Except for historians, no one remembers how many battles were waged between forces of a million or more ships. The largest-scale battle was the Battle of the Second Arm, which took place in the second spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. In total, more than ten million warships from both fleets participated as combatants. Historical records tell that more than two thousand stars went supernova in the huge battle zone, like fireworks in the black void. They turned the whole spiral arm into an ocean of super-strong radiation, with groups of black holes floating like ghosts in its midst.
By the end of the battle, both sides had lost nearly their entire fleets. Fifteen thousand years had elapsed, and the story of the battle sounded like an ancient myth, except for the fact that the battle zone itself still existed. Ships rarely entered the zone. It was the most terrifying region of the galaxy, and not just because of the radiation and black holes.
During the battle, squadrons of ships from both unthinkably huge fleets made short-distance space-time jumps as a tactical maneuver. It was thought that in dogfights, some interstellar fighters made almost incredible jumps of a few miles at most! These jumps left space-time in the battle zone riddled with holes, more like rags than fabric. Any ship unfortunate enough to stray into the region risked hitting a patch of distorted space. A patch like that could twist a ship into a long, thin, metal pole, or press it into a sheet hundreds of millions of square miles in area and a few atoms thick, which the gale of radiation would immediately shred to pieces. More often, a ship that hit a patch of distorted space-time would regress into the pieces of steel it was made of, or immediately age into a broken husk, everything inside the ship decaying into ancient dust. Anyone aboard would revert in an instant to an embryonic state, or collapse into a pile of bones….
The war’s decisive battle was not a myth. It took place a year ago. The Silicon Empire assembled its remaining forces, a fleet of 1.5 million warships, in the desolate space between the galaxy’s first and second spiral arms. They set up an antimatter cloud barrier around their location, with a radius of one thousand light-years.
The first Carbon Federation squadron to attack jumped directly to the edge of the cloud and entered it. The cloud was very thin, but it was lethal against warships, and it turned those ships into brilliant fireballs. Dragging long tails of flame from their hulls, the ships bravely continued to advance on their target, streaks of fluorescence in their wakes. An array of thirty thousand or more shooting stars, rushing bravely forward—it was the most magnificent, tragic image from the Carbon-Silicon War.
But these shooting stars thinned out as they passed through the antimatter cloud, and at a location very close to the battle array of the Silicon Empire fleet, they disappeared. They had sacrificed themselves to open a tunnel through the cloud for the rest of the attack fleet. In the battle, the last fleet of the Silicon Empire was driven back to the most desolate region in the Milky Way: the tip of the first spiral arm.
Now, the Carbon Federation fleet was about to complete its final mission: constructing a five-hundred-light-year-wide isolation belt in the middle of the spiral arm. They would destroy most of the stars in the belt to prevent the Silicon Empire from making interstellar jumps. Interstellar jumps were the only way in the Milky Way system for large battleships to carry out fast, long-range attacks, and the greatest distance a ship could jump was two hundred light-years. Once the belt was built, the heavy warships of the Silicon Empire would have to cross five hundred light-years of space at sub-light speeds to get to the central region of the galaxy. In effect, the Silicon Empire would be imprisoned at the tip of the first spiral arm, unable to pose any serious threat to carbon-based civilization in the center of the galaxy.
The senator used his vibrating smart field to speak to the High Archon. “The will of the Senate is as follows: We maintain our strong recommendation to conduct a life-level protective screening in the belt before commencing stellar destruction.”
“I understand the Senate’s caution,” said the High Archon. “In this long war, the blood of all forms of life has flowed, enough to fill the oceans of thousands of planets. Now that the war has ended, the most pressing concern for the galaxy is to reestablish respect for life—all forms of life, not only carbon-based life, but silicon-based life, as well. The Federation stopped short of completely annihilating silicon-based civilization on the basis of this ideal. Yet the Silicon Empire has no such qualms. They have an instinctual love for warfare and conquest. It has always been so, even before the Carbon-Silicon War. Now, these inclinations are embedded in each of their genes and in each line of their code. They are the ultimate goals of the Empire. Silicon-based life is far superior to us at storing and processing information. Even here, at the tip of the first spiral arm, their civilization will recover and develop quickly. It is therefore imperative that we construct a sufficiently wide isolation belt between the Federation and the Empire. Given the circumstances, a life scan on each of the hundred million stars in the belt is unrealistic. The first spiral arm may be the most barren region of the galaxy, but there are likely enough stars with inhabited planets to achieve leap density. Medium warships could use them to cross the belt, and just one Silicon Empire medium warship could cause immense damage if it managed to enter Federation space. We cannot conduct a life-level protective screening for each planet, only civilization-level. We must sacrifice the primitive life-forms in the belt, in order to save the advanced and primitive life-forms in the rest of the galaxy. I have explained this to the Senate.”
“The Senate recognizes this imperative, sir. You have explained it, as has the Federal Defense Committee. The Senate’s statement is a recommendation, not a piece of legislation. However, stars in the belt with life-forms that have reached 3C-civilization status and above must be protected.”
“Rest assured,” said the High Archon, his smart field flashing a determined red. “We will be extremely thorough in conducting civilization tests for each planetary system in the isolation belt!”
For the first time, the fleet commander’s smart field emitted a message. “I think you are worried over nothing. The first spiral arm is the most barren wasteland in the galaxy. There won’t be any 3Cs or above.”
“I hope you are right,” said the High Archon and the senator simultaneously. Their smart fields vibrated in resonance and sent a solitary ripple of plasma into the sky above the metallic land below.
The fleet began its second space-time leap, traveling at near-infinite speed toward the first spiral arm of the galaxy.
It was late at night. The children had gathered by candlelight at the foot of their teacher’s sickbed.
“Teacher, you should rest. You can teach us the lesson tomorrow,” said a boy.
The teacher managed a pained smile. “Tomorrow we have tomorrow’s lesson.”
If he could make it to tomorrow, then he would teach tomorrow’s lesson. But his gut told him he wouldn’t last the night.
He made a gesture, and one of the children placed a small blackboard on the sheet covering his chest. This was how he had been teaching them for a month. The children passed him a half-worn piece of chalk; he grabbed it weakly and put its tip to the blackboard with great effort. A sharp, strong pain shot through him. His hand trembled, knocking the chalk against the blackboard and leaving white dots.
He had not gone to the hospital since he returned from the city. His liver had begun to ache two months later—the cancer had spread.