Will the out-of-control servitor meet the cosmic cat?

Rush!

Volume 252 Industry and Power: Chapter [-] Going Behind Enemy Lines

However, although Hong believes that the effect of delaying time by relying on depth and guerrilla attack cannot fully meet the needs, they still need to do more things.

However, this will not affect the guerrilla strategy they formulated before - food needs to be eaten at one bite, and the road needs to be walked step by step. Until other better methods are found, small-scale combat based on guerrilla warfare will become the main theme of the battlefield .

Since the warp drive cannot pass through the wormhole safely, what Hong was most concerned about when preparing the plan was how to let the destroyer fleet headed by the Span Rui destroyer pass through the barrier of the wormhole and penetrate deep into the enemy. Fang's territory—after all, the deeper they dive, the greater the damage they can cause to the opponent, and the more they can force the opponent to devote their energy to dealing with their flexible and powerful elite fleet.

Therefore, the composition of this combat fleet is different from that of most military fleets. They are equipped with many special, non-combat-type auxiliary ships, such as heavy-armored missile ships used to quickly clear nuclear air mines around wormholes. In contrast, the tonnage allocated to the main battleships of the entire fleet has just reached 50%.

Moreover, since the warp speed engine carried by No. 2945 was originally a special model prepared for long-distance single-ship crossings, it is very different from the warp speed engine in Red's hand, which was designed to lead the fleet to short-distance transfers. It was modified so that it could move the fleet to some extent.

But after all, the technology industry has specialization. In order to ensure that the breaking ability of the No. 2945 engine is not sacrificed too much, the ultimate warp field release range of this engine is limited to a radius of 120 kilometers, and the ultimate warp mass is only 2.5 million tons. Compared with the 500-kilometer range of the Glory engine and the warp mass of up to 80 billion tons, that is a far cry.

However, compared to the Glory, the warp speed engine of the 2945 also has considerable advantages in other aspects. As a machine that has been properly maintained, except for the moderate damage caused by forcibly passing through the Tukeka wormhole last time, basically The warp speed engine that has not encountered other forms of damage, its performance is relatively complete, and it will not be like the ancient civilization engine used by the Glory. Due to the long years and extremely serious damage, the current performance is not as good as One-twentieth case of completeness.

Therefore, even if part of the energy efficiency is sacrificed after the modification, the remaining performance alone is enough to allow a fleet of 5000 million tons to travel about 1.1 million kilometers at 5000 times the speed of light-this is enough to meet two The requirements for point-to-point navigation between planets are met.

As long as the opponent doesn't have a strong warp disrupting force field to catch them, or has a better warp engine to chase them directly, it's almost impossible to catch such a slippery fleet by relying on conventional navigation alone. possible things.

According to Hong's plan, the destroyer will first transport the entire fleet of 2 million tons to the enemy's territory, find an uninhabited asteroid group that can mine basic resources such as water ice and carbon, and settle it down .

Then, Red will divide the battleships into three groups, and No. 2945 will only carry one group each time it goes out to reduce weight, increase the range and flexibility of a single warp speed, and then return to the base after completing each mission, and send this ship to the ship. The damaged fleet is replaced and repaired, and another brand new fleet is taken to continue the battle, and this cycle is repeated.

Theoretically, as long as it is not caught by the opponent's warp/anti-warp fleet, the combat of this disengagement fleet can continue for a long time-even in the worst and worst case, the opponent has a high-performance warp engine and at the same time It also has a high-performance warp-disrupting force field generator, and has spent a lot of money dispatching troops several times their size.

Then, No. 2945 can also run away with its powerful conventional engine originally installed by Spanrui, and keep the warp speed engine on it and a warp speed disrupting force field generator specially distributed by Red, and lose at most [-] million There are only [-] tons of warships + [-] tons of auxiliary ships—and judging from the current situation, the possibility of this situation is very small.

After all, if the other party really had these things, they would have ridden directly on their faces. How could it be like this? It took almost 10 days to take over the Earth-Moon Element, and it took another two days to prepare for it before starting. How about setting off, relying on slow conventional engines to cover a distance of hundreds of millions of kilometers, to occupy other planets in the inner/outer solar system?

