Chapter 298: Harvest and Trial
“This is—”
Black Smoke scanned the central nervous system prosthesis on the back of the Imperial officer’s head. “Hmm, I don’t know much about brain science, but looking at this blueprint, a lot of thin filaments radiate from the device, and then it seems to be directly connected to the brain nerves. There’s also something like a syringe piercing the spinal cord in the middle. Is it used to directly control hormones?”
“It definitely has some brainwashing effect,” Guo Li Cheng said, flicking the officer's skull with a finger, causing it to collapse. “Look at how ridiculously confident they all are. It’s inexplicable.”
“Perhaps… Anyway, we have all the data we need. Let’s withdraw!”
Four warp yachts, carrying the players who had completed the boarding operation, withdrew in time.
Eight hours later, another four Imperial warships, limited by light speed, arrived belatedly.
One smaller destroyer remained to organize rescue efforts on site, while the other three passed through the wormhole, pursuing the Cangyuan Fleet.
Upon returning to New Hope, Black Smoke copied the footage taken during the operation to the branch.
These clips would play an important role in future corporate propaganda, further increasing Cangyuan's prestige.
This battle was won, and they had thoroughly beaten a Boss in the Star Union Space. It was certainly worth boasting about!
Even though it was a relatively small-scale battle.
Afterward, the tens of gigabytes of blueprint data were first transmitted to Li Star via the Earth Interstellar Network, and then various samples were sent to the more heavily guarded 'Purgatory' underground vault, just in case.
After arranging all the work, Black Smoke warped to the Taibai, which was traveling at warp speed, to report the good news to everyone on the bridge.
“Executive Officer! After this glorious battle, we are bound to make new breakthroughs in the fields of energy and railgun technology! I believe that the design of a 400-meter-class frigate can now be put on the agenda!”
He transmitted an image to Lu Yuan.
“Look, this is a sketch I drew on the way! Calculated at 400 meters in length, the internal usable space is almost 8 times that of the ‘Qinling’ class. If the power room is scaled up proportionally, it can easily fit 16 Imperial reactors! Providing a terrifying total energy output of 19.2 TW!
“There are two main weapon options: one is a proportionally scaled-down Intelligent Order Consensus particle beam main cannon; the other is one to two axial Imperial railguns, each with about 30 times the power of the ‘Qinling’ class main cannon!”
Good heavens, 30 times—
That's the difference between a 9mm pistol and an anti-material heavy sniper rifle.
“Were those two warships we defeated earlier really that powerful?”
“Well…”
Black Smoke chuckled.
“Not really. It’s just that their technological reserves only support this level of capability.
“It’s estimated that those we fought against were just relatively cheap, non-mainstay warships, and their Sailors were also equipped with strange central nervous system prostheses, making them all 'big brains'—pure consumables.”
He sent the boarding video from earlier to the Executive Officer.
Hmm…
After watching the Imperial Sailors' abstract defense, Lu Yuan nodded in silence.
These people were very abnormal—
Their courage was undoubtedly specially enhanced, but unfortunately, the process must have damaged their intelligence, and something else.
For some reason, compared to Black Smoke and the other players, Lu Yuan felt a strong sense of unease.
He shook his head vigorously, focusing his energy on the matter at hand.
So, was the auxiliary combat software on the Imperial warships very powerful?
Did the Sailors only need to maintain high morale, get the basic operations right, and then fight to the death, leaving the rest of the work to the computer?
Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain their seemingly decent tactical proficiency.
“Have the branch do its best to decrypt the captured data. A portion of the funds can be allocated to hire professional hackers from Anya; they seem quite professional.”
In this era of widespread quantum encryption, one could only hope that the data on the hard drive or memory had been unlocked before, and that in the intense battle, there was no time to lock it again or completely delete it.
In this regard, one could only try with a lottery-like mentality.
“Understood, I will convey your order immediately!”
“Also, regarding the frigate, I agree. Let’s get it started as soon as possible and try to catch the next peak in ship production. By the way, which main cannon do you personally recommend?”
“The particle beam main cannon.”
Black Smoke answered without hesitation.
“This cannon can not only penetrate shields and armor, but its muzzle can also deflect within a certain range, probably a 50-degree cone angle directly in front. For large targets, it can focus fire; for numerous small targets, it can directly sweep, making it extremely versatile! The downside is that the entire system is very large and heavy.”
“We need to guard against future enemies possibly having effective means to defend against particle beams. The main weapon scheme cannot be too singular.”
Lu Yuan reminded him.
