It has been three days since the fleet left the Imperial Zone.
Of course, since there is no concept of time in the void, this "three days" is calculated according to the standard time axis of the empire. No matter how far it is from the empire zone, we will keep the time scale on the battleship consistent with the empire zone.
For warships in the void, traveling is a constant "jumping". Every time the void engine modifies its own information identification code, it is equivalent to transferring the entire fleet once. This is a non-linear way of advancing, and each jump is very fast. In the absence of an "absolute path" as an obstacle, the only thing that affects the fleet's forward speed is the calculation ability of the void engine. And three days is enough for us to go a very, very long way—but we still seem to be farther away from our destination.
After all, the action speed of the fleet cannot be compared with that of the void shuttle. Although Tavel tried his best to install a modification plug-in to increase the sailing speed of each spaceship in the fleet before departure, this improvement is limited. It will take us more than half a month to reach the first suspected coordinates.
Now the fleet is far away from the border, but it is still within the range that the Death Garden system can barely radiate. The empire has sent some sporadic outposts and automatic observation posts to this area, and there are also some self-proliferating and self-evolving self-discipline bases. It can be said to be the limit of the empire's power. Through the transfer of the frontier outpost development station, some unclear civilian channels can still be received here. Although there will no longer be any civilian expedition ships here, these civilian channels are still using their weak signals to declare imperial hegemony here. presence.
It's really a desolate and dead place. We have never developed it here, because there is really nothing to develop here-only three or two universes can be searched within the information offset of thousands of units. And all of them are lifeless. This place is as empty as a large cemetery, and even the remnants of the world are rare things.
Occasionally this very empty area appears in the void. The distribution of the world in the void is uneven, where there are dense places, there are sparse places, and the extreme sparseness is this kind of desolate area. The Desolation was a desperate situation for the casual civilizations there. This means that even if they develop the technology of cross-world navigation, it will be difficult to find other universes alive, and they will die on the long way to the first voyage; but for some cross-world civilizations, this kind of desolate area is rare Natural barriers: Without the universe as a springboard, it means that the abyss and foreign enemies are difficult to penetrate. You don't need to set up a sovereign hub in each world to build a costly "Great Sentinel Wall". This desolate area belongs to the latter. For several years it had served as an excellent barrier for the New Empire, and it had proven to be effective—the New Empire had never received any warning of the abyss seeping through this desolate area since its founding.
But this time we're trekking through the barren land. This kind of journey is not difficult for the Imperial Fleet, but it is extremely boring, and there is nothing to see along the way. Even Qianqian, a vigorous girl who keeps being excited anytime and anywhere, quickly gets bored.
Fortunately, the imperial spaceships are quite large, even to the extent that towns are commonly found inside. The hundreds of kilometers long Imperial Admiral has additional space for expansion warehouses, and the size of its towns has reached the level of a city. Although each spaceship is a purely industrialized military center. But walking the streets of those cities can also make you forget for a moment that you're on a starship sailing through the void. In addition, there is a large-scale ecological ball in the spaceship. This is enough for Qianqian to work for a long time - the girl will not be depressed.
But Qianqian can run around and play. But I have to be on duty in the command hall often. Although I know that I am not an expert in the professional field, after all, as a commander, I have to set an example, and no one can be absent in this kind of meaningful voyage. Only me and Sandora can't. Although we usually talk about eating together and waiting to die, we still have awareness at critical times.
Of course, the more important thing is that if you skip work casually, you will be bitten by Sandora. I can't bite her... Well, I'm not in the habit of biting!
This is the afternoon of the third day. I was called by Sandora to the command hall to accompany her within half an hour after lunch. The place is always brightly lit and busy, every command seat and every data terminal is constantly receiving information and sending out commands, as the brain of the entire spaceship and even the entire fleet coordinates everything. And here Sandora and I seem to be monitoring the working status of this brain-is this metaphor a little bit curious
"Huh, it looks like another day of doing nothing," Sandora was also a little bored (in fact, I suspect that she called me here just to find a fellow sufferer to kill time with her), she exhaled and looked at the Embedded data terminal, "You can still receive the signal from the Garden of the Dead. It seems that the last time the system upgrade of the Garden of the Dead was quite effective. But it's time to drop the outpost. Although the spiritual network has always been very reliable, it is better to leave a few more An avenue of communication is always good."
I looked at the picture sent back from the external monitor. Located in the middle and rear of the fleet are dozens of huge engineering barges. The outpost development station, and the role of the outpost development station is to ensure the smooth communication between the fleet and the empire area.
After all, we are going to a rather remote place, and there are many unexplored environments in the middle, and a large number of stations must be set up along the way to prepare for various accidents.
