Chapter 149
Grinding Problems
Chu Shen swiveled his fighter, allowing the battleship to come into his scopes. Squeezing the trigger, he watched as a hole appeared in the nose of the ship and exited out one of its engines. A split second later, the ship flared brilliantly as its reactor realized it had lost containment and wreaked havoc on the rest of the ship.
He sighed as he watched this happen. It just didn’t have the appeal it first had. When they had first started out, it had been exciting. Blowing up ships left and right, dodging lasers, sometimes unsuccessfully, and commanding an army of ships. All of it had been the thrill of a lifetime.
Unfortunately, no good thing ever lasts. They would wait for a week, doing nothing but sitting on their laurels. Then, for three hours, they would be forced to wait until they reached the sixth planet. For the next 30 minutes, him and his team would rip into the enemy fleet, completely demolishing them.
Afterwards… nothing. There was literally nothing to do. The most would be vaporizing the remains of the enemy fleet so that there would be nothing left for examination by the enemy. The first two weeks was almost like a high. It was so stressful waiting for the enemy to appear even though they knew exactly when and where they would.
During the third week, the high started to wear off. Boredom started to set in. By the fourth week, everyone was starting to think of it as a job rather then them having fun. That wasn’t a bad thing since this was technically a job anyways. However, it was still very unsatisfying for everything to be playing out like this.
Chu Shen sighed before blowing up another ship. He couldn’t find a solution to this boredom problem though. Luckily, he was having a pretty good time handling it since cultivation was naturally boring. After ten minutes, the enemy fleet was destroyed and he signed out of his simulator.
Lucas, on the other hand, was having to deal with a headache. He rubbed his temple as he stared at the display in front of him. ‘This just won’t do. The enemy's numbers keep increasing no matter how many we destroy. We can continue replacing the ships and manufacturing more. That isn’t the problem though.’
‘In four years, the numbers will be so astronomical that we would have literally dissolved the entire planet in order to keep producing ships. Then what would be the point in protecting it?’
That was the true issue. While the ARD was truly miraculous, it still needed resources to operate. Those resources might be common, but they would still be consumed eventually.
Already their efforts in ship construction had erased over a hundred square foot of rock and dirt over three hundred miles deep. That might seem crazy, but a single fight needed a hundred square feet of earth in materials. With the amount of ships made so far, they definitely needed that much dirt.
In twenty years, the entire solar system would be consumed in order to match the output of the enemy ships. Of course, maybe the enemy was also running low on resources as well. In war though, one couldn’t hope for the best. You planned for the worst.
Lucas started to think of something. He pulled up an old historic battle that Earth had once fought with pirates in the asteroid belt. Looking over the details, he started nodding. This might work. Of course, he was going to need to make a couple things. Several things in fact. After that, maybe next week wouldn’t be so boring.
Contacting the AI, he started proposing his plan. After ten minutes of nonstop talking, the AI agreed. Together they refined his plan for an hour before both of them were in agreement. Afterwards, they contacted the rest of the team.
Chu Shen faced Lucas as he started to reveal the details of their predicament. Whenever he mentioned the fact that the planet would have to become fuel for them, Chu Shen immediately realized that just sitting here playing defense was never going to workout.
Lucas paused to let everyone absorb what he said but Chu Shen wasn’t ready to wait. “So Lucas, what are you suggesting we do? We obviously can’t just sit here doing nothing.”
“I was waiting for someone to ask that. Me and the tin can over there,” he nodded at the scout drone in the corner of the room, “have been plotting a little something.”
“Now obviously we can’t just fire up the engines at full throttle and attack the enemy head-on. For one, we don’t know where these things are coming from. For another, even if we did, we don’t have the capabilities of interstellar-travel. Short range hyperspace jumping is nothing, but to achieve true hyperspace we need a lot more power than these tiny ships have.”
“I talked with the AI and we have a solution. We can create a stealth missile for my ship, the original one, that will not contain explosives, but nanites instead. The nanites have tachyon-comm capability so we can immediately trace where they are located.”
“We can also build hyperspace-relays. Essentially, they would be huge ships that can create a tunnel through hyperspace to wherever we need to go. Now the tricky part is finding out where the enemy is. I planned it out with some help from the AI and this is the result.”
“We are going to have some of our battleships equipped with railguns join its rebuilt fleet. Just like the past few times, we should be able to wipe out most of the enemy fleet without trouble, and then the enemy will try and make a break for it. We need to tag one of the ships that is going to get away with some nanites while we attempt to hunt the rest of the ships down.”
“After the ship we tagged gets away, we will then send in the stealth ship and several probes to the ship’s location. We will attempt to find the location of one of their factories, ship storage facilities, or at least a colony. Afterwards, we can mount a strike on them.
Chu Shen was immediately intrigued by the plan. He had never thought about trying what they were going to do, but it seemed like it was doable. Aslo, on the other hand, was not as supportive. He didn’t like losing, even if it was supposed to be a ploy to defeat the enemy once and for all.
Chrissa managed to convince him otherwise, pointing out that they would literally have to destroy the planet they were supposed to be protecting in order to continue to fight. Doing it this way meant saving the planet fromt themselves. Facing this kind of insurmountable logic, Aslo had no choice but to surrender.
With his team behind him a hundred percent, Lucas got busy changing the fabricators’ orders. Big spheres slowly started to take form in front of the fabricator. Multiple specially designed stealth missiles also appeared in the fabricator before being taken to Lucas’ stealth ship.
The day before the invasion, the preparations were finally completed. It was time to defend their planet. If they played their cards right, they just might be able to take the fight to the enemy for once.