Stellaris from the Automata Era

If he remembered correctly, it was a battlecruiser with a ram installed, and the owner and leader of this battlecruiser seemed to be...

11b?

Flagship = commander = the head and direction of a fleet.

"Damn it! Who lets an old battlecruiser lead a new fleet?"

Chapter 235: Subspace Channel? Do you humanoids want me dead?

The situation is now very complicated. 11b and its entire fleet disappeared, almost causing the entire Earth to fall into a short period of defense vacuum.

Of course, this does not mean that the Earth is in a life-or-death emergency.

In fact, nothing major should happen in the short term, either in Koprulu or in the solar system. After all, various events take time to develop and ferment.

Therefore, compared with the pressure of defense, what is more urgent now is that Yan Luo must immediately search for the humanoids who have disappeared in various parts of the universe.

Since they currently have no way to travel beyond light years except through natural wormholes, those humanoids who sail out should not be lost too far.

However, without the guidance of psychic beacons, many of them may only rely on mysterious methods such as divination (fate) to find their way home.

Similarly, Yan Luo might as well ask his amazing scientific chief to see if she has any amazing inventions that can solve the current problem.

"How is that possible, sir! Science doesn't just appear out of nowhere!"

When faced with Yan Luo's question at first, the chief researcher Rui was about to agree immediately, saying that he had similar scientific and technological knowledge that could help.

However, after her system ran around in her mind at high speed, she could only express her helplessness with great frustration.

After all, compared to others, these scientific research dolls still have some rationality and self-control.

"Actually, my lord, you really don't need to worry too much. The arrangement of the planets in the solar system is so obvious, they will return by themselves according to the galaxy."

"Are you really sure?"

Yan Luo looked strange.

In fact, this is indeed a good method. It can be roughly understood as the most primitive scientific astrology, which calculates the unreliable direction based on the pattern formed by the arrangement of the planetary light.

However, this method may only be suitable for professionals. Most people can only feel that there are more stars when they look up at the starry sky. It is really hard to ask them to use the starlight to find Libra or Mercury.

Stop joking, they are amazing if they can find the North Star.

Especially the humanoids, they have no basic knowledge of corresponding stars. In fact, for most of the current long-distance voyage personnel, Yan Luo only requires them to be able to understand the beacon guidance and operate the spacecraft.

In this situation, let alone finding their own way home, I'm afraid many of them will simply board the Star Trek train and get farther and farther away from the Earth.

"I think...I'm sure..."

Rui now doesn't know whether her idea is correct. For scientific researchers like her, identifying constellations may be a common sense and simple issue.

However, whether other humanoids possess this knowledge is not something she can confirm.

So after thinking for a while, she gave Yan Luo an effective suggestion.

"Perhaps your Excellency could you try sending out a search party."

"So I'm here to see if you have any technology that can locate a lost humanoid."

Sending out a search party is indeed one option.

But in the face of the vastness of the universe, the lost sailing fleets are like lonely leaves in the ocean.

Putting aside the question of whether it is easy to find or not, the fact that the voyage team also has the ability to act independently makes the so-called search become a game that is even more mysterious than drawing cards.

And at least there is a guarantee for drawing cards, but the search work is completely close to zero and there is no guarantee.

"The voyage team's psychic equipment must have been detonated, causing the psychic environment around them to be destroyed, making it impossible for them to establish a physical connection with us. Therefore, we can create a machine that can generate a psychic environment and spread it within a certain range. As long as they get close to the machine's range, they can establish contact with us."

“It’s a really huge project.”

In essence, humanoids cannot be considered psychic units, and there is a transformation of magic elements between them and Yan Luo.

In fact, most of the humanoids may be connected with Yan Luo, thanks to the psychic equipment. They are like wiff towers, providing convenient network connection for the humanoids.

What makes humanoid technology stand out most is probably the extra-light-year connection.

However, the disadvantage is that it can be easily exploded by things like Xel'Naga artifacts.

