Chapter 166: Chapter 166: "Locust" Technology
"Father, are you giving it to me?" Saint Giles asked, somewhat in disbelief and hesitating slightly, unsure if he should reach out for it. He understood what the Imperial Spear represented.
"What else?" Samuel Young released the spear without hesitation, allowing it to fall freely.
Seeing this, Saint Giles hurriedly extended both hands to catch the finely carved golden war spear.
"I know what you're concerned about." Samuel Young walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window on the right, hands clasped behind his back, gazing at the city illuminated by the sunset.
Then, his voice echoed through the spacious room:
"But don't forget, you and Guilliman are both my eldest sons. You two, along with Ryan, are responsible for vast sections of the universe and have provided the company with a tremendous amount of talent and resources. Therefore, this Imperial Spear is yours by right.
Of course, I have also prepared equivalent weapons and armor for your brothers. You need not worry that this spear will cause strife among you."
No one knows a son better than his father.
Samuel Young knew Saint Giles harbored concerns about accepting the Imperial Spear, fearing it might provoke jealousy among his brothers.
However, Samuel Young understood the importance of fairness. How could he possibly show favoritism? If conflicts or rifts were to arise between the brothers, as their father, he would bear the primary responsibility. After all, the duty of raising his children rested on his shoulders.
"Understood."
With his father having addressed his concerns, Saint Giles accepted the Imperial Spear with confidence and said, "Father, rest assured. I will do everything I can to help the company and humanity seize that unknown alien vessel. I will also look out for my brothers in secret, ensuring their safety."
"Your task is to lead your forces into the alien ship's control room. Vulkan and the others can take care of themselves. On the battlefield, you should be thinking about the safety of all the soldiers, not focusing solely on your brothers," Samuel Young reminded him.
"Understood. I will head to the space station now."
"Go."
With the conversation between father and son over and the sound of heavy footsteps receding into the distance, the top-floor office fell silent once again.
Samuel Young, gazing out the window and listening to the familiar ticking of the clock, sank into deep thought.
First, there was the alien vessel, which was about a quarter the size of the moon.
A few hours ago, when the surveillance satellites deployed in Mars' orbit sent back images, Samuel Young immediately recognized the alien vessel as the Reaper Mothership from Independence Day.
Even though he had lived for almost two hundred years, Samuel Young found it hard to forget the various details of that classic movie.
Putting aside certain political factors and some of the film's controversial elements, Independence Day truly showcased excellent "sci-fi blockbuster" effects and conveyed the idea that "the song of humanity is the song of courage."
One particularly memorable scene involved a father who, fearlessly piloting his fighter jet as a missile, directly confronted the Reapers' City Destroyer, sacrificing himself to give his children and the underground military base a chance at survival.
As for the Reaper civilization, in the Independence Day universe, they were like locusts, detestable and loathsome, yet unavoidable. Wherever they went, nothing was left alive.
Their societal structure was similar to the hive system of Earth's bees, with "queens" and "matriarchs" acting as the higher-ranking units, using a form of telepathy to remotely control worker and soldier ants.
This hive-mind structure made the Reaper civilization highly unified and extremely efficient.
However, this system also had a fatal flaw: once the queen or matriarch was killed, it would affect the soldier and worker ants under her control, causing them to instantly lose their ability to act and fight.
In Independence Day, humanity won the final battle by killing the queen and nuking the mothership.
What surprised Samuel Young was that the Reaper civilization actually existed in the main universe as well.
But there was no way Samuel Young would allow the Reaper mothership to approach Earth's orbit, risking catastrophic damage to space stations, orbital elevators, and critical infrastructure in places like Accra and Libreville, not to mention the potential loss of billions of lives.
Even though the Reaper civilization had been defeated by humanity in Independence Day and its operating system was vulnerable to human electronic viruses, there was no denying that they possessed the capabilities of a second-tier civilization.
For instance, their mothership, a standard carrier used for scouting star systems, could hold between twenty and thirty billion worker and soldier ants, along with forty disc-shaped City Destroyers, each over twenty kilometers in diameter.
Additionally, the Reaper Queen's flagship was a massive vessel with a diameter of 5,000 kilometers, capable of directly siphoning the core of a terrestrial planet to use as fuel.
Moreover, the Reaper civilization was known for its most iconic technology: the energy shield.
In the Independence Day universe, after negotiations with the Reapers broke down and humanity realized the Reapers took pleasure in slaughtering the weak, they decided to fire a tactical nuclear missile at a City Destroyer hovering in Earth's atmosphere.
However, a single tactical nuke was insufficient to penetrate the warship-grade energy shield.
Considering that the Destroyer was hovering over major cities, humanity in Independence Day couldn't freely use nuclear or hydrogen bombs, further complicating the situation.
Fortunately, humans discovered that the Reapers' operating system couldn't resist electronic viruses.
As a result, the military sent an elite pilot and a scientist to infiltrate the mothership using a captured Reaper fighter.
Though they encountered some difficulties, they ultimately succeeded in disabling the Reapers' weapons and defense systems. Humanity seized the opportunity to launch a full-scale counterattack and won the battle to defend Earth.
Thus, Samuel Young planned to adopt the tactics used by his counterparts in the Independence Day universe. He would dispatch a fleet consisting of five Selene-class military transport ships and two Fides-class frigates to infiltrate and take over the Reaper mothership approaching Earth.
For this purpose, he had specifically called on Saint Giles, who was in charge of Universe Zero-Four (Netherworld), to lead the combat forces and protect the research team's field personnel in their mission to disable the mothership's systems, allowing Atlas to capture it.
In Samuel Young's eyes, the Reaper attack was both a crisis and a rare opportunity for Atlas and humanity in the main universe to advance rapidly.
If this raid succeeded, Atlas would directly gain technologies such as "energy shields," "planetary core extraction," and "warp travel," along with a ready-made hundred-kilometer-class carrier.
However, Samuel Young found it difficult to appreciate the design of the Reaper mothership.
Simply put, its appearance was completely out of step with Atlas' aesthetic, and the engineering department would have to carry out a full overhaul.
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