This time, it was finally Hong's turn to experience the unilateral suppression brought by the warp drive.

"The warp flight has ended. The current position is 1000 kilometers away from the lunar wormhole. The relative speed is 2.2 kilometers per second. It is expected to arrive at the wormhole in 9 minutes and 30 seconds."

After 4 warp voyages, the 5000-million-ton breaching fleet came from Venus, [-] million kilometers away, to the sky above this gray-white satellite—unlike other wars, this time the opponent only attacked It destroyed Pan-Asia's armed facilities and orbital facilities such as skyhooks and electromagnetic ejection tracks, but did not choose to destroy their production facilities as well.

Of course, this is not because the Lupers are merciful and want them to continue to produce in enemy-occupied areas. The reason why the other party does this is obviously to allow the remaining small troops to take over so that production capacity can be restored as soon as possible. Their activities in the theater provide a certain amount of logistics—it can’t be that all the supplies are transported from the rear, the cost and efficiency of doing so is really unacceptable.

Red and humans are also happy to see this. After all, the Lupers want to occupy human production facilities and reuse them. They also want to rely on local guerrillas to harass their production, and even take advantage of their main force Recover lost ground when they are away—their guerrilla tactics are not limited to the fleet that followed No. 2945 and prepared to go deep into the enemy's rear to carry out sabotage. There are also many ordinary guerrilla fleets that use conventional engines to deal with the opponent inside the solar system. .

Especially after confirming that their own side is definitely not a united enemy of the Great Rupert Kingdom, the IFCF and the Foreign Alliance simply sent half of their fleets and scattered them to all corners of the solar system-by then, the main force While the fleet was circling and consuming the other side, the guerrilla fleet took the opportunity to go around and steal their homes, and continued to regain the planets they had occupied.

In addition, since the tactics of plasma gunships rely on the number of hard piles and close the distance against battle damage, plasma gunships can still compete with laser/electromagnetic gunships of the same size during large-scale main battles, but in small Combat with a small fleet, especially a small fleet with only a few dozen ships and a total mass of only 3000 to [-] million tons. The plasma gunship cannot compete with the laser/electromagnetic gun mixed fleet of the same tonnage.

Therefore, send a small fleet of the same size to fight against the Great Rupert Kingdom. They can’t beat the long-range laser/electromagnetic gun fleet; send an advantage of several times the size to encircle and suppress the fleet. .

It would be even better if there were enough defensive fleets left, which is equivalent to forcing the guerrilla fleets to leave a not-so-small defensive fleet on each planet without a single soldier. The bigger the enemy is, the less the main force the enemy can use to attack, until the fleet is exhausted and unable to break through the frontal line of defense, their mission will be considered complete.

This scene, just thinking about it, feels pleasing.

Although the opponent must have discovered their actions and realized the purpose of this fleet that is using warp speed to quickly approach the wormhole, but unfortunately, their main fleet is too far away from here, so that it is too late to return.

As for the auxiliary fleet staying in the local area, the combat power is about 0. Let alone stopping them, if they don't kill them casually, they will already be red. Time is tight, and there is no time to run over to destroy them.

After confirming that the neighboring galaxy did not have any decent defenses through the spy satellite launched earlier, Hong kicked the accelerator and sent the fleet into the wormhole leading to the distance.

The war has just begun.

...

It took about a month for the Breaking Fleet to set off from the solar system and cross seven galaxies all the way, before finally being stopped in front of a galaxy that was heavily armed and guarded by an entire main fleet.

Although the probe only had time to glance at the fleet and fortress deployed over another planet, it was destroyed by the battleship they guarded here in advance, and failed to find the location of other wormholes in this galaxy.

But with the tip of their tails, one can imagine that this heavily armed galaxy is definitely not an ordinary galaxy that is simply used to connect territories, but to guard against a civilization that they don't know yet.

