Star Ocean: Starting from the Abandoned Mining Space Station

Chapter 100 Factory, Contact

Industrial colony galaxy in afterglow.

After arriving, the Afterglow fleet led by Brilliance and Huiyao dispersed as if they had completed their mission before.

Hui Hui, who was responsible for the preliminary review of Chen Ming, left the galaxy and entered hyperspace.

And Huiyao, with the refraction that protected Chen Ming's Iron Mine in his belly, arrived at the orbit of the industrial colony planet that Chen Ming had visited before.

Then Huihuang did not continue to land in the colony, but directly asked Di Guang to take Chen Ming to the giant industrial area that occupied one-fifth of the planet's area.

In the corner where the entire industry is expanding, there is a small, independent industrial zone consisting of only three factories.

The final purpose of refraction is here.

Although this place is relatively remote compared to the geocentric furnace energy supply tower at the core of the industrial zone, Chen Ming thinks it's not bad.

At least the environment you usually stay in is definitely better than inside an industrial zone full of industrial equipment.

As the diopter gradually approached its destination, Chen Ming could still see that the three factories had a large number of mechanical equipment and robots of various shapes busy at work.

However, it seems that these machines are not busy with the internal work of the factory, but are renovating the factory itself.

After landing, Di Guang spit out the Iron Ore Number and stayed in the open space in the center of the three factories.

The Iron Ore was parked in the open space next to the project.

Di Guang entered the factory directly from the other side. After placing a pile of materials and the escape capsules that had been sealed by Chen Ming into the factory's warehouse, he left the factory and flew into space.

Maybe there is something else that Yuhui needs to do.

Chen Ming checked the status of the escape cabins when he landed just now and made sure that all the escape cabins had activated the cryo-sleep function.

The two-day automatic startup time for the escape cabin has not yet come, so they should have started it themselves.

Chen Ming did not go around to the factory warehouse to touch these escape cabins for the time being. Instead, he chose to familiarize himself with the place where he might stay for a while and deal with them later.

But when Chen Ming got off the ship wearing protective clothing and prepared to enter the factory.

He was suddenly stopped by a robot busy around the factory.

Immediately afterwards, Huihuang, who had just brought him here, also contacted him again.

"The factory still needs a period of transformation. Please wait on the spacecraft for a while."

"You will be officially assigned tasks and work beginning at [-] a.m. Earth Standard Time tomorrow."

"If you have any needs, please contact Gamma A. He will help you contact me, and I can help you get what you need."

"understood."

Chen Ming responded, suddenly feeling like he was in the internship period.

But the thing that is different from the internship is that there is no one at the moment. No, there is no AI to take care of him.

Chen Ming turned around and returned to the spacecraft, looking at the atmosphereless sky full of stars and the mechanical equipment at work.

Suddenly, I missed the time when I had to work on the pirate space station.

He shook his head, shook off the memories, and opened the porthole shield to isolate the outside environment.

There is no need to think too much about the past, he still has to move forward now.

Chen Ming returned to the Iron Mine's studio, took out the terminal, and placed it in front of him.

But he just opened the terminal and was not in a hurry to use it.

Instead, I took the opportunity to take a look at the situation of Gamma A.

After leaving the Afterglow Colony planet, Gamma A arrived at the distribution point of the galaxy, which is the space station supporting this industrial colony.

The Glory class was also parked near this space station at this time.

Although Chen Ming was unable to directly read the thoughts and data of Gamma A core, he could see that Diopter's communication equipment was constantly sending out data and receiving data at the same time.

It is estimated that Gamma A is, as it once said, reading the data on their communication platform through the network coverage of the space station in order to learn later.

At the same time, it should also be communicating with Huiyao.

Huiyao and Gamma A are friends, so it is normal for Huiyao to confirm Gamma A's situation again after Gamma A went to pick up Chen Ming.

Chen Ming would not interrupt at this time. After confirming the situation of Gamma A, he directly changed the perspective to Gamma B.

Gamma B is not in the galaxy where Chen Ming is now, but in another place, closer to the galaxy at the core of the afterglow, doing its own thing.

Although Gamma B has been out of contact on the Afterglow list, as soon as it came back, it was investigated by the Afterglow individual responsible for this aspect of work within Afterglow.

However, the time to investigate Gamma B was before Chen Ming asked Gamma A to convey his situation to Huiyao.

Therefore, the rigor of the investigation of gamma B is much easier than that of gamma A.

Gamma B only needs a little explanation of what happened during the time it was out of contact.