The superstructure of an engineering barge was slowly opened, and a dozen autonomous machines and a small workboat floated out of it. Behind them was a silver-white cube dragged out by a tractor beam. This silver-white cube is the "construction core" of the outpost development station. They have a long-term maintenance order field, and a set of architectural blueprints and information-matter transformation devices required for self-expansion are sealed inside. Good base unit. This basic unit needs very little external intervention to operate, basically it is thrown into the void by autonomous machinery and workboats, and then positioned to set an activation mode. The rest of the work can be done by the construction core itself, they will grow rapidly, and finally become a permanent station similar to the void node of the Protoss. The standard configuration of an outpost development station is as follows: a core computer room, located in the dome building in the center of the site; two sets of high-power void communication modules. They are two large antenna towers at both ends of the site; a medium-sized factory that can continuously produce autonomous machinery and small work boats, these work units are used for self-maintenance and basic defense of the site (although there is nothing Enemy. But Xiling Apostle is used to hanging guns everywhere); two sets of transmission devices, these transmission devices lead to the next outpost development station, all the outpost development stations are connected by this void portal, and finally lead to The Empire Zone; the last is a living space that can accommodate hundreds of people (loaded with the New Empire Survival Protocol, which can provide an ecological environment for seventeen life forms, and provide "quick freeze preservation" services for other life forms).
The pioneering station is actually unmanned, but one of its main purposes is to provide security for the nearby explorers in various extreme environments. In addition, a survival cabin that can accommodate hundreds of people will not put pressure on the space expansion device. Large, so these sites have living quarters.
The basic shape of an outpost is a blunt olive. There are antenna towers protruding from the main body at both ends. The alloy carapace and psionic energy barrier completely cover the other parts of the outpost development station. They range in size from one kilometer to ten kilometers, depending on whether they need to be "long" that large. In such a desolate area, the outpost development station is an important communication device. Also "insurance" for the duty officers working here, should you run into danger in the void. Then escaping to the outpost may be your last chance - and you can quickly return to the empire zone through the outpost teleporter. But to be honest, people who encounter danger in the void may not necessarily have time to escape to the nearest outpost. In any case, most mortal creatures are too fragile in the void.
"Perhaps we should take this opportunity to set up more development stations." Seeing the workboat and the autonomous machine dragging the silver-white cube with a side length of 100 meters out of the field of order and disappearing behind the fleet, I suddenly had an idea, "We can Let the development stations be connected into a network in the desolate area, and then use them as a target to build a transmission channel to the home world. After all, the home world is too far away, and the power of the death garden can't "drag" it. We can't always It took half a month to fly every time, and it was more difficult than Sheila visiting our house."
"This is indeed a problem, but let's talk about it when I have a chance in the future." Sandora pondered for a moment, shaking her head slightly, "It takes a lot of energy to set up the continuous jumping channel you mentioned, and this place is a desolate area, and there are no universes around it that can be used as nodes." , The jump passage itself requires a lot of self-maintenance components, and our fleet is not here for construction along the way."
I nodded, still remembering this matter in my heart. This problem will have to be resolved sooner or later: the home world is far away from the current imperial area, and the practice of "dragging the new world over as a territory" that the Apostles of Xiling is accustomed to always has a distance limit. More than a hundred sky zones have been established, and the "distance" between the new empire and the home world is farther than that from the first sky zone to the one hundred and thirty-fifth sky zone! It is unrealistic to slowly crack the soil and open up borders to push over. We can only build a temporary passage to connect them.
By the way, I think of the Silk Road at this time, can our history be saved
The fleet left an outpost and moved on, followed by a more boring long journey.
Another week has passed, and the fleet has come to a strange void that no one has ever set foot in. If the previous information and calculations are correct, this is already the leading edge of the wave of destruction, and we will probably see it soon. A lot of world fragments.
But the first thing we see is something surprising.
Sandora called me to the research facility of the Admiral of the Empire early in the morning. A group of quality projections from Tavel are already busy here, and Abyss Xiling is also present. I saw on the holographic projection in the center of the hall that a large piece of broken wreckage appeared at the front of the field of order, and the fleet had already stopped in front of the wreckage.
A large number of workboats are shuttling through the wreckage, dragging out pieces of bright lines. I looked at the wreckage and looked familiar, so I couldn't help but ask Sandora next to me: "What is that?"
"It's the self-proliferating drone group we launched two years ago," Sandora frowned. "Part of them lost contact last year. I didn't expect to have multiplied to this place. But it seems that something gave Ruined."
Self-proliferating drone swarms? I froze for a moment, and then quickly remembered this: This was a detection plan two years ago. At that time, the battle between the New Empire and the Abyss was still in full swing. We urgently needed to expand our territory and increase our strength, so Sandora led the launch of a large number of self-proliferating drones. This drone is actually not a single device. It is a kind of "clan", including drone mother bases, conventional fleets, exploration laboratories, pioneering factories and a lot of things, which can generate huge collective power like ant colonies or bee colonies. Once this drone group enters the void, it will proliferate rapidly, looking for the world. Dropped the colony station, sent an attracting signal to the empire area, and at the same time desperately expanded and spread, only the orders set by the apostles of Xiling could stop them. This kind of fleet is used for "exploration and discovery", so they are not offensive except for marking the territory everywhere, and they are "safety products" (at least for the apostles of Xiling, but many ordinary races seem to be quite doubt). In the era of the old empire, this kind of docile and loyal drone group has always been an important auxiliary tool, and they helped the militant Xiling apostle break the ground. It has worked hard for hundreds of millions of years. The Age of the New Empire and their work is also very effective. That pioneering project two years ago brought us at least a third of the new territory.
