BATTLE FOR STARS

“Even a ship this large can pass through?” Ding Yufei asked, looking at the Carrier they were currently aboard. It was several times larger than most of the surrounding starships.

“You don't need to worry about that,” Belina replied. “This Carrier is a special design. It's actually made up of several separate sections. They can detach from one another completely.”

She smiled.

“Think of it like building blocks. Once the sections are separated, passing through a temporary Stargate is no problem at all.”

Ding Yufei's eyes widened.

He had only just learned that starships could "transform."

Now he was discovering that Carriers could be disassembled into multiple independent vessels.

This was the kind of spacecraft design he had never even imagined.

“So the greater the distance, the harder it is to establish a Stargate, and the less stable it becomes?” Liang Jinsong asked from beside him.

“Exactly,” Claudia replied. “And the farther the destination, the more energy is required. Generally speaking, only Carriers possess the capability to create temporary passages.”

She paused before adding,

“That's one of the reasons Carriers carry antimatter.”

“So during interstellar travel,” Ding Yufei said, “you usually have to move from one Stargate to the next. You can't simply jump directly to your destination.”

“That's right. Creating long-range cross-space corridors is dangerous and complicated. Maintaining them also requires enormous amounts of energy. As a result, almost all interstellar travel follows established Stargate routes.”

Ding Yufei and Liang Jinsong immediately understood.

The interstellar transportation network was much like a highway system—or perhaps a giant tree.

Travel meant moving from one node to another.

Direct jumps were possible, but they were dangerous, expensive, unstable, and unsuitable for long-term use.

Unless absolutely necessary, nobody would choose a temporary corridor over a regular Stargate route.

“Does Planet Boman only have this one Stargate?” Ding Yufei asked.

The question had been bothering him for a while.

This Stargate connected Boman to foreign nations.

Shouldn't there also be one connecting it to the rest of its own country?

“Of course not,” Claudia said.

“There are other Stargates. They're simply located farther away from Boman. Reaching them requires about two days of travel.”

“That's also why our journey still takes roughly two weeks, even though we're using Stargates to cross space.”

Ding Yufei nodded.

“That's strange. The international Stargate is so close to the planet, but the domestic one is much farther away.”

“The reason is simple.”

Claudia pointed toward the planet below.

“Boman is an entertainment world. Its economy depends heavily on visitors from other nations. Naturally, it wants incoming travelers to reach the planet as quickly as possible.”

“Meanwhile, Stargates can't be built too close together. They interfere with one another.”

“And the larger the Stargate, the greater the required separation distance.”

“Then does a typical planet have several Stargates?”

“Not really.”

She shook her head.

“For permanent Stargates with regular traffic, most star systems have at most one.”

“Boman is unusual because it receives a large number of visitors. Even then, it only has two.”

“The vast majority of star systems don't have a permanent Stargate at all.”

“None at all?”

Ding Yufei blinked.

“Then how do people travel to other planets?”

“I said permanent Stargates.”

Claudia laughed.

“Those systems use intermittent Stargates.”

“Think of them like airports on Earth. Their Stargates open once or twice a week for scheduled travel.”

Ding Yufei immediately followed her reasoning.

“So it's like airline routes?”

“Maybe Monday serves Destination A, Wednesday serves Destination B, and Friday serves Destination C?”

“Not quite.”

“They operate point-to-point.”

“One Stargate route connects to one destination.”

“Why?”

“If Stargates already exist, shouldn't it be easy to adjust a few parameters and connect somewhere else?”

“Theoretically, yes.”

“But interstellar space is far more complicated than that.”

Claudia leaned against the window as she explained.

“The spatial coordinates of a Stargate are constantly changing.”

“Just as Earth continuously moves around the Sun, every Stargate's position shifts as well.”

“Creating a cross-space connection requires not only tremendous energy but also enormous computational power.”

She paused briefly.

“As I mentioned earlier, Stargate locations are chosen very carefully.”

“A route suitable for one destination may be completely unsuitable for another.”

“Switching a Stargate from one destination to another requires synchronization at both ends, extensive calculations, and acceptance of certain risks.”

“So in practice, most Stargates operate as dedicated point-to-point routes.”

“That's not entirely true,” Belina interrupted. “The Siqin Star System has four Stargates.”

Claudia smiled.

“Of course it does. It's the royal capital.”

“Systems like that are extremely rare.”

She thought for a moment.

“Across the entire star region, there are probably fewer than five.”

Now everything made sense to Ding Yufei and Liang Jinsong.

Interstellar travel was actually quite straightforward.

Most locations relied on one-to-one routes.

Only the most important and prosperous systems possessed multiple Stargates capable of connecting to several destinations simultaneously.

And once they understood that, they also understood why interstellar journeys still consumed significant amounts of time.

The actual passage through a Stargate was nearly instantaneous.

The delays came from waiting for Stargates to open, or traveling between Stargates located in different parts of the same star system.

Humanity had spread across countless star systems.

Yet cross-space transportation remained neither simple nor convenient.

If anything, it was a dangerous and highly complex undertaking.

“There's one more thing you should keep in mind,” Belina said.

“The territorial borders of interstellar nations are nothing like those of countries on Earth.”

“A lot of the star systems belonging to our kingdom are separated by regions controlled by other nations.”

“I get it,” Ding Yufei said after a moment's thought.

“Your expansion happened through leaps rather than continuous growth.”

“Exactly.”

The existence of cross-space travel meant civilizations didn't have to expand outward system by system.

They could bypass regions considered unimportant and establish colonies directly in distant destinations.

Over time, those skipped systems might end up belonging to entirely different countries.

What Ding Yufei didn't realize was that another factor had shaped the modern political map.

During the early era of interstellar expansion, countless small nations had emerged.

Later, as wars intensified and the Hill Empire rose to prominence, many of those smaller states sought protection from larger powers or merged together to form new nations.

As a result, many countries controlled disconnected territories scattered across space.

With Stargates linking them together, physical continuity was no longer necessary.

Beyond the great powers such as the Resk Empire, the Hill Empire, and the Kramic Kingdom, numerous tiny states still existed throughout the star region.

Most of them remained hidden from ordinary travelers.

They lacked permanent Stargate connections and couldn't be reached through regular transportation routes.

Visiting such countries usually required conventional interstellar travel or the construction of temporary corridors.

Neither option was particularly convenient.

Combined with their limited influence, this meant the major powers often paid little attention to them.

At last, Ding Yufei and Liang Jinsong felt they truly understood how interstellar travel worked.

Their next plan was to visit Belina's homeworld.

According to her, it was the most technologically advanced region in the entire star domain.

Unfortunately, that wish would have to wait.

An urgent transmission arrived and abruptly changed their itinerary.