Chapter 409: Tachyon Communicator

The molecular lattice of this purple super-material was not bonded by simple covalent links.

The bond configurations underwent near-infinite recursive variations, forcing the ambient electron energy states into absolute minimal thresholds via extreme electron cloud overlap.

By manipulating nanoscale geometry to force the atomic energy states this low, Eureka-Six achieved practically unbreakable structural stability.

Simply put, any civilization willing to use Eureka-Six to build a disposable communication relay was vastly more advanced than the Federation. In standard interstellar trade, this super-material was bartered in single grams.

The fact that it was used here made it an extravagant luxury!

The atmosphere in the room turned razor-sharp. Everyone was on high alert, frantically trying to deduce The Seeders’ true intentions...

"...Did the diagnostic drones press that silver button while they were sweeping the chassis?" Jason asked, a cold sweat breaking out across his forehead.

If the answer was yes, he would instantly order an emergency spool-up of the warp drives and initiate a blind jump into the void!

It wasn’t cowardice; it was survival. Who cared if the ship was in the middle of an engine refit? When faced with an unknown, god-tier cosmic power, the survival of the civilization superseded a few busted thrusters.

Tension hung heavy in the air. The only sound in the conference room was the collective heavy breathing of the crew. The terrifying reality of potentially provoking a hyper-advanced empire filled them with a crushing sense of dread.

"No... they shouldn’t have!"

The head of the diagnostic team considered the timeline for a few agonizing seconds before offering a logical reassurance.

"Look, the button is encased behind a protective glass shroud... We didn’t fully disassemble the probe’s interior during the sweep, so theoretically, the robotic manipulators shouldn’t have been able to accidentally press it... We just don’t know... if any of the probes bumped the glass housing hard enough to trigger a proximity sensor?"

A team of analysts was frantically reviewing the optical playback of the robotic sweep. They were terrified that during the initial inspection, one of the drones might have inadvertently engaged the device...

The initial sweep had occurred three days ago, and no one could remember the exact micro-movements of every drone; they had to verify it via the video logs.

Meanwhile, Jason quickly opened a secure channel to the chief propulsion engineers.

"Captain, although the primary drives are currently offline for the refit, we still have the secondary redundancies fully primed. If necessary, we can initiate a combat jump," the engineer reported.

"How long from zero to warp transition?" Jason demanded.

"The entire spool-up sequence will take fifteen minutes."

Hearing this, Jason let out a shaky breath.

Fifteen minutes was practically nothing in the grand timeline of the universe, but in a crisis, it could feel like an eternity.

"Bring all long-range sensor arrays to maximum yield! Sweep the entire sector for tachyon wakes!"

Jason quickly assessed the tactical readouts. Finding no immediate hostile signatures or anomalous energy spikes, he keyed the room-wide communication.

"Alright, everyone stand down. Don’t panic. Statistically speaking, the probability that The Seeders harbored malicious intent when leaving this device is incredibly low..."

"...They went to all this trouble, waiting millions of years, just to spring a cheap booby trap on whichever primitive species eventually stumbled across the probe? It doesn’t make any logical sense..."

While the analysts continued scrubbing the surveillance footage, Jason and the senior staff set the immediate panic aside and resumed dissecting the translated data.

Returning to the primary timeline of events, the empire known as The Seeders had intercepted the probe over ten million years before humanity.

They had done exactly what the Atlantean Empire had done before them... appending their own message to the metal disk and hurling it back into the cosmic sea.

The data tracks on the metal disk ended there, which was mildly disappointing.

It appeared the Federation was the third intelligent species to intercept this ancient artifact...

The fact that the desperate legacy of a doomed primitive civilization had now interconnected three entirely separate interstellar empires was profoundly moving.

It was a sense of cosmic wonder and historical gravity that a species could never experience while confined to the gravity well of a single planet.

Although humanity was separated from the first two empires by an unfathomable gulf of time, even The Seeders had intercepted the probe over ten million years ago—the connection remained tangible.

The two unknown empires had left behind nothing but a few etched sentences and a USB-sized tachyon relay.

The feeling it evoked was difficult to articulate. Deep down, humanity harbored a profound, aching desire to communicate with equal or superior beings in the dark.

They had never once engaged in a true, equal dialogue with another interstellar empire, and knew absolutely nothing about their cultures or ideologies.

But despite that burning curiosity, Jason would never dare press the button on that communicator.

The minds in the conference room began to dissect the two messages, trying to peel back the layers to uncover the empires’ true behavioral logic.

First, there was the Atlantean Empire.

Their actual technological tier remained unknown, but their cultural temperament seemed... surprisingly benevolent?

"Think about the timeline," an astrophysicist noted. "Over 24 million years passed between the launch and their interception. Even assuming the probe maintained a steady inertia of 30 kilometers per second, it could have drifted over 2,000 light-years!"