It was that after it was captured in the battle of the previous mission, it was supposed to be used to take charge of some work.

However, there was a human spacecraft maintainer who was treated unfairly by the forces that obtained Gamma B and was unable to use his abilities, so he hoped to join Yuhui by contacting Yuhui.

However, the repairman died while escaping in the Fighter Kai, so in the end Gamma B came back on its own.

Although Chen Ming himself felt that this statement was ridiculous, for Yu Hui, it should be a more convincing statement.

Because although there have always been conflicts between Yuhui and humans, there has been a news circulating among those who have the ability to access the core of Yuhui's AI.

Afterglow treats people, especially researchers in various human-related mechanical, electronic, and spacecraft technologies, and will recruit them with very high salaries.

It can only be said that humans capture the core of the Afterglow AI to work for humans, and the captured Afterglow AI will also find ways to gain leverage from humans.

Although the efficiency is average, after all, Yuhui's place is still inferior to humans' own place.

However, there are indeed some people who have successfully joined Yu Hui and worked for Yu Hui, including senior engineers and senior researchers.

The special tachyon spear modified by Yuhui can be regarded as their masterpiece in a sense.

So this is why at the Xinda Company board of directors meeting, everyone on the board of directors was not too surprised that Chen Ming suddenly found Yu Hui's rescue and ran to Yu Hui's place, and they quickly accepted it.

Therefore, in the end, the Afterglow AI who investigated Gamma B successfully accepted Gamma B's words.

Then, after reading the spaceship data of Fighter Kai at the expense of part of the material ration, Gamma B was released.

The cosmic environment is ever-changing, and for Yuhui individuals, losing contact is a common occurrence.

One day he was captured, and one day he was paralyzed in space due to spacecraft problems.

Or maybe he was rescued again one day and escaped by himself. This is all normal and possible.

If it's been reviewed and there's no problem, then there's no problem.

Therefore, the case of driving the Gamma B modified by the Fighter was considered a closed case before, and basically there would be no afterglow to investigate again.

So Chen Ming simply gave Gamma B free time and let it do whatever it was doing before, without having to worry about his affairs here for the time being.

After all, he can be said to be under the protection of Yuhui now, and there is no need to contact the Alpha AI who purchased the ectoplasm stone.

And since Gamma B has not yet been exposed to the eyes of other Yuhui who are dealing with matters related to Chen Ming, Chen Ming simply lets it be hidden for the time being.

There is an afterglow hidden in the darkness of the afterglow, and it is an afterglow that is about to reach the beta core like Gamma A.

I'm not sure what use it will be put to in the future.

Closed the panel where the two gamma AI conditions can be seen.

Chen Ming then opened the panel of his spacecraft that was still at the space station.

There were ten spaceships in total before Chen Ming.

They are Iron Ore, Diopter, Sunder, Two Mules, Lumen, Shimmer, Fighter Kai, Centurion and Sentinel.

At present, both the Sunder Armor and the Centurion have been destroyed, and the Dioptric and Fighter Kai are now on Yuhui's territory.

The only ones left on the space station were two Mules and a Sentinel, parked quietly in the repair shop.

Chen Ming took a look at each one and found that none of the three spaceships showed any signs of being tampered with by outsiders.

There was also equipment on the Sentinel for long-distance communication that he had installed before. When Chen Ming started the equipment, he found that there was a received message inside the communication equipment.

It's information from the company.

Let Chen Ming contact them as soon as possible after seeing the news, and they will find a way to bring Chen Ming back.

It seems that the company has guessed that he was peacefully taken away by Yuhui.

But Chen Ming was not in a hurry to contact the company. Instead, he contacted his boss first.

When the communication was connected, the boss did not speak, but Chen Ming said the secret code he had spoken to the boss before.

Chen Ming had previously told his boss about his abilities and that he could communicate over long distances using communication equipment.

However, in order to prevent anyone from using his spaceship to disguise their identity, Chen Ming set up a secret code and told several people who were familiar with him.

After verifying his identity, the boss asked quite unexpectedly: "Xiao Ming, how did you survive? I know the military thought you were dead when they got a Dominator over there."

"luck."

"It's not luck. I heard that Yuhui's cruiser appeared over there. It should have something to do with you."

Chen Ming didn't answer, which was regarded as acquiescence.

The boss suddenly sighed slightly and said, "Anyway, I want to apologize to you first. My previous rescue arrangements were blocked by others and did not work."

"Fortunately, you are fine now. You should be safe at Yuhui's place."

Chen Ming didn't pay too much attention to the boss's apology.

