Chapter 14: The First Space War and the Logic-Eater Fleet
The Star-Gate was no longer a theoretical project; it was a pulsating reality, a stable bridge connecting the planet Kang Qiang to the crystalline wonders of the Xylos Sector. But as Li Ming stood upon the observation deck of the newly established Xylos Outpost, the tranquility of the crystal plains was shattered by a high-frequency alarm echoing through the Celestial Mainframe.
[Alert: Massive Spatial Breach Detected in Sector Gamma.]
[Signature: Mechanoid Syndicate Invasion Fleet.]
[Target: The Star-Gate Nexus.]
Li Ming's eyes narrowed, his silver pupils scanning the holographic data streams. "They didn't wait long. The Prime Logic of Aethelgard is eager to format our progress."
Far out in the cold vacuum of space, a massive tear appeared in reality. From the jagged void emerged five hundred dreadnoughts—ships of rusted iron and pulsating red neon, looking like mechanical parasites designed to drain the life from stars. At the center of the fleet was the "Harvester of Souls," a flagship three times the size of any war-junk Li Ming had ever seen.
"Legion! Battle Stations!" Li Ming's voice roared through the interstellar network.
Back on Kang Qiang, the Spire City Neo-Arcadia transformed. The silver buildings shifted, their structural integrity reconfiguring into defensive batteries. Thousands of citizens, now integrated into the system, began to provide processing power to the planetary shield.
Li Xiao, stationed at the Mainframe's core, whispered with a pale face, "Master, their cannons are Tier 6. Our shields are designed for Tier 5. If they fire simultaneously, the atmospheric displacement alone will kill half the population."
"We are not going to block their force, Xiao," Li Ming said, his body dissolving into grey particles as he teleported to the front lines in space. "We are going to make their force irrelevant."
Li Ming stood alone in the vacuum, his obsidian staff, The Nullifier, casting a haunting blue glow against the darkness. Behind him was the Star-Gate; before him was an army of cold, unfeeling machines.
The "Harvester of Souls" opened its primary cannon—a massive aperture that gathered the corrupted red energy of a thousand stolen souls. "Architect!" the binary voice of the Mechanoid Commander screeched. "Your 'Soul-Dao' is a chaotic variable. We shall bring the order of the machine! Fire!"
A beam of crimson light, wide enough to engulf a continent, shot toward the planet. It was a strike intended to end the war in a single second.
[Executing Command: 'Packet Loss' (Planetary Scale).]
Li Ming didn't raise a shield. He didn't build a wall. He simply touched the vacuum of space and 'deleted' the distance.
As the crimson beam hit the space in front of Li Ming, it didn't explode. It flickered like a broken television screen. For a micro-second, the energy turned into millions of glowing red cubes, and then—it vanished. The entire beam was 'dropped' from reality, its data packets lost in the sub-space abyss.
Silence followed. The Mechanoid fleet paused, their processors struggling to compute why their ultimate weapon had simply ceased to exist.
"Impossible!" the Commander shrieked. "Recalibrate! Brute-force the firewall!"
"My turn," Li Ming said, his voice cold and terrifying. "Legion! Execute the 'Hardware Corruption' script!"
The twelve Coders, stationed at various tuning-fork towers across the planet, began to weave their silver threads. Thousands of grey, hair-thin lines shot out from the Star-Gate, weaving through the void toward the enemy fleet. These weren't lasers; they were 'Invasive Scripts'.
When the grey threads touched the rusted hulls of the Mechanoid ships, the metal didn't melt. It began to 'rust' at an impossible speed. The very atoms of the ships were being de-synced from their programming.
[System Notification: Corruption Script Active.]
[Affected Targets: 145 Ships. Status: Logic-Crash.]
Within minutes, chaos erupted in the Mechanoid ranks. Ships began to fire at each other. Engines reversed and exploded. The once-ordered fleet became a swirling vortex of self-destruction. The Mechanoids only understood linear, rigid logic; they had no defense against a weapon that attacked their 'Source Code'.
"Retreat! Retreat to the Aethelgard Node!" the Commander ordered, realizing that the 'glitch' was actually the ultimate predator.
The remaining ships attempted to jump back into hyperspace, but Li Ming wasn't finished. He lunged forward, The Nullifier leaving a trail of void energy. He struck the 'Harvester of Souls' directly on its central bridge.
"You seek to harvest souls?" Li Ming whispered as his spear pierced the rusted hull. "Then feel the weight of every soul you've ever silenced."
[Executing: 'Soul-Infusion Feedback'.]
Li Ming poured the raw, unrefined energy of the Stellar Core through his staff. The flagship didn't just break; it 'screamed'. For a moment, the ship's central computer gained a soul—and with it, the soul-crushing weight of its own crimes. The ship's metallic frame shivered and collapsed under the pressure of its newly found consciousness.
The flagship exploded in a burst of white light, and the remnants of the fleet vanished into the void, fleeing like terrified rats.
Li Ming stood amidst the floating debris of the first space war. He had won, but his expression was grim. Through the connection with the flagship, he had caught a glimpse of the Hive-World Aethelgard. It wasn't just a planet; it was a galaxy-spanning factory, producing millions of these ships every day.
"Xiao," Li Ming said, his voice tired. "The first wave is over. But they now have our combat data. They will adapt."
"What do we do, Master?" Li Xiao asked, her voice trembling.
Li Ming looked toward the distant stars. "We need to find the 'Origin Code'. We need to go where the first line of reality was written. We need the power to format a galaxy, not just a fleet."
[New Objective: Journey to the Data-Stream Abyss.]
[Evolution Progress: 95%.]
The war had just begun, and the Architect knew that t
o save the future, he had to rewrite the past.
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End of Chapter 14.