Chapter 6
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Chapter 6: Are There Any Durable and Affordable Items?
The unit used for traveling through Dimensional Corridors with Jumpers is called Star Distance. Star Distance is not a fixed distance unit in the true sense, and conversion usually requires an experienced sailor. It is different from human units like light-years.
On the navigation table, there is a device, a huge telescope, which navigators use to observe the stars, compare with thick star maps to locate the starlight positions. Once the target is selected, the ship enters the Dimensional Corridor and flies towards it. Initially, the journey only guarantees the direction, the exact distance and length of the jump is not fixed and is challenging to control.
However, later on, sailors discovered a pattern for the hyperspace jumper through experience. They categorized stars by brightness into different classes. Astrologers found that the brightness of stars was roughly equivalent to their distance. They located the nearest brightest star above, below, left, and right of the target. When this bright star disappears from the edge of the telescope, the distance traveled is called a "Star Distance".
Inexperienced rookies need to stop after advancing one Star Distance, then check the star class again, compare with the star map, locate the target, and continue jumping. Experienced sailors on familiar routes can jump 5-10 Star Distances in one go, then calibrate. However, when exploring unfamiliar territories, they usually jump a maximum of 10 Star Distances each time before stopping, slowly returning one Star Distance at a time on the way back, summarizing the jumping pattern as a new route data.
This navigation method is naturally rough, every familiar route was explored by generation after generation of experienced old captains amidst numerous sacrifices. The fleet where Ruier belongs was dispatched by the empire with this goal in mind, equipped with the most experienced navigators, ground troops, and elite spacecraft, and they collided in this hellish place called Earth, suffering heavy casualties.
Therefore, most navigators believe in some strange things and use mystical methods to navigate without revealing their skills. This is known as divination navigation, magical communication, steering with magic, and flying by fate.
The Imperial people spent thousands of years and a lot of resources just to explore a small area. Their reliable routes are scarce, compared to the colonies and the Great British Empire. Maybe that’s why they are not as successful.
However, the rat people are different. They have a great logical machine driven by electricity, which is the most advanced and scientific device in the star sector, aside from humans. It’s a crystal computer maintained by thousands of slave mice. After a grand ceremony, this machine provides them with the Imperial people’s route data, and the clever rats with exceptional astronomical and mathematical knowledge create a tracking star map.
This is why they have been able to survive freely until now without missing a beat when scavenging for scraps!
Dimensional travel is a lengthy process, although faster compared to conventional travel. It still takes months to travel from the rat people’s home to the final location of the Imperial fleet. Hyperspace waves are ripples transmitted through the Dimensional Corridor, unsuitable for detecting enemies.
However, these waves can reveal the traces of any spacecraft traveling through the Dimensional Corridor in a short time. Identifying specific ripples amid the numerous traces is time-consuming and challenging – but the rat people have their great logical machine!
This is clearly a battlefield, with broken junk floating in the planet’s orbit, which delights the rat people. Clad in bulky and bizarre diving suits resembling ancient submarines, the salvage slaves are released from the mothership. They eagerly scavenge high-quality copper, insulation materials, and ancient electronic components found on abandoned satellites.
"What a wealthy waste dump!"
"Sniff sniff~ But, darn it, there are, those, darn, colleagues!" Horn Tail Biting glared at the guys in white spacesuits not far away.
In this star sector, only mice have invented devices to walk in space. These devices are not only cleaner and made with better materials, but also have a distinctive appearance with long tails. "Traitors of the White clan!"
The magistrate was furious. The White clan, once the nobles of the mouse people, had a wealthy life without relying on scraps, clean cities, and broad runways for flights. The powerful ancient weapons unearthed by them are still circulated among the upper-class nobles.
However, these noble White people betrayed the mouse people. They abandoned the mouse people in pursuit of the ultimate truth, leaving behind a barren, cold planet for their descendants. They ran away without looking back, taking their knowledge and wealth with them, leaving behind a group of survivors struggling in the garbage dump.
The angry mice smashed all temples, destroyed all cultural records of the traitors, keeping only their treacherous acts. Every mouse wanted to seek revenge on those accursed traitors, to fill their perpetually hungry bellies with their flesh and blood. And now, in the same waste dump, they unexpectedly met, stirring up Horn Tail Biting’s anger and a hint of sweet revenge.
"Dimension Stone cannons, ready, sniffing~ traitors, turn those noble White people into one of us!"
Cannons lined with messy pipes were pushed out, slave mice in protective suits scurried around, loading the deadly Dimension Stone while emitting a terrifying green glow. Powerful electrical currents unforgivingly surged through the complex, wasteland punk-style devices, causing the tip diode stack to flicker.
Under the influence of high temperature and current, the green slime fungi rapidly proliferated, died, metabolized, and quickly decomposed the minerals. Subsequently, catalyzed by the electric field, these radioactive substances formed a directed beam or partially directed neutron and gamma radiation, while the other parts dispersed in all directions, instantly killing the slave mice who were slower than others.
The Dimension Stone cannon, or rather the Radiation Cannon, used strong ionizing radiation, especially neutron and gamma rays, to harm enemy personnel. Apart from its slow rate of fire, short range, and virtually zero physical destruction, it had no other weaknesses. Its killing effect was strong enough even when dealing with humans.
