Star Empire

“…Not long ago, it seemed that our universe, the environment we live in, and even ourselves were quite likely to be unnatural. But now, what we need to determine is just how unnatural it is. "

Victorville looked at the huge black shadow outlined by the gap in the starry sky in the last frame of the picture due to excessive blocking of starlight, and his face turned livid, "Cavenriel, can you deduce that incident based on the picture just now?" Which era can we roughly locate it?”

"Wait a moment, Archon, let me give it a try." Cavernrel intercepted the last frame of the image and murmured in a low voice while retrieving the details, "Even if the dark red abnormal celestial phenomenon is blocked by the light speed barrier, The restrictions should have been observed long after the Federation expanded... The era is currently uncertain, the star map is likely to have undergone huge changes, and the remaining star map is no longer enough to match... huh?"

Cavenriel frowned, and then separated part of the picture again and enlarged it. Victorville could see that this was the background starry sky revealed in the picture after excluding all unknown vehicles in the picture. . With a slight stroke of Caverniel's right hand, the terrifying blood color covering the stars quickly faded, and the brilliant starry sky returned to its original appearance.

"Fortunately, at least this red light is based on physics and principles." Cavernell breathed a sigh of relief. When he looked at the cut-out images again, the stars had returned to their original colors, which were countless dotted on the On the dark curtain, there are blue light spots that are brighter than sapphire, and the light spots are connected to form a ribbon across the sky. Even the space itself has lost its cold and dark feeling under the illumination of this blue sea of ​​stars.

"When this scene occurred, the main color of stars in the universe was still blue, and from this part of the picture, the stars in the picture are huge, the spectrum is biased towards the blue band with higher frequency, and the number of small and medium-sized stars in yellow and white tones is still small. Quite rare.”

"There is only a short period of time in the universe that can reach such a standard, that is, after the Big Bang, the first generation of super stars belonging to the third star family dominated the universe for tens of millions, or at most billions of years. From this point of view , the time these spacecraft visited our universe can even be traced back tens of billions of years before the first year of the Origin Era."

"It's nearly 10 billion years earlier than the first year of the Origin Era. In other words, they had already been here not long after the birth of the universe." Vidoville looked at the layers before Cavenriel separated again. , his eyes jumped among the various types of aircraft that occupied most of the field of view. In addition to the fact that most of the spacecraft that could be seen clearly had a metallic "Σ" mark on them, the Archon soon discovered another strange place. .

"Those two behemoths seemed to have no power, and there was absolutely no activity on their surfaces."

After Vidoville's prompt, most of the people around the projection also carefully observed the aircraft in the picture. Whether it was a large aircraft like a molecular model or a variety of smaller flying wings, their surfaces were more or less There are few dim light patterns, and even though a layer of mist-like blood light shrouds their figures, those light patterns are still clearly visible.

Judging only from the small image fragments that were intercepted, those strange aircraft should follow conventional optical laws to a certain extent. The light emitted by the aircraft "behind" the two behemoths could still be received, but those two behemoths... showed no signs of starting.

"How should I say this... Although it is not very clear, it can be roughly determined that they are all single spaceships. If they are still under construction, there are no facilities such as docks in the picture. Is it possible that those small aircraft are Dragging these behemoths around?" Looking at the scene in front of him, Victorville couldn't help but fell into deep thought.

"Wait a minute, Archon, we will consider these issues later. Let's first determine where the current fleet should go. The spaceship will not last long in the current environment - time is not wasted by you like this!"

The patient reminder from the former chief control technician brought Victorville's attention back to reality. When he looked up, he saw that the holographic projection in front of him had begun to appear slightly distorted.

". First try to see if you can leave the fragments of this world." Vidoville woke up as if being struck by electricity and quickly ordered.

"Consul of Vidoville." On the side, Cavenriel looked seriously at the somewhat bewildered Vidoville. You have been in a trance since your last trip to the Void Ark.

In this fragmented and chaotic world, movement is not a simple matter.