Of course... although they know about this shortcoming, the humanoids have no intention of giving up on the development of psychic research. The biggest reason is that they do not have the technology to replace it and the sense to directly connect with humans.

This is the same as how humans in the 21st century clearly know that electrical facilities will be destroyed by EMP, but have no intention of returning to the steam age.

There will always be ways to remedy technological flaws as time evolves. It's impossible to discontinue this technology just because of its future fatal weaknesses, right?

Anyway, the humanoids don't intend to stop their psychic advantage.

But the problem now is that machines with psychic networks must have range limitations, and no one knows where the previous voyages have gone.

Yan Luo wanted to establish contact with them in this way, so he would probably have to spread the instruments in a 360-degree radius with a radius of one light year from the solar system without any blind spots.

This is just like building a high-speed railway across the sea between North America and Asia. The key is not the difficulty but the cost!

Another thing is that the current speed of Earth's spacecraft is such that just traveling one light year is time-consuming and laborious, and it is unknown how many years it will take to complete this project.

"The equipment that generates a psychic environment is actually quite easy to produce. We currently have the capacity to produce a lot of it. To achieve light-year coverage, we simply need more production capacity and future upgrades to higher-powered technology. The real difficulty right now is whether we can reach the light-year coverage area before them at the same speed as them, but..."

Rui looked at Yan Luo with burning eyes, then she turned on a projection device. After Yan Luo's attention was attracted, a colorful black object appeared in the projection.

"But recently, a flash of inspiration struck me, and I was able to crack the super-light-year travel technology that is unique to our Earth."

The black objects in the projection gradually gathered together. Although there was no clear shape afterwards, a word of channel was formed in Yan Luo's mind from the concept of mystery.

"This is our faster-than-light travel. From now on, light years are measured in seconds!

My Lord, its technical principle is not related to the currently known micro-warps, wormholes, or hyperspace channels. In my understanding, it has some of them, so to distinguish them, I named it the Subspace Channel.

"??"

I always feel like the humanoid seems to be walking further and further away on a certain road.

Similarly, Yan Luo also saw a strange fate in the colorful darkness of this subspace channel.

This is a deadly rhythm!

Note: I personally think that a large-scale EMP attack is equivalent to a nuclear attack.

Chapter 236: A huge loophole in the psychic network?

"The seeding ship has entered the designated location. Plan one, the faster-than-light travel, was successful. Plan two will see the placement of the psychic device."

The unknown figure spoke into the communication device.

Yan Luo finally stopped struggling. He no longer cared what names the group of humanoids under his command came up with.

However, he eventually changed his chief scientific research plan.

It is indeed a waste to deploy a psychic device across an entire light-year just to guide a lost humanoid.

So after careful consideration, he changed the psychic device into an outpost with early warning capabilities.

But it is obvious that his idea is doomed to fail, largely because the cost is too high.

If you think about it carefully, with the current technology, if he wants to build a light-year-wide early warning outpost with no blind spots, he needs to deploy countless devices and cover the surrounding area like a Dyson sphere covering the sun.

This is simply not something that the Earth can do at present!

Not to mention the cost of material consumption, the cost in time alone is as foolish as the ancient people in the Middle Ages planning to travel through space.

If he had the time, wouldn't it be more practical to build a few giant structures?

Of course, this plan is not impossible, but the current technological strength of the earth is not enough. Perhaps when magic (crossed out)... technology is more advanced in the future, it may be possible to achieve coverage in units of light years.

However, although he gave up the youth version of the Sentinel Array, Yan Luo still had to create experimental samples for comparison due to the newly discovered theory of superluminal travel and the subsequent expansion and upgrading of psychic devices.

Especially when the new shipyards that the humanoids had recently started construction on were almost completed, in order to save the time of returning the newly launched warships for upgrades, the scientific research humanoids were still working overtime to apply the newly discovered theories to civilian cargo ships.

This also prompted the early implementation of experiments before the comprehensive replacement of warships.

