Chapter 129 128: Trace
They had to be built on every single planet!
And not just one, either. Depending on the planet's size, larger ones would require hundreds or even thousands of them, while smaller ones would need at least a few dozen.
All told, this added up to tens of thousands of new structures. Calculating based on a standard Interstellar Cannon Platform fortress having a total mass of 50,000 tons, that was another several billion tons of mass.
In addition to that, there were Unmanned Warships!
Unmanned Warships that could maneuver with ease and flexibility, and automatically form up for combat!
The Unmanned Warships would also have to rely on numbers to win, so their quantity had to be as large as possible.
Based on different specifications, Li Qingsong divided the Unmanned Warships into five classes.
The largest had a total mass of over 200 tons, while the smallest were only one or two tons.
'I'm already building over a million Water Star Level Warships; the Unmanned Warships should be at least ten times that number, right?'
'Then I'll build 10 million of the largest Unmanned Warships. For the second class, 16 million. The numbers will increase for each subsequent class, and for the smallest model… I'll crank out a hundred million of them!'
Beyond the Unmanned Warships, there was another construction requirement of an immense scale.
Ground Air Defense Bases.
Ground-based air defense was crucial for planets without an atmosphere.
After all, most production tasks had to be completed on the planet's surface, and mineral extraction was entirely ground-based. If the logistics bases were attacked and destroyed, the war would be over before it began.
Faced with a bombardment of tiny projectiles as vast as mountains and seas, how would the ground bases defend themselves?
They would use the very same air defense bases, spread all across the land, to defend!
If spacecraft could intercept Electromagnetic Cannon Projectiles using high-speed radar scanning and rapid-response technology, then ground bases could certainly do the same.
And because they were larger, with more abundant energy and material supplies, their defensive capabilities would be even stronger!
Every base, every mine, every railway line, space elevator, factory, and so on—every single location had to have a Ground Air Defense Base!
That added up to hundreds of thousands, even millions more bases.
Tallying everything up, the materials needed to complete all these construction tasks would likely be measured not in trillions of tons, but in tens or even hundreds of trillions of tons.
Such a colossal demand for resources was something Li Qingsong would not have dared to imagine in the past. But now, it didn't matter in the slightest.
Because the great development of the Solar System was complete. Now, under the control of the Divine Craft AI and with countless Clones for maintenance and decision-making, seven major planets, hundreds of dwarf planets, moons, and asteroids could supply Li Qingsong with resources.
In a situation like this, what amount of resources could he possibly not acquire?
At this stage, if Li Qingsong was willing to invest the time and effort, he could even strip away the entire atmosphere of Earth, bit by bit.
With the continuous advancement of his technology and the maximum number of conscious connections, Li Qingsong knew that his industrial capacity had truly reached the point where he could completely remodel a planet.
Under these circumstances, a construction effort of unprecedented scale truly began.
Motherships even larger than the previous Space-Air Carriers, propelled by secondary pressurized Thrust Devices, constantly shuttled back and forth between one space elevator and another. A single ship could transport over ten million tons of materials.
Once they arrived at a port, robots and smart cranes, also controlled by the Divine Craft AI, would come forward. They would unload standardized cargo containers, which then flowed like a river down to the planet's surface to be carried by heavy-haul trains into one factory after another.
In the newly built Interstellar Mine production factories, assembly lines continuously churned out Interstellar Mines, each with a mass of only 1 kg.
The processes of shell assembly, loading the charge, chip installation, and so on proceeded without the slightest disorder.
A single assembly line could produce an average of one Interstellar Mine per second, which amounted to 86,400 per day.
A single factory contained 50 such production lines, giving it a daily output of 4.3 million units. And Li Qingsong had built a total of 50 of these factories!
He could produce 210 million Interstellar Mines in a single day!
A continuous stream of Interstellar Mines flowed out, only to be packed into one cargo container after another.
These containers rode space elevators into orbit, where they were then transported by dedicated cargo ships to designated sectors of space. The ships then dumped these Interstellar Mines into the endless sea of stars as if they were discarding trash.
Around every planet, in the space far from any celestial body, near shipping lanes and far from them—anywhere that might have even a sliver of tactical value—Li Qingsong generously dumped massive quantities of Interstellar Mines. He then set them to orbit either the Sun or the various planets and dwarf planets.
There is no air in interstellar space, so there was no need to worry about rust or oxidation. These Interstellar Mines could be stored perfectly for a very long time.
In the Clone production factories, vast numbers of Clones emerged at every moment. They rode various vehicles to hibernation bases and entered cryosleep in an orderly fashion.
Although the hibernation bases weren't fully constructed yet, the production of Clones wasn't finished either.
So, the construction of the hibernation bases and the process of putting the Clones into cryosleep proceeded in sync.
In the Warship assembly plants, a mountain-and-sea-like flood of components converged, and one Warship after another was assembled. After being refueled, they would fly off to either enter active service, hide away in the vastness of Deep Space, or be temporarily stored in underground spacecraft hangars built on different planets.
The production of Unmanned Warships was even faster. Their technological complexity was lower, and their performance requirements were not as high.
Interstellar Missiles, large-scale Interstellar Cannon Platforms, and other unmanned combat systems also began to spring up like mushrooms after rain, rapidly appearing around every planet and in every sector of space.
The construction of Supercomputer Ships and Supercomputing Bases was also advancing rapidly.
Li Qingsong began large-scale supercomputer construction not only in space and on the other planets, but on Earth as well.
Although Earth had not undergone large-scale development, it still needed essential protections for when the war came.
In the space around Earth, Li Qingsong had also deployed substantial air defense forces, along with numerous Interstellar Mine clusters and Interstellar Cannon Platforms. Correspondingly, the surface of Earth naturally needed enough Supercomputing Bases to support them.
On this pristine planet, untouched by industrial development, one Supercomputing Base after another began to operate under the somewhat curious and awestruck gazes of countless animals—on the ice sheets of the North and South Poles, within the snows of high mountains, at the bottom of great lakes, beneath layers of ice, and deep inside mountain ranges.
Other than Supercomputing Bases and necessary auxiliary factories, such as power plants, Li Qingsong built no other industrial facilities on Earth.
Time slowly trickled by, and in the blink of an eye, several decades had passed.
On this day, for the first time since the Blutuk Civilization's main fleet had "activated" that dark nebula, Li Qingsong finally saw a true sign of their presence once more.