Chapter 411: Sphere of Light

"Safety? Impossible," one researcher argued. "The other side is probably after the Precursor vault, not to mention our stockpile of the Perfect Element. We can’t overlook that!"

Another senior scientist immediately shot back, "Have they just been lying in wait here for millions of years, waiting for us to pass by? How could they possibly know we’re carrying anything valuable?"

Someone else voiced a wild theory. "Could this be... an elaborate trap set by The Annihilators? They might have just fabricated all of this to make us guess. The moment we press the button on that metal box, they’ll instantly know our coordinates..."

"Impossible... Why make it so complicated? Wouldn’t it be far easier for them to just deploy a stealth drone?"

Despite the heated debate, even when the department heads attributed the worst possible malice to The Seeders, they couldn’t piece together a coherent logical motive.

The underlying principle was simple: if the opposing force harbored malicious intent, there was no need to resort to such a highly inefficient "fishing" method. Wouldn’t it be much simpler to just dispatch an ambush fleet to attack directly?

"So, does that mean leaving this tachyon communicator was really just done on a casual whim?"

Jason found himself constantly wavering amidst the conflicting opinions.

He thought to himself, "This is a massive gamble. If we win, we establish peaceful contact with a highly advanced empire, which would drastically accelerate our technological development.

If we lose... the outcome is entirely unknown. Perhaps they will just leave us alone out of boredom, or perhaps they will simply crush us into dust."

In the end, he shook his head. It was a recipe for disaster! The achievements humanity took the most pride in, whether it was their amassed knowledge, industrial productivity, mathematics, or philosophy were likely not even worth mentioning in the eyes of a higher-tier empire.

Like ants trying to converse with giants, they possessed absolutely no right to communicate on an equal footing.

The only things of true value were the Perfect Element and the Precursor vault. They were like flawless diamonds hidden inside an anthill. Exposing them would be fatal.

"An ordinary man is innocent, but possessing a priceless treasure makes him a target; it’s best to be extremely cautious. Even if we don’t know for certain whether these things hold true value to them..."

Just as the senior scientists were sighing and lamenting, Jason’s ears twitched.

He suddenly heard the frantic shouts of several junior technicians echoing from down the corridor. Their voices were urgent and laced with raw panic!

A dreadful premonition flashed through his mind. He jumped up from his seat and rushed toward the commotion.

A pale-faced technician hurried over from a terminal and whispered frantically in his ear, "Captain... we just reviewed the surveillance footage. During the initial diagnostic sweep, one of the robotic manipulators applied pressure to the glass casing... the glass right next to the embedded device."

"We can’t tell if the pressure indirectly... depressed the silver button! And this was... during the sweep three days ago! It’s already been three whole days!"

For a split second, Jason froze completely. This was catastrophically bad news; he felt as if his heart was about to pound its way out of his chest.

The glass casing was mounted flush against the button. If it had been squeezed, did it compress the mechanism? Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t... But who could possibly know the consequences?!

"Damn it!" he cursed, a freezing chill rushing down his spine. This was the exact nightmare scenario he had been worried about.

The diagnostic sweep had to be comprehensive by design. It was only natural that a manipulator might brush against the surface glass of the probe; it was completely unfair to blame the technicians.

But regardless of fault, staying anchored in this sector was now a suicidal risk! Breaking out in a cold sweat, he reacted like a startled bird, instantly ordering to the engineering deck to initiate an emergency launch.

"Emergency Order! Generate the warp bubble and accelerate to maximum faster-than-light velocity immediately!"

"Captain’s orders: Recall all external personnel and spool up the warp drives!"

Within seconds of the broadcast, a flurry of bewildered propulsion engineers flooded the communication channel.

They were completely confused, frantically asking why they needed to jump when the primary engines were only half-replaced and the hull inspections weren’t even finished...

It wasn’t until Jason screamed a few expletive-laced clarifications into the communication that they grasped the apocalyptic urgency of the situation.

"Wait, what? The button was already pressed?!" Austin and the other defense officials reacted in pure shock, immediately mobilizing the security forces to secure the ship for an emergency launch.

