trash-talking an invincible alien armada gave him a bizarre, thrilling sensation.
It would take eight or nine days for the radio waves to reach the fleet, by which time the sun would have already exploded. The Noah would either be slag, and humanity extinct, or they would be blasted out of the system at relativistic speeds. Even if the Annihilators were enraged by the transmission and immediately launched light-speed kinetic kill vehicles, humanity would either be dead or long gone.
The aliens were already dead; they just didn’t know it yet.
Jason usually maintained the stoic, composed demeanor of a seasoned commander. He would normally never entertain such juvenile behavior. But right now... the idea sounded absolutely irresistible.
Mocking an advanced alien empire?
Hell yes. If they were going out, they were going out swinging and swearing!
In moments of total powerlessness, people finally understood the psychology behind belligerent rogue states that constantly provoked global superpowers. There was an incredibly cathartic rush in screaming insults at an unstoppable force.
So what if they were an interstellar empire? In the face of nature’s infinite fury, they were just as dead as the humans!
Within minutes, a crowd gathered around the primary communications array. They had to act fast; this console was slated for immediate dismantling, too.
"Hey, idiots! Are you completely braindead?! %#&@!" Marcus roared into the microphone, laughing hysterically between curses.
It was incredibly liberating! Back on Earth, Marcus had always been a bit of a hothead, quick to pick a fight. In the face of the apocalypse, he had finally rediscovered his roots.
There hadn’t been anyone to yell at aboard the Noah!
"Alien scumbags!" Jason shouted, instantly feeling the crushing weight on his shoulders lessen. The stress of the past few months had been suffocating; this was the ultimate release valve. Who cared if they died?
"Screw you!" "Burn in hell!" "Eat plasma, you overgrown squids!" The rest of the military personnel joined in, hurling every obscenity they could think of. The soldiers were naturals, screaming at the top of their lungs.
But the scientists hesitated. They stood awkwardly in the back, blushing furiously, far too polite to join the fray.
"Come on! Do it!" Marcus cheered, physically shoving Dr. Lambert toward the microphone.
Faced with the cheering crowd, Lambert completely froze. He stammered, his face turning bright red. After an agonizing pause, he finally managed to squeak out a timid, "...F-fuck!" The moment the word left his lips, he wanted the floor to swallow him whole. He couldn’t even look up.
What an absolute disgrace! He felt he had destroyed his decades-long reputation as a dignified academic in a single syllable. But honestly... it did feel kind of good.
The crowd, however, was having none of it.
"Too quiet!"
"That was pathetic, doc! Put some chest into it!"
Lambert panicked. He had never been this stressed during his most complex quantum physics exams.
In his sheer, deer-in-the-headlights panic, his stomach suddenly cramped, and he inadvertently let out an incredibly loud, resonant fart: Pfft!
The microphone captured the sound with perfect, high-fidelity clarity.
The room fell dead silent. Even Marcus was stunned. His eyes widened, and he slowly raised a thumbs-up. "Doc... that was a perfect message"
And so, by unanimous support, the high-definition audio of Dr. Lambert’s nervous flatulence was beamed into deep space, destined for the vanguard of the Annihilator fleet...