Chapter 405: Doubts
The inspection process for over 100,000 researchers and their belongings was incredibly time-consuming. With the Ji race’s limited staff and constrained facilities, the entire process took nearly a year to complete.
Fortunately, none of the boarding personnel were found to have any abnormalities. All were in good health, and no strange pathogens were detected. As for the luggage, while a few hazardous items were discovered, further investigation revealed no intentional wrongdoing by the owners, so these were deemed minor issues.
Once cleared, the researchers began entering their cryosleep pods, while their luggage was stored separately. With all preparations complete, two Ji transport ships, escorted by eighteen warships, slowly departed the starport and began accelerating.
The light from the ships’ engines gradually dimmed, eventually disappearing into the vast sea of stars.
The Ji race’s warp drive technology was highly advanced. Their warp bubbles were incredibly stable and compact, eliminating the need to avoid large gravitational sources like planets.
Unlike Troi warships, which had to exit their star systems before activating warp, the Ji fleet initiated their warp drives just 5 million kilometers beyond the Twin Star Defensive Zone under the watchful gaze of the Swarm’s Observer Bugs. Moments later, their forms blurred, and optical radar could no longer track their precise coordinates.
However, warp bubbles, being a special kind of gravitational field, could still be detected using gravitational-wave radars.
Hundreds of intelligent entities were on high alert, constantly tracking the ships’ coordinates and calculating their speed: twice the speed of light, three times, four times… The ships accelerated rapidly, stabilizing at eight times the speed of light and maintaining that velocity.
Luo Wen’s expression grew serious. The Ji race’s technological sophistication exceeded even his most pessimistic expectations. Back when the Troi diplomats had been negotiating, there was speculation about the origin of the five-member Ji delegation and an attempt to estimate their ship’s speed. The resulting calculations were terrifying. Learning that they had traveled aboard Troi warships to the negotiation site had brought some relief at the time.