Chapter 95: Space-Air Carrier
The numerous satellites Li Qingsong had launched decades ago had long since entered the Inner Solar System, orbiting the Sun, the eight major planets, or even their moons and dwarf planets, collecting all sorts of data about them.
A wider Deep Space communications network, one that could be said to cover the entire Solar System, had also been established. At present, a full hundred communications satellites were positioned at various nodes throughout the Solar System, ready to communicate with Li Qingsong at any moment and allowing him to connect to every single satellite.
The second-generation dual-pressurization Thrust Device had been successfully developed; it was more stable, safer, more reliable, smaller and lighter, yet more efficient.
The resources on Enemy God Star and Ceres were nearly depleted.
In approximately 260 years, the vast fleet of the Blutuk Civilization was expected to arrive.
'So, it's time to go. Time to leave. It's time to return to a place closer to the Sun, where resources are more plentiful.'
'Only there can I develop better and with fewer restrictions.'
'Only there will there be enough resources to support my advancement to a higher technological stage. And only then will I have any hope of fighting back against the Blutuk Civilization on its long journey here...'
Now, on Enemy God Star, the final batch of Clones, the last of the machinery and basic resources, and the most critical resource of all—the one Li Qingsong prized above everything else, yellowcake—had all been loaded.
Not a single Clone remained on Enemy God Star.
The tens of thousands of factories that usually roared day and night had all ceased operations.
The railway tracks, where trains once sped ceaselessly, were now empty.
The electromagnetic launch base, once bustling with cargo and constantly catapulting containers into space, had now fallen silent.
'I can't take all these resources and equipment with me, but I can't leave them for the enemy either.'
With that thought, Li Qingsong took control of several Warships and launched over a hundred Interstellar Missiles, their warheads armed with atomic bombs.
The next moment, it was as if a hundred suns had suddenly erupted on the desolate, dead, and dim surface of Enemy God Star.
Rampant high temperatures and radiation swept over everything. In an instant, an untold amount of frozen gases sublimated directly into vapor, dissipating into space and vanishing.
The tall, sturdy steel structures, seemingly indestructible, were like paper in the face of this furious energy, disappearing in a flash.
They too were vaporized. Even if they were to cool down later, they would only recondense into dust-sized particles, merging with the very ground of Enemy God Star.
It would be impossible to separate them again without re-smelting.
Having wiped clean everything he had left behind on Enemy God Star, the heavy cargo freighter, escorted by several combat ships, began its journey back to Ceres.
Meanwhile, a new round of construction had begun on Ceres.
This round of construction was unlike any before. This time, Li Qingsong had only one goal.
Li Qingsong intended to build an unprecedentedly large ship.
Supported by the last batch of resources that could be extracted from Enemy God Star and Ceres, countless factories once again roared to life, and innumerable Clones once again bustled with activity.
The dual-purpose ships that traveled between the surface and space shuttled back and forth without rest.
In space, a total of 50 construction sites were established, and work began on 50 of these unprecedentedly large ships simultaneously!
Previously, given Li Qingsong's efficiency, even the largest heavy cargo freighters could be built in just a few months.
But for this new type of ship, even after two years, Li Qingsong still wasn't finished.
In the end, it took a full three years just to complete the main frame of these massive ships. It took another full year to install and calibrate the internal equipment, lay the pipelines, and complete all the other tasks.
Now, what appeared before Li Qingsong were 50 blocky ships, shaped like standard rectangular prisms.
The ship's length reached an unprecedented 1,200 meters, its width 400 meters, and its height 20 meters.
This type of ship did not have a unified outer hull. It was constructed from what, from a distance, looked like steel tubes.
Each steel tube had a diameter of about five meters. A total of four 1,200-meter-long steel tubes formed one of its layers.
Along this 1,200-meter length, a 400-meter-long transverse tube intersected it every 95 meters.
There were twelve transverse tubes in total.
The four longitudinal and twelve transverse steel tubes intersected with each other, forming this massive grid.
On this massive grid, each cell had an area of about 9,000 square meters. Factoring in the 20-meter height, its volume was approximately 180,000 cubic meters.
And a single ship had 33 such grid cells.
The rearmost row of three grid cells was used to install the ship's Thrust Devices, equipment bays, and the like.
In each of these three cells, Li Qingsong installed ten larger models of the dual-pressurization Thrust Device. That made for thirty engines across the three cells.
Each one of these engines was capable of continuously accelerating a giant freighter weighing several hundred thousand tons. But now, all thirty of these massive engines were gathered together to serve the sole purpose of propelling this single ship.
Excluding those three occupied cells, that left 30 usable grid cells on each ship.
Each cell could secure and transport about 300,000 tons of cargo. With 30 cells, that was 9 million tons.
Including the ship's own weight, the mass of one of these vessels exceeded ten million tons!
For a ship so enormous and with such a high mass, Li Qingsong felt that calling it a freighter was no longer appropriate.
It wasn't a freighter, but a... Space-Air Carrier!
A Space-Air Carrier of the same type as the Blutuk mothership he had captured, one that could dock other ships and transport an unimaginable amount of supplies!
Now, all 50 Space-Air Carriers were complete. It was time to load them with supplies, equipment, and personnel.
A large number of small ships began to converge on the Space-Air Carriers like ants.
During this process, huge cargo containers, ships of various sizes, and numerous ecological pods capable of supporting Clones, livestock, and poultry were launched directly from the surface or completed in space factories. Then they all arrived at the Space-Air Carriers and were secured onto their grid frames.
Seemingly endless quantities of chemical fuels like liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen, methane, and ethane, as well as large amounts of uranium-235 and plutonium-239, were pumped into the fuel tanks.
It took almost another year for Li Qingsong to complete the work of transferring and loading all the personnel, supplies, and equipment.
And so... it was time to set sail.