Chen Ming's fleet transporting energy crystal crabs encountered a fleet from the mechanical clan here.
Ever since Chen Ming and Bai Quan agreed to hand over the development rights of the energy crystal crab technology and the energy crystal crab population to the legion.
Chen Ming had already arranged the process of transporting the energy crystal crabs back to the empire.
He prepared a cargo fleet with the Colossus-class heavy freighter he currently owned as the flagship, and planned to slowly return via the hyperspace route.
A total of 1 cruiser, 20 destroyers and 20 escorts.
The quantity is not large, but it is just enough to transport the sufficient number of energy crystal crabs that Chen Ming had mentioned before.
Although according to Chen Ming's current ability, he can directly let this fleet perform three extreme-distance jumps to reach the empire, and leave the rest to the legion, letting the legion think of ways to take the energy crystal crab away.
But if the supplies arrive too quickly, it will be difficult to coordinate with Baiquan.
After all, when the energy crystal crabs arrived at the legion, they had to hurry up and start cultivating the energy crystal crabs to obtain energy crystals.
But when Chen Ming agreed, Bai Quan had just started to get involved in the special materials department.
Although there are many vacant positions in this department, no results will be achieved without a few days of wrangling.
And once the energy crystal crabs are really delivered, more people will definitely have ideas about these locations.
It would be better to wait for Baiquan to occupy more positions in the special materials department.
Then Chen Ming transported the supplies to the destination, which was just right.
Besides, the jump requires far more supplies than normal navigation to maintain the jump engine, and continuous jumps consume not only supplies but also mental energy.
Chen Ming is not in a hurry to transport the energy crystal crabs, so he would rather take it slow.
At least wait until Baiquan is almost ready, or the fleet really encounters trouble, and then make the jump.
And under normal circumstances, Chen Ming's route into the empire is quite safe.
At most, only the last section where the Empire, Afterglow and the Mechanical Race meet is a little dangerous.
So Chen Ming’s idea was to let the fleet fly slowly in hyperspace.
He thought everything would go smoothly, but unexpectedly an accident happened.
Moreover, the location where the accident happened was not the most dangerous section of the road, but rather it was at a point where the cruiser was almost able to make an extreme distance jump.
There is still some distance from the mechanical clan star field.
Why here?
Chen Ming didn't understand, but he immediately switched his vision to the Colossus-class transporting energy crystal crabs.
He had been personally controlling the Colossus from the very beginning.
Although there is no Afterglow Core on it, as long as Chen Ming needs it, an Afterglow Core can take over at any time and control the ship to fight.
However, as a cargo ship, the Colossus class is mainly used for transporting cargo and has little combat capability.
And for Chen Ming, this batch of goods is the most important.
Even with his psychic powers protecting him during the battle, it would be difficult for him to guarantee that the goods would not be damaged.
So when Chen Ming switched his vision, the thought in his mind was to retreat as much as possible and not to get entangled with the mechanical clan.
As Chen Ming's psychic power was activated, a new picture appeared in front of his eyes, the picture of the Colossus-class sensor.
Through the door of the screen, you can see that the Colossus is now in a hyperspace channel.
All around are dense clouds
After all, this place is far away from the Empire and any existence capable of exploring hyperspace.
Therefore, in this area that has only been explored by Chen Ming driving the Supreme Point, hyperspace cloud has become the only main color.
At the front end of the narrow hyperspace channel was the mechanical fleet that attacked Chen Ming's fleet.
At a glance, there are more than ten cruisers alone, not to mention the number of lower-level spaceships.
And this was a raid initiated by the Mechanical Clan.
So in fact, just now, Chen Ming received a reminder from Yu Hui of the escort fleet.
The mechanical race had come within their firing range.
Their cruisers have begun their attack.
The concentrated fire from the large weapons of more than a dozen cruisers put the Colossus-class shield in danger, and it could only barely resist.
