Communications

These massive creatures, reaching lengths of up to 3,000 meters, are not particularly noticeable in the asteroid belt, but the Overseer of Swarm are ubiquitous.

The Blade had already discovered the Duoqi ship hidden in the asteroid belt and, through various analyses, deduced its approximate purpose. In addition to the two supply ships, the Duoqi Race were also hiding another vessel here.

The ship doesn't look particularly unusual. It's nearly 2,000 meters long and has an ordinary appearance. If you weren't familiar with it, you would just mistake it for a warship in the Duoqi Fleet.

But now that it's hidden here with two supply ships, it's quite different. At first, the Blade thought it was just a warship protecting the supply ships. Later, they figured that the supply ships' own guns could handle things like meteorites, and if they were attacked, having one more or one less warship wouldn't make much difference.

Moreover, this kind of concealment and hiding means that each additional ship adds another target and increases the risk of exposure, so it is unlikely that this ship is a warship. Furthermore, its 2,000-meter hull only has four main guns, fewer than the number of main guns on a 1,500-meter warship.

However, due to the limited information, the Blade can only speculate that it is a functional ship, and its specific purpose remains unknown.

To avoid alerting the enemy, the Swarm used an ancient hyperboloid projectile. Swarm were very skilled at slow-speed throwing and their accuracy was quite good.

Even at low speeds, it is comparable to the speed of Ancient Class beings that rely on their own Plasma Propulsion Organ for flight. However, the advantage is that this purely physical projection method produces almost no energy fluctuations.

In addition, the Ancient Class's own stealth system makes them difficult to detect by any means other than Gravity Radar at this stage.

And so, after using the planet to block the view of the Duoqi Fleet, several hyperboloid projectors secretly "grew" on the Creep on the back of Laze Planet, and several Ancient Class set off silently.

After months of flying, while Dialo was still exploring GAI, he suddenly received news that the supply ship had been attacked.

"XXX! How did they find us?" Dialo cursed angrily. The Swarm had a large number of units, and after the Riken Race surrendered, the Riken Star System could be considered the Swarm's home turf. The Duoqi Race didn't have any noteworthy cloaking technology, so it wasn't surprising that the three-thousand-meter-tall behemoth was discovered.

What truly puzzled Dialo was how the Swarm had evaded his surveillance. In interstellar warfare at this level, two sides could detect each other from hundreds of millions of kilometers apart, and then it would take them ten to fifteen days of full-speed travel to reach each other's firing range. Therefore, the concept of a sneak attack was practically nonexistent.

However, the message he received was that the Swarm's Octopus Monster had suddenly appeared and attacked the supply ships. He knew that the Swarm's Octopus Monster could use Optical Camouflage, but even if they were cloaked, there would still be energy fluctuations when they used plasma propulsion. With the technological level of the Duoqi Civilization, such energy fluctuations would be very difficult to conceal within the star system.

"Damn it!" Dialo cursed again in frustration.

Aslite, who was standing to the side, thought for a moment and said, "Your Highness, do you remember that the information provided by the Suzerain mentioned that the Zerg have a very traditional launching tool that does not produce any energy fluctuations?"

You mean?

"That's right. I suspect the Zerg used this launcher to deliver the Octopus Monster to the supply ship. Although the Zerg ignored our fleet, they relentlessly attacked our surveillance devices at any cost. This behavior was highly suspicious before, but I didn't understand what the Zerg were trying to do at the time. Now it seems..."

Dialo nodded, agreeing with the statement. Indeed, understanding now was futile. Time couldn't be reversed. Although the supply ship had sent him a message immediately after the attack, he didn't receive it until half an hour later.

He knew about Zerg Octopus Monster's melee capabilities; if a supply ship with poor combat strength got close to them, half an hour would be enough for the Octopus Monster to crush and flatten it several times over.

The two supply ships are fine, but the communication ship is the real problem; it's extremely valuable.

The Duoqi Race's Mother Planet is more than ten light-years away from the Riken Star System. Using conventional communication methods, it would take more than twenty years to make a round trip. Moreover, it would be difficult to keep the signal hidden over such a long distance, and the energy consumption would be considerable.

The communication-equipped ship carries a highly advanced Quantum Communication Device, capable of communicating over ten light-years with virtually no delay. Furthermore, due to its unique transmission method, its concealment and encryption are extremely high. While it consumes more energy at close range than conventional communication methods, its advantage lies in the fact that energy consumption doesn't increase significantly with distance. Therefore, beyond a certain distance, conventional communication methods actually consume more energy, and this difference increases exponentially when the distance exceeds light-years.

This Quantum Communication Device is divided into a transmission section and a receiving section. It is highly technologically advanced, and the Duoqi Race has yet to overcome some key challenges. Therefore, this device can only be imported, and such non-domestic products are generally very expensive.

Dialo was only allowed to bring one ship because he had accepted a mission from the Suzerain, and because of the long distance involved, to maintain timely contact with the Mother Planet.

To put it bluntly, the functional ship itself isn't very valuable, but this Quantum Communication Device is worth more than many of Dialo's younger siblings.

This is why the communications ship didn't use this equipment to contact Dialo, because none of the warships on Dialo's side were equipped with quantum signal receiving devices.

However, even if they notified them in time, it would be too late. Dialo was going at full speed, and it would be several hours before they arrived. That would be enough time for the Zerg Octopus Monster to flatten and reshape the communications ship into a miniature version of a building block.

"Your Highness, what should we do now?" Aslite had also thought of this.

To prevent the leakage of important technologies, major warships are equipped with self-destruct mechanisms. If the Duoqi Race captain does not activate the ship's self-destruct mechanism when the situation develops to a certain point, the artificial intelligence will also activate it on its own. This is one of the few advanced permissions that the Duoqi Race have granted to their artificial intelligence.

In this situation, unless the AI is remotely and directly disabled, and then a captain who is afraid of death comes along, those communication devices are definitely doomed.

However, judging from the Zerg's past performance and style, they do not possess the ability to remotely disable artificial intelligence.

Whether it was destroyed or captured by the Swarm, those devices certainly no longer belonged to the Duoqi Race.

The loss of an item of this caliber would be a major headache even for Dialo, the third prince.