Star Ocean: Starting from the Abandoned Mining Space Station.

Chapter 320 Snatching
On the direct line between Chen Ming's foreign development stronghold and the empire's border, it was still quite far away from the empire.

Chen Ming's fleet transporting energy crystal crabs encountered a fleet from the mechanical clan here.

Since the last time Chen Ming and Bai Quan agreed to hand over the development rights of crystal crab technology and the crystal crab population to the legion.

Chen Ming has already arranged the process of transporting the crystal crabs back to the empire.

He prepared a cargo fleet with the Colossus-class heavy cargo ship he now owned as the flagship, and planned to return slowly through the hyperspace channel.

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 mentioned before.

Although according to Chen Ming's current ability, the fleet can simply make three extreme distance jumps to reach the empire. The rest is left to the legion and the legion can think of ways to take away the crystal crab.

But if the supplies arrive too quickly, it will be difficult to cooperate with Baiquan.

After all, when the energy crystal crabs arrive in the legion, they must seize the time to start cultivating the energy crystal crabs and obtain energy crystals.

But when Chen Ming agreed, Bai Quan had just started to join the special materials department.

Although there are many positions available in this department, no results can be obtained without wrangling for a few days.

And once the crystal crabs are actually delivered, more people will definitely have ideas about these locations.

It is better to wait for Baiquan to occupy more positions in the special materials department.

Then Chen Ming transported the supplies to the right place, which just matched them.

Besides, a jump requires far more materials than normal navigation to maintain the jump engine, and continuous jumps consume not only materials but also mental energy.

Chen Ming is not in a hurry about transporting crystal crabs, so he might as well take his time.

At least wait until Baiquan is almost done, or the fleet really encounters something, before making the jump.

And under normal circumstances, Chen Ming's route to the empire is quite safe.

At most, only the last section, where it borders the empire, afterglow, and the machine race, is more dangerous.

So Chen Ming's idea is to let the fleet fly slowly in hyperspace.

He thought the journey would go smoothly, but unexpectedly something happened.

And the location where the accident occurred was not the most dangerous stretch of road, but rather where the cruiser almost made 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 the energy crystal crab.

This colossus has been controlled by him personally from the beginning.

Although there is no Afterglow Core on it, as long as Chen Ming needs it, the Afterglow Core can take over at any time and control the ship for battle.

However, as a cargo ship, the Colossus class mainly transports cargo and has little combat effectiveness.

And for Chen Ming, this batch of goods is the most important.

Even with his spiritual protection during the battle, it would be difficult for him to guarantee that the goods would not be damaged.

So when Chen Ming switched his field of view, the idea in his mind was to retreat as much as possible and not to get entangled with the mechanical tribe.

With the activation of Chen Ming's spiritual power, an additional picture appeared in front of his eyes, the picture of the colossus-level sensor.

Through the door of the screen, you can see that the Colossus is in a hyperspace channel.

all around
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 developed by Chen Ming's highest point, hyperspace clouds have become the only main color.

At the front end of the narrow hyperspace channel that ended up was the mechanical fleet that attacked Chen Ming's fleet.

At a glance, the number of cruisers alone is already more than ten, and the number of lower-level spaceships goes without saying.

And this was a surprise attack initiated by the Machine Tribe.

So in fact, just now, Chen Ming was reminded by the afterglow of the escort fleet.

The machines have entered the range where they can fire.

Their cruisers have begun attacking.

The concentrated fire of a dozen cruisers' large weapons put the Colossus's shield at risk, and it could only barely resist.

But outside the line of fire of the exchange of fire, there are still a large number of mechanical gang jumping troops approaching.

Fortunately, there were no losses in the escort fleet.

When they discovered the attack of the mechanical cruiser, they hid behind the shield opened by the Colossus.

Now Chen Ming's attention is all here. It is not a problem to recover the afterglow core while the ship is destroyed.

The problem now is that Chen Ming only has one cruiser, which cannot defeat the dozen or so cruisers of the mechanical race.

Although he can increase the speed by overclocking various parts of the spacecraft, the increase cannot reach ten times.

A pair of dozens of people, or a pair of dozens of people on a cargo ship, can't beat them at all.

It is impossible for Chen Ming to let the Colossus stay here.

What's more, what he just saw was the mechanical race at one end of the channel, in the direction of the fleet.

In fact, behind the fleet, at the other end of the channel, there is also a fleet of mechanical clan approaching.

The scale is exactly the same as the machine family cut off earlier.

Being attacked from both sides, one to twenty, if you don't run away, why should you stay and wait for death?
Chen Ming immediately tried the means at hand to escape from the enemy fleet.

But the mechanical tribe was obviously well prepared.

The pulse blocking equipment disrupted the hyperspace channel systems of all ships in Chen Ming's fleet.

Make it impossible for the fleet to escape hyperspace, or use hyperspace jump engines.

The serious jump engine was also blocked by the mechanical clan attacking from both sides.

If in a normal cosmic environment, Chen Ming's spaceship would fly out at such a small distance.

But now, his fleet is in hyperspace.

There is only a narrow passage that is the only space for movement.

The channel is surrounded by extremely dense channel clouds.

It is true that the mechanical tribe 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 that need to be solved in doing so.

Hyperspace lightning flashing in the hyperspace channel cloud will cause 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 within hyperspace lanes.

In other words.

If Chen Ming cannot escape the pursuit of the mechanical fleet and cannot find the channel in the clouds, then his fleet will always be destroyed by lightning in the clouds.

Once the fleet is lost in the hyperspace channel cloud, the consequences will be unimaginable.

But corresponding to the risk of getting lost is the battle situation between one cruiser and more than twenty cruisers.

Obviously, compared to the threat of hyperspace channels, the fleet of the mechanical race is more terrifying.

We still have to prioritize retreating into the clouds and waiting 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 cargo fleet and the temporary stronghold is only one extreme jump.

As long as the reinforcements from Chen Ming's side have passed, we can fight.

As long as he delays for five minutes, giving him five minutes to assemble the fleet, he can immediately kill the attacking mechanical race.

Under Chen Ming's control, the Colossus-class fleet with escorts piled directly into the hyperspace cloud beside the channel, and hid in the clouds while being bombarded by countless lightnings.

While Chen Ming was doing this, he had another idea in 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 for giving up the Crystal Crabs instead of giving them away like the Afterglow Cores is simple.

Although Chen Ming can already transport creatures, he transports creatures through 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 one is in an unconscious state, or is in a state where Chen Ming has used spiritual energy to block external perception.
To prevent being drowned in the ocean of knowledge when passing through the scarlet dimension,
The former is an easy condition 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 part of it is saved, it will be enough for Chen Ming to drink a pot.

And if he only saves a small part, then 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 throw away these energy crystal crabs, he can only resist the losses on the ship that may come from the channel cloud or the mechanical fleet.

He chose to resist.

And just after Chen Ming rushed into the clouds, the fleet of machines that followed him like crazy also rushed into the clouