Rescue operation

As Luo Qi delved deeper into using electromagnetic force, he began considering his own path and the path Earth had taken in his previous life.

Well.

There was no comparison.

Earth, after all, had an enormous population. The resources consumed by food and shelter for a single day were a hundred times Orange Star's current consumption, and development had to account for the environment and people's livelihoods.

Capital interests were also at work behind the scenes.

On Orange Star, however, there was only one voice and one force driving development.

As more mining vehicles were manufactured and put into operation, a continuous stream of resources was collected and fed into the research centers.

Theories were tested and verified, and the research centers rapidly advanced Orange Star's technology.

Each was equivalent to a top laboratory on Earth in his previous life, costing no less than a hundred million in monetary terms.

But on Orange Star, they were merely cold stacks of data, incubators Luo Qi used to nurture technology. As long as a theory offered potential for development, he would commit resources to it, whether it ultimately succeeded or failed.

Taking the wrong path still built experience, so he would keep going. Taking a successful path accumulated technological progress, so he would keep following that, too.

It was nothing like humanity's lopsided development, pursuing whatever offered a profit.

Orange Star's technological development could therefore be described as an explosion.

With resources poured in regardless of losses, Luo Qi's body of knowledge about electromagnetic force grew ever larger.

The controllable magnetic field opened a new door for the Orange Star Civilization's development. Like a crowbar, it could pry open any technology; everything depended on how powerful the controllable magnetic field was.

By this point, the Orange Star Civilization had fully entered the intermediate electromagnetic force framework.

Orange Star's applied technologies now included controllable magnetic field production lines, controllable nuclear fusion, and the Deuterium Super Battery. A single battery rivaled the kind of "grenade" T800 tossed in Terminator.

This also meant Luo Qi could manufacture independent T800 units, but he did not. Instead, he powered the newly produced T3 Robots through a wireless electric field.

That way, he did not have to fear an AI rebellion. As long as he controlled the nuclear fusion facilities and their energy output, he could shut down the robots dependent on the wireless electric field at any time.

Carbon Nanotubes technology also began rapidly building databases to store data on Orange Star's technological development. Luo Qi still had enough processing power at this stage, but he also added servers to his manufacturing plans.

Fifteen of the long-planned Rescue Craft were produced at once.

Five factories built them simultaneously, each assembling three aircraft, for a total construction time of twelve days.

The high-powered radar station also successfully went operational at this point, with a full eight enormous satellite dishes.

The newly assembled Rescue Craft had sharp, triangular profiles with faintly reddish exteriors. They had wingspans of thirty-two meters, lengths of forty-eight meters, and heights of eleven meters above the ground. Molecular co-diffusion technology left their surfaces completely seamless.

They were made entirely of zero alloy. Even a hit from an Earth main battle tank's cannon would struggle to penetrate their zero alloy surface layers.

The large mounted mechanical arms then went to work, spraying them all with a silver coating that absorbed radar waves and resisted high temperatures.

The arrival of the Rescue Craft meant Orange Star now possessed armed forces, along with interception capability within one million kilometers of nearby space.

After all, once they entered space, they needed no energy to keep moving, only to change course, accelerate, or decelerate.

Luo Qi considered expanding the eastern side of the base with an airfield, but it remained only a thought, never actually implemented.

The Rescue Craft in the assembly plants began loading ammunition and fuel. Luo Qi connected to their chipsets and began writing their intelligent programs.

Their names were simply Rescue Craft 1 through 15. They really were cannon fodder; he could not even be bothered to name them.

[Aviation System installation commencing]

[Air Combat Module download commencing]

[Intelligent program ready]

Outside, the connected fuel lines detached.

[Fuel loading complete]

As for the seventy-five-millimeter and thirty-five-millimeter Electromagnetic Cannon Shells,

multiple framed loading tracks rattled as they fed them into the aircraft, no slower than drinks coming off a production line.

With a click, the seventy-five-millimeter Electromagnetic Cannon Shells stopped feeding in.

The crisp ringing continued, however, as over ten thousand thirty-five-millimeter Electromagnetic Cannon Shells entered separate ammunition magazines. Their loading stopped only a minute later.

The loading frames withdrew. Amid blaring alarms, the entire side wall of each factory split into three huge sections and was mechanically lifted!

All the mechanical arms and T3 Robots cleared space for the Rescue Craft.

[Rescue Craft on standby]

[Receiving rescue instructions]

[Rescue Craft commencing operation]

[Small Vector Nozzles activated]

The fifteen Rescue Craft ejected ion streams from their undersides, slowly setting their wheeled supports rolling. One after another, they taxied out through the sides of the enormous factories into the open spaces between them.

[Vertical takeoff and landing test commencing]

Inside the Second World,

Luo Qi was not the only one watching.

Even the copies involved in the design joined in to observe the takeoff. Their manifestations in the real world were T3 Robots.

