He called up the quantum key that Jiuquan had just uploaded and drew a strange elliptical orbit on the sand table.
"Change the Volga-Yangtze River's navigation data to these parameters." The lieutenant general tapped his electronic pen on Jupiter's shadow. "Since the Russians like to send fuel, let them add a new satellite to the asteroid belt."
Earth-Moon Orbit Interstellar Resources Group Smelting Platform
Xiao Zhen looked at the Russian detector that suddenly turned in the surveillance footage, and a sneer appeared on the corner of his mouth.
He activated the quantum chip array hidden in the metal ball of lunar soil, and invisible electromagnetic pulses crawled into the control system of the "Volga-Yangtze River" along the relay satellite.
"Overriding navigation protocols," the AI's synthesized voice chimed, "disguised as a programming error caused by solar wind."
At this moment at the Moscow Flight Control Center, engineers were looking at the screen in panic: the probe that was originally locked onto Tianwen-4 suddenly began to spin wildly, and the remaining fuel was being consumed at an alarming rate in meaningless attitude adjustments.
"Xiao! You tampered with..." The angry roar of the Russian Space Agency Director came from the communication channel.
"Just testing its radiation resistance for you." Xiao Zhen turned the lunar basalt paperweight. "By the way, I'd like to remind you that the ownership certificate for that platinum asteroid... is on file with the Shenzhen Notary Office."
The holographic screen suddenly switched to a deep space bird's-eye view: Tianwen-4's laser cutter was melting a huge "China Interstellar" logo on the surface of the asteroid, while in the shadow 20,000 kilometers away, the robotic arm of the US X-37B was awkwardly hovering over a mineral-rich area that had long been locked by quantum encryption.
The next morning, at No. 95 Nanluoguxiang
Li Xinmin took off the still steaming tactical goggles and found that Xiao Zhen was fiddling with three special chess pieces on the sandalwood chessboard: one was a model of the Chang'e 5 return capsule, one was a fragment of a space mine engraved with a Russian number, and the other was a quantum chip emitting blue light.
"Do you understand?" Xiao Zhen suddenly pressed the chip onto the center of the chessboard. "The Russians want to break through with brute force, the Americans rely on technological suppression, and we..." He gently pushed down the piece representing the X-37B. "We've created a new chessboard outside the rules."
There was a roar outside the yard, and Xiao Zhenbei drove the Romeo through the morning mist.
The truck bed is filled with hexagonal crystals retrieved from lunar lava tubes, which reflect a strange rainbow halo in the sunlight. These creations containing unknown technology are now lying quietly in the chess box, waiting to start the next game of a higher dimension.
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