Chapter 96: A Sudden Crisis!!

As technical hurdles were overcome one by one, the Noah’s industrial capacity grew exponentially. The bold goal of doubling production every six months was steadily being achieved.

In the mines and across frozen lakes, massive automated excavators and cutting robots operated around the clock. Heavy-duty cargo trains transported materials back and forth, securing vast resources for humanity. The machines worked tirelessly and without complaint.

That day, several staff members in the server room were conducting their routine data checks. Usually, each log was nearly identical to the day before. Any sudden discrepancies would indicate an unexpected event or a machine malfunction requiring immediate attention.

Thanks to numerous bug fixes, the mining AI was practically perfect, with errors becoming increasingly rare. Because of this, the monitoring team was relaxed, chatting and laughing as they scrolled through the data.

“Everything looks green, except the uranium output has dropped by 7%,” one operator noted. “According to the AI’s feedback, the excavators hit a massive deposit of ultra-hard ore. There are no error codes or bug reports.”

“Hard rock? Just blow it open with some explosives,” a supervisor replied, nodding dismissively.

This was a common occurrence. When an excavator encountered rock too dense to drill, they simply blasted it to pieces.

The supervisor pressed a few keys to manually override one of the excavators. He activated the machine’s external cameras to assess the size of the rock face and calculate the necessary explosive yield.

Suddenly, he froze. He stared at the monitor, completely paralyzed in disbelief. After a long moment of stunned silence, he finally screamed, “Everyone, get over here! What the hell is this?!”

Hearing his shout, the rest of the team rushed over. They were instantly terrified by the image on the screen. It was a massive section of excavated metal, the very thing the AI had mistaken for “ultra-hard rock”!

It was an unnatural, silvery-white metallic hull. It was clearly manufactured by an advanced civilization!

The report was rushed straight to Jason. He only needed one glance at the images for his heart to start pounding. The vague, lingering sense of dread he had been feeling lately instantly spiked, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up!

Was this the crisis his intuition had been warning him about?! He scrutinized the image closely. It was unmistakably an alien spacecraft!

The Precursors left the Noah on the Moon, so why is there another ship buried on Mars? Are there still aliens inside? A barrage of terrifying questions flooded Jason’s mind.

“Convene an emergency meeting!”

“Pull all excavators out of the Uranium Sector! No—wait… leave a few behind to maintain a live video feed!”

“And get Calvin in here immediately!”

After barking out three consecutive orders, Jason forced himself to take a deep breath and slowly sat back in his chair. What is there to be afraid of? he reasoned. Two-thirds of the uranium deposit has already been mined; a slight drop in production won’t kill us. If the worst comes to worst, we’ll just nuke the site!

The ship’s engines and escape drives were fully operational. If things went south, they could always abandon Mars entirely. This realization finally calmed his racing heart. As the leader of the Federation, he absolutely could not afford to panic.

Shortly after, the senior staff poured into the command center.

“This is an opportunity! An absolute godsend!” a senior physicist roared, waving his fists in the air, completely overcome with excitement. “A damaged alien vessel! I bet its technology is still within our realm of comprehension. We can reverse-engineer so much from this: superconducting materials, anti-gravity fields, advanced nuclear fusion, maybe even sub-light engines! We could….”

The live feed was playing on the main screen of the command center. Because the mining AI had been blindly digging through the night, the alien ship had been unearthed completely by accident.

Its shape resembled a classic, massive saucer. It had clearly suffered a devastating impact; the hull was covered in deep structural fractures, and the exposed metallic surface was pitted and scorched.

Based on the exposed sections, its total diameter was at least 5 kilometers. While much smaller than the Noah, it was still vastly beyond humanity’s current manufacturing capabilities.

Physicists, astronomers, biologists, and materials engineers were all gathered in the room. Jason, Austin, Marcus, and other members of the Security Department stood alongside Calvin. It was a full-scale emergency summit.

“We must secure this vessel! It’s too vital to humanity’s future!”

“We can’t reverse-engineer the Noah because its tech is too far beyond us… but this damaged ship might be exactly the stepping stone we need!”

The scientists were practically foaming at the mouth, especially since complex mechanical structures were faintly visible through the cracks in the alien hull. Damaged or intact, humanity was bound to reap massive technological rewards!

Amidst the clamor of the scientists, Calvin, who was sitting near the back, suddenly rolled his eyes upward. Thick beads of sweat formed on his forehead. He was the only person besides Jason to sense the looming dread.

But he didn’t understand what the danger actually was. Was the alien ship going to attack?

He slipped into a bizarre, precognitive trance. Infinite dots and lines danced across his mind’s eye, weaving together into abstract, chaotic images that he desperately tried to interpret.

Light? Endless light? Calvin felt utterly bewildered. But that was exactly what his vision showed. Afraid he was misinterpreting it, he forced himself to trigger several more premonitions. Every single time, all he saw was an endless, blinding expanse of white light that seemed to consume everything.

Calvin was speechless. His unpredictable psychic abilities had always been incredibly unreliable…

Still, he leaned forward and whispered what he had “seen” to Jason. Jason’s brow furrowed tightly. What did he mean by endless light?

“Director Jason, no matter what, my gut says this ship is incredibly dangerous. We have to be careful!” Calvin warned in a hushed tone.

Jason nodded. He shared the exact same feeling and trusted his own instincts completely. As for the “endless light”… could that mean a nuclear detonation?

Jason frowned, his mind racing through the terrifying implications of Calvin’s vision. Would they discover some horrifying threat inside the ship and be forced to detonate a nuclear weapon themselves? Or would the alien ship simply self-destruct?

Looking at the crowd of fanatical, greedy scientists, he suddenly felt a wave of irritation. How was he supposed to talk sense into these people when they were blinded by the promise of advanced tech?

At that moment, Dr. Felix stood up from his seat at the side of the room. He cleared his throat and spoke with grave seriousness. “Everyone, please quiet down. You need to realize that while this vessel presents an opportunity, it also represents an apocalyptic danger!”

“We still don’t know if the Martian virus was brought here by this exact ship or if it’s native to the planet. This discovery changes everything we know about our local space.”

“If a microscopic Martian virus almost wiped us out, what do you think a highly advanced civilization could do? We must exercise extreme caution!”

“We have never made first contact before. We don’t know if there are living entities, biological weapons, or automated defense systems inside. Look at artificial intelligence, as long as it has a power source, it can wait in the dark for millennia! We cannot just rush in blindly!”

“We are small and ignorant in the face of the wider universe. Our adversary could be a civilization capable of shattering planets. Even the most basic automated defense mechanism on that ship could be enough to wipe us all out!”

His words acted like a bucket of ice water dumped over the excited scientists. Many of them froze in shock. Some fidgeted, wanting to argue back, but they couldn’t find a single logical flaw in his warning.

“Dr. Felix is right!” Jason barked, his expression turning fierce. “What if the crew is still alive in cryo-sleep? What if they launch an immediate counterattack against us? These are the questions we must answer before anyone goes near that thing!”

In truth, Jason had already quietly ordered Austin to put the military on maximum alert. At that very moment, a massive one-gigaton yield nuclear warhead was actively locking onto the alien vessel!

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