However, not all of these drone groups can continue to work safely. Last year, a group of drones disappeared together with a mother base.
Such sudden disconnections are not uncommon, as drone swarms are exploring uncharted and treacherous territories. Their forward speed is not as fast as a void shuttle, but their spread is far greater than that of any void exploration team. So there will always be swarms of drones missing in the white zone. These missing fleets either encountered the abyss, or just happened to encounter the end of the world, and when the situation was serious, it was too late to send an alarm signal back.
The disappearance of the drone group last year was considered to be a relatively serious one, because they also had a mother base that had just been built by themselves, which was considered a large-scale brigade. Sivis also organized several search operations for this purpose, but Due to the fact that the missing aircraft group was too deep into the white area, and the abyss area was too restless for the empire to take care of others, this drone group gradually faded out of everyone's sight.
I didn't expect that we would see the wreckage of the aircraft fleet here. They are obviously not the batch that disappeared at the beginning, but should be the new fleet that has been multiplied later. I have to say that the expansion speed of these things is simply terrifying, and they have spread all the way to the white area without the coordination of the headquarters—fortunately, the core instructions of each drone include "do not interfere with the progress of local civilization, do not destabilizing the local world" (after all, they are used to mark new territories, the empire does not want to get a piece of scorched earth and a group of enemies when receiving territories from the drone swarm), otherwise this thing is definitely a bunch of horrible war plagues .
Even if the supernatural substances manufactured by the empire fall into the void without energy supply, they will quickly disintegrate and assimilate. Therefore, these wreckages that the fleet encountered should have been destroyed not long ago. Most of them have serious signs of "evaporation". The edges of some wreckages have been blurred like phantoms. I can even see this obvious blurring on the surveillance screen, but many wreckages are still intact. Let's salvage them It should be possible to confirm what happened in this area recently.
The workboat found a spherical device that looked pretty good from the wreckage. It was a silver-gray metal ball with a radius of more than one meter. There was still a dim blue light slowly floating on the surface. It should have been installed On a pedestal somewhere, but now all that's left of those connections is a few stubbles of broken metal. I watched as a working ship used a tractor beam to pull this spherical device into its container hold and then flew towards the Admiral Empire, while Tavier explained beside him: "That is the thinking device of the drone group. A thousand drones have one such "brain", and every hundred "brains" can form a home base. Of course, there are also phenomena of expansion or reduction of the establishment, which are all determined by the drone group itself. These The 'brain' has a very strong protective function. Even if the carrier ship they are in is blown up, these thinking cores can sail independently, and can survive in the void for a long time. These brains probably recorded the recent progress of the drone group. encounter."
This thinking core was quickly sent to the research facility of the Admiral of the Empire. Tavel led a group of experts to quickly disassemble it, and found the database inside it—fortunately, it was not broken.
According to database records, this thing was destroyed a few months ago.
A report was sorted out and sent to Sandora and me, and Abyss Xiling also got a copy. She looked at the conclusion of the analysis and shook her head slightly: "It seems to be related to the wave of destruction. The log said that the drone group lost contact with the Empire District After that, they chose to rebuild the communication link while continuing to expand into the depths of the void. They proliferated normally for several months. Finally, a large group of drones finally found a stable new universe, so the group consciousness decided to integrate itself with this new universe. They seem to be planning to build an industrial world, then create a giant mothership, and send a copy of the database back to the Imperial Zone, but before that... the entire universe 'shattered' without warning."
"Just like what those exploration teams reported, the world died in pieces, and the causes of death are strange." Tavel looked at the thinking core of the drone that had been disassembled, and his tone was quite sighing. "It seems that what we know about the void is still Too little, endless exploration... The world barrier can suddenly 'shatter', apparently only the void itself can do it. In theory."
"Don't study these ultimate secrets yet," Sandora put down the data terminal in her hand, and looked up at the large holographic projection not far away. The projection showed a panoramic view of the imperial fleet. The working fleet had already cleaned up the field of order. The wreckage of the front-end drone swarm, and released some autonomous workboats to find out if there are other swarms nearby (if possible, we still hope to recover some things, let's live), and the fleet itself prepares to sail again, "We should be close to the 'wave of destruction' now, and we may encounter unprecedented situations at any time, let the fleet get ready, turn on the sensor power fully, and switch the order field to the alert cruise mode-the speed can be lowered, Better than missing something."
In the next second, I realized that Sandora's sixth sense might be similar to Lin Xue's, because as soon as her voice fell, the shipboard broadcast sounded: "Attention, the tide of information has been detected, and we are about to touch the field of order! All members Get ready for impact!"
(I've been thinking about what to write a new book... Finally, I decided to use my brain hole style without integrity.) RL