Bai Yi wasn't here to play, at least not entirely. Of course, he wasn't here to do the hard labor of dragging ice; that wasn't his job as a border guard.
The mapping of the asteroid belt is proceeding in an orderly manner, with dozens of ice draggers traveling back and forth between the planet Forgiveness and the asteroid belt.
After clearing out the "bad boys" lurking among the masses, the larger remaining asteroids would be hollowed out from within and equipped with artillery dispatch centers. These command rooms hidden within the meteorites could coordinate and command the surrounding automated artillery, allowing them to concentrate their firepower on a single target.
Bai Yi planned to transform the outer star belt into the first layer of the galaxy's defenses, placing a large number of automated turrets there. The numerous celestial bodies in the asteroid belt acted as a natural barrier, and after activating camouflage mode, the automated turrets appeared indistinguishable from rock in both electromagnetic and tachyon bands.
However, the number of artillery batteries is ultimately limited. Due to the density of the asteroid belt, the limited artillery batteries are unevenly distributed. Therefore, to fill the gap in artillery firepower, a batch of equipment called crystal minelayers was transported to the asteroid belt by industrial ships.
These minelayers will float freely in space and autonomously lay space mines according to the given fire distribution map.
Space mines resemble Earth's naval mines, ranging in size from a human head to a frigate, depending on their yield and mission. Once deployed, these spherical space mines instantly activate their built-in warp shields. This distorts the surrounding space, forming a capsule that envelops the mine, rendering it literally invisible.
Just now, Bai Yi watched helplessly as a torpedo disappeared before his eyes. He controlled the industrial ship and released a drone from the hangar, which slowly approached.
This is an anti-flagship air mine. The power of its explosion is enough to crush the material within a dozen kilometers around it into powder. However, because the air mine has not been activated yet, Bai Yi can approach it boldly.
The drone approached quickly from two hundred kilometers away. When it was less than ten kilometers away from the air mine, the huge figure of the anti-flagship air mine gradually emerged from the starlight.
Because the space warp has been activated, most detection methods are helpless against these air mines. After the electromagnetic waves and tachyon beams come into contact with the warped space, they will flow along the warped wall to the back of the air mine and be emitted.
From the perspective of waves, they travel in a straight line without any obstruction. The shape of space itself forms a bubble here, and all objects can only move along the surface of the bubble. The actual location of the air mine is actually the center of the bubble. Therefore, the air mine illuminated by the radar will not produce any reflected echo, making it extremely difficult to detect.
Under normal circumstances, air mines can only be distinguished by the distortion at the edge of the warp field, which is similar to the gravitational lens effect of a black hole. However, these distortions are very weak and can usually only be detected after entering the killing radius.
However, air mines are not invincible. In view of the characteristics of air mines, the Alliance has also developed detection methods specifically for air mine sites, such as graviton detectors.
Gravity, the only one of the four fundamental forces that can permeate all dimensions of the universe and produce effects over a wide range, manifests itself microscopically as gravitons, or gravitons, a type of boson. Theoretically, by detecting the distribution of gravitons in space, it's possible to pinpoint the exact location of a space mine.
But after all, it is only a theoretical thing, just like the absolutely smooth plane in the physics textbook. In actual operation, simple conditions like those in the textbook are impossible to appear.
For example, in the asteroid belt where Bai Yi is currently located, from Xianwu - the Great Wall of Corona Borealis to the asteroids in the belt, countless gravitational fields are superimposed on each other, disturbing the gravitons in this area all the time.
Compared to the perfect arcs outlined by smooth lines in science programs, space in this state is more like a pot of boiling water, and gravitons are the water molecules that make up this pot of water.
The water is boiling all the time, and the particles in it are dancing wildly all the time, so that the interference caused by the mass of the air thunder in this boiling ocean is like a drop of water falling into the turbulent sea, which can't make any waves at all.
What the mine-sweeping team has to do is to find that drop of water, and you can imagine how difficult it is.
The distance to the mine was within fifty meters, and the warp field was no longer effective at this distance. Through the drone's camera, Bai Yi could clearly see the mine's black surface and the hideous protrusions on it. The protrusions were equipped with the mine's sensors.
After the air mine is activated, these sensors will monitor the surrounding environment at all times. As long as the change exceeds the pre-set value, the detonator will be triggered immediately, causing an explosion.
However, as a defensive weapon with a deterrent effect greater than its killing value, air mines do not necessarily have to cause direct damage to the target to be effective.
During the Galactic Crusade, the Earth United Nations fleet typically deployed minefields using a combination of light and dark mines. This meant using air mines with warp shields in dark areas, interspersed with light mines without shields.
However, the range of the visible mines is not completely synchronized with the hidden mines. As a means of deception, the two can even be separated by several light years.
You know I'm laying mines here, and I know you know I'm laying mines here, but how many, where, and what types are they? No one knows, not even me, because mines are primarily randomly distributed, with too many uncontrollable factors. Some mines are even equipped with space sails, allowing them to slowly travel along the undercurrents of space.
This tactic of alternating light and dark mines allows the Earth Alliance's fleet to expand its territory by consuming only a small amount of resources to create a large isolation zone in the rear.
Because no one can guarantee that there will be no hidden mines left after clearing the visible mines. Even after spending a lot of effort to clear the hidden mines in this area, new hidden mines will appear from other areas just after a few years or even months.
These wandering dark mines were called ghost mines. No one at the time would have imagined that these elusive ghosts would cause all races in the galaxy, including the United Nations on Earth, to suffer in the long years to come.
To this day, there are still some undiscovered ghost mines in a state of waiting to be activated. Some of these ghost mines have not lost their lethality due to the passage of time. On the contrary, due to aging problems, they are unable to recognize the self-destruction orders issued by the Pan-Galactic Air Mine Organization.
According to the records of the galactic judicial system, there is an average of one space accident caused by a ghost mine every fifteen galactic standard years. So much so that some regions' ship insurance policies have added compensation clauses specifically for these ghost mines.
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