But outside the line of fire, a large number of mechanical boarding troops were approaching.
Fortunately, the escort fleet suffered no losses.
As soon as they discovered the attack of the Mechanical Cruiser, they hid behind the shield activated by the Colossus.
And now Chen Ming's attention is all here. It is not a problem to recover the afterglow core while the ship is being destroyed.
The problem now is that Chen Ming only has one cruiser, and he cannot defeat the dozen or so cruisers of the Mechanical Clan at all.
Although he could overclock various components of the spacecraft, the increase could never reach ten times.
One against dozens, or using cargo ships against dozens, there is no way they can win at all.
There was no way Chen Ming would let the Colossus stay here any longer.
What's more, what he just saw was only one end of the channel, the mechanical race in the direction where the fleet was heading.
In fact, behind the fleet, at the other end of the waterway, a mechanical fleet was approaching.
The scale is exactly the same as the mechanical family that blocked the way before.
Attacked from both sides, one against twenty, would he stay and wait for death if he didn't run? Chen Ming immediately tried the means at hand to escape from the encirclement of the enemy fleet.
But the mechanical race was obviously well prepared.
The pulse blocking device disrupted the hyperspace channel systems of all ships in Chen Ming's fleet.
Preventing the fleet from leaving hyperspace or using hyperspace lane jump drives.
The real jump engine was also blocked by the mechanical clan attacking from both sides.
If in a normal cosmic environment with such a small blockade distance, Chen Ming's spacecraft could easily fly out.
But now, his fleet was in hyperspace.
There is only a narrow passageway which is the only space available for movement.
The channel is surrounded by extremely dense channel clouds.
The mechanical clan really only needs to block this section of the passage.
Unless Chen Ming rushed directly into the clouds, bypassed the mechanical clan's blockade fleet, and tried to escape.
But there are obviously problems to be solved in doing so.
Hyperspace lightning flashing in the hyperspace channel cloud will form disturbances in the spacecraft's circuit network and signal network when it hits the spacecraft.
This disturbance will greatly hinder the normal operation of the equipment and interfere with the stability of all systems.
Of course this also includes the jump system.
Ships cannot jump into hyperspace.
That is to say.
If Chen Ming cannot escape the pursuit of the mechanical fleet and cannot find the channel in the clouds, then his fleet will continue to be destroyed by the lightning in the clouds.
Once the fleet gets lost in the hyperspace channel cloud, the consequences will be disastrous.
But corresponding to the risk of getting lost is the situation where one cruiser is fighting against more than twenty cruisers.
Obviously, compared to the threat of hyperspace channels, the mechanical fleet is more terrifying.
It is still necessary to retreat into the clouds first and wait for reinforcements to arrive.
When Chen Ming received the news just now, he had already notified several Alpha-level afterglows to prepare for battle.
Now the distance between the freight fleet and the temporary base is only one extreme jump away.
As long as Chen Ming's reinforcements arrive, we can fight.
As long as he could delay for five minutes, giving him five minutes to assemble his fleet, he would be able to kill the attacking mechanical race immediately.
Under Chen Ming's control, the Colossus-class and its escort fleet rushed directly into the hyperspace cloud beside the waterway, enduring the bombardment of countless lightning bolts and hiding in the clouds.
While Chen Ming was doing this, another idea came to his mind.
That is, when necessary, he actually has another choice.
Abandon this batch of energy crystal crabs, directly dismantle the fleet and send away the afterglow core.
The reason why we have to give up the energy crystal crabs instead of sending them away like we did with the afterglow cores is very simple.
Although Chen Ming can already teleport living creatures, the transported creatures take the channel of the Scarlet Dimension. There are two prerequisites for any creature to pass through the Scarlet Dimension safely.
One is that he has never experienced dimensional infection.
