Chapter 214: A Genius’s Thought
Milky Way Galaxy 9375.
A fleet consisting of 500 battleships, nearly a thousand small and medium-sized various ships, plus a small aircraft carrier 10 kilometers long, slowly passed through the Alpha Centauri star gate.
Subsequently, led by that aircraft carrier flagship, the fleet entered warp drive state.
A few minutes later, the fleet arrived at the outermost edge of the Solar System in front of the Alpha Centauri star system.
Immediately after, the fleet pushed at full speed, surging toward the Solar System.
This massive sudden change was discovered first by A’dai through the phase-monitoring satellites and reported.
Milky Way Galaxy 9379.
After the electromagnetic waves sent from that fleet traveled at the speed of light for 4 years in interstellar space, they finally reached the Solar System.
After this electromagnetic wave was received, A’dai translated it first and sent it to Fan Ren’s desk.
“Unknown civilization, greetings.
We are the Hans Civilization from the Wolf 359 star system, 7.8 light years away from you.
Please do not panic; we come in peace to establish diplomatic relations with your civilization.
We will arrive at your civilization’s star system in 90 years.
We reiterate, we come in peace; please do not panic.”
Fan Ren’s mouth twitched.
5 years ago, A’dai had clearly detected all relevant data of this menacing fleet.
Under communication with Fox.
This is a standard deep space voyage fleet composed of one small flagship, over 500 battleships, and over a thousand small ships.
In the Galactic Alliance, this is just a standard small flagship combat formation.
And the default common rule in the Galactic Alliance is:
When contacting an unknown civilization, only formations below flagship level are allowed, and no more than 10 combat ships may enter another civilization’s territory.
Fox confidently stated that this must be because after checking, they learned that the Solar System was not registered in the Galactic Alliance, so they launched the invasion.
Fan Ren was not anxious.
There is a key factor here: under Fox’s expert judgment, the conclusion about the scale of the other civilization’s fleet is that this civilization is neither wealthy nor strong.
His analysis conclusion is also very simple.
Take Fox’s previous action plan as an example.
His pirate group had him pilot a spaceship with super high speed performance and an induction device to arrive at the Solar System first.
Finally, using the induction device, a dreadnought 9.7 light years away was instantly warped here.
The entire process saved half the time.
But the opponent did not do so; instead, they painstakingly assembled a fleet for deep space voyage to head to the Solar System.
Obviously, the opponent is not affluent in financial resources, unable even to afford the warp fuel cost of a flagship worth a million star coins, and thus uses this ‘clumsy’ method.
It seems the opponent is really very ‘poor,’ to the point of eyeing humanity’s civilization that has just entered space development.
Fan Ren looked at that ‘diplomatic relations’ message, a playful smile at the corner of his mouth.
80 years—he couldn’t wait that long.
Jupiter-Mars Hub, shipyard construction plant.
A Punisher was slowly pushed out of the dock.
Unlike the previous Punisher, this ship’s Punisher hull color has developed somewhat toward dark green.
Its overall ship shape has not changed much.
The only change is that its tail is equipped with the latest hybrid power engine group developed by the Xinghai engine laboratory.
Under Fox’s reminder, the so-called ‘afterburner’ on his spaceship mainly uses liquid metallic hydrogen as fuel to provide enormous power.
Then, a great and crazy idea was proposed by those mad scientists at Xinghai.
Long ago, a scientist proposed that once material technology matures in the future.
During humanity’s deep space voyages, the shockwave from nuclear bomb explosions could be used to generate reaction force for spacecraft, thereby providing extra thrust.
But this genius idea was abandoned because at the time, spaceship materials could not safely withstand the shockwave.
Also, spaceship space was very tight then, unable to spare more room for bomb storage, and other intractable problems, so it was gradually forgotten.
However, now with spaceships built from high-strength compressed quasi-silver supermetallic material.
The shockwave from bomb explosions is hardly enough to affect the spaceship.
At the same time, dense bombs use liquid metallic hydrogen, which has extremely high energy density, even surpassing that produced by nuclear fusion reactions.
The space problem has also been solved.
Combining the two, with a fusion engine as the conventional power source.
Meanwhile, a nuclear fusion phase container furnace is added in the middle, allowing it to provide the high-temperature, high-pressure environment prerequisite for liquid metallic hydrogen explosions.
When needed, after precise control, an extremely small amount of liquid metallic hydrogen can be ejected from the spaceship’s tail, triggering an explosion effect.
The explosion’s shockwave will provide massive reaction force to the spaceship, thereby giving it enormous extra thrust.
This genius idea finally landed on this Punisher ship, built from quasi-silver supermetal that has just been reinforced for the first time and used.
After hearing about it, Fox was quite puzzled for a while.
He knew liquid metallic hydrogen could explode, but the problem in vacuum environment, without atmosphere as medium, is that the shockwave range is limited and power greatly reduced.
He had also experienced his spaceship greatly slowing down under humanity’s dense bombs, but it did no damage to the spaceship itself.
Moreover, this method offered him only one chance.
Compared to his spaceship’s speed at the time and humanity’s missile flight speed, humanity could not have a second chance to use such bombs on him.
And in the Galactic Alliance, this backward barbaric method is generally not used against high-speed small boats.
The starfield market has equipment that uses gravity technology to force targets to decelerate sharply at a certain distance.
Most civilizations use this method.
So Fox completely didn’t expect it back then, which is why he fell for it.
But now, this method has actually been applied to the engine system by human scientists.
What can be said?
It’s very barbaric, yet seems to have no logical issues.
The afterburners on the starfield market use liquid metallic hydrogen as fuel.
And this so-called hybrid power engine group also uses liquid metallic hydrogen as the power source.
Just in the form of explosions.
This genius idea left him without any reason to refute.
The nuclear fusion engine at the tail of the Punisher slowly powered up; it will head to the distant Azure Phoenix Legion for preparations.
Soon after, a team of professional test pilots will conduct test flights on various performances of this spaceship.
At the same time, the thrust capability of its hybrid power engine group will also be tested.
