Chapter 142 - 141: The Fall
A three-dimensional virtual projection displayed the entire Solar System.
General Harir stepped forward. His finger, covered in fine, silvery-white scales, finally tapped one of the planets.
It was an exceedingly bright planet with an extremely thick atmosphere.
Venus.
The relevant battle plan soon arrived on the Heirwe Supreme Leader’s desk. As he looked over the plan, a faint smile finally broke through his usually stoic expression.
"Harir, you have not disappointed me. Since you’ve found the enemy’s weakness, then do it."
...
The brutal battle raged on. But now, the enemy’s fleet movements seemed unusual.
Li Qingsong noticed that a large portion of the enemy fleet was maneuvering toward the inner Asteroid Belt.
Inside the Asteroid Belt are the four rocky planets. Outside the Asteroid Belt are the four gas giants.
This seemed to mean the enemy’s main target for the next phase of their attack would be the rocky planets.
’Why this deployment? The rocky planets’ defenses are clearly stronger than those of the gas giants.’
Li Qingsong couldn’t afford to be careless and began repositioning his own forces accordingly.
After completing his initial deployments, Li Qingsong saw a force of over two hundred thousand Blutuk Warships suddenly make a violent charge for Venus.
’Venus? Their main target is Venus? Why?’
Li Qingsong couldn’t quite understand.
As a major rocky planet, Venus’s defenses were also incredibly formidable.
Vast quantities of Interstellar Mines, Nuclear Missiles, Cannon Platforms, Unmanned Warships, and Manned Warships were stockpiled there. Its defenses were in no way weaker than Earth’s.
Furthermore, Venus could receive support from the other planets at any time.
By all accounts, Venus should not have been a soft target.
Though he didn’t fully understand, Li Qingsong remained on high alert, ready to give it his all.
The battle erupted. It was more intense than any engagement that had come before.
This was no longer the small-scale skirmishing from before, but a real, all-out planetary siege!
But this time, one detail seemed different from the past.
Li Qingsong saw that while the enemy was still furiously attacking his defensive forces, their focus seemed to have shifted away from his Warships and onto something else.
Supercomputer Ships!
The numerous Supercomputer Ships—scattered and concealed across the battlefield, each carrying a supercomputer running the strategic version of Wukong—seemed to have become the primary target of the enemy’s planetary assault!
Li Qingsong froze for a second, then realization dawned on him. A grim look immediately crossed his face.
’My opponent is as cunning as they come, a true veteran of the battlefield. His instincts are incredibly sharp!’
’No wonder they were willing to waste so many resources in the previous phase, engaging my forces in a chaotic melee across the entire Solar System. The melee was never the objective; finding my defensive weakness was!’
’And now, they’d actually found it—a weakness so minor it could barely be called one!’
Venus’s surface environment is extremely harsh.
Due to its incredibly thick atmosphere and a severe, runaway greenhouse effect, the average surface temperature on Venus is over four hundred degrees Celsius, hot enough to melt metals with low melting points.
Furthermore, Venus’s atmosphere contains vast amounts of highly corrosive sulfuric acid. Its atmospheric pressure is also immense—more than ninety times that of Earth’s.
Thunderstorms, gale-force winds, acid rain, and extreme heat. The surface itself is a wash with flowing lava. The environment is so hostile that not even Li Qingsong’s level of technology allowed for large-scale infrastructure construction on the surface of Venus.
Consequently, the Supercomputing Bases—which play a vital, one might even say the most critical, role in the planetary defense system—were not built on the surface of Venus. Instead, they took the form of Supercomputer Ships operating in space.
This arrangement was unique in the entire Solar System. Aside from Venus, every other planet—even Mercury, the closest to the Sun—had numerous canyons, craters, and other locations suitable for building ground-based Supercomputing Bases and land-based defense bases.
Even Earth had numerous supercomputers built on its surface.
While Earth had no land-based defense bases, planets with atmospheres like Earth, Venus, and Mars didn’t need them anyway.
The atmosphere itself is a natural shield. High-speed Electromagnetic Cannon Projectiles, laser beams, artillery shells, and Interstellar Missiles simply can’t penetrate its protection.
Initially, the lack of ground-based supercomputers wasn’t an issue. The Supercomputer Ships in orbit could still bear the responsibility of running the Wukong AI and coordinating the entire defensive network.
It couldn’t even be considered a weakness.
But...
That was only under normal circumstances.
But now, with the enemy deliberately seeking them out and dedicating immense combat power to attacking the Supercomputer Ships, their weakness was immediately exposed: unlike ground-based Supercomputing Bases, the spaceborne ships lacked the natural protection of an atmosphere.
The Supercomputer Ships in space were far more vulnerable to destruction!
Even though Li Qingsong had already designated the Supercomputer Ships as high-priority assets, hiding them behind legions of unmanned combat units, that level of protection still couldn’t compare to the natural shield of an atmosphere.
In the skies around Venus, more than a dozen Supercomputer Ships were destroyed in a short span of time by an enemy that seemed willing to pay any price.
Li Qingsong had plenty of reserve Supercomputer Ships, which came online instantly to take over, continuing to coordinate the entire Unmanned Combat System. But they, too, were being destroyed one after another.
No matter how large his reserves were, their numbers were ultimately finite.
The Supercomputer Ships from other planets were too far from Venus. The resulting communication delay made it impossible for them to take over the task of coordinating the unmanned forces there.
’Transfer Supercomputer Ships from other planets?’
’It’s no use. Even if I brought them over, they’d just be destroyed as well.’
With so many Supercomputer Ships destroyed, the operations of the unmanned forces—a crucial component of Venus’s defensive line—became noticeably sluggish.
As ships were destroyed, their computational loads had to be shunted to the survivors. But each individual ship had limited processing power, making bottlenecks and lag inevitable.
This, in turn, caused the Unmanned Combat System to run even more slowly, reducing its combat effectiveness and making the remaining Supercomputer Ships even easier to destroy.
Although every unmanned combat unit contained a tactical version of Wukong, which could mitigate some of the losses caused by the strategic version’s failure, it could only do so much.
The strategic version of Wukong and the Supercomputing Bases were irreplaceable.
In just a few days, the situation had deteriorated to an almost irreversible point.
The fall of Venus was almost unavoidable.
Li Qingsong knew exactly what it would mean for the war if the enemy gained an entire major planet to use as a logistics and supply base.
His technology was insufficient to build large-scale infrastructure on Venus, but his enemy’s was not!
Their technology was more advanced. They had that capability!
But...
"If I can’t hold Venus, then I won’t defend it at all! You can have it!"
Li Qingsong gritted his teeth and made his decision. "I’ll turn Venus into your tomb!"