The other is to be in an unconscious state, or to have their external perception blocked by Chen Ming's psychic power to prevent them from being drowned in the ocean of knowledge when passing through the scarlet dimension. The former is a condition that is easy to achieve, but the latter requires Chen Ming to spend a lot of mental energy to protect these creatures.
The cargo hold of the entire fleet was stuffed with over a hundred thousand energy crystal crabs. If Chen Ming wanted to preserve them all, he wouldn't have enough mental energy to drain them dry.
Even if only a part of it is saved, it will be enough for Chen Ming to drink a pot of wine.
If he only wants to save a small part, Chen Ming might as well wait for the next cargo ship to deliver the goods.
So as long as Chen Ming doesn't want to lose these energy crystal crabs, he can only withstand the losses on the ship that may come from the channel cloud or the mechanical fleet.
He chose to fight back.
Just after Chen Ming rushed into the clouds, the mechanical race's fleet followed him and rushed into the clouds like crazy.
What's even more exaggerated is that the Mechanical Clan also prepared a device on a cruiser to remove the clouds from the hyperspace channel of the exploration ship.
Even though Chen Ming's fleet entered the clouds first, it didn't take long for the mechanical fleet to catch up.
High-density channel clouds will hinder the speed of spacecraft traveling through them.
Chen Ming, who was sailing in front with Yun on his back, had no way to escape from the mechanical fleet with exploration ship equipment behind him.
In just over a minute, Chen Ming's fleet was caught up and came within the firing range of the mechanical fleet behind.
He was forced to activate the shield at the rear of the ship to block the fire from behind.
Fortunately, the mechanical clan only installed exploration equipment on one cruiser, and they could only open a channel wide enough to accommodate a maximum of seven cruisers at the same time.
Compared with the previous dozen or so cruisers, the pressure from the seven cruisers was reduced by nearly half.
As long as the shield and armor take turns to bear the damage from the rear, relying on Chen Ming's high-speed repair ability, the spacecraft can barely be kept from being destroyed in the face of the concentrated fire of seven cruisers.
They also have those boarding fleets.
In the hyperspace channel, all spaceships and everything have an upper speed limit.
This speed limit is related to mass. The greater the mass, the smaller the upper limit that can be reached.
The upper limit of speed that the cruiser's mass cannot reach is obviously far lower than the upper limit of speed of small spacecraft carrying mechanical ships for boarding.
A large number of boarding ships and assault boats were seen approaching the Colossus class through the passage opened up by the cruisers equipped with exploration equipment by the Mechanic Clan, and they could threaten the Colossus at any time.
Chen Mingdu has already controlled the Colossus-class to give up attacking the mechanical cruisers and instead attack those boarding ships.
Still some of them passed through the shield of the Colossus and rushed into the boarding range.
These assault boats with drill-like front ends drilled directly into the Colossus-class armor. Even though they were immediately squeezed out by the metal liquid that Chen Ming used to repair the spacecraft, some of the mechanical clans still remained in the gaps that had just been drilled.
They continued to violently destroy the gap repaired by Chen Ming, trying to tear a hole from the outside to enter the interior of the spacecraft.
The mechanical creatures seemed to know the effect of Chen Ming's psychic power. All the nearby mechanical bodies were moving towards the place where the largest number of boarding individuals were, and constantly launching attacks on the gap.
The destructive power of the concentrated fire was so great that Chen Ming’s spiritual power was not enough to repair the armor plates.
The mechanical bodies of the mechanical race relied purely on the stacking of attack methods and the high repair efficiency of Chen Ming's psychic power when it was applied to a small range, and they tore open a passage to the Colossus-class cargo hold.
Although they were immediately counterattacked by the robots placed inside the Colossus by Chen Ming, the influx of mechanical creatures was still like a tide and difficult to completely stop.
Some of the mechanical bodies charged deeper into the Colossus, while others chose to unload the cargo holds closest to the gaps they had opened.
And while their number was still sufficient to maintain the gap, all the unloaded cargo was thrown out of the gap.
