Chapter 169: Turning Waste into Treasure

Extending a massive sensor array outside the Noah while traveling at relativistic speeds was practically a death sentence. Before addressing external threats, they had to secure internal stability. The Noah’s interior was currently a chaotic, hazardous disaster zone, making any external operations impossible. They had to repair the ship’s internal infrastructure first.

The primary obstacle was the internal heat. Without stabilizing the ambient temperature, no reconstruction could begin.

“The post-disaster reconstruction is going to be a nightmare,” Jason muttered, scanning the latest damage reports. The massive magma pool trapped in the high-gravity ventral zone, radiating at tens of thousands of degrees Celsius, was his biggest headache.

“Those are all raw materials! It’s a tragedy we can’t extract them…”

If they waited for the magma to cool naturally, it would take centuries. Humanity couldn’t afford to wait that long.

To tackle the impending reconstruction, Jason convened a special summit. The opening session doubled as a general mobilization meeting, broadcast to the entirety of humanity. Having survived an apocalyptic event, it was crucial to celebrate and boost civilian morale before the grueling work began.

Top-tier scientists, administrative directors, and Federation officials gathered in the main assembly hall to outline the reconstruction protocols. Given the circumstances, Jason was obligated to deliver the opening address.

That afternoon, he stood at the podium, his voice echoing through the hall. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is the greatest privilege of my life to stand before you today. We are alive. We are all alive!”

“We owe our lives to the Noah! To this magnificent, peerless vessel! On behalf of all humanity, I offer my deepest gratitude to this ship!” Jason stepped out from behind the podium and bowed deeply, a gesture of profound, heartfelt thanks.

Straightening up, he continued, “But I also want to thank every single one of you. It was because of our unity, our relentless hard work, and our unbreakable spirit that we survived!”

“We survived!”

Deafening applause erupted from the crowd, their faces glowing with relief and joy. Who would choose death when they had fought so hard to live?

While the Noah’s internal honeycomb structure had sustained heavy damage, the outer hull remained completely unbreached. This confirmed that The Precursors were technologically on par with the architects of the neutron star weapon. Humanity’s survival was entirely due to this miraculous vessel. Time and again, it had shielded them from extinction. Without the Noah, Humanity would be nothing but cosmic dust.

Of course, they also owed a debt to their own perseverance; the internal blast walls that had absorbed the residual thermal shock had been built by human hands.

“Yes, we have weathered the apocalypse!” Jason’s voice rose, filled with fierce determination. “Our civilization will rise from the ashes of this disaster, stronger and more prosperous than ever before! Let us rebuild together…”

Despite the monumental challenges ahead, survival was the ultimate victory. As long as they drew breath, there was hope for the future.

—–

The Strategy Summit

After the public mobilization, the broadcast was cut. The closed-door strategic sessions began, with journalists compiling approved summaries for the public later.

Jason paused, let the adrenaline settle, and shifted to a serious tone. “Now, let’s get down to business regarding the ship’s reconstruction and retrofitting. As you’ve all seen, the external sectors look like a dormant volcano.”

“Reconstruction must begin immediately. Our current food reserves will only last one year. We have to mitigate the ambient heat problem so we can re-establish the hydroponics arrays and livestock farms. I don’t think anyone wants to experience a second food crisis.”

“Furthermore, we’ve lost half of our freshwater reserves, along with critical inorganic salts and organic minerals. That matter was either vaporized and vented, or it sank into the magma pool at the bottom… Some of it is simply gone forever.”

“These are existential threats.”

The room was filled with humanity’s brightest minds. They were well aware of the grim statistics and immediately began murmuring among themselves, pitching solutions.

Extracting resources directly from the magma was impossible; humanity simply didn’t possess materials capable of withstanding tens of thousands of degrees.

“We should just cap the breaches. Leave a small thermal vent to bleed off the ambient radiation,” one engineer suggested.