According to the current information, this galaxy is not leading to the Akachi Swarm or the Riga Swarm—the galaxy leading to the Akach Swarm is the second hop after leaving the solar system, and they have already passed by for a long time. The Riga swarm is in another direction, and there is a temporarily unclear distance from the galaxy they are currently in, but at least no less than 7 jumps.

In the previous diplomacy, the Lupers only shared the approximate star map up to the galaxy they were in, and did not mention any information about the next galaxy that was fully armed.

Obviously, the Lupers didn't want them to know about this civilization.

This time Hong cheered up all of a sudden—something the Lupus didn't want them to know?

Then she has to find out today!

Therefore, after placing the "family" in a relatively affluent asteroid group, Hong began to destroy the industrial area, and at the same time planned the follow-up investigation mission non-stop, trying to find out the identity of the galaxy next door. specific situation.

The current known situation is that the corresponding exit of the wormhole in front of the red crossing fleet is on planet No. The deployment location of the fortress is on the fifth planet.

In addition, this galaxy is different from the previous galaxies. The previous information is all red dwarf galaxies, and the habitable planet types are all amino--for Lupers whose life form is almost exactly the same as them, it is obviously a There is no living value, which can also be judged from the very small population of these galaxies.

And this galaxy is an orange dwarf galaxy like the star of the cat alliance mother star-this means that the habitable planet in this galaxy is very likely to be carbon-based habitable, in other words, there is very likely to exist Rupert Large settlements in Sri Lanka.

In such a place, a heavy-duty fortress is specially built, and at the same time, it is equipped with an entire main fleet with a total mass of over 20 billion tons. Obviously, these Lupers are fighting against a powerful alien civilization and confronting each other.

If you can get in touch with the other party, even if it is just a simple exchange of information, it will provide immeasurable great help to this war.

After tensely planning for about half a month, finally, after once again making a fuss in an important industrial area of ​​the galaxy and beating up the local defense fleet, the No. 2945 ship returned to the temporary base, It was simply repaired for a while, but it did not take away a fleet of battleships to assist in the destruction as before.

This time, she took away a heavy high-speed reconnaissance ship.

Since Lupers' battleship has already stood in place in advance, it is impossible for Hong to let her single-push man rush into the wormhole-without the advantage of range, it is impossible for the laser ship to be the same as the plasma gunship within the range. Even if the opponent wins, it can only be a miserable victory.

There are many and heavy tasks on the shoulders of the cross-border fleet. It is impossible for Hong to cause heavy losses just to talk to the civilization on the other side.

Therefore, when no/light armored detectors will be destroyed in seconds, and at the same time, the fleet cannot be used to rush into the wormhole, the use of heavy reconnaissance ships becomes the only option-this thing is of high quality and cost, It is still a one-time item, and the entire fleet has only brought 3 ships in total.

For this reason, Hong also brought three other frames with main equipment, to see if there is a chance to get some materials and armor from the occupied enemy industrial area to build them.

In addition, in addition to the high cost and quality, the time required for the detection of these heavy scout ships is also very long-in order to ensure that they can rush through the opponent's defense line at a very fast speed, so that the opponent has no time to destroy it, these scout ships are equipped with The extremely expensive ultra-high-performance engine can accelerate to a high speed of [-] kilometers per second while wearing heavy armor that can't even hit the soul with a plasma cannon.

However, in order to reach this speed, these reconnaissance ships need to accelerate from a place at least [-] million kilometers away, and it takes at least one month of acceleration time. It can be said that not only the cost of construction, but also the time cost of its reconnaissance is quite high .

As long as there are any other methods, Hong will not choose to use this long investigation method that needs to wait for more than a month to get the result.

However, it turns out that the high cost has its effect after all.

After a month and a half of acceleration, the heavy scouting ship successfully accelerated to a high speed that everyone could only hope to catch up with, and rushed past Lupers' defense line like sparks and lightning.

It was so fast that the Lupers Plasma Gunship couldn't keep up with the speed at which it moved across the firing line, and it couldn't even track effectively, let alone shoot accurately.

Therefore, except for a bit of damage caused by a lucky plasma cannon, the high-speed scout ship passed through the defense line in an almost undamaged state, flew into the interior of this heavily guarded galaxy, and began to use The various expensive high-performance sensors it carries collect internal intelligence, trying to dig out its mysteries.