A total of 8 small warehouses near the gap were all taken away by the mechanical clan.
A mechanical cruiser behind immediately captured the thrown cargo hold and chose to turn around, no longer following Chen Ming's fleet deep into the clouds.
At the same time as the cruiser turned around, the other mechanical spaceships also began to slow down and stopped chasing.
Instead, they covered each other, turned around and left the clouds.
They simply abandoned the mechanical troops that were boarding and chose to retreat.
When Chen Ming saw this scene, instead of feeling relieved, he felt even more depressed.
Because these mechanical people obviously came here with a purpose.
They left only after they had achieved their goal.
Their goal is to seize the warehouse, and only after seizing it will they choose to retreat.
The mechanical fleet retreated outside the hyperspace channel cloud layer, shut down the device that hindered the jump, activated the jump, and disappeared in front of Chen Ming.
Chen Ming's reinforcements had not yet arrived, and they did not dare to chase in the opposite direction.
We can only let them leave.
At this time, less than four minutes had passed since Chen Ming received the news that the fleet had been attacked.
After Chen Ming confirmed that the mechanical race had really left, he quickly cleared out the mechanical race that had entered the cargo ship and returned to the relatively safer waterway.
If you continue to stay in the channel cloud, you will be electrocuted in vain.
He was constantly thinking in his mind what was going on.
At the moment, it seems that the mechanical race is definitely coming for him with preparations.
A large number of cruisers blocked the waterway, and special boarding ships were prepared to seize the cargo holds.
Moreover, the mechanical clan actually brought exploration equipment to prevent Chen Ming’s fleet from directly rushing into the channel cloud.
Chen Ming didn't believe that the mechanical clan was not prepared.
The question is, when did the mechanical race discover his spaceship? How did they prepare the fleet to surround and attack? Chen Ming usually didn't use this route at all, and he might have used some spaceships to explore it when he was developing it.
Everything he obtained from the empire and needed to send to the frontier was generally delivered through his boss's colonial warehouse.
The farthest it can be transported to is the new planet where the mechanical race controlled by Chen Ming is newly stationed, and then sent to the main body using psychic power.
Although it is quite tiring, Chen Ming has gotten used to it over time and it has a very good effect on training his spiritual power.
Therefore, after much thought, Chen Ming concluded that the reason why the mechanical race was prepared to attack him was most likely related to the empire's recent actions.
Ever since Chen Ming said last time that the mechanical star field has a weak defense relative to the empire's rear.
The Empire often dispatched reconnaissance fleets to conduct reconnaissance around the Mechanical Star Territory.
The mechanical clan is not fools. They will naturally strengthen the defense in the rear and expand the territory belonging to the mechanical clan in the rear.
Then by chance, the patrolling or pioneering mechanical fleet discovered Chen Ming's cargo fleet, so after some preparation, they came to attack Chen Ming.
But if you think about it carefully, this idea is problematic.
Because normally fleet dispatch requires not only time but also logistical support.
This was an attack by the Mechanical Clan that was clearly premeditated, planned in advance, and had logistical preparations made.
Not all ships set sail like Chen Ming's, which does not require any logistical preparation.
Chen Ming can use psychic power to meet the fleet's logistics needs.
No matter who else they are, they must ensure logistics.
This batch attacked his fleet and was obviously needed.
A temporary base with basic industrial facilities is the best guarantee.
From the fact that the mechanical fleet was able to leave through a jump in the end, Chen Ming could judge that the mechanical fleet definitely did not jump here to block the road, but sailed here.
Even if the mechanical tribe can leap over first, then stay on the road to do maintenance, and then come back to find Chen Ming after the maintenance is completed.
The jump will also lead to the loss of war supplies, resulting in a slight reduction in the ship's combat capability.
But judging from the feeling Chen Ming had when he was fighting with the mechanical cruiser just now, their combat effectiveness had not been lost at all.
