Chapter 299: Analysis of the New Military Governor

The old Military Governor traded his own death for a temporary peace in the Trisolaran world, but the choices facing Trisolaris had never changed.

Supreme Leader: "I ultimately lost to humanity, not just in terms of cunning, but also in understanding the world.

"Before the war, the most serious scenario we had considered was that humanity still had other means of broadcasting interstellar messages hidden from us.

"But the reality far exceeded our expectations. Humanity defeated us head-on, and we had underestimated them too much.

"Their civilization's potential far exceeds mine, perhaps they are the ones more suited to this universe than we are. What path should Trisolaran civilization take next?"

Science Governor: "Among all the emergency plans we devised before the war, the most critical scenario was humanity broadcasting our coordinates to the universe.

"In that case, we would have no choice but to execute an escape plan. We estimate that we could only lead about 10% of Trisolarans to flee. For the remaining Trisolarans, we are helpless, we can't even use lightspeed spacecraft to transform the Trisolaran Star System into a Dark Domain to protect them."

The Science Governor showed a bitter smile: "We have three suns, and even if we turned the Trisolaran Star System into a Dark Domain, the three-body problem would still exist. Moreover, in the near future, our home planet will be consumed by these stars as well.

"The remaining Trisolarans, even in a Dark Domain, would be able to survive less than ten thousand years, and such survival is meaningless.

"This is different from the humans of the Solar System, who can choose to create a Dark Domain of the Solar System, where the remaining humanity can survive indefinitely.

"They have shelters, they can even choose to destroy their sun, stopping its fusion reaction. With the remains of their destroyed sun, the resources provided could sustain humanity for hundreds of billions or even a trillion years."

The Science Governor continued: "The next most critical emergency plan would be for humanity to establish Dark Forest Deterrence again.

"In this situation, we would dispatch more spacecraft to form a comprehensive blockade of humanity, using a gradual pressure, a boiling frog strategy, to trap humanity in a dire situation without them realizing it. When they finally become aware of the danger, it would be too late for them to escape.

"The Dark Forest doesn't truly protect weaker civilizations; it merely gives them a glimmer of hope.

"Of course, we have formulated other emergency plans, but these plans were not designed for a scenario where we were defeated. The current situation, although better than the extreme case of humanity broadcasting our coordinates, is only marginally better.

"I do not know what we should do, but if we carry out a full-scale escape now, we estimate we can only take away 15% of Trisolarans."

The new Military Governor analyzed calmly: "Dwelling on this doesn't serve much purpose, what we need to consider now is that our resources are limited.

"Should we pour all our resources into the escape plan, or devote a part of them to dealing with the human crisis?

"The human crisis response mainly consists of two points:

"First, Trisolarans who have infiltrated human society must do their utmost to delay humanity's expedition plans. For each day delayed, we might be able to fight for the chance of thousands of Trisolarans to escape. This would involve leveraging Lin Sen's Civilization Alliance Program, where we have short-term common goals.

"This plan could also potentially accelerate the development of human society.

"Second, we must lay numerous ambushes in the vast interstellar space between the Solar System and the Trisolaris Star System. As long as we can deal a heavy blow to the Human Expedition Fleet, we can gain precious time and delay their arrival in the Trisolaris Star System."

The new Military Governor added: "Of course, the second type of crisis response plan also carries great risks. Humanity has many suitable planets and moons, and their production of Sophons far exceeds ours. This means that in the field of interstellar exploration, humanity has a significant advantage.

"When humanity deploys tens of thousands of battleships and supplements them with thousands of Sophons for the expedition, the transparency of the battlefield will be heavily in their favor.

"What's more worrying is that humanity's Sophons might already be on their way to our Trisolaran Star System. Yet, we currently lack sufficient resources to construct an effective Sophon shield field."

The new Military Governor looked at the Science Governor and suggested: "I propose that we need to research new Sophon shielding technology, that is, Sophon Blind Zone technology, right now.