Soon, under Hong's deliberate collection, she got detailed information about the fifth planet that was guarded by the fortress and the main fleet—yes, it was a habitable planet.

This is the first time that Hong has seen a habitable planet belonging to the Lupus since it bordered the Great Lupus Country for three years.

"My cat..."

Looking at the photos taken by the scout ship through the telescope, as well as the data being continuously sent back by other instruments, Hong muttered to himself.

That's right, she did find a planet around that fortress, a "livable" planet.

The nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, the temperature range suitable for the existence of liquid water, comfortable gravity, and no high concentration of toxic gases are completely livable ranges for humanoid creatures like them. Generally speaking, such planets only need a little modification and adaptation. It can meet the needs of interstellar colonization and provide them with a good living environment.

The only problem is-

It is gray.

Volume IV Industry and Power: Chapter 253 Stars of Steel and Concrete

Looking at the gray planet in the distance, Hong remained silent.

By analyzing the data returned by the equipment, she has understood why this habitable planet is gray - this is a planet that has been modified by the environment, a planet shaped by the Rupers according to their will planet.

A planet shrouded in reinforced concrete.

Planetary transformation itself is a very normal thing. Since the moment humans landed on Mars, they have always dreamed of transforming Mars into a habitable planet, allowing people to walk freely on the surface of Mars without wearing protective clothing. In Hong's ideal list, there is also the establishment of a scientific research-oriented urban planet, and the creation of a scientific star born for the progress of civilization.

Although the current productivity does not allow them to realize these dreams, at least their dreams are to make life better—whether it is a livable environment or the light of progress, they all represent the contribution of intelligent creatures to a better life. The longing for represents the meaning of their hard work.

However, this planet tells them in an extremely radical way that planetary transformation is not always linked to the "pursuit of beauty".

It can also be used to "do evil".

According to the analysis of the photos, most of the natural sights have been lost on this habitable planet. No matter how beautiful and charming it used to be, it is already a long time ago.

Today, there are only large expanses of giant buildings left here, gray jungles made of reinforced concrete—whether it is an administrative agency that symbolizes authority and strength, or a giant compound factory for production, each building is incomparable. It is tall and magnificent, and every detail can see the builder's admiration for the magnificent.

Even the most ordinary residential area, its builders will try their best to express its solemnity and greatness. If you click on any city, you can see at a glance those located in the city, which are more than [-] meters wide and as high as A giant residential building with a length of more than [-] meters and a total length of several kilometers.

In order to ensure that the formation of the people can be efficient enough, these giant residential buildings are often connected end to end, presenting a circle shape, and at the center of the circle is a magnificent stone sculpture of a person they call "the leader".

The height of this sculpture is about 300 meters. At the same time, there is a huge stone platform with a height of more than 100 meters under the feet. The combination of the two makes the upper part of the sculpture itself surpass the surrounding giant residential buildings, so as to ensure that any room around People inside have to look up to see the face of the sculpture.

It's as if the majestic statue in the human world is overlooking the mortal beings lying under their feet.

Through the powerful large-scale telescope, Hong can even recognize the specific shape of the sculpture from such a long distance. Its body is slightly tilted, and its left arm is firmly across the chest, as if it is resisting the attack from the outside world. Dirty, while the right hand is pointing straight ahead, and at the same time, the sharp eyes are also staring at the direction the right hand is pointing, as if to guide the way forward for the believers under their feet.

Or, is it the direction of the enemy?

Hong doesn't know.

From the design of these residential areas, Hong can see many things—magnificence, majesty, grandeur, majesty, power, etc., many terms can be used to describe these giant buildings located in the city.

Among these nouns, however, only one thing is missing.

"people."

Looking at these photos, Hong whispered softly.

As a residential building, a building designed to provide people with a place to live, it is grand and majestic, majestic and majestic, and the giant sculpture in the center reveals an infinite sense of power. Most people who see it can feel awe from the bottom of their hearts This statue can feel the Great Rupert Kingdom represented behind it, as well as the taste of that power and strength.

