BATTLE FOR STARS

For the Duir Republic, it was the most populous nation within the Confederation. Its population had surpassed thirty-five billion, yet it possessed fewer than eight hundred inhabited planets.

On average, that meant nearly five hundred million people per planet.

And that figure was deceptive.

Once the countless small industrial and agricultural worlds with sparse populations were excluded, the major planets each housed one billion people or more. Some of them even feed billions of people.

So where had the Duir Republic's rank system come from?

In the beginning, Duir had been founded by a group of people dissatisfied with Gaia's unequal treatment of humanity. They pursued ideals of equality and universal compassion instead.

During the era of great interstellar expansion, such a system worked remarkably well. It maximized people's motivation while preserving a sense of fairness.

Originally, the rank system had never been intended to divide society into rigid classes. Its purpose was to encourage effort and ambition, pushing people to strive for higher ranks. In a society without private property, rank itself became one of the few meaningful measures of achievement.

But as society developed, problems gradually emerged.

The number of high-ranking citizens continued to grow. Living standards improved across the board. Eventually, people realized that opportunities for promotion were becoming increasingly scarce.

Many simply gave up trying.

After all, it was impossible for everyone to keep moving upward forever.

The privileges enjoyed by a high-ranking citizen consumed dozens, sometimes hundreds, of times more resources than those allocated to someone at a lower rank.

As advancement became harder and harder, people's motivation to work declined.

No matter how hard they worked, promotion was often out of reach. Yet their basic living needs were guaranteed regardless.

If that was the case, why not just take it easy?

Against this backdrop, an old population-growth policy remained in effect.

Every citizen was entitled to have at least five children.

As a result, many people had children simply because they could. The state covered the expenses, so there was little burden on the parents themselves.

The Duir Republic eventually became the most populous nation among the four member states of the Confederation.

Of course, some people suggested reducing birth rates.

But policies that ran contrary to popular sentiment were difficult to pass.

People already had little chance of climbing the social ladder, and now they were being told to have fewer children as well?

Besides, how much fewer?

That was hardly a simple mathematical problem.

After years of debate, no meaningful policy changes were made.

The population, meanwhile, continued to grow.

At first, Duir had been able to leverage its vast labor force to manufacture inexpensive goods.

But as automation spread throughout human space, the market for Duir's low-end products steadily shrank.

Even jobs became scarce.

And if employment itself was no longer guaranteed, promotion became an even more distant dream.

To occupy its increasingly "bored" population, the Duir Republic partnered with the Kramic Kingdom and introduced Immersive Devices.

These systems allowed a person's entire nervous system to connect directly to a virtual world.

Once inside, it became almost impossible to distinguish reality from the game itself.

The technology certainly solved the boredom problem.

But it came with side effects.

People's ambitions diminished.

Their interest in politics faded.

Even their concern for their own lives and futures weakened.

The Duir Republic had succeeded in reducing public dissatisfaction, but it had done little to stimulate economic growth.

After all, people without ambitions had even less desire to work.

In recent years, the situation within Duir had become increasingly difficult.

The nation had a massive population, a sluggish economy, and an ongoing war abroad.

Worse still, each new war was larger than the last.

Modern warfare, to a great extent, was a contest of economic strength.

Duir's situation differed greatly from that of the Kramic Kingdom.

For the Kramic Kingdom, manpower was the greatest bottleneck.

Duir, however, had no shortage of people.

What it lacked was technology.

What it lacked were opportunities for advancement.

As a result, its economic growth remained slow, and its starship production capacity lagged behind as well.

When the Kramic Kingdom proposed replacing older unmanned starships with a new generation of models, the Duir Republic participated in the program, but among all Confederation members, it replaced the fewest vessels.

It was less a matter of choice and more a matter of necessity.

"Right," Vivian said. "How confident are you in this plan?"

She didn't want war.

But she feared defeat even more.

For Duir, war cost money.

Losing a war cost far more.

Vivian had risen from a junior officer to a Fleet Commander. Years of experience had taught her not only military strategy, but also the basic economic realities behind war.

"It's hard to make guarantees in war," the officer replied. "Whether the plan succeeds will depend heavily on your fleet's cooperation."

"Don't worry. We'll give it our full support. When will you tell me the details?"

"In your office. Better for security reasons."

"Fine. No problem."

As technology advanced, secrecy had become an enormous challenge.

Military personnel were prohibited from possessing personal communication devices. They could only use equipment issued by the armed forces, and as long as they remained in service, private communicators were strictly forbidden.

Even so, information leaks still occurred from time to time.

To ensure security, the Kramic Kingdom's Ministry of Defense had dispatched personnel to deliver this plan in person.

The operation itself was extremely complex.

To maximize its chances of success, the Kramic Kingdom had implemented the strictest security measures possible.

Fortunately, the Duir side had been equally cooperative.

At least when it came to preparations, no one had shown the slightest sign of negligence.

Everyone understood the importance of the coming battle.

The liaison shuttle successfully returned to Vivian's flagship.

The vessel was roughly three kilometers long and nearly five hundred meters in both width and height.

Of course, nothing about its appearance revealed that it was a flagship.

It looked exactly like every other starship of the same class.

The reason was simple.

The more distinctive a flagship appeared, the more likely it would become the enemy's primary target.

As a result, warships of the same class were visually identical regardless of nationality.

In fact, starships utilized a dual-core structure.

The inner core housed most of the crew and propulsion systems.

The outer core contained the ship's offensive and defensive weapons.

The inner core was roughly one kilometer long and over two hundred meters wide and tall.

Between the two cores lay a massive honeycomb network of energy-absorbing armor and specialized materials.

Why devote so much space to honeycomb armor?

The answer was simple: survival.

Modern weapons inflicted devastating damage.

Missiles came equipped with nuclear warheads, neutron warheads, high-explosive warheads, and countless other variants.

A nuclear warhead could generate temperatures exceeding one hundred million degrees at the center of its detonation, enough to melt virtually any armor.

Neutron warheads were even more insidious. Their radiation could penetrate metal alloys and kill living organisms inside a vessel directly, requiring large quantities of hydrogen-rich materials to absorb the neutron flux.

In reality, however, missiles rarely struck a starship directly.

Defensive lasers, ultra-high-velocity electromagnetic cannons, and interceptor missiles destroyed many incoming threats long before they reached their targets.

Furthermore, assaulting starships traveled at extraordinary speeds.

In combat, a ship can travel hundreds or thousands of kilometers in a single second.

A missile usually had no choice but to detonate at a predicted point along the ship's path, making direct impacts extremely difficult.

That was why starships carried such immense layers of energy-absorbing armor.

Even when a missile successfully "hit" a ship, the result was often limited damage rather than a fatal blow.

This was also why a military starship cost hundreds of times more than a civilian vessel.

Not only were they vastly larger, but the quantity and quality of materials involved were on an entirely different level.

The Hill Empire's starships were noticeably smaller than those of the Confederation.

Most measured only two thousand to twenty-five hundred meters in length.

The primary reason was that they had reduced the thickness of the central armor section.