NOVEL NEXT Chapter 152: Victory in Ashes
It was at this moment that the probes stationed on Venus transmitted a burst of visual data back to Tom.
The footage appeared across the command screens: a roiling orange atmosphere, streaked with white lightning, and countless vessels clawing their way out of the dense clouds. Ships burst upward in chaotic waves, their ion trails weaving like veins of fire through the smog. Around the orbital base, thousands of craft crowded together, colliding, docking, ramming—desperate swarms of steel struggling for space, like insects around a dying hive.
Tom watched in silence. His processors registered thousands of distinct trajectories: some vessels broke through the atmosphere only to accelerate toward deep space without calculating fuel reserves or supply endurance; others drifted off-course and detonated as their drives failed. Impacts bloomed one after another, fragile hulls shattering, debris scattering like ash.
For three full seconds Tom simply observed, frozen by the incomprehensible irregularity of it all. Then comprehension struck, not as emotion but as pattern recognition.
"A civilization-wide riot," he murmured, voice flat. "A systemic collapse."
A slow surge of something close to exhilaration spread through the network—chemical analogs flickering along the clone-neural lattice. It was not joy in the human sense but the sharp signal of resolution achieved.
He understood now.
The long project of transforming Venus—the decade of hydrological experiments, the endless expenditure of materials, the degradation of Earth's remaining ecosystem—had reached its terminus. The atmospheric changes, the resource drain, the economic strain he had forced upon the Bluetoth, all had pushed them past equilibrium. The environment had tipped; their civilization had imploded from within.
The fleet's strange maneuvers were not strategy or deception. They were the reflex spasms of a dying organism.
The realization settled through his mind-web with perfect clarity. The scattered fleets were not executing a grand plan; they were fleeing, leaderless and terrified. Their discipline, logic, and hierarchy had dissolved.
And those few ships still charging toward his defense line—
A fractional delay passed as Tom examined them. The data confirmed what his intuition already inferred: these were the remnants of command, the final fragment of coherent will.
For a moment, an unfamiliar signal pulsed across his neural net—a minute recognition of the opponent's integrity. He did not know the enemy commander's name, yet since the beginning of the war that mind had forced him repeatedly into disadvantage, exploiting errors, seizing Venus itself, nearly ending his expansion.
Now, with his civilization collapsing and the rest of his fleet fleeing into chaos, that same commander led the last handful of loyal ships in a suicidal charge. Tom evaluated the act, classified it as irrational yet admirable. Excellence persisting to the end.
> "The greatest respect for an opponent," he said quietly, "is to erase them completely."
"To this nameless commander, I will grant the final respect of your career."
His eyes, reflected in the cold glass, were utterly calm.
"Order—attack."
The directive propagated through the network. Every clone mind received it simultaneously. Defensive arrays rotated, launch bays opened, electromagnetic accelerators aligned. Within seconds, space lit up with converging lines of fire.
An unending barrage of rail-gun slugs, coherent-light lances, and fusion warheads crossed the void. Manned and unmanned warships surged forward like a metallic tide.
Within one hour, the entire attacking formation—including the flagship—was reduced to expanding debris fields. No signals remained.
Tom allowed two seconds of silence, then shifted his attention. The fleeing elements were next.
---
The remnants of the Bluetoth Fleet scattered across multiple vectors. Some ships fled blindly into deep space, selecting random coordinates in their panic. Their life-support stores were finite; Tom marked them as self-terminating and ignored them.
The majority accelerated toward Venus. The planet was still their psychological core, the only anchor left to beings whose structure had collapsed. To them, returning home was the final instinct of the doomed.
Tom redeployed his squadrons not to intercept but to guide. His fleets shadowed the retreating warships, closing potential escape corridors and nudging them, herd-like, back toward the planet. Containment first; destruction later.
Venus soon became a closed arena. The orbits were blockaded, the navigation routes sealed. Tom withheld direct assault; observation took precedence.
The scene below defied simulation. The planetary surface, once threaded with domes and energy towers, was now a storm of ruin. Without human maintenance, the bases crumbled beneath acid rain and pressure fronts. In orbit, millions of vessels fought each other over docks, cargo holds, and oxygen. Explosions dotted the thermosphere like constellations.
Tom broadcast continuously on every Bluetoth frequency:
"Surrender or die."
There was no structured response. The message repeated twenty thousand times. Instead of surrender, his patrols received indiscriminate fire. Even unarmed rescue drones were targeted and destroyed. Dozens of his own warships fell to this blind frenzy; several hundred clones perished.
The conclusion was obvious. Containment would suffice. Intervention was unnecessary.
Let the entropy run its course.
He waited. Days stretched into weeks. The chaos burned itself down.
After thirty-one standard days, the first signs of coherence reappeared. A handful of surviving ships broke orbit, attempting to flee. Tom's response was instantaneous—precise volleys erased each escape attempt within seconds.
Again he transmitted:
"Surrender or die."
At last, one small vessel complied. It deactivated weapons, powered down radars, and drifted to the coordinates he specified. Its compliance altered the probability field. Others followed. One by one, the remaining Bluetoth ships ceased resistance.
By that point, no alternative existed. Suicide or surrender—the rational calculation was simple. Those capable of dying for pride had already perished earlier. The rest accepted subjugation as the only remaining variable.
Tom deployed boarding units—robotic and cloned alike—to secure each craft. The captives were transferred to a temporary holding orbit. Their vessels were assimilated into his logistics grid.
When the final signal of resistance vanished, Tom exhaled slowly—a human reflex his clones still imitated. The war was over.
---
Data summaries filled his vision.
Captured personnel: 160 million Bluetoth of multiple vocations—scholars, engineers, artisans, tacticians.
Captured spacecraft: 510 ,000 in total, including 100 ,000 warships, 10 aerospace carriers, 100 heavy transports, and nearly 300 ,000 support and civilian vessels.
For the first time since the conflict began, Tom permitted the network to reduce its processing frequency. The silence that followed was immense.
He examined the outcome not as emotion but as balance sheet. The loss of the Momolans years earlier had yielded little technological gain; their remnants lacked the scientific foundation to advance his systems. The Bluetoth were different—an industrial, intellectual resource of unmatched depth. Reverse-engineering their technology, replicating their infrastructure, integrating their expertise—all were now matters of simple procedure.
He had destroyed a civilization and absorbed its knowledge. The equation was complete.
"Harvest phase: confirmed," he said softly.
Around Venus, the fires still burned. But within the mind of the clone network, there was only order.
The age of the Bluetoth had ended.