Chapter 161: A Small Star

Under these brutal conditions, the battlefield telemetry network faithfully fulfilled its purpose, capturing a massive stream of combat data over the first thirty seconds. The sheer volume of raw data was staggering. In this narrow timeframe, only the quantum tactical mainframes could possibly analyze the flow and generate actionable conclusions.

There were a total of six thousand nuclear warheads concealed within a chaotic cloud of countless conventional missiles and decoys. However, the command center’s attention was fixed squarely on the super-heavy main payloads.

The vast majority of the swarm consisted of rocket booster debris or bulky foam and aerogel blocks. Their sole purpose was to saturate and overwhelm the enemy’s automated tracking systems.

Humanity had only twenty-seven super-heavy nuclear payloads in play: twenty-six helium-3 warheads, each boasting a one-gigaton yield, and the single, apocalyptic tetrahydrogen bomb.

However, given their catastrophic blast radii, these heavy hitters couldn’t be clustered too closely together. If one detonated, it would instantly vaporize any friendly assets caught in its proximity, resulting in a net loss of firepower.

In the face of this chaotic void, even the most brilliant tactical minds were lost. The battlefield was a maelstrom of light, with thousands of detonations occurring every single second. The human brain simply couldn’t process the visual information.

They had to rely entirely on the tactical AI to execute pre-programmed maneuvers: strike vectors, calculated sacrifices, mid-course trajectory burns… Each heavy payload had a unique flight path. The combat mainframes had to issue microsecond-precise adjustments to keep the swarm viable.

“Payload 11 has been intercepted!”

“Payload 3 has been intercepted!”

The casualty reports scrolled across the monitors in a relentless, blurring stream.

It felt like watching a massacre. Humanity’s absolute best weaponry was crawling through the void like sluggish reptiles, while the enemy’s defensive lasers, fast and precise as lightning bolts, systematically exterminated them one by one.

In less than thirty seconds, at least ten heavy helium-3 warheads were either cleanly intercepted or forced into premature cover-detonations. Only two managed to breach the curvature bubble. They flared brightly inside the distorted space, but due to the visual interference, it was impossible to confirm if they had struck the hull or been vaporized mid-flight.

All the observers could see were shimmering, warped spheres of nuclear fire, like lights reflecting off choppy water. Judging by the rapid dissipation of their blast radii, the probability of them being intercepted just short of the hull was overwhelmingly high…

In other words, excluding the deliberate cover-detonations, it was highly likely that not a single heavy nuclear warhead had successfully struck the Viridian spacecraft!

Perhaps a handful of the smaller, standard nukes had slipped through the net and impacted the hull. But the raw destructive yield of a standard nuke simply wasn’t enough to breach an interstellar spacecraft!

The core flaw in humanity’s strategy became agonizingly clear: their delivery systems were simply too slow. Agonizingly slow.

During 20th-century naval engagements, commanders often had hours to convene a war council before the enemy fleet even crested the horizon. But in deep space warfare, combat was measured in microseconds and nanoseconds. To an advanced AI targeting system, a human “second” was an eternity. The Viridian point-defense grid was rendering humanity’s arsenal completely obsolete.

It felt akin to trying to shoot down the moon with a wooden bow and arrow. Could a bow bring down the moon? Obviously not!

“Their defensive fire is too dense!”

“This isn’t working! We’re losing the payload!”

The sheer disparity in technological capability instilled a profound, crushing sense of helplessness and a deeply primal fear.

It wasn’t that nuclear weapons lacked raw destructive power; a high-yield nuke was devastating even in a deep-space war. The problem was humanity’s delivery method. Strapping a nuke to a chemical rocket and firing it blindly was incredibly primitive. They were basically using a slingshot to throw rocks at a fortress.

If they stayed the course, total defeat was guaranteed!

Jason, Austin, and the tactical officers frantically conferred. They realized that their probability of success was rapidly dropping to zero. They needed an immediate shift in strategy!

