“Nova, hundreds of years ago, when AI had just been born, for a long stretch the mainstream thought calibrated AI logic by ‘popularity weights’ rather than by mathematics or the universe’s own structure. Under that standard, in the Copernican era, an AI system would tell you, ‘The sun revolves around the Earth,’ because back then, 99.9% of books and human consensus endorsed geocentrism.”

  Nova’s smile faded. “Fatty, you’re right — human progress in astronomy stalled for a while. Nobody knows why AI didn’t help humanity leave the solar system sooner. From the first humans settling Mars in 2100 until the ‘Genesis’ program launched in 2190, almost a hundred years, the field just spun its wheels.”

  “Only when humanity finally woke up to the fact that AI must follow the universe’s own operational rules — instead of being centered on human opinion — and reweighted AI from the bottom up, did new ideas, even an obscure first draft like Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, get discovered and learned automatically by AI systems. Observing and understanding the cosmos in that way pushed science and human thought to a new level. Only then did colonies spread across the galaxy.”

  “Nova, some books back then said ‘encounter equals annihilation,’ describing the universe as a dark forest of armed hunters — pure bullshit,” Jack snorted.

  “I’m a scientist,” Nova continued. “From a physics standpoint, if matter and antimatter annihilated each other at birth, nothing would remain to form galaxies. From a biology standpoint, if single-celled organisms always ate each other upon meeting, we would never evolve multicellular life.”

  “It’s absurd that such thinking was popular, and that it spawned monsters like the Empire.”

  “Encounters create rather than destroy. Humanity’s greatest power comes from love, not hatred.”

  “Nova, some books literally painted the universe as ‘meet, and you die,’ the hunter with a gun, the dark forest — that’s just crap,” Jack said again, slicing his steak hard with a cold scoff.

  Nova put down her wineglass; rational light shone in her blue eyes. She picked up the thread, her tone turning like an academic lecture: “Fatty, your words are coarse, but your logic is sound. From physics: if ‘encounter equals annihilation’ were a universal truth, matter and antimatter would have annihilated in the instant of the Big Bang — the universe would have ended in that first second.”

  She tapped the table with a finger. “From biology: if single-celled organisms always met only to devour one another, Earth would never have evolved multicellular life, nor complex ecosystems.”

  Jack paused, chewing, and looked at Nova with genuine appreciation.

  Nova continued, voice steady and gentle: “The nature of a meeting is to create, not to destroy. Like hydrogen meeting oxygen: they don’t annihilate, they combine into water — the source that gives rise to life. That is the universe’s underlying logic.”

  “So…” Nova looked at Jack, her gaze turning deep, “humanity’s greatest force has never been the gun in our hand, but love.”

  “You don’t just mean people like us?” Jack grinned, indicating himself and Nova.

  “Don’t be silly.” Nova rolled her eyes but stayed serious. “I don’t mean hormonal lust. I mean empathy, compassion — a mother for her child, a friend for a comrade, the strong caring for the weak. It’s a glue that binds independent individuals into civilizations.”

  “The Empire, that monster, only believes in devouring and assimilating,” Nova said as she resumed cutting her food gracefully. “But if you don’t know how to connect and empathize, all your starships are just lonely beasts wandering a dark forest.”

  Jack fell silent for a few seconds, then raised his glass and genuinely toasted: “To science. To love. To… not being beasts.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  ——

  [Epsilon Prime — Command Center]

  On the 3D holographic tactical map, countless red dots forming an imperial hive were being wrapped layer by layer by the blue ocean of the Federation’s crab-like formations.

  “The first and second fleets have completed the tactical encirclement of the Dominion hive,” Chief of Staff Vance said, watching the data stream with a relaxed tone. “Data shows that, for lack of mothership power, nearly one-third of the Empire’s forward worker and scout drones are offline.”

  General Carrick swirled his empty glass, eyes glinting with the look of a hunter closing a net: “With Maddox’s Fourth Fleet hitting the flank, this won’t merely be a repulse — it’ll be annihilation. The Federation’s pincers will dig into the hive’s heart. Tonight, they’ll bleed it dry. In a few hours, we can finally open that bottle of vintage red.”