"Otherwise, all our actions will no longer be a secret to humanity, and our technology and strategies will be clearly exposed to them."

Science Governor: "Indeed, we must accelerate the research of Sophon Blind Zone technology.

"Sophon shielding fields exploit the instability of space, causing the dimensionally-reduced Sophons to be unable to maintain their form and be destroyed.

"Sophon Blind Zone technology is about directly severing the quantum entanglement between Sophons."

"The quantum entanglement between Sophons is a one-time event, once severed it cannot be restored, and those Sophons that enter the blind zones will be lost forever, as the Sophon blind zones are also undetectable by Sophons.

"We only have four years left, and we must break through this technology before the human Sophons arrive."

The Military Governor shook his head,"No, the Science Governor is oversimplifying the problem.

"There's another possibility, and it's the most likely one, that the human Sophons are already among us.

"Humans must have created Sophons quite some time ago, and the first thing they would want to do with them is not anything else but to come to the Trisolaran Star System for reconnaissance.

"Our conversation might already be under human surveillance.

"I personally am more inclined to start preparing for escape right now, and it should be by using curvature propulsion.

"All our preparations will be exposed to humanity, continuing to struggle against them is meaningless."

This struck terror into all the Trisolarans. Upon careful consideration, this indeed seemed the most probable scenario. If humanity possessed Sophon technology, they would very likely use it to explore the Trisolaran world.

At the moment, the Trisolarans present were also looking around nervously, as if trying to spot the human Sophons.

The Trisolaran world had never anticipated that humans would master Sophon technology, and were utterly unguarded against it. As long as the human Sophons were cautious, they would be quite hard for Trisolarans to detect, a risk and reward that humans naturally knew how to weigh.

Those accustomed to spying on others were now subjected to being spied upon themselves, everything about the Trisolaran world was laid bare for humanity.

The analysis by the new Military Governor had not ended, he continued,"I believe, that everything in the Trisolaran world, including technology, might have been stolen by humanity, and in many technological fields, humans have already advanced beyond us.

"And have you noticed something, why does Lin Sen insist on capturing our warships?

"On the surface, there are two reasons, one is to acquire our technology, the other is to capture a large number of Trisolarans to prepare for his Civilization Union plan.

"But I think there's only one real reason, which is to capture the large number of Trisolarans.

"What Lin Sen is really after is not our technology, but to study the Trisolaran people.

"The idea that capturing the warships is to obtain our technology is just Lin Sen's misdirection toward us.

"In our battle of wits, we have actually been led by their thoughts all along, in the intense confrontation, we overlooked the fact that human Sophons had come to the Trisolaris planet.

"Because in our minds, if human Sophons came to the Trisolaran world, obtaining our warships wouldn't make a great difference to the development of human technology.

"Lin Sen exploited this overly rational thinking of mine to design a logical trap for us, one that we can't extricate ourselves from once we fall into it.

"Even more crucially, our previous strategic deployments might have been completely exposed to humanity. This also explains why every move we make seems to fall within human expectations.

"The entire campaign has been a stratagem by Lin Sen from beginning to end.

"Even this conversation we're having now... might be under surveillance by Lin Sen..."

Suddenly, the Trisolarans, who had just found themselves in shock and tension, felt as though cold water had been poured over their heads, giving rise to an indescribable sense of panic within them. Their faces turned pale, and their eyes betrayed deep unrest and dread.

Some even stood rooted to the spot, with a vacant stare, as if struck by the news to the point of losing the ability to think.

This news was undoubtedly a crushing blow to the Trisolaran world.

In this atmosphere of panic, every Trisolaran felt an unprecedented pressure and sense of crisis.

Reality was indeed such, that two human Sophons had arrived in the Trisolaran Star System ten years ago, but their reconnaissance of Trisolaris had to be extremely cautious. Because once discovered by the Trisolarans, all of Lin Sen's plans would be rendered useless.

As soon as humanity had built Sophons, their first thought was surely to send them to explore the Trisolaran world for information, how could they only remain in the Solar System to command warfare?"