Chapter 140: A Psychological Advantage

Unbeknownst to Jason and his command staff, the Viridian Empire had actually connected the crashed spacecraft to the events on Mars! The aliens were deeply alarmed, believing that the mysterious vessel might have been shot down by the Noah… This assumption had a massive deterrent effect on them.

Especially after transmitting their surrender, the Viridians realized that the spacecraft ruins in the Martian Arctic had been inexplicably vaporized by a nuclear detonation, all without any detectable incoming missile trajectory. This further terrified them. (Their optical telescopes couldn’t see the tiny, automated suicide rover moving across the surface).

This local civilization is truly terrifying; even after conquering their enemies, they still go out of their way to completely obliterate the remains… In this way, the Federation gained a massive psychological advantage without even realizing it. Even Jason and his team didn’t fully understand how this absolute dominance had been cemented, only vaguely guessing at a few key factors.

Psychological advantage, though an abstract concept, is incredibly effective.

It is like an unarmed man facing a massive, hungry tiger; his subconscious reaction is pure terror and the desperate urge to flee. He wouldn’t dare provoke the beast unless absolutely backed into a corner, terrified to even test its limits.

Simply put, the tiger looks overwhelmingly stronger than him.

After being repeatedly threatened, the man is utterly terrified and stops logically analyzing just how powerful the tiger actually is… He might even compromise his own boundaries and abandon his belongings just to escape.

This perfectly mirrored the current state of the Viridian Empire.

“…Since they want to stay in the Solar System for a while to conduct repairs, what tone and attitude should we adopt when responding to them?”

“We can’t outright refuse them, lest they panic and resort to a scorched-earth suicide run…”

The command staff debated animatedly. The surreal feeling of dancing on the edge of the abyss gave them a strange, almost intoxicating sense of accomplishment.

Could the adrenaline of sheer terror be addictive? This group of highly intelligent experts was practically vibrating with excitement, pitching one audacious idea after another.

“Should we, acting as the supreme power, condescendingly ’bestow’ a planet upon them?”

“The word ’charity’ doesn’t quite fit our ruthless persona…”

“I think giving them Sedna is more than enough. Besides, it’s incredibly far from Mars…” one of the senior astronomers suggested.

Jason took the orbital charts handed to him by the science team and stroked his chin in deep thought.

Sedna is a dwarf planet out beyond Pluto. Its closest approach to the Sun is roughly 76 Astronomical Units (AU), and its farthest is 937 AU. Its diameter is about 1,000 kilometers, and its orbital period around the Sun is roughly 11,400 years. Currently, Sedna is about 50 years away from its perihelion, putting its average distance from Mars at roughly 85 AU.

Most importantly, this icy rock was directly in the flight path of the approaching Viridian fleet…

85 AU is an immense distance; for context, Earth is only 1 AU from the Sun. Light from Mars takes about 11.76 hours, roughly half a day to even reach Sedna.

This distance was right at the absolute limit of what humanity’s nerves could tolerate. After all, the Federation’s overwhelming strength was nothing but a fragile facade… If the aliens got any closer, the bluff might be called!

At 85 AU, they would be safely out of range. Furthermore, Mars has thick cloud cover and massive global dust storms that effectively obscure the Noah from long-range optical sensors, allowing humanity to maintain its intimidating aura of “mystery.”

Jason nodded in agreement. Sedna was definitely their safest choice.

“Aren’t we supposed to be the ruthless apex predators here? It doesn’t seem right to just let them park in our territory for free! Perhaps… we should intimidate them even further. We need to seize this opportunity to extract some tribute!”

Dr. Arthur Lambert practically spat as he spoke, fully embracing the role of the tyrannical alien overlord. He raised his fist and shouted, “We are not to be trifled with! We’ll squeeze them dry. Yes, exactly… There’s no such thing as a free lunch in this galaxy! We’ll make them bleed for the privilege!”

Having tasted their first psychological victory, the younger analysts behind him were swept up in the excitement, cheering in agreement. The sheer audacity of extorting an interstellar empire vastly more advanced than themselves gave them a twisted, thrilling adrenaline rush.

“…We can claim that there’s a massive, multi-system empire behind us, and we’re merely a border patrol fleet. Showing them compassion violates our strict military protocol… Yes, that’s it! We demand they pay a heavy fine to compensate us for looking the other way!”

Dr. Lambert’s imagination ran wild. He grew increasingly frantic, acting as if he had just discovered the ultimate shortcut to humanity’s technological ascension.

Many of the more radical officers actually agreed with Dr. Lambert’s aggressive extortion plan. Perhaps the younger generation was simply fearless; surviving a few close calls had inflated their confidence to dangerous levels.

They knew perfectly well that risk and reward were always proportional. While this move was incredibly risky, the potential payout was astronomical!

So, what constituted valuable currency between advanced interstellar civilizations? What could actually be traded? They racked their brains, throwing out theories.

First, scarce resources. Common natural elements obviously wouldn’t cut it. To a true interstellar empire, an entire rocky planet wasn’t even considered expensive. Therefore, valuable resources would either be synthetic elements with extremely short half-lives, like tritium, or exotic materials like fullerenes and antimatter.

Second, science and technology. If two civilizations could communicate, they could certainly trade data. After all, it was virtually impossible for a single species to research every conceivable branch of the scientific tech tree.

Humanity had already begun to grasp this concept. The technological tree of a civilization is like a circle of light in the dark. Inside the circle is known science; outside is the vast unknown. As the circle expands, its perimeter touches even more of the unknown.

Inspired by the advanced materials salvaged from the downed spacecraft, humanity realized just how massive that “unknown” truly was.

Beyond the branches they had already illuminated, they could vaguely guess at thousands of undiscovered technologies, as numerous as the stars themselves!

Because of differing environments and biological needs, every civilization’s developmental path would inevitably diverge, leading to different specializations. This meant “unique technologies” definitely existed.

For example, back on Earth, different global superpowers utilized fundamentally different engine designs to achieve the exact same aerodynamic goals, illustrating how technological paths could split. For a civilization, the birth of a single visionary genius could propel a specific scientific field centuries ahead of the rest, cementing it as that species’ unique signature technology.

Humanity, for instance, had pushed nuclear energy and battery storage far beyond their other scientific disciplines; those two fields might eventually become humanity’s unique signature in the cosmos.

“Technology! We can demand access to their unique, proprietary technology!” Dr. Lambert roared.

Jason frowned. Although this pirate-like logic made a twisted sort of sense, something still felt off about it, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on what.

“…I think this extortion plan is highly inappropriate.”

It was Lily who spoke, her voice cutting through the excitement. Her expression remained completely calm. “First of all, the very existence of these ’unique technologies’ you’re banking on is entirely theoretical.”

“What if they don’t operate on that concept? Making such a specific demand could easily expose a fatal lack of basic interstellar common sense and arouse their suspicion…”

It was a sobering point. All these grand theories about signature tech trees were just human conjectures; who knew if the wider universe actually worked that way?

Seeing the room quiet down, Lily continued, “Secondly, they aren’t like us. We have a population of fifty thousand, with our entire civilization stuffed into a single Noah. But they clearly have a massive empire and a homeworld somewhere else. A single, battered fleet stumbling into the Solar System cannot possibly carry the sum total of the Viridian Empire’s knowledge.”

How many top-tier state secrets would a standard military fleet actually possess?

“To use an Earth analogy, they are like an aircraft carrier strike group. A naval fleet doesn’t just sail around carrying the blueprints for its nation’s most classified, cutting-edge experimental research, does it? Even if we successfully intimidated them, could a mere fleet captain actually hand over their civilization’s core technological database?”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep