(Note: All descriptions in this chapter involving the units of measurement of the Moyunli Tar civilization have been translated into human languages in advance by the great author. Don’t be rude.)
At this moment, in the vast void hundreds of billions of kilometers away from the sun, the "Okaro" armed mining spacecraft is decelerating.
Its bottom, a total of 10 square kilometers of propulsion jets, has been adjusted to be roughly aligned in the direction of the yellow dwarf star. At this moment, under the huge energy supply generated by the annihilation of matter and antimatter, the plasma jet was accelerated to a point very close to the speed of light and surged out, exerting huge reverse thrust on the hull of the ship. Pushing the Okaro spacecraft, which has a mass of 90 billion tons, it slowly reduces its speed.
At this moment, the Okaro spacecraft is in an empty state.
More than 60% of its internal volume of approximately 2,000 cubic kilometers is empty. This means that one day in the future, it will be able to accommodate a total of more than 1,100 cubic kilometers of cargo - with a total mass of about one trillion tons. It will return fully loaded from this star system to where the main body of civilization is. Go to the Lalande 21185 star system.
By that time, the speed of the Okaro spacecraft will be far from being as fast as it is now.
When it came, it only took about 80 years to cross the huge distance of 8.31 light-years. Even including the tedious acceleration and deceleration stages, the average speed is as high as about 10% of the speed of light.
But after it is fully loaded, it will take at least 200 years to return. In other words, including the round trip time and the mining time in this star system, the time it will take for him to leave the main body of civilization will be at least about 350 years.
This reality made Villagash slightly irritated.
As the captain of the Okaro spacecraft and the director of this interstellar mining mission, Villagash belongs to the "left behind" among the two major factions within civilization. The other faction is the "wandering faction".
These two factions are the two most important ones in the Moyun Litar civilization. Even the current supreme leader of civilization is just the product of a compromise between the two major factions.
The two major factions have different political tendencies, different support groups within civilization, and different interests.
Among them, the main political tendency of the left-behind faction is to give up the past behavior of wandering between different star systems and setting off to the next star system after consuming the resources of one star system, and to steadily choose a star system with more abundant resources. , star systems with relatively good interstellar environments are fixed.
The resources of a star system are certainly not enough to support the development of civilization. Then, civilization should choose to expand to surrounding star systems, vigorously develop rapid navigation technology between star systems, and use the resources of multiple star systems to simultaneously provide for the development of civilization.
The benefits of this are obvious - first of all, it can avoid turmoil during every migration, avoid a lot of time and resources being wasted, and also save time to rebuild the galaxy every time it sails to a new star system.
The political views of the wandering faction are exactly opposite to those of the left-behind faction. They believe that we should stick to the traditions of civilization and stick to the behavior of consuming the resources of one star system before heading to the next star system.
They believe that this can maintain the vitality of civilization, allow civilization to come into contact with a wider world and gain greater space for development while it is constantly wandering.
The most important point is that doing so can improve the security of civilization as much as possible. Because once there is a fixed station, the coordinates of the civilization will be exposed. Once time passes, it is easy to attract malicious foreign civilizations, subjecting one's own civilization to unpredictable risks.
At the beginning, the two major factions just had different tendencies towards the future direction of civilization, and it was basically an academic dispute. But in recent thousands of years, with the addition of different interest groups in civilization, this dispute has changed somewhat.
To put it simply, vested interest groups support the left-behind parties. They do not want frequent changes in territory and frequent wanderings to have an impact on their own industries. The common people firmly support the wandering faction. They believe that wandering between different star systems will bring them the opportunity to achieve a class jump.
As for which faction the sub-humans support, no one pays attention to it, although they are the largest number among civilizations, hundreds of times the total number of everyone - whether civilians or rich and powerful people combined.
Second people are just tools. Will anyone take the opinions of tools seriously?
This interstellar mining operation is an opportunity that Villagash, as a left-behind faction, won amidst the conflicts and compromises between the two parties.
If it weren't for the newly discovered star being swallowed by a black hole, and the black hole's accretion disk containing a large amount of natural rare minerals, then this opportunity would not have been possible.
If this was just an ordinary star system, then the Wanderers, who had widespread civilian support, would never give themselves the opportunity to drive a spaceship to mine minerals.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Because the Wanderers have no excuse to refuse to obtain a large amount of rare minerals in advance. Because of this, the left-behind faction was able to win this dispute.
Once you successfully return to the main body of civilization with a huge amount of supplies, and once you prove that this method is feasible, then the left-behind faction will naturally gain a certain advantage in the factional struggle. And he will also win the admiration and attention of the faction's senior leaders, thereby gaining a higher status.
But all this is based on a premise.
That is, the time consumption cannot be too long.
You know, the round trip alone is destined to take 280 years. Including the time required for actual mining in the galaxy, if you are not careful, hundreds of years may be wasted, thus extending the total time of the entire inter-star system mining operation to 400 years. above.
And once the time exceeds 400 years, it will give the Wanderers an excuse and be attacked by them as inter-star system mining has no practical significance.
"This mission must be completed within 350 years, absolutely."
Villagash secretly made up his mind.
At this moment, the 70-year hibernation time has passed. He has been awake for about 8 years. However, in another four to five years, the spacecraft will reach the inner layer of this yellow dwarf star system. In another year or two, it will almost be time to start actual mining.
Normally, he wouldn't have to wake up so early. Because it was obvious that there was nothing for him to deal with during the voyage. But this time the mission was special. He had to wake up early and personally supervise the progress of something.
That is the cultivation of sub-human beings.
At the time of departure, the Okaro spacecraft only carried about 10,000 people. It is obviously unrealistic to rely on such a small number of people to complete the mining of rare minerals called "superionic metals" in black hole accretion disks.
In fact, most of these ten thousand people are technicians, engineers, and managers. The remaining small number are responsible for certain dirty, tiring, and dangerous tasks in service and spacecraft maintenance. The person responsible for the task.
The real mining task requires at least millions of people to complete.
It is obviously not cost-effective to carry sub-people directly from the main body of civilization. In order to save resources and time, Villagash chose to bring the civilization's gene pool with him. When it is about to arrive in that star system, it is cultivated in the spacecraft in advance. In this way, when they arrive at their destination and people have the ability to work, they can be sent out to work directly.
The cultivation of secondary people is related to the success or failure of this mining mission to some extent. This was the real reason why he woke up early.
"Captain, the higher education zone has been built, and the first batch of 300,000 people can receive skills training."
Chief Secretary Grigensch reported a piece of news to him.
"Okay. Let's send robot teachers to educate those stupid sub-humans. Don't waste our manpower."
At this stage, everyone is busy maintaining the Okaro spacecraft, preparing equipment in advance, formulating mining plans, etc., but there is no spare manpower to serve as teachers for those people.
Grigensch asked: "At what level do you want to set the elimination rate?"
It is obvious that the education of secondary people should be strict and efficient, but it cannot be taught tirelessly and repeatedly like humans. This requires setting an elimination rate, that is, in the face of inferior people who do not study hard, they should be punished if necessary, and the most serious ones can be killed directly.
This is the elimination rate.
Villagash thought for a moment: "Set it to one thousandth."
This ratio is a bit high. This made Grigenxi secretly surprised. But he could also understand the captain's urgency at the moment.
"Okay Captain."
After finishing the matter, Grigensch reported again: "Our observation equipment has observed that the survivors of that local civilization seem to be engaged in large-scale war preparation activities."
Vera Gash was slightly surprised: "They discovered us? Shouldn't they?"
"According to the analysis of scientists, it may be that when our spacecraft passed through the small nebula No. 13, the radiation flow from the spacecraft 'lit up' the nebula, which exposed our traces."
"That's it. It seems that this local civilization is somewhat interesting." Villagash waved his hand indifferently: "It doesn't matter. Just destroy them when the time comes."
He cannot allow any uncertain factors to affect his mining mission. Anyway, it is just a backward local civilization. The main body of the civilization is gone and only a few survivors are left. Just destroy it casually.
"yes."
The huge Okaro spacecraft slowly slowed down its speed.
At this moment, it is not far from the planet occupied by the survivors of the native civilization. As long as you get closer, you can launch an attack.
Veragash has no intention of communicating with that civilization. He didn't have that time to waste.
But at this moment, his chief secretary Grigensch hurried in.
"Captain, we discovered something unexpected. You should take a look..."
Villagash glanced at it casually, and his eyes almost jumped out of his head: "What? What? How is it possible?"