They definitely didn't jump here.
They must have a base nearby.
At this time, Chen Ming suddenly thought of the method of colonial expansion that was common to the Empire, the Mechanical Clan, and Yu Hui.
The first step is to find a suitable galaxy as the core of the subsequent star field.
Then start from this core and expand to the surrounding areas.
It is very likely that there is a temporary base of the mechanical race in a nearby galaxy, which is the core of their development.
You must know that the Mechanical Clan was absolutely fully prepared to attack Chen Ming's fleet. They took into account various complex situations and made various preparatory measures.
If we follow the premise that the Mechanical Clan's fleet is here to explore, then it is understandable that they brought along a cruiser equipped with exploration ship equipment.
At the same time, the equipment for blocking the jump engine is something that is rarely used in normal times. After all, unless the entire galaxy is blocked, it is difficult to completely block the whereabouts of a cruiser.
However, this device for blocking jump engines would be very valuable if it was used to protect oneself, preventing any cruiser that dared to approach or attack the base from jumping away.
This also happens to explain why the fleet that attacked Chen Ming had this kind of thing.
Chen Ming was also able to subtly sense the honeycomb network belonging to the mechanical race from the individuals of the mechanical race he had just captured alive, through the honeycomb network of the mechanical race that he controlled.
Chen Ming could vaguely sense that the source of the cellular network was not far away.
Taking all these factors into consideration, Chen Ming felt that the actual situation was probably pretty close to what he had guessed.
As for the purpose of the mechanical race doing this...
Chen Ming was sure that the mechanical race had no idea what he was transporting into the empire.
But they knew that anything that could be transported from outside the empire to within the empire would definitely not be just any random thing.
It would be best if we could snatch it back and verify what it is. After all, it’s not a loss to destroy the Empire’s fleet.
Just give it a try.
After determining what is being transported, they can decide whether to attack Chen Ming’s fleet again.
If the mechanical race were not fools, they would soon discover the specialness of the energy crystal crabs and would definitely find a way to transport the energy crystal crabs away as soon as possible.
At the same time, they prepared to attack Chen Ming's fleet again.
Although Chen Ming will definitely not give the mechanical clan this opportunity.
But the mechanical clan has achieved its initial goal of seizing the cargo hold.
What is stored in the cargo hold are all living energy crystal crabs.
Although there were several cargo holds containing energy crystal crabs that Chen Ming had transformed using insects, it was not difficult to dispose of these energy crystal crabs.
But there were also several cargo holds filled with ordinary energy crystal crabs.
If an ordinary energy crystal crab is taken away, the mechanical clan may be able to figure out the special features of the energy crystal.
Once they are allowed to breed a new generation of energy crystal crabs, I'm afraid a lot of trouble will happen.
Chen Ming suddenly realized the seriousness of the matter.
If the mechanical race really develops the technology to mass-produce energy crystals, the empire will probably suffer greatly in the war with the mechanical race.
We must never let the mechanical tribe take away the energy crystal crab.
He had to sort things out thoroughly.
It shouldn't be too difficult.
Since Chen Ming has confirmed that there must be a base of the mechanical clan nearby.
Then the Mechanicals will definitely send the warehouse there.
He is going to the base of the mechanical clan.
Destroy the stronghold and retake the cargo hold.
He was unable to defeat them and had to run away just now because there were too many mechanical creatures and he only had one rocket.
This time, he will take the initiative to launch the attack.
However, before Chen Ming really went to attack the mechanical clan, he had another consideration.
That is, if he clashed with the mechanical race, would it lead to an all-out war between the Empire and the mechanical race coming early? He just wanted to take advantage of the war to get some benefits for himself, and for the people around him, and do some research, but he didn't really want to drag himself into the quagmire of war.
He has to figure out the consequences of his actions before he can do anything.
So Chen Ming called Bai Quan immediately.
(End of this chapter)