Although this place can still be called an "ordered world" compared to the void, in fact, the environmental friendliness here is not much higher than that of the void: According to Zhai Cahir's inference, since the timeline of the entire world has been closed , the history that should have been sliding from the beginning to the end has been "connected end to end" at this time, making all events at different times evenly spread out in the current broken universe.

The constant emergence of weird pictures and phenomena makes the navigation control department and attitude control department of the fleet exhausted. However, these historical fragments that constantly emerge are not the real trouble. What really poses a fatal threat to the fleet is the chaos of laws and the chaos in the current environment. Unknown contamination.

When the universe was still in a normal state, the federal civilization had basically ascertained the entire space of the universe: except for some battlefield ruins and some severe spatial curvature variation layers, the laws of the universe and the speed of light were uniform. This part was just a background concept for the former Federation, but this former background has become the most elusive thing for the existing exile fleet.

In the current fragmented world of chaos, the laws of physics have been broken to a very serious extent. It is possible that at the current location, the laws of physics are still the same or similar to the previous summable items. However, when the spacecraft's thrusters provide conventional power, the entire ship may be in several areas with different laws before the spacecraft has time to leap forward. On the other hand, the failure of the uniformity of the speed of light leads to even more dire consequences.

The Federation once installed a defense device called a mass-energy conversion force field. It created an extremely fast-changing super gravitational field by pulling the Higgs field interaction; it would briefly distort the space structure and generate a Low time zone.

This defense device can withstand almost all attacks that require matter with rest mass. When crossing the light speed fault, these materials will produce huge mass expansion due to the sharp change in the speed of light, and eventually self-destruct and turn into pure energy.

This kind of defense is quite effective for mass strikes and self-destruction attacks, but it will also be quite uncomfortable when something that is effective for the enemy is used on yourself.

In order to ensure as much safety as possible, the crystal energy shield, which is a direct protection at the information level, is opened to the maximum without hesitation. Although the crystal energy currently used by the Ark Fleet is basically not affected by these "low-level" conventional physics, this does not It does not mean that the structural materials of the spacecraft itself will not.

Although the current materials of the spacecraft contain crystal energy, they are just because the information structure just happens to allow the storage of crystal energy to be integrated without causing any harm to the existence.

Even though the current materials have been upgraded compared to the original materials, part of the information structure itself of these materials is still formed under conventional physical conditions, and they do not have the ability to completely ignore the physical gap. If those materials come into direct contact with these distorted constants and environments, they may also be distorted and may even be destroyed.

In the central area of ​​the middle and rear section of the spacecraft, the crystal energy reactor is burning blazingly. After being transported to the mathematical rate core, the extremely high-frequency information fluctuations are "assigned" and "compiled" and then spread along the crystal matter all over the spacecraft. The orbit flows through every inch of the ship's hull, providing information and compensation corrections to the members inside the ship.

Outside, a faint golden light film enveloped the entire spacecraft, and the mathematical core was fully activated, providing a powerful shield for the spacecraft. Under the protection of this shield, the Ark of Exile can barely sail in such an area. However, people inside the ship will not notice that some weak black and red two-dimensional patterns have begun to spread quietly on this shield. , competing with the golden light of crystal energy.

"What is the nature of this pollution? After being exposed to it, it's like eating a shield!"

Looking at the mathematical rate core with increasing operating power, Cavinrel began to feel nervous. In order to try to escape from the tracking of this strange world fragment, the mathematical rate core had experienced a serious overload, and now the central pure machine was restrained. Part of the inner layer of the mathematical environment's metal outer protective shell has already crystallized. Even if it is not overloaded, it is definitely not a good idea to operate at high power for a long time in the current state.

"Hiss... the remaining world barrier of this strange world fragment seems to be suppressing our jump into the void, and the jump engine is difficult to use here. For some reason, only the conventional engine can be used now, but the size of this world fragment ... Even if we use conventional engines to reach high sublight speeds, we will not be able to leave here. Neither the spacecraft itself nor the energy bricks are enough to allow us to persist for such a long time, and the environment will not allow it."

Eisendel, who was on the side, felt a sense of soreness in his teeth, "To be honest, I don't like it here. I feel a cold feeling in my chest, as if the whole world is hostile to me."

