After finding a safe house to secure his physical body, David returned to the lunar base to inspect the first Night Lord he had hand-crafted. Because the gene-seed was entirely synthesized through David's own psionic power, he understood its developmental progress better than anyone.
"Perfect growth."
Looking at the Night Lord lying in the lunar base, David patted Smoothbore's face with satisfaction. Due to the expansion and enlargement of the skull, the skin on Smoothbore's face had cracked in many places, oozing dark brown, viscous blood. David wiped his hands with a towel after touching him.
"Should I awaken him now?" the Abominable Intelligence simulated by the Electronic Demon asked.
"No, not yet," David replied, shaking his head. "Can you find the coordinates for Trisolaris?"
"I can, but currently all information related to the Red Coast Base is encrypted at the highest level by human authorities. Although such encryption is trivial to me, it would inevitably leave traces."
"A Swordholder has the right to access Red Coast records. You just focus on operating the lunar base," David said. He looked around. Compared to the previous desolation, the lunar base now flourished under the Electronic Demon's control. Using Helium-3 as fuel for nuclear reactors, the Demon had established an improved laboratory factory and robot production line by reverse-engineering American lunar probes.
The transparent glass bottle in David's hand was one of the results of the lunar base's recent work. Walking on the silver-white fiberglass tiles of the laboratory, David examined the green liquid in the bottle under the prismatic overhead lights.
"So this is Polymorphine?"
The liquid in the bottle was not truly liquid, but a jelly-like substance. As David shook the bottle, the contents swayed rhythmically. David murmured to himself, then held the bottle to his nose for a light sniff. No scent.
Following the system's instructions, David dipped a bit from the bottle and applied it to Smoothbore's face. In the next second, Smoothbore's skin, flesh, and bone became soft, like modeling clay.
"Good grief, it even has a character customization feature? Is this some new game from NetEase?" David joked. He began to slide his fingers across Smoothbore's face, molding it into the likeness of a certain bald assassin from his memory.
"Done." Seeing Smoothbore's new face take shape—roughly seventy percent similar to his memory—David clapped his hands in satisfaction.
"Awaken him? According to data available on the internet, it only takes three to five days to give a Night Lord top-tier cold weapon combat capabilities," the Electronic Demon asked from the side.
"No, no need." David closed the glass door of the life-support pod. Then, he asked the Electronic Demon another question. "Load him into the main frame of the spacecraft. Once the Trisolaran coordinates are in hand, launch him and the ship together into deep space."
"Understood," the Electronic Demon replied. "Using the fragmented light-speed propulsion technology from the 'Singer' civilization, we can only build a space rocket capable of roughly one-tenth the speed of light. It can carry almost nothing except the pilot's body and gear. A space ecosystem is out of the question. Furthermore, once launched, it cannot change direction, accelerate, decelerate, or avoid obstacles mid-transit."
"Because the Singer civilization's technology is too advanced and deviates wildly from the path of human scientific progress, we cannot complete the technology unless we obtain their full database. However, the good news is that by using the fragmented time-stasis technology you provided, we can install a small stasis field inside the rocket. This allows the Astartes to launch their first raid in peak condition upon arrival, rather than wasting the most dangerous twelve hours of the mission."
"But the stasis field is still in the experimental stage. Calculations suggest that even the entirety of the Singer's space-time technology isn't enough to create a standard stasis field. The most reliable method is still to let the Astartes utilize their extreme survival capabilities to enter suspended animation, be violently awakened upon reaching the destination, and then carry out the mission after replenishing strength by consuming local organic matter."
The Electronic Demon explained much, but the core was simple: pack an Astartes into an interstellar rocket and hurl him toward the enemy's home world.
Out of concern for resource management, the rocket was designed to be fueled by locally mined Helium-3, meaning it was powered by a small nuclear reactor, making the cost extremely low. Because the rocket used thermal separation to reach one-twentieth the speed of light—a speed where interception becomes incredibly difficult—it would be a nightmare for the Trisolarans.
Unless they used exhaustive search methods, launching countless interceptors to near-light speed the moment they detected the rocket, or used higher-dimensional weapon strikes, the rocket would inevitably reach its target. And even the most strategically illiterate would have to ask, Is it worth it? to use such high-level resources to stop a single, crude suicide rocket.
The true core of this deterrence lay in the persistent destructive power of the Astartes Battle-Brother once he landed on the Trisolaran home world. Carbon-based organisms normally require massive life-support equipment to survive cryo-sleep, something even the Trisolarans struggle to miniaturize.
But the absurd advantage of an Astartes is that with only basic life support, he can enter a centuries-long hibernation. These modified warriors have stomach acid that can corrode steel; they can even replenish their strength by gnawing on meteorites or digging up soil from a planet.
With a modified lifespan of nearly three hundred years and combat effectiveness largely unaffected by age, they can conduct interstellar crusades within ten light-years. Once the Trisolarans fail to shoot down the Astartes Brother immediately, they will fall into a grueling interstellar counter-insurgency—a humiliating "shooting mosquitoes with AA guns" scenario.
And after David's Warp-tainted modification, their will to fight was indestructible. Most lethally, if the Trisolarans captured a live Astartes and tried to replicate the technology, they would inevitably begin researching the Warp.
David's eyes grew solemn. The Warp storm that would sweep the galaxy a hundred years from now would undoubtedly plunge the entire Milky Way into blood and madness. There were too many god-level civilizations in the Three-Body universe desperate to escape this reality. They wouldn't be able to resist the temptation of the Warp.
Because of the Dark Forest Law, they would be unable to unite to suppress or control the Warp before it grew too strong. The best possible outcome would be half of the god-level civilizations sensing the horror of the Warp and using their supreme technology to restart the universe—creating a harmonious, perfect world to shut out Warp interference forever.
But... is that possible? David sighed. No one knew how many civilizations would have that kind of resolve. Embracing the Warp, or even allying with newborn Chaos Gods to explore this power, would likely be the mainstream choice for these cruel civilizations upon first contact.
And there was a more immediate threat. David watched as the Night Lord was loaded into the unfinished rocket by the Electronic Demon's mechanical arms, looking at the faint points of light scattered across the star chart.
His greatest fear had come true. Psykers were starting to appear across the universe on a large scale. Deceptively, because the Warp had only just been born, these Psykers appeared stable... even reliable.
Listening to the prayers that sounded like whale songs or falling leaves, it was clear that many civilizations treated the birth of psionic power as a gift from the universe. They had begun to actively worship the source of this miraculous power—the Warp!
"We must speed up." David watched as the last alloy plate was fitted into the window of the life-support pod, completely sealing Smoothbore's body from the outside world.
"A Great Crusade is imperative. Humanity must shoulder its Manifest Destiny to guard the galaxy."