The engineer working on the mouse spaceship, facing away, did not notice another spaceship approaching from behind. They were welding the frame of the space station onto the prefabricated supports. These prefabricated supports would form a huge cage-like structure, and the first batch of completed large cargo starships would deliver the prefabricated compartments on the ground, assemble them. Within about a month, a large space station big enough to accommodate 3000-4000 people would be completed, serving as humanity’s first spaceport.
Compared to the past, the construction speed is like being in fast forward, with spacecraft modified with Space Displacer flying to the moon and space three times a day, carrying personnel and supplies, then bringing back resources. Finally, the fuse of the human powder keg is put out when it’s down to its last 5 centimeters.
It is said that when the 150,000-ton container carrier ordered by the International Space Cooperation Organization is completed, the explosive powder that could destroy all of human civilization can be dumped into the sea at any time. Unlike warships, civilian carriers need some improvements in sealing and power aspects, but most indicators can be applied the same way. There’s no need to be suspicious like the military.
By then, there must be a space station in space for coordination, right? At least commercial space flights will probably be available in the future, so an airport terminal is also needed. Although the Space Displacer can operate within the atmosphere, breaking through it still causes energy loss, friction, and wear. Humans are not weaklings who can’t build spaceports, so there’s no need to endure such losses.
Therefore, this construction site is no longer as pathetic as only two people repairing Taurus II. At least seven or eight engineers and hundreds of workers who have undergone simplified space construction training are clinging to the huge cage-like framework like ants. Perhaps only the Chinese, the infrastructure maniacs, can do this. The American side responsible for building the Mars transit station has not yet set up their structure. It seems like their workers on Mars are on strike due to unpaid wages.
(Congress believes that the Mars work subsidies set according to past standards were too high, and demands that they be distributed according to normal overseas service standards. So the workers disagree, feeling like they are about to reenact the Defias Brotherhood drama with just one Black Dragon Princess missing.)
The Geiger counter suddenly roared like it was crazy, and then a worker felt like his internal organs were on fire. Next came a noticeable dizziness and nausea, then in just a few seconds, he felt like he lost control of his stomach and started vomiting violently, with the thick vomit sticking to his mask and mouth. It gradually filled his helmet. In a daze, feeling suffocated and feverish, the worker instinctively tried to remove what was blocking his breath. A white mist rose, and he finally felt the long-lost coolness before succumbing to permanent darkness.
"Traitors, dead traitors, are good traitors. Sniff, this waste dump… belongs to us!" The magistrate looked satisfied at the white figures dropping dead as if sprayed with insecticide. "This waste, these valuable treasures, and the bodies are all ours! Sniff!" The mice cheered and swarmed out, attempting to haul back everything on the orbit that looked like garbage or unfinished products to the mothership.
However, the mother mice responsible for food processing soon noticed a problem. "What is this thing? It’s not a Longhair, not White clan, hairless, smooth!"
These creatures have four limbs and five cute little fingers similar to the mouse people, with flat faces and only a little hair on their heads. They look even more pitiful than the mouse people, lacking tails. This pleased the magistrate with the chewed-off tail, as their limbs are much longer than the mouse people’s.
"Long-hand play thing? Not White clan?" The magistrate scratched his sparsely-haired head, "Their walking suits are better than ours!" The secretary touched the high-grade synthetic fabric, feeling the extraordinary texture, much better than the Void walking suits of the rat people.
"Technology, very powerful technology, sniffs~" Another big-headed rat raised an old-fashioned human circuit board. Although the rat people with electronic technology didn’t know what a large-scale integrated circuit board was, they could recognize at least some components like capacitors.
Suddenly, the command hall fell silent, and in the darkness, the red-eyed rat people all looked towards their leader. What to do? It seemed like they made a mistake, attacking a formidable opponent. The rat people’s inherent weakness began to outweigh their previous brutality. From their gazes, the magistrate clearly saw retreat and fear. If it were on the battlefield, apart from a group of rats carrying dimensional flamethrowers, nothing could stop the impending massive defeat.
Before the magistrate could come up with a plan, the rat people started to stir because they saw something terrifying emerging on the planet. Those white things no longer made them think of the White clan. Although they seemed similar in technology and style, the bodies did not lie. Unless the white rat people had transformed into these long-hand playthings in just a few hundred years.
Those flying things were much smaller than the rat people’s mothership, but the rat mothership was not for combat, it was for collecting garbage. The dimensional cannon on it was used to bombard other clans’ motherships. For the numerous rat people, only the dimensional cannon could quickly solve problems, just like how Cook Bigfoot’s insect spray eradicated pests in the garbage dump.
The white flying things were clearly meant for warfare. The things they carried underneath were unfamiliar to others but very familiar to the rat people. Wasn’t that the weapon carried on the "Super Invincible Fire-Flying Rat" they had made before? A slave rat controlled this thing filled with Dimension Stones, bombs, and fuel, turning all the thick-skinned playthings into rubble.
Surveying the restless rat crowd around him, the magistrate filled his mind with reason and decisively ordered: Surrender!