Chapter 8: The Radical Faction’s Hidden Move

The night on the far side of the moon was seven shades darker than on Earth. The emergency lights of the Moon Soul Base cast elongated beams of light through the shadows of the craters, slicing the silver modules into prismatic shapes of light and dark. Lin Shen stood before the quantum glass of the observation deck, his fingertips unconsciously tracing the neural interface on his wrist. The deep resonance test that had concluded three hours ago left his temples throbbing. The image of the Dreamweaver homeworld being consumed by the Star Hunters remained seared into his memory like a red-hot brand.

"Professor Lin," the communicator suddenly crackled. It was the base security chief, his voice noticeably strained. "The energy monitor in Sector C has jumped by three standard deviations. You had better come to the control center."

Lin Shen’s pupils contracted. Three days ago, Xia Qing had shown him the data on the light cocoon’s fusion energy absorption; the timing of this anomalous fluctuation was far too sensitive. As he grabbed his lab coat and rushed out, he collided with Xia Qing, who was sprinting past with an electromagnetic rifle in her arms. Her tactical armor still carried the chill of the vacuum, and the major-general’s insignia on her shoulder caught the cold light of the corridor.

"Come to Sector C with me." She grabbed his wrist, her grip so firm it threatened to crush bone. "The Ark's orbital radar just picked up a swarm of nanobots on the lunar surface—that old bastard Oleg has made his move."

When the pressure door of the Sector C isolation chamber hissed open before them, Lin Shen’s breath hitched. A three-meter-wide light cocoon hovered in the center of the room. Its surface, usually marked by flowing quantum patterns, now looked like crumpled silk, marred by blinding purple blotches. Seven figures in black tactical gear crowded the console, and one of them was injecting silver nanoliquid into the energy interface beneath the cocoon.

"Cease operation!" Xia Qing leveled her electromagnetic rifle at the neck of the nearest operative. "You are in violation of Article 12 of the Contact Protocol. You have the right to remain silent—"

"Spare me the official rhetoric!" The leader turned. Lin Shen recognized him as Mikhail Ivanov, Oleg’s chief assistant. His face was splattered with quantum fragments shed by the cocoon, and his eyes were as bloodshot as a congested space jellyfish. "We are protecting humanity! That pile of scrap absorbs enough energy every day to power the Mars colony for three months! By the time they’ve gorged themselves on the sun, you and I will both be the next Dreamweaver race!"

"Shut up." Xia Qing’s tactical gloves emitted a low hum—the precursor to her power armor engaging. With her free hand, she seized Mikhail by the nape of his neck and lifted him off the ground. "You have no idea how the cocoon is structured! Forcibly stripping the quantum-entangled matter will trigger a chain resonance. When that happens, the lunar orbit will become a graveyard, just like the Dreamweaver homeworld—"

"Enough!" Lin Shen lunged forward, pressing his hand onto Xia Qing’s arm. He could feel the tremors beneath her tactical glove; she was struggling to contain her urge to kill. The purple blotches on the cocoon were spreading, and fine blue light seeped from the quantum patterns, mimicking the energy decay state just before Amil’s projection had vanished.

"Mikhail," Lin Shen forced his voice to remain steady, "what is the absorption frequency of the nanobots?"

Mikhail stiffened his neck, refusing to speak. Xia Qing tightened her grip, and he gasped in pain. "1.42 terahertz! The damn things aren't responding to control commands—"

"Shut down the generator!" Lin Shen rushed to the console, his fingers flying across the holographic keyboard. 1.42 terahertz was precisely the resonant frequency of the quantum-entangled matter. Oleg’s team had clearly intended to strip the surface of the cocoon using the nanobot swarm, unaware that this frequency would trigger the cocoon’s self-defense mechanism.

The moment Lin Shen pressed the terminate key, the cocoon let out a high-pitched whine. The purple blotches contracted into a single point of light, followed by a thunderous boom that exploded into a cloud of blue stardust. Amil’s projection emerged from the dust, his light band far dimmer than before, his voice trembling with a fractured, broken quality: "The resonance network... has been disrupted."