After all, he took the initiative to say that he didn't need the boss' help from the beginning.

The boss was already preparing to rescue him if there was an accident, and he had nothing to blame.

But now Chen Ming was very curious about who could get rid of the rescue arranged by his boss, so he asked: "Who stopped him?"

The boss made no secret of this, saying, "Other people in the organization I'm in."

"Internal conflict?"

"Not really. It can only be said that our organization is relatively loose. He is also a psychic. He didn't want me to save you, so he blocked the rescue I arranged." Chen Ming asked in confusion: "Why? I You shouldn’t have messed with any psychics, right?”

"In fact, there is, because he is the beneficiary of the military's mining of Sky Steel, and part of the Sky Steel mined by the military will be distributed to him."

"It's a pity that I didn't know about this before, otherwise he wouldn't have interfered with your rescue."

Chen Ming was suddenly silent for a while and asked, "What's his name? Where is he?"

"What do you want?"

"Write it down first and talk about it later."

The boss hesitated a little, but still told Chen Ming the name of the psyker and the galaxy where his colony was located, and said: "If you have an idea, I will tell you his psionic effect. Don’t know too much right now.”

Chen Ming responded and kept everything his boss said in mind.

"What are your plans for the future?"

"My plan?"

Chen Ming thought about it and couldn't hide it, so he said directly: "Yu Hui attaches great importance to my ability, so I will definitely not be able to come back in a short time."

"But I don't want to come back. There are many things that are very valuable to me in Yuhui, and they are all here."

The boss couldn't help but smile and said, "That's all?"

"In addition, I also want to take this opportunity to exercise and develop my abilities."

"If I had been able to control cruisers before, or if I already had a fleet of my own, I wouldn't have been forced to this point by the military."

Chen Ming repeated as if he had strengthened his determination: "Yes, I want to build a fleet of my own."

The boss didn't think it was crazy because Chen Ming wanted to do this alone. He just said: "That won't be easy. A fleet does not just need ships."

"Yeah, I know it's difficult, but I suddenly feel that the most reliable power is only the one you personally control."

Now that the conversation has reached this point, Chen Ming took advantage of the situation and said, "So I'm thinking about whether there is any way to make money."

"As far as my current situation is concerned, even if I'm on Yuhui's side, I can't completely break away from human society. Money is still very important, whether it's buying a boat or buying supplies."

"And in the future, if I can really build a fleet, how will I solve the problem of bulk supplies?"

The boss carefully considered Chen Ming's question and said, "Actually, since you have gone out and there is still afterglow protecting you, you can try to explore the unknown star field."

"In recent decades, the empire has no plans to expand. There is still a blue ocean outside."

"Once the buffer zone between us and Afterglow passes, everything is an unknown star field that has basically not been investigated."

"If you can bring back a star map, or go deeper, scan the rough data of the planets in the galaxy on the star map and bring it back."

"Detailed data on these valuable galaxies could cost more than a battleship."

"Oh, no."

The boss suddenly interrupted himself and said: "I almost forgot that you don't have an exploration ship, you don't have professional scanning equipment, and it's not easy to deal with the hyperspace channel cloud outside."

Chen Ming originally had some thoughts about what his boss said, but he realized the problem after his boss said it was wrong.

That is, hyperspace channels are not naturally generated, but are developed step by step by humans.

The interior of hyperspace itself is filled only with endless hyperspace channel clouds, and the density of the internal clouds is not uniform, which means that they can be dispersed.

Back when humans first set foot in hyperspace.

Humanity can only rely on cruisers and even capital ship-level ships to support the front, and struggle to open up a channel that can allow other small spacecraft to pass.

In the process of continuous exploration and research, humans have developed specialized exploration ships to explore unknown star fields based on the properties of hyperspace.

Then, for the sake of convenience, in addition to its own ability to disperse hyperspace clouds, exploration ships are also gradually increasing their ability to explore unknown galaxies.

High-power scanning equipment scans the galaxy environment, and fine detection equipment detects the general situation of the planet to determine whether a planet is worthy of detailed exploration.

So far, the hyperspace here in the Fringe Star Field is still filled with hyperspace clouds, and navigation between galaxies can only rely on shipping lanes.

But over in the prosperous star field, the hyperspace clouds have basically completely dispersed, and that is the world that truly belongs to humans.

However, although Chen Ming currently does not have the ability to explore unknown galaxies, it may not be possible in the future.

So Chen Ming said to his boss: "Actually, I can ask Yu Hui to try. They might be able to give me an exploration ship, but it shouldn't be convenient for me to go out myself."