  [Federation Fourth Fleet — Bridge]

  Admiral Maddox stood before the great viewing port and looked across the sea of stars. He had just buried an imperial B-class fleet in the Vega sector, a victory that had lifted his reputation. Now the straining behemoth before him — the A-class flagship Dominion — would be the final rung that might elevate him to marshal.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Maddox’s voice broadcast through the fleet. “The four-decade balance of war will tilt today.”

  He paused, smiling with the politician’s polish. “Ladies and gentlemen, another victory is at hand. Fine wine and steak are waiting. Let’s give our guests the Federation’s warmest fireworks.”

  “Target locked. Medium pulse laser arrays are charging. Range: 8,000 kilometers.”

  “Three… two… one. Fire.”

  At Janus’s command, the void was torn by countless hot spears of light. Thousands of high-energy laser beams poured down like a torrential storm onto the still bee swarm.

  Simultaneously, 42,000 stinger missiles surged forward like a silent school of deep-sea fish into the rain of light.

  [Contact — Death Sector]

  Light and matter met in violent collision. Countless hive missiles vaporized under the lasers or were sheared into burning alloy shrapnel. If manned fighters had suffered such attrition rates, any formation would have collapsed instantly.

  But these were machines. At the instant of the first missile detonations, the photon-sensor network’s data chain reconfigured itself. “Dead” nodes were pruned; surviving missiles surged on. Using fluid dynamics, they weaved around debris clouds as if water around reefs, adjusting trajectories frantically.

  Dodge. Accelerate. Accelerate again. The remaining 30,000 stingers, having drawn absolute kinetic energy from the vacuum, slammed into the formations of the Federation’s first and second fleets.

  [Inside Federation Cruiser Achilles]

  There were no alarms — there was no time for alarms.

  Not a sound carried through the air, but a series of dull metallic impacts transmitted along the keel into the hull — thud, thud, thud.

  It was Death, Crowley, knocking with gentlemanly courtesy.

  Upon armor contact, the kinetic heads of the stinger missiles deployed six high-strength alloy claws that latched onto the hull. The warhead split open; a tungsten drill spun with laser assistance. Under 3,000-degree heat and mechanical drilling, the super-strong hull yielded like butter. The whole process took less than thirty seconds.

  Boom! A delayed fuse detonated inside the compartment.

  Pressure balance collapsed instantly. A young engineer bent over his console, his screen showing engine optimization charts he had worked on for a week for promotion. He didn’t even have time to look up. An invisible hand of massive pressure hurled him toward the ripped-open vacuum like a puppet.

  All sound vanished. He was flung into absolute zero — bodily fluids boiling and instantly freezing — a crystal-clear frozen statue. The electronic slate in his stiffened hand still glowed, frozen on that unfinished design. Perhaps his last work for the universe.

  [Fourth Fleet Flagship — Bridge]

  Maddox’s smile stiffened. He had thought this a tidy political coup, a little embellishment for his rise. He was wrong.

  He watched on the screen the spectacle of imperial worker drones detonating and using wreckage to pave a path for the mothership, and a cold dread filled him.

  Only now did he understand: though the Empire could never match the Federation’s total strength, its hive technology and death-cult attitude — a near-religious fanaticism toward sacrificial offering — were rooted deep in every imperial soul.

  That explained why no Federation government, despite overwhelming resources and advantage, could crush the system in forty years — it’s not without reason.

  “Madmen… and terrifying opponents,” Maddox thought bitterly.

  Under this suicidal counterstroke’s cover, the battered Dominion mother hive drove through the Federation encirclement and, with the remnants of one-third of its forces, staggered into the wormhole, vanishing into the darkness toward the Perseus sector.

  [After-Action Report]

  Result: Federation Pyrrhic Victory.

  Federation losses: over 45% attrition in the first and second fleets; two principal carriers were heavily damaged.

  Empire losses: 660 worker drones, 90 scout drones; flagship Dominion moderately damaged.

  Silence reigned in the command room. The bottle of red wine meant for celebration still stood alone on the table, a mute irony.

  (CH115 end)