Xia Qing released Mikhail, who slumped to the floor, coughing violently. Lin Shen stared at Amil’s fading projection, his throat tight. "I’m sorry. We failed to protect the contact zone."

"It is not your fault." Amil’s fingertip brushed the back of Lin Shen’s hand. This time, there was no surge of memory, only a heart-wrenching void. "The Star Hunters’ Dyson membrane... is approaching the Orion Arm. The Dreamweaver homeworld... was how we exposed our coordinates while attempting to reverse-engineer their technology."

The moment the projection dissipated, the base alarms tore through the air. An emergency message from the Ark flashed on Xia Qing’s communicator. She glanced at the screen, her expression turning icy. "Oleg is live-streaming this footage to the United Government’s emergency session. He says we need to 'proactively understand the threat,' or else, when the Star Hunters arrive—"

"We will regret not studying their technology in advance," Lin Shen finished for her, his voice a mere whisper. He looked at the wreckage of the nanobots scattered across the floor, suddenly recalling what his mother had said during the ecological crisis of his childhood: "Humanity always repeats the same mistakes, using fear to extinguish potential hope."

The following day, the United Government assembly hall felt like a frozen starship. Oleg stood at the center of the holographic podium, the footage of the sabotaged cocoon playing behind him. His silver hair was combed with meticulous precision, yet his tone held the sharpness of an old hunter. "You have all seen it—what lies hidden beneath those so-called 'friendly signals'? A 12% daily drain on our fusion energy! Yesterday’s accident was no mishap; it was a warning. If we continue to wait passively, by the time the Star Hunters’ Dyson membrane wraps around the sun, we won't even have the luxury of regret!"

"And your so-called 'proactive understanding' involves violating the Laws of Civilization Contact to steal technology?" Xia Qing stood abruptly, her tactical gloves striking the table with a dull thud. "The Dreamweavers have already proven the cost of reverse-engineering with the destruction of their own homeworld! Do you want Earth to be the next marked target?"

"Proven?" Oleg sneered, pulling up the energy data Xia Qing had sent him three days prior. "Major General, it was you who personally delivered the evidence that 'they require stellar energy' to my desk. In the face of survival, can those tender, sentimental 'laws' be used as antimatter fuel?"

Lin Shen watched the whispering delegates in the hall, suddenly remembering the void of resonance before Amil had vanished. He pulled out his portable quantum storage device—it contained the foundational physics formulas passed down by the Dreamweavers, the mathematical cipher of a civilization.

"Survival is not an excuse for predation." He stepped onto the podium. His voice was not loud, yet it pierced the commotion like a needle. "What the Dreamweavers taught us through the loss of their homeworld was not 'how to defend,' but 'how to coexist.' If we use the logic of the Star Hunters to fight the Star Hunters, how are we any different from them?"

The hall fell into a deathly silence. Oleg’s fingers drummed a rapid rhythm on the table, his gaze sweeping over the neural interface on Lin Shen’s wrist, where a faint blue halo from the resonance with Amil still lingered.

As the meeting adjourned, Lin Shen caught up with Xia Qing in the corridor. She looked out the window at the hovering cocoon—now calm, its quantum patterns flowing with a gentle purple light once more—and her voice was as soft as a sigh. "Do you think... we can really find a third way?"

Lin Shen did not answer. He stared at the starlight shimmering within the cocoon, remembering Amil’s words: "Resonance is not consumption; it is witnessing each other’s light." A breeze blew through the ventilation ducts, carrying a faint, ethereal scent of stardust, much like the jacaranda trees his mother used to grow in his memories.

At that very moment, far away in the direction of Alpha Centauri, in a region shrouded by purple nebulae, an anomalous electromagnetic pulse was piercing through the interstellar dust. It was a Star Hunter probe, scanning the coordinates of every civilization that had ever revealed a fluctuation of technology.