“…We could funnel that heat radiation into the Noah’s uninhabited sectors so it doesn’t cook the residential zones. We might even be able to run vapor condensers to reclaim some of the boiled-off water and minerals from the steam…”

Although the magma pool was massive, it was a finite heat source, a fire without fuel. Sealing the thermal vents with heavy-duty, heat-resistant capping seemed like the most pragmatic approach.

Within hours, a rough consensus began to form. Jason reviewed the preliminary draft and found it highly practical.

“No… wait! We shouldn’t just vent this heat. We should harness it to generate electricity!”

An older, gray-bearded power systems engineer suddenly shot to his feet. His eyes were wide with the manic gleam of a man who had just discovered a gold mine.

“Yes! Geothermal power generation!” he shouted.

Thermal power generation, a relatively model that had been all but phased out, was suddenly back on the table. The extreme, sustained heat of the magma pool was the perfect catalyst. Because the Noah relied almost entirely on its internal nuclear reactors, the engineering teams hadn’t even considered thermal energy. Now that the idea had been voiced, the sheer brilliance of it stunned the room into silence.

“Geothermal power?”

“…Geothermal power!”

Initial skepticism rapidly gave way to fervent enthusiasm. Frowns turned into wide grins. The proposal completely upended their previous plans.

That hazardous lake of magma had just become humanity’s greatest treasure. If harnessed correctly, their available energy surplus would skyrocket!

The sheer volume of the magma was staggering. Between the liquefied Martian bedrock, the melted blast walls, and the slagged internal decking, the pool contained a conservative estimate of over one trillion tons of molten rock!

Driven by this revelation, the Federation quickly drafted a massive infrastructure project that would instantly create 20,000 new jobs. The initiative aimed to completely exploit the magma pool, primarily for electricity and centralized heating.

According to the projections, this geothermal grid could supply over 80% of the Noah’s total power consumption for the next fifty years. The nuclear reactors would only need to supplement the remaining 20%.

“Talk about turning waste into treasure,” Jason remarked, thrilled by the revised drafts. Energy was always the ultimate currency. Better yet, the steam-capture systems attached to the generators would allow them to slowly reclaim trace amounts of water and minerals!

“If we cap the magma vents with thermal generator, the ambient heat in the outer sectors will normalize within a few months. Plus… we can use our remaining ice blocks as emergency coolant to accelerate the process. We can have the grid operational in thirty days!”

“We’ll also need to fabricate new external radiator fins,” another engineer added. The plans grew more complex by the minute; they were basically overhauling the entire internal infrastructure of the Noah!

—-

Ecological Engineering

At this point, the biology division pitched a radical new ecological proposal. To Roman and his team, the catastrophic destruction of the ship’s honeycomb bulkheads was actually a blessing in disguise!

“By utilizing these massive, cavernous voids created by the gamma radiation, we can drastically improve the ship’s internal atmospheric circulation,” Roman explained enthusiastically. “We can vastly expand the volume of our primary biosphere. A larger, contiguous ecosystem is inherently more stable. We could even generate localized weather patterns, like actual rainfall!”

The biologists were pushing aggressively to engineer a true, simulated Earth environment.

Previously, the Noah’s purple alloy bulkheads had been too resilient to dismantle, forcing humanity to build their biospheres within segmented, claustrophobic compartments. Now… the supernova had done the demolition work for them.

The theory was elegant: by establishing a low-temperature zone in the upper, low-gravity decks, water vapor would naturally rise, condense, and precipitate back down as rain. This artificial water cycle would be infinitely more efficient than their old mechanical dehumidifiers.

Of course… a project of this magnitude required meticulous planning and exhaustive peer review.

Though the general assembly concluded, the specialized ecological design summits waged on.

Jason found himself locked in endless, grueling debates with the department heads, arguing over structural modifications, resource allocation, safety tolerances, and biospheric stability…

After pulling yet another all-nighter, his eyes bloodshot and stinging, Jason rubbed his scalp, painfully aware that he was starting to lose his hair again.

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