"But your abilities do."

The boss helped Chen Ming pick up the conversation and said, "Since you said so, you should have some ideas in this regard. It never hurts to explore some valuable planets."

"Also, do you remember what you did for me before?"

"The pirate?"

"Yes, remember why I asked you to bring the pirates back?"

"He attacked the fleet transporting goods to your colony."

"Not bad, do you understand what I mean?"

"You want to acquire the galaxy data I scanned and then build a colony?"

"Almost, but I don't build the colony, you build the colony."

Chen Ming frowned and asked one after another; "Why do you say that? And why do you mention this suddenly? Is there really no problem if the colony is outside the empire's territory?"

The boss responded immediately as if he had already prepared a plan: "The reason why you built the colony instead of me is very simple."

"Because I'm lazy."

"As for the reason for suddenly mentioning this."

"It's because the entire human empire is able to survive stably in the dangerous unknown star fields where the afterglow lingers outside the empire, and can also remotely communicate with the empire without any communication equipment."

"At the moment, as far as I know, you should be the only one."

"This is a rare opportunity, an opportunity to expand territory. If you miss it, it may be gone."

"As for the problem, what do you think there will be?"

Chen Ming immediately said the two issues that had just occurred to him: "Yu Hui, there are still people."

"I said, this is not my colony, it's the colony of you, who is working under Yu Hui now. It shouldn't be a problem for Yu Hui to meet your small needs, right?"

When Chen Ming heard this, he couldn't help but said: "I don't think this is a small demand."

"I think so too, but it depends on you to see if you can get Yu Hui's true attention."

"As for the human problem, I can solve it. In your case, I was not prepared enough and was intercepted midway. But such a thing would never happen in a colony that gave me time to prepare in advance."

The boss's tone sounded very serious.

"You must know that a perfect self-sufficient colony is an existence that can provide all the materials that can be obtained in human society."

"I will only provide you with support. When the colony can make money, you will receive dividends. Everything in the other colonies will be yours."

"Everything you need can be found in the colony."

Chen Ming had personally seen Yuhui's colony and the colony in the Star Territory Capital, and knew that what his boss said was correct.

But he still had some questions to ask: "But colonial construction is not that simple, right?"

"Of course not, so I'm just telling you that you can't find a suitable galaxy so quickly now."

"As for the work that needs to be done to build the colony, you can actually learn about it from Yu Hui, or if you have time, you can come to me and I can talk to you slowly."

Ended correspondence with boss.

Chen Ming also acquiesced to the idea of ​​setting up a colony with his boss.

After digesting what the boss said, Chen Ming returned his gaze to the sentry's communication equipment.

He was considering whether to contact the company.

At present, it seems that the company has only sent a message to Chen Ming's spacecraft, and has not gone so far as to directly install monitoring equipment on the spacecraft.

After all, even if they did this, they still had to wait for Chen Ming to take the initiative if they wanted to communicate with Chen Ming.

The initiative to contact lies with Chen Ming, so installing equipment on the Sentinel for monitoring is likely to arouse Chen Ming's resentment.

So they may not know Chen Ming's details yet, nor do they know that Chen Ming has contacted his boss.

This is a good thing for Chen Ming, because Chen Ming now feels that he does not have to contact the company.

Chen Ming needs to stay with Yu Hui for a while to obtain benefits that are very important to him, and he also has needs from his boss.

But the company obviously urgently needs Chen Ming to help them obtain Sky Steel and confront the military.

Otherwise, the longer it drags on, the greater the company's losses in Sky Steel will be.

So once the company knows about Chen Ming's situation, it will definitely find a way to take Chen Ming away.

Chen Ming didn't want to leave like this.

If he leaves now, not only will all Chen Ming's chances of benefiting from Yuhui be ruined, he may even be chased by two Afterglow cruisers.

And from now on, Yuhui may directly blacklist him.

This is definitely not a good thing for Chen Ming.

So Chen Ming planned to delay for two days without contacting anyone else.

Anyway, the boss and factory director Wu are familiar with it. The factory director and others should know that Chen Ming is fine in two days, and they will most likely hide it for Chen Ming temporarily.

Unless the company is really urgent, they may find a way to contact Chen Ming through their boss.

But you have to get through the boss first.

Chen Ming picked up the terminal in front of him and opened the professional books that Old Wu had given him before. He had not yet read many of these books.

And in the future, Yu Hui will probably give him a bunch of Yu Hui's professional books, and he will have to read them all slowly.

But now, he has plenty of time.

(End of this chapter)