If the button had indeed been triggered, there was absolutely no point in further debate. This rusted probe from a primitive empire was turning into a colossal nightmare!

Some of the slower-to-react personnel were still bewildered, blindly following the evacuation protocols without fully comprehending the impending doom.

At a single, unified command, all external engineering crews scrambled back into the ship’s airlocks, and all maintenance drones docked at their stations.

The secondary nuclear reactors surged to full capacity, and the half-replaced warp drives were brutally forced into an emergency spool-up.

Watching the flurry of wartime alerts flashing across the bridge and the crew rapidly mobilizing, Jason’s heart hammered against his ribs.

He carefully analyzed his own gut feeling. Strangely enough, he didn’t feel that suffocating, abyssal sense of impending death. Could it be that... the button hadn’t actually been fully depressed?

However, a civilization’s survival could not be staked solely on a captain’s intuition. They had to take concrete steps to mitigate the potential fallout. Austin had already ordered all security personnel to Condition Red.

Half an hour later, the faint, shimmering distortion of a warp bubble enveloped the hull, and Deep Space hurled itself into an aggressive acceleration burn. A collective sigh of relief echoed across the bridge.

However, dealing with the alien probe itself presented another massive headache.

"As for the probe and that metal data vault... destroy them immediately!" Jason ordered.

This decision was met with fierce, immediate opposition from a large faction of the senior scientists. For various academic and theoretical reasons, they argued that destroying the device could trigger more severe consequences than simply having pressed the button.

"What if it’s rigged with a dead-man’s switch? If we destroy it, they might detect the signal loss instantly!"

"...There’s also a high probability the button wasn’t actually triggered, and we’re just scaring ourselves over nothing! Actively destroying it would be the worst possible move. Just jettison the probe into the void; that’s more than enough!"

Their arguments held some logical weight. Besides, this was a functional piece of tachyon technology! The mere thought of vaporizing it literally brought tears to the eyes of the theoretical physicists. They desperately didn’t want to give it up, but they had no choice. The safety of the Federation suppressed all academic curiosity.

Besides, if we just drop it here, maybe we can come back and find it again someday, the scientists secretly reasoned to themselves.

Of course, given the incomprehensible vastness of the universe, whether they would ever actually find this specific set of coordinates again was highly unlikely...

Reluctantly, a heavy-duty loader drone inside the isolation bay hoisted the probe onto the ejection platform, preparing to jettison it directly through the rear of the warp bubble into real-space.

"Wait! Hold on a minute..."

In the very next second, everyone on the bridge stared at the main monitors in absolute shock. A sphere of pure light had spontaneously materialized from the center of the alien probe!

It drifted upward slowly, rapidly expanding to a diameter of roughly one meter. Like a giant, ethereal bulb, it pulsed with a soft, pale blue incandescence.

"What... what in the world is that?"

Dozens of scientists stared at the optical feeds in disbelief, their hands instinctively flying across their diagnostic consoles.

The isolation bay was packed with every conceivable sensory instrument known to the Federation, yet no matter what spectrum they scanned or what calibration they used, the sensors registered absolutely nothing but standard atmospheric air...

According to the telemetry, the physical space occupied by the sphere was completely empty.

The orb of light had manifested out of thin air, with the only measurable physical effect being a fractional increase in ambient room temperature.

The luminous sphere continued to expand until it reached over three meters in diameter. It then stabilized, hovering silently without interacting with or damaging any of the surrounding containment infrastructure.

Even so, the tension on the bridge was thick enough to cut with a knife. They were face-to-face with an unknown, god-like entity.

Assuming the signal had been triggered three days ago, this entity had crossed an unimaginable expanse of light-years in a mere seventy-two hours. Its transit velocity must have been unfathomably faster than the speed of light!

What did it intend to do with humanity?

Jason was sweating bullets. His immediate tactical instinct screamed at him to authorize the internal defense turrets to open fire, but after an agonizing moment of hesitation, he forced himself to hold back...