"Fly, fly! As long as there's enough thrust!"

"Even a brick can fly!"

"These aren't bricks! They're the fruits of science and intelligence!"

Hadn't their very first rocket launch succeeded, too?

Inside the main control base,

Stendhal stood with his head raised before the enormous display. The screen was divided into several sections, showing live surveillance footage and data from the Rescue Craft.

The streams of data scrolling across the screen made Stendhal's head spin, but that did not stop him from being a good spectator.

"Dad, those robots gathering there..."

Luo Qi replied, "They're there to respond to emergencies."

"Is that so..." Stendhal nodded.

"System self-check complete. Aircraft, take off!"

Luo Qi's voice filled the control center. It was time to test the results of their research.

A dozen or so T3 Robots watched the Rescue Craft lift vertically through their large, single camera eyes.

The Rescue Craft's control systems adjusted their commands. The vertical nozzles increased thrust, the ion fuel ignited, and the deuterium nuclear batteries released a steady stream of electrons. Electromagnetic fields accelerated those ions to generate thrust for the Rescue Craft.

Powerful particle streams began pushing their hundred-ton-plus bodies upward. Five Rescue Craft lifted vertically off the ground, quickly rising above the twenty-meter-high factory buildings.

The entire base security system activated and locked onto the targets, turning its sensors and gun barrels toward the aircraft.

Tank shells fired with chemical propellants could not penetrate them, but the electromagnetic and laser cannons, upgraded through several generations, were sharp blades indeed.

The Rescue Craft quickly climbed to eighty meters. Then the six angled, symmetrically arranged diamond-shaped nozzles at their tails spat green light ten meters long!

In an instant, the Rescue Craft vanished from above the base.

They were unmanned and sturdy enough that acceleration overload was no concern. Ions continued blasting out at high speed through the powerful electromagnetic fields in their acceleration chambers!

The aircraft's speed shot past one thousand meters per second!

One watching copy exclaimed, "Just as expected! With enough thrust, even a brick can fly!"

"These aren't bricks! They're the fruits of science!"

The thrusters had not even reached maximum output yet. Sensors throughout the Rescue Craft operated, transmitting signals to the main base's radar station.

Airframe stable, flight speed 1,470 m/s-

As the Ion Engines increased thrust, speed and fuel consumption rose together...

The other ten aircraft also took off and left the base in sequence. Excellent. At least none needed to return for supplies.

Luo Qi ordered them straight into the rescue operation, while the satellite station remained operational and maintained continuous contact with them.

The satellite station could not only receive signals from orbiting satellites, but also distress signals from 250,000 kilometers above the surface.

The signal lasted four hours every three days. The escape pods were approaching Orange Star.

Luo Qi had already calculated their new orbital region by locating the signal, and he transmitted the positional information to the rescue fleet.

The fleet, with a maximum atmospheric speed of 3.8 kilometers per second, burst out of the atmosphere trailing flames. First, they circled Orange Star and deployed the thirty observation satellites they carried into its orbit.

The satellites autonomously unfolded their solar panels and began propelling themselves. They were multipurpose satellites that would continuously provide Orange Star with survey data.

The fleet left near-planet orbit, reaching ten kilometers per second in space and continuing to accelerate.

The fifteen Rescue Craft formed a shared local network, exchanging the information each detected to avoid colliding with the dangerous meteoroids.

[Deploy defensive cannons]

The left and right wings carried a total of two seventy-five-millimeter electromagnetic cannons.

The other four, along with eight smaller-caliber cannons, were all turret-mounted.

They normally remained concealed inside the airframes. If an enemy got on their tails, their flexibility could teach it a proper lesson.

With 180° × 180° fields of movement, the turret-mounted electromagnetic cannons could greatly increase the Rescue Craft's firing coverage.

[Current fleet speed: 80,000 km/h]

[Recalibrating coordinates]

[Weapons systems unlocked]

[Free-fire mode]

Once the fleet accelerated to fifty-five kilometers per second, it shut down its main thrusters.

They traveled at two hundred thousand kilometers per hour, with virtually no resistance in space.

Their inertia alone would keep them moving at their current speed. In the vast vacuum of the universe, they did not even amount to grains of sand.

When encountering meteoroids, they mostly took evasive action. Solid projectiles could shatter the rocks, but would inevitably create even more fragments.

Now they only needed to coast on their own inertia for roughly 270,000 kilometers to reach the escape pods.

On the ground, Luo Qi watched video recorded by the Rescue Craft in near-planet orbit.

Blurry fragments littered space, with almost one fragment per cubic kilometer.

At fifty-five kilometers per second, a Rescue Craft would pass fifty-five fragments every second!

And this was after Luo Qi had already cleared away some of the meteoroids.

[Rescue fleet proceeding to designated coordinates]

[Estimated travel time: 1 hour, 20 minutes]