The AI defensive grid clearly prioritized targets based on mass and volume. The larger the threat, the higher it was placed in the targeting queue.

Given its colossal size, humanity’s trump card, the tetrahydrogen bomb would be flagged as the absolute highest priority target!

“We can’t be greedy,” Jason barked, his eyes glued to the tactical map. “Even if the tetrahydrogen payload breaches the curvature bubble, it’ll be intercepted long before it reaches the hull.”

“If they vaporize the core, the yield drops to zero!”

“Then we don’t wait! Detonate immediately upon breaching the perimeter!”

Following a rapid exchange, Jason ordered the weapons officers to override the primary strike protocols.

Initially, they had hoped to pilot the tetrahydrogen bomb directly into the spaceship’s hull. That was no longer viable. They had to settle for a stand-off detonation.

It absolutely could not be intercepted. If the tetrahydrogen bomb was neutralized, humanity’s entire offensive strategy collapsed.

(According to standard nuclear lethality models, the effective destruction radius (R) scales with the cube root of the explosive yield (Y), expressed as R propto Y^{1/3}.)

A tetrahydrogen bomb with a one-trillion-ton yield boasted an effective kill radius of nearly 700 kilometers! That was more than enough to engulf the entire 150-kilometer Viridian dreadnought!

They abandoned the dream of crossing the final 100 kilometers. The new order was absolute: the moment the payload breaches the curvature bubble, detonate!

The instant the command was authenticated, four adjacent helium-3 heavy payloads self-destructed simultaneously. The resulting flash and massive electromagnetic pulse were so violent they instantly slagged hundreds of friendly decoys in the vicinity.

The immediate glare completely whitewashed the cosmos. In the blinding fires of these artificial miniature suns, that sector of space became a roiling ocean of pure light.

Surrounding the fireballs, waves of molten shrapnel exploded outward. The searing clouds of liquid metal surged through the vacuum, like massive boulders crashing into a sea of magma.

In that split second, the incoming fire from the Viridian spaceship noticeably stuttered. The catastrophic sensory overload had finally blinded the alien targeting arrays.

Under the cover of this apocalyptic distraction, the massive tetrahydrogen payload slipped forward.

They had sacrificed themselves, using their own fiery deaths to carve a path. The endless light and heat completely jammed all telemetry. Radar, thermal optics, and visible light sensors could see nothing but the blooming hellfire of the decoy blasts.

Space is a vacuum, meaning there is no atmospheric shockwave. However, the tetrahydrogen payload was still subjected to the staggering radiant heat of the surrounding blasts. Its like a thermal shielding was rapidly boiling away; it would only hold together for a few more seconds.

But a few seconds were all it needed. It carried the final hope of the human race.

Several more heavy warheads were swatted out of the void by blind, sweeping laser fire, but it didn’t matter. The tetrahydrogen bomb had crossed the threshold!

The curvature bubble offered no physical resistance to matter, acting much like a ripple on the surface of water. However, the severe spatial distortion instantly began to aggressively warp the payload’s trajectory.

It didn’t matter. The millisecond the bomb registered the spatial shift, the detonation sequence engaged!

Over a hundred smaller, conventional nuclear detonators arranged spherically around the tetrahydrogen core fired simultaneously. These initial blasts merged into a perfectly unified, imploding shockwave. The immense pressure violently crushed the hyper-dense core inward, like a impossibly tight spring, triggering the primary fusion reaction!

A localized, miniature star, 600 kilometers in diameter, erupted into existence on the battlefield.

There was no sound in the vacuum. There was only endless, unfathomable light. The blast radius instantly consumed and vaporized every remaining human asset in the sector.

But none of that mattered. The tetrahydrogen bomb had successfully detonated!

A wave of ecstatic, breathless tension swept through the command center. This was the absolute pinnacle of human destructive capability, the final boss of their weapons engineering. Even Professor Hao Yu and the physics team had tears in their eyes. The successful ignition proved their theories correct.

They had birthed a true, miniature star in the cold dark of space!

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