Putting themselves in the Atlanteans’ shoes, if the Federation had intercepted the probe back in the Solar System, and realized the Tark homeworld was thousands of light-years away, they never would have wasted the resources to mount a physical expedition to check on a dead planet.

"At most, we would have fired off a long-range telemetry drone," the astrophysicist concluded.

Yet, the Atlantean Empire perhaps out of sheer boredom, or perhaps out of profound scholarly curiosity, had actually dispatched a physical expedition to confirm the ultimate fate of the Tark Empire, formally recording their tragic end onto the metal disk.

"...Based purely on their ability to casually project power across thousands of light-years just to satisfy their curiosity, the Atlanteans must have been significantly more advanced than we are right now."

"Then, for whatever reason, they relaunched the probe... and left behind that cryptic footnote regarding the impossibility of achieving controlled nuclear fusion using ’rudimentary’ methods."

Jason stared down at the transcripts, trying to psychoanalyze the ancient empire.

It was an elusive puzzle; there was simply too little data.

To the Atlanteans, appending the message might have been a trivial, passing whim. It was impossible to aggressively deduce their core logic from a few sentences.

"The scientific advice they left behind is almost certainly genuine. It reads like a benevolent warning to younger species. At least from our current understanding of plasma physics... their statement is absolutely correct. They had no strategic reason to lie on a dead probe."

"So, the Atlantean Empire was an advanced civilization with a fundamentally benevolent nature?"

That was the absolute limit of what humanity could deduce.

Next... was the message from The Seeders.

This empire provided significantly more context, making them the primary focus of the crew’s analysis.

First, based on their exact phrasing—"To our profound surprise, it contains data logs referencing the magnificent Atlantean Empire"—it heavily implied that at some point in galactic history, the Atlanteans had evolved into a universally recognized, hyper-advanced powerhouse...

It was shocking to hear one interstellar empire openly refer to another as "magnificent."

Due to inherent biological pride and survival instincts, humanity found it incredibly difficult to label another empire as "magnificent," even if the opposing force was ten thousand times more powerful.

The Federation had been nearly annihilated by The Annihilators, yet they did not revere their enemies’ "greatness." They only harbored a bitter, simmering resentment.

Of course, alien psychologies were vastly different; they might simply be far more intellectually honest than humans.

"Hypothesis one: The Atlantean Empire was a legendary, benevolent civilization that actively aided younger species, earning universal reverence..."

"Hypothesis two: The Atlanteans were indeed a terrifying powerhouse, but had completely died out by the time The Seeders came along. It’s easy to pay flowery compliments to a dead empire," Security Chief Austin muttered, frowning deeply.

"Hypothesis three: The Atlanteans were truly, unfathomably magnificent... existing on a plane of reality beyond the comprehension of normal empires... Perhaps a Tier S civilization?"

Setting the hypothetical "magnificence" of the Atlanteans aside, they were simply too distant and ancient to hold any tangible meaning for humanity. They were just a name in a history book.

But the casually flaunted technological prowess of The Seeders... that was absolutely terrifying. They had specifically mentioned using a "tachyon sensor array"!

That implied "faster-than-light information processing"!

Upon hearing that term, the eyes of several senior physicists lit up with a feverish intensity. A flood of theoretical possibilities rushed into their minds.

This was a realm of physics humanity had yet to breach, a massive, universal secret locked away in the quantum depths.

"Tachyon arrays are a theoretical sensor framework that operates beyond the speed of light... Yes, instantaneous FTL telemetry! Based purely on that single capability, The Seeders were exponentially more powerful than The Annihilators!"

One senior physicist spoke in a hushed, reverent whisper, his entire body trembling as if he had just witnessed a holy revelation.

"I don’t know if the translation software accurately mapped the term ’tachyon,’ or if we’re just projecting our own theoretical models..."

The theoretical existence of "tachyons" had been debated since the era of Einstein.

Through advanced iterations of special relativity, human physicists had mathematically proven that "tachyons" particles that inherently traveled faster than the speed of light, did not actually violate the core tenets of relativity.

The mystery of FTL physics was intoxicating; no one truly understood why the universe strictly enforced the speed of light as a fundamental speed limit for normal matter.

"Tachyons" represented the ultimate loophole for shattering the light-speed barrier.

These hypothetical particles possessed imaginary mass. In theory, they existed entirely within a superluminal state, meaning they always traveled faster than light and could never decelerate below it.

The most critical distinction between tachyons and baryonic matter was that tachyons theoretically exhibited negative gravitational mass, meaning they generated repulsive gravity, much like dark energy.

Their other quantum properties, as described in advanced quantum field theory and string theory, mirrored normal matter.

But to this day, humanity had absolutely no idea why they had never been able to physically detect a tachyon.