"The inexplicable pollution here is very strange. It has a very strong destructive ability to matter or information aggregates, but it is very strange. I used to be unable to see even the slightest bit of its nature. Now, I no longer dare to look at anything related to it. Things..." Zhai Cahir also complained in a low voice, "It seems to soften our minds and confuse our judgment."

"Would you like to... try to throw some crystal energy crystals and try to detonate them?" Vidoville shook his head vigorously, trying to cheer up, "If the environment here is so bad that we cannot leave by peaceful means, then we... Just use unconventional means!”

"What can the crystal do?"

"Alert, there are abnormal activities among members of Ark No. 3!" "Alarm, there are abnormal activities among some crew members of Ark No. 6!" "Alarm, there are abnormal large-scale crew activities in Ark No. 12!" "Alarm, Ark No. 13 is suspected of suffering from psychological mutation. Memetic Invasion…”

As soon as Vidoville finished speaking, a series of inexplicable alarms stunned the people in the flagship control room - it seemed that something more bizarre had bypassed the shield protection.

However, before they could react further, another piece of even more surprising news was like a bolt from the blue. In the overhead holographic projection of the flagship, these lines of text appeared:

Ηεπίβεβαωσηδχεταίστησυμφωνατονπολίτισμκαττηνπτση, οίαρχαοιχρνοιεκπολτίσαντηναυστηρενεργοποησησυμφωνα

"This...this is the same type of text used in the information we received when we left the universe! Damn it, burn it!" Cavinriel was shocked when he saw the information appearing on the screen for the first time, but the person who responded to his words was not Vidoville's inquiry may have been supplemented by other scientists, but instead there was a violent vibration in the spacecraft.

"The spacecraft is under attack, and the picture has been displayed on the main screen." The spacecraft AI displayed the captured picture: outside a layer of pale golden light film, several flying wing-shaped unidentified aircraft were passing by the front of the spacecraft, and A little further away, the space is producing abnormal distortions and fluctuations. It is not known whether those inexplicable aircraft came out of those space vortices, or whether those space vortices are the aftermath of the spacecraft condensing and emerging from there.

"These aircraft..." Cavernrel tried his best to capture a clearer image. On the "upper" shell of the spacecraft that was somewhat similar to a wide-angle boomerang, the science officer found a quite eye-catching sign. :Σ

"It means...the people who visited our universe tens of billions of years ago belong to the same civilization as the one attacking us right now?" Vidoville looked at the turning flying wings in the picture and couldn't help but frown, "Kavan Riel, are the sizes of these spaceships a little too small?”

"Yes...yes." After making a more accurate comparison as quickly as possible, Cavinriel nodded, "In previous cosmic anomalies, the minimum estimated size of those flying wing-shaped aircraft was in the tens. Even within a range of hundreds of kilometers, and these...are only a few hundred meters, which may not even be enough to serve as the former's unmanned carrier aircraft."

"Alert, the power of this ship's inertial stabilizer is approaching the warning threshold, and the shield consumption is increasing." In the synthetic voice of AI Furui Muha, the spacecraft shook violently again, and in the display of the scanning radar, those few The spacecraft that could still be barely locked suddenly disappeared.

"Ark No. 15 is under attack! The situation of the ship is not optimistic!" After maybe only a second or two, Weisrifan suddenly said in shock, "Communication with Ark No. 15 is temporarily blocked! There is stronger interference that is hindering us. communication signal!”

"Is this... a coordinate definition drive?" The last trace of indifference remaining on Zhai Cahir's face disappeared, "It can interfere with communications established on the crystal energy level... and there is also an extremely strong attack that has just been calmed down nearby. The world is twisted..."

"Damn it!" Vidoville finally lost control of his emotions, "Vesrifan, please contact me quickly. Even if they collide, we will kill these bastard spaceships!"

"Calm down!" Weisruifan quickly dodged and jumped some distance away. "The important thing now is to determine the situation of Ark No. 15... huh? The second bridge? The second bridge!"

"Archon!" Isendel's startled breath attracted the attention of Vesrifan: "The Eleventh Ark! It has been shot down!"