Chapter 133: Continuing the Disguise

Inside the astronomical observatory, Jason paced back and forth, burning with anxiety.

You never realize how crucial a tool is until it’s missing. Jason knew the Federation’s technological foundation was still shaky, but he never imagined a simple translation hurdle would be the thing to paralyze them.

In hindsight, it wasn’t surprising. They had poured all their resources into heavy industry and reverse-engineering alien technology, resulting in a highly skewed technological tree. Xenolinguistics and alien translation software had been completely ignored.

The crew aboard the Noah didn’t face language barriers. Back in the day, the Lunar Base had been an international hub where various Earth languages mingled. However, since Jason took command and unified the Federation, standard English had been universally adopted to streamline operations. Because everyone spoke the same language, no one had wasted time or funding on advanced translation algorithms.

Now, this oversight was coming back to bite them. The Earth’s legacy translation software was so archaic that it produced practically unreadable gibberish when fed an alien syntax!

“What are your thoughts?” Jason asked, noticing that Lily looked like she wanted to speak.

Lily paused for a moment, her expression thoughtful. “To be honest, we’ve already established ourselves as a ruthless, highly advanced empire. We don’t have many options left.”

Due to her special ability, her brain could temporarily accelerate, reaching processing speeds dozens or even hundreds of times faster than a baseline human. In some respects, she was a more brilliant analyst than Dr. Arthur Lambert.

“Regardless of what their message actually says, our strategic options are incredibly limited. We can’t act like apex predators one minute and cowards the next… We only have one path forward: absolute dominance.”

Jason rubbed his temples, realizing Lily was absolutely right. Her words cut straight to the core of the issue.

The arrow had left the bow; the Federation was on a path of no return. First, humanity could not survive a genuine military engagement, so they had to maintain the bluff and scare the aliens off in one decisive move. Second, their behavior had to remain consistent. They couldn’t launch relativistic warning shots and then immediately offer a compromise. They had to make it perfectly clear that the Solar System was closed territory!

They had already fired the ion cannons, backing down now was impossible.

Stay ruthless. We have to stay ruthless, Jason reminded himself.

The problem, however, was their complete lack of actionable intelligence. Jason knew it was dangerous to fire blindly into the dark without understanding the enemy’s stance. What if the Viridians were literally begging for their lives or offering tribute? Should the Federation still hurl threats at them? It was a slim possibility, but they couldn’t rule it out entirely.

An astronomer hurried over, delivering news that only deepened Jason’s anxiety. “Commander, the alien vessel is still coasting at near-light speed, though their velocity has dropped marginally.”

What did that mean? What was their endgame?

Time ticked by agonizingly slowly. Jason’s mind raced, desperate to formulate the perfect response before the clock ran out. He began mentally cataloging every piece of data they had on the aliens. First came the ambient radio chatter, then the infrared thermal blooms from their hull, followed by the rough visual simulations…

And finally, the dictionary sequence and the garbled message from today. Was there any other angle they could exploit?!

“Wait. We need to analyze that very first burst of radio chatter we intercepted!” Jason suddenly had a flash of inspiration. It was entirely possible the Viridians had inadvertently leaked internal communicator during their initial panic! He turned to the linguistics team. “The first radio transcription we recorded weeks ago! Run it through the new dictionary program. Now!”

The experts scrambled to comply, importing the old data logs and feeding them into the supercomputer. Because the baseline translation model was already established, it took less than five minutes to churn out dozens of pages of translated text.

The resulting document was long, tedious, and utterly chaotic.

“…Circuit? Port side… short circuit… fire?? 40%?? explosion…”

Jason scanned the readout, feeling like he was reading a document typed by a monkey randomly hitting keys. The precise syntax was completely lost; he could only piece together isolated nouns and numbers. Only a handful of keywords were actually legible.

Frustration gnawed at him. Their translation capabilities were genuinely pathetic. If they survived this, he was going to mandate a massive overhaul of their linguistics department.

“It looks like an automated damage control report. An internal alarm system broadcast that somehow leaked outward…” Evan muttered, his eyes widening as he picked through the scattered words. “…The enemy ship is in critical condition.” Evan’s voice rose with sudden excitement. “Yes, look at the frequency of the terms! Even without the specific context, the sheer length of this automated report means their systems are failing on multiple fronts!”

Jason’s heart skipped a beat. It made perfect sense. He might not understand the alien grammar, but the word “explosion” appeared dozens of times. The alien dreadnought was falling apart at the seams, triggering a massive cascade of automated error reports.

Evan paced around the console, his mind working quickly. “This perfectly aligns with our thermal sensor data. Those massive infrared blooms we detected earlier had to be catastrophic energy leaks. Maybe their main drives exploded, or their power grid short-circuited… They’re bleeding out in the void. They aren’t coming to the Solar System to conquer it; they’re coming here because they desperately need a dry dock to survive!”

Jason nodded slowly. Evan’s logic was flawless and mirrored Dr. Arthur Lambert’s earlier hypothesis perfectly. The decryption of this old radio burst was a massive stroke of luck. It confirmed their greatest hope: the enemy vessel was essentially a flying coffin!

Jason’s eyes hardened with newfound resolve. “Then we press our advantage. We act completely ruthless. They’re on the verge of total system failure; there’s no way they’ll risk a shooting war with a supposedly superior empire! Right? We terrify them into altering course for the next neighboring star. The Solar System is off-limits!”

“We’re going to run them out of our territory!”

At that moment, Dr. Arthur Lambert abruptly shook his head, a grim shadow falling over his face. “Theoretically, yes. But you’re failing to consider the ultimate variable. In this specific scenario, acting too ruthlessly might trigger the exact opposite reaction!”

“What if, and this is a very real possibility their ship is so critically damaged that it physically cannot reach the next star system? What if the Solar System is their only hope for survival?”

“If they are truly out of options, and we back them into a corner, we will force the worst possible outcome…” Dr. Lambert locked eyes with Jason, articulating his final word with chilling clarity. “…War.”

A cold sweat broke out across Jason’s back. The old military adage rang true: a cornered beast is the most dangerous. If the aliens were guaranteed to die in the cold void anyway, they would absolutely go down fighting. It was like a drowning man spotting a floating log occupied by a crocodile. If he lacked the strength to swim to shore, he only had one choice left: climb onto the log and fight the crocodile to the death!

Could the Federation actually defeat a crippled alien dreadnought? Absolutely not… unless the enemy drifted close enough for a suicidal, point-blank nuclear barrage. Aside from that, their ion cannons, Gauss rifles, and laser grids were just flashy toys. Humanity didn’t lack the theoretical blueprints for victory; they simply lacked the time to build the necessary arsenal. Risking an all-out, apocalyptic space battle was tactical suicide.

“…This is a logistical nightmare,” Jason muttered to himself.

He slumped back into his command chair, quietly processing the chaotic variables in his mind. The final call rested entirely on his shoulders. He had no concrete data on the Viridian dreadnought’s true operational limits. How severe was the damage? Could they limp to the next star? What were their actual energy reserves? These were classified, life-or-death military secrets that the aliens would never willingly broadcast.

“Our best-case scenario is that they just pack up and leave. But what if they literally can’t? We have to assert dominance, yes, but we also have to leave them a golden bridge to retreat across. If we don’t give them an out, they’ll resort to a suicide charge!”

Jason was trapped in a strategic paradox. He needed a masterstroke plan. On one hand, he had to project the image of a god-like, merciless Federation, leaving no room for weakness. On the other hand, he had to leave the enemy just enough hope to cling to. As long as they had a sliver of hope for survival, they wouldn’t pull the trigger on a final, apocalyptic war!

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