Foundation 3: Has Dusk Turned The Invictus Into A Death Star?

The second episode of Foundation season 2 began with a more than hundred-year-old Hari Seldon showing Gaal Dornick everything he had figured out about the eight Crises that Gaal or others might have to face moving forward. In the previous episodes, Gaal, Hari, and Salvor had already dealt with the First and the Second Crisis, and the third one was almost upon them. The third one, also known as the Seldon Crisis, would be centered around the Mule, who through his “mentalics” abilities would wreak havoc in the galaxy. But the Mule wasn’t what Hari was worried about. Activating the Prime Radiant, he told Gaal that if the Mule was defeated, then the path forward would lead to the Invictus, implying that the Imperium War Ship might have a larger role to play in the future Crises. However, you might be wondering, how is that possible? I mean, the Invictus was destroyed, right? At the end of the second season, it crashed into Terminus, creating a mega-flare or a singularity that devoured the whole planet in a matter of seconds. It turns out, the Invictus wasn’t really destroyed during the impact, which could explain the reason why Hari mentioned it in his predictions. But what exactly happened to the jumpship after the events of season 2? No one really has the answers as of yet, but I have a few theories in case you want to hear me out.

Spoiler Alert

The Empire Retrieved the Invictus

The third season of Foundation takes place some 152 years after the destruction of Terminus, which means the Empire had enough time to retrieve their most prized possession and take it back to Trantor. The question here is: why? Why would the Empire need their old toy back, especially when they knew that it was no longer in its former glory? Well, in season 2, Hari had sent Hober Mallow to conclude a deal with the Spacers and turn them against the Empire. In the Foundation universe, Spacers are genetically engineered beings who can navigate the jumpships, and the Empire needed the Spacers to operate their Imperial Fleet. So, after the Empire lost control of the Spacers, they were fastidiously looking for technology they could use to travel across the galaxy. Now, in season 1, Lewis Pirenne, one of the directors of the First Foundation, had told Salvor that the Invictus was one of the oldest starships that could operate without Spacers. Instead, it used a navigation cradle in which an unaugmented individual was hardwired directly into the ship so they could use their brain’s processing power to navigate the space jumps. Hence, it could be assumed that after the falling out with the Spacers, the Empire might have decided to retrieve the old jumpship so they could use its powers in case of emergency. Surprisingly, the Empire had found another destructive use for the Invictus’ wreckage.

Dusk Turned the Invictus Into A Death Star

One of the most shocking revelations of the second episode was that Brother Dusk had turned the Invictus into a weapon of mass destruction. I know “turn” isn’t the right word, because the jump ship was already a world killer, but the Imperial scientists made a few tweaks to the beast’s wreckage and amplified its capabilities beyond anyone’s imagination. They used Invictus’ wrecked skeleton to house a black hole bomb, the Novacula, placed at the center of the three concentric rings. According to the scientist, the Novacula harnessed the power of the unbridled spin of the beast, which rotates hundreds of times in a second. What they tried to do here is use the black hole as a “heating element.” I am sure you know how an electric geyser works, right? In the case of the Novacula, they have weaponized the outer region of the black hole, the ergosphere. They punctured this outer layer with electromagnetic waves and photons, creating a chain reaction that unleashes an immense amount of heat, the same way the electricity heats up the coil of wire in a heating element. And once the black hole has turned into a ball of fire, they would activate a mechanism that compressed this unendurable force and directed it towards the target in the form of a beam. And as soon as this stolen force came in contact with a celestial body, it obliterated the entire planet in the blink of an eye and turned it into a ball of dust. I know that Foundation fans will say that Isaac Asimov’s books are the blueprint for the Star Wars franchise. That said, as far as I know, the Novacula is a creation of the showrunners of Foundation, and it seems like they have taken inspiration from Star Wars and created their very own Death Star. I’m not complaining, but if you think otherwise, let me know in the comments.

Hari Could Be The Brain Behind The Novacula

If you think that this was the first time the Invictus has been used to cause such destruction, then think again. If you remember, in season 1, Hari’s digital consciousness had told the people of the First Foundation that the jumpship Invictus was really crucial to the success of his plan. I think he wasn’t just talking about dealing with the First and Second Crises but was hinting at the fact that the ship might come in handy after the Third Crisis. At the end of season 1, he asked Hugo Crast to take the Imperial jumpship to the distant arm of the galaxy with a dangerous star and some dead planets and activate the quantum drive, maintaining the position of the ship in subspace. This would create a mega-flare which Hari believed would wipe out all life in the solar system. Hari’s plan was to create an energy signature that would convince the Empire that the planets in the Outer Reach had been destroyed by the megaflare, therefore making the people of the First Foundation invisible to them. They would be able to thrive without the Empire meddling in their affairs. And I am sorry that I took a lot of your time to come to the point, but this was needed to underscore the fact that Hari always knew what the Invictus was capable of. 

The Novacula might be a new packaging for an old machine, but they create a similar effect, in a way. So, what I am trying to say is that it could be possible that while Gaal was in cryosleep, Hari directly or indirectly contacted the Empire and gave them the idea of creating such a weapon. The reason I say so is because at the end of episode 2, we saw Gaal contacting Brother Dawn, which means the Second Foundation had been in contact with the Empire for a long time, and they might have been sharing ideas to stop a common enemy, the Mule. While unveiling his magnum opus, Dusk had mentioned that recent revelations had moved up their timeline, forcing him and his team of scientists to speed up the development of Novacula. It’s obvious that Dusk was hinting at the third crisis, the Mule, to be particular, who had recently taken over Kalgan. Now I am not sure under what extraordinary circumstances Dawn is going to use the new machine, but it could be theorized that he might end up pointing it towards Kalgan and destroy the planet to get rid of the Mule. In the episode, he had already told Foundation Ambassador Quent that the Empire was only bothered about “us” and no one else, so Dawn wouldn’t think twice if there’s a threat looming over his galactic empire. 

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