"Thank you for your cooperation. May His Excellency's glory be upon you forever. Now, after you've lowered the psychic device and tested its performance, you can return." A faint female voice came from the humanoid's communication device. Although it sounded calm, her next words betrayed her joy. "With any luck, you'll even be able to catch His Excellency's inspiring speech to our compatriots returning from the Koprulu Sector."

"So, Your Excellency didn't personally pay attention to such an important scientific research experiment?!" The humanoid's voice became low and lost.

This is not a complaint or dissatisfaction, but simply the disappointment of losing hundreds of millions without being directly observed by human eyes.

The humanoid's current wish is very simple.

"Um... maybe I can help you apply for a special honor from the master? After all, faster-than-light experiments are still somewhat dangerous. You deserve it."

Isn't it a good opportunity to change your job as a ship girl when things are dangerous? Now which humanoid doesn't know that the new ship girl system is a hot commodity.

In fact, before setting off, the humanoids were considering whether to create some accidents so that they could successfully change jobs.

However, considering that she might not pass the retrospective accident memory test afterwards, she finally gave up this plan.

Now it seems that she is not at a disadvantage. In terms of public speaking status, she is on par with Aquaman and his harem in the comics. Moreover, she was awarded the honor for being the heroine and pure love. It is obvious that she made a lot of money!

Therefore, it does not seem unacceptable that the adults are currently unable to pay personal attention to her.

"Then I'll leave it to you! I'm going to release the psychic device and return now. Please help me seize this opportunity!"

After saying this, the humanoid couldn't wait to throw the psychic device in his hand into the deep space.

Then...

"What is this? A friendly sign?"

Did those lost compatriots manage to get here so quickly, faster than the speed of light?!

Complaining in her mind, she quickly moved along the mark, and soon she saw a rectangular object drifting in the universe.

----

"It looks like you found something strange in your experiments in the universe."

When Yan Luo rushed to the research center after hearing the news, he saw that the research figures were already struggling with the strange things they had retrieved from the universe.

Judging from the appearance, this should be an irregular rectangular object that is twenty meters long and ten meters wide.

It has a dark appearance, with irregular serrations around it, and looks...

"It looked like a part of something had been violently peeled off."

Rui expressed Yan Luo's thoughts. Many other scientific research humanoids around her had already begun testing. It was impossible that she was the only one doing scientific research on Earth.

In fact, she also has a huge team, which is...these dolls look a lot like her.

Of course, Yan Luo quickly put this irrelevant question behind his mind. After all, it was very common for human figures to look alike.

What Yan Luo is more concerned about now is what is in front of him.

Why does it have Earth's friendly signs?

It should be clear that the current friendly force identification system on Earth is completely developed based on Yan Luo's psychic network.

Essentially, only those who are incorporated into Yan Luo's spiritual energy and connected to the sacred human beings can be marked as friendly forces.

What Yan Luo was sure of was that he had never included anything other than humanoid and mechanical life into his network, not even the Terrans in the Koprulu Sector!

The things before our eyes now have friendly markings unique to the interior of the Earth, which means that the current psychic network's identification has already shown huge loopholes and insecurities.

This is exactly why he came here in person.

He had to sense it with his eyes and psychic powers.

However, even though he dyed his eyes bright yellow on the spot, the magical psychic power did not seem to give him more feedback this time.

But he still vaguely sensed some thoughts coming from the dark rectangle, and there should be a living being inside... falling into a deep sleep.

What's even more terrifying is that the moment he used his psychic power to contact it, a new individual suddenly appeared in Yan Luo's network and connected to him.

For a moment, Yan Luo was a little confused as to whether he had been hacked online.

Out of caution, Yan Luo did not forcibly use the psychic network to read its memory, but only captured its superficial thoughts.

"Energy? Drifting? Going home?" Yan Luo pondered for a moment, then gave a decisive order. "Rui, turn it on."

"I can't." The magical humanoid was finally helpless this time. She shook her head and said, "I tried it before you came. Our current technology can't even make a scratch on it. Apparently, its surface alloy is very strong."

"Then try another way, Ray, and recharge it."