It has many advantages and only one disadvantage.

It is not suitable for living.

It has no "human taste".

Hong slightly imagined the feeling of living in such a residential building - every morning, accompanied by the government's bell ringing according to the schedule, people opened the curtains, and at a glance they could see the endless gray sky and a Tall, giant gray statues that seem to pierce the sky.

Taking a deep breath of the air that has been seriously polluted by industrialization, people walk into the kitchen and take out the breakfast planned by the government. One serving is divided into seven flavors, and the health nutrition cream is rotated every day. They are eaten on time according to the time specified in the schedule. Then put on work clothes, open the door, take the nearest elevator to the bottom of the building, then walk out of the corridor, get on the train packed like sardines, and go to the factories they have arranged in various places in the city to start working.

Day after day, year after year, until the age is too old to fulfill the needs of the post-after that, the existing information cannot be predicted.

Maybe after a lifetime of busy work, you can finally move to a place with beautiful mountains and rivers to enjoy the past years?

Hong could only think so.

In fact, according to Hong’s calculations, the ones who can “enjoy” this kind of life are already middle-ranked Lupers in Greater Lupers—at least they still have a window that can really be pushed open, and they can enjoy this kind of life from home. See what it looks like outside, and even if you are lucky, you can enjoy the sunshine.

After all, those who are in the middle and lower floors of the building, the light is blocked by the opposite residential building, or the giant posters hanging on the building, or even inside the building from the beginning, covered by reinforced concrete in all directions. People who have to get out of the building to see the outside world.

Who can hear their voices?

"This is no longer a simple totalitarianism." Hong re-photographed the document on the table, and the screen behind him continuously showed various photos taken by the scout ship, "We must strike hard."

Regarding this, no one at the scene expressed any objection—they were all so shocked by the scenes before them that they couldn't speak.

They do know that the Great Rupert Country is a totalitarian country, and they do know the various meanings of totalitarianism, and what kind of horrors real totalitarianism (not those terms used for labeling) will do, and have always been , they are all afraid to use the worst and worst ideas to imagine what this big Rupert country might do.

But after seeing these, they finally realized that what they thought was still too kind.

"Burn all the forests, use synthetic factories covering the surface to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen to keep the atmospheric oxygen content normal; The drop exposes a large area of ​​land at the expense of rising ocean levels on the other side, and for this a ring of dikes has to be built along the coastline to prevent it from being submerged..."

Seeing these behaviors that can be described as "unnecessary", everyone felt extremely puzzled.

Why do you want to do this?

What is the purpose of doing this?

In this regard, Hong's answer is very simple.

"Because the Great Rupert Kingdom believes that doing so can make the environment controllable." Hong spread his hands, "That's it."

The pursuit of power and control in the Great Rupert Kingdom has reached an almost perverted level. They fanatically want to bring everything under their control, and want to make the world change according to their will—although Red sometimes There is nothing wrong with admitting that they will do this. It is better to say that any intelligent creature will have the idea of ​​changing the world according to its own will.

But the fundamental difference between the two is that whether it is red, human beings, or any normal person, the fundamental reason why they want power and control other things is that they want this power to achieve a certain goal —Whether this goal is good or bad, at least it is a goal that they think needs to be achieved.

Grand Rupert, however, is different.

They shouted for the greatness of the Great Rupert Kingdom and the prosperity of the Ruperts, but in fact, they never had a real and clear goal.

What they are after is to control themselves.

No matter what the purpose of doing this is, whether the benefits are worthwhile compared to the cost, or even a pure loss-making business, it doesn’t matter if it’s superfluous—they don’t care how stupid it is to burn the forest and replace it with an oxygen plant, they don’t care Such a long dam has brought nothing but a piece of saline-alkali land, let alone the psychological needs of the people for a better environment.

What they want is the feeling that the world is at their will.

Even if the cost is to damage the overall benefits of civilization.

This is not about efficiency first. On the contrary, doing so is trampling on efficiency—you know, this is not the kind of transformation of a desolate planet that is not livable, and its own ecological environment is livable.