Getting a Technology System in Modern Day - Chapter 1001

Chapter 1001: Misdirection of the Century

Minutes from the detonation of the bomb, the entire planet was already covered in radioactive materials. Spending even less than ten minutes was enough to guarantee death, which essentially sentenced every living thing on the planet to death and would sustain that life-denying level of toxicity for at least a century before people could return and be able to spend a few hours without dying.

This could be accelerated if a civilization invested a huge amount of resources, but most of the time, waiting was deemed to be the most effective solution, considering that to many civilizations, a period of a century is something within their lifetimes.

“That should be enough of a warning for anyone else to think twice and for those who attempted to leave to crawl back to avoid suffering the same fate,” Gubka said as he watched the planet from a distance, knowing that it was not the end of the chain reaction. Following the radioactive fallout, there were going to be tsunamis, earthquakes, and the worst of them all, a nuclear winter. Should the luckiest person exist who had awakened and could survive most of the catastrophe caused by the bomb, the lack of food would be the reason they died. For a civilization as small as this, awakened individuals were very rare, which was one of the reasons they were so far down in the civilization standings, but it also meant the population of the entire planet of more than twenty-seven billion could be considered dead.

“You have the recording of everything, right?” he turned and asked one of the team members.

“……” Instead of answering verbally, the man just nodded, which was their usually liked means of communication as it meant there would be no sound to trace his location, one of the traits they had retained from their planet-locked days and one that they continued teaching despite already moving into the interstellar age and conversations in space taking place through intercoms, making it impossible to track the speaker using sound alone.

“Good, we will send it to the Central Command for them to decide what to do with it. Return to base,” he said, and immediately the whole team started heading back to their ship. When they arrived at the open hatch, they all reentered, and as the hatch’s outer door was slowly closing, Gubka turned to look at the planet for the last time with a smile covering his face.

……………………………

“Thank you very much! Thank you very much! Thank you very much! Thank you very much!” someone was heard repeating those words as if it were a mantra, with a voice tinged with extreme sincerity that anyone who heard it for a moment would be able to distinguish.

It was Hogu, the leader of the Nymari civilization, who had just had its capital nuked, causing a mass extinction event for all its inhabitants.

“Sir, the empire keeps every promise it makes. If you are to thank someone, please thank the Emperor when you have an audience with him, not me,” an imperial soldier in full war gear said, addressing him respectfully as he made attempts to stop Hogu from his up-and-down repeated bowing that he accompanied with his gratitude mantra, as he was aware of his surroundings.

Anyone who looked at Hogu’s surroundings would see millions of Nymari citizens who were all reacting differently to finding themselves inside this large hall. It wasn’t the only hall that was filled with Nymari citizens and animals, as they were the result of the empire doing another record-breaking rescue operation within minutes.

A few minutes before the nuke detonated.

The moment a wormhole opened a distance from the Nymari capital, it had already been discovered and was tracked, as the invaders had made no attempt to hide themselves out of confidence.

They continued observing the ship until they suddenly appeared a distance from it, releasing a massive object heading toward the planet.

It took them a few minutes using the low-tech Nymari sensors to be able to deduce what was inside the object before they realized that it was a nuke. They opened fire, but by that time, it was already too late to shoot enough materials to drain all of the phasing energy, so Athena, who was monitoring the whole situation, immediately acted.

She took control of the shield system that the imperial invasion avatar force had brought and activated over the planet, and divided it into two spheres. The inside shield sphere was shrunk to seventy kilometers above sea level inside the atmosphere, while the outer shield sphere remained in the same location but was converted into passive mode, with a portion of its power directed into doing something the empire had been doing on both Earth and Mars: using the shield’s function of bending light to generate realistic images that anyone watching would think was what was happening on the planet.

At the same time, as a final precautionary measure, she also activated all of the free stargates and used the planet’s recorded absolute coordinates and locations of its citizens to instantly open a wormhole under them for them to fall in and be transported to either the empire or another planet under the empire’s control within the Conclave. This was done for both the people of the Nymari capital planet and the wild and botanical life, with animals and plants all being teleported into a stasis hall to preserve them for future release while also preventing commotion if they were to be transported together with the people.

While that was happening, the nuke went through the outer layer that was in passive mode and was acting as a giant, planetary-sized, super-realistic screen. It in itself started shrinking as well, while the inner shield started expanding, bringing with it a portion of the atmosphere to create the illusion of atmospheric friction without it having to enter the planet. The moment it sensed that it was inside an atmospheric pressure and was experiencing friction, it detonated. The outer shield turned active, dispersing its energy in the gap between the two shields, which went around all of the planet, providing a large enough space for the dispersal to happen without the pressure increasing, which would be counter-intuitive to the shield’s intentions as it would only increase the bomb’s potency and push the shields that were already at their limit to the brink or even actual failure, which would defeat their purpose.

While the explosion was being contained, the outer shield took the captured energy output, and the screen function replayed the simulation version that Athena had simulated in VR, creating a super-clear, realistic image no different from it actually happening on the planet.

Both the life forms and the planet were safe, thanks to the super-calculation-intensive operation done in a matter of ten minutes. Athena, who had expended all of those computing resources, had a smile on her face as she watched the people being returned to the planet from the same location they were taken from, for those who were not in a dangerous situation. Those in dangerous situations were returned to a safer location, with the same happening for the wildlife, now that the explosion containment plan had worked.

For her, this incident was now going to act as a perfect advertisement for why joining the empire is better than remaining in the Conclave, where they only know how to rule through fear and leave you to fend for yourself. She could already imagine the slogan: “We are strong enough to ensure both our safety and yours without having the dilemma of choosing, so come to us and we will protect you” or something in a similar ballpark that would be going around once the propaganda and PR action was permitted by the crown prince or when the Emperor awoke, which she was looking forward to just as much as Nyx, who would be executing that propaganda and PR round.