“You just said the particle cannon is very heavy. So, on the basis of already equipping one particle beam main cannon, how much total weight would be added by also including two axial electromagnetic main cannons?”
Whenever one is indecisive, one should try to have it all!
“That needs to be calculated carefully.” “Hmm. My meaning is, if the impact on flight performance is within 10%, then it is acceptable.”
“Understood!”
No sooner had Black Smoke left than Prairie floated over.
“Executive Officer, all five warships have completed emergency damage control. The main structures are undamaged, and cabin damage rates are all below 15%.”
“Good. So, they can continue with the mission?”
“That might be a problem!”
Prairie led the Executive Officer to the ship area and entered the radar compartment, which was usually off-limits.
The radar dome was gone, open directly to outer space, and the radar itself had been melted by high temperatures and then solidified into a large lump.
This expensive equipment, due to needing to be installed at the very front of the warship, would certainly be the first to suffer if the shield was breached.
It was truly ill-fated.
Lu Yuan turned around and looked at the thick main armor behind the radar.
This area had been hit twice by enemy cannon fire, and a tungsten rod was still stuck inside.
Another one left a small hole in the armor, penetrating it, and then consecutively pierced two more cabins behind it before finally stopping in the hangar.
Fortunately, no carrier-based aircraft were parked there at the time, preventing greater losses.
“These damages cannot be repaired in a short time,” Prairie said with a solemn expression. “And, the more serious damage is in the aft section of the hull.”
Then, he took out a pad and showed the Executive Officer footage from the 'Lishan' in the rear.
After seeing the image, Lu Yuan's heart sank.
On the side of the hull, a large section of armor had been torn off by a projectile entering at a shallow angle, and four of the six propulsion engines beneath it were damaged.
In this state, the warship's conventional navigation capabilities and maneuverability would be greatly reduced, making it difficult to cope with intense combat.
“The situation of the other four warships is not much better,” Prairie said.
“Among them, the Longhu only has one electric propulsion engine still working normally, with severely insufficient thrust. In conventional spaceflight mode, it has essentially lost braking capability and must be assisted by other warships for towed deceleration.
“The enemy was aiming at the engines. If we hadn’t tried our best to straighten our heading angle at the time, we would probably have been crippled in front of the Jump Point.”
“Fortunately, the more heavily protected warp engine and zero element storage compartment were not damaged,” Lu Yuan said in a deep voice. “What I’m more concerned about is the change in the warship’s shape after the armor was torn off.”
Prairie nodded very gravely.
“Yes! With the armor damaged to this extent, our radar stealth profile has been completely compromised. I just had the Lishan experiment, and found that the RCS radar cross-section has increased by an average of nearly 4 million times.”
4 million—this was a terrible number.
The distance at which a target is detected by radar is directly proportional to the fourth root of its RCS.
An RCS increase of 4 million times means the detection distance by radar has increased to 45 times what it was before.
In this state, the Cangyuan Fleet’s survivability was greatly reduced.
Dealing with civilian adventurers or pirates might be fine, but if they encountered Imperial warships again—
“Where is the nearest space station that can repair warships?”
Clearly, they had to find a place to repair the warships as soon as possible, at least to a reasonable extent.
Relying solely on the four 3D printers carried by the two 'Wuyi' class ships would definitely not be enough.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Before Prairie could speak, Charlotte floated into the radar compartment, which had become a “viewing balcony,” and came before Lu Yuan.
“I am very sure that the Empire has secretly colluded with all the space stations in this area, except for New Hope, and has likely coerced or bribed them!”
She stared at the Executive Officer, hands half-clenched, eyes unblinking.
She was small, but her presence was not.
“Please don’t go!”
“…I understand. Thank you.”
After thinking for two or three seconds, Lu Yuan decided to tentatively accept her suggestion.
“Prairie, call the locals in for me.”
“Yes!”
The locals he referred to were naturally Yu Xiao and Old Jia, who had accompanied the fleet on this epic treasure hunt.
“Besides the space stations along the route, are there any other places nearby where we can repair our warships?”
In response to the Executive Officer’s life-or-death question, the two exchanged glances and gave the same answer.
“Yes, there are quite a few!”
Quite a few!
That’s great!
If there were only one or two, it would be too easy for the Empire to predict their destination, making it too risky to go.
“Where is the most remote one? A bit far is fine.”
“It’s a mining colony belonging to the Human Exploration Federation,” Old Jia said. “However, it has been inexplicably out of contact for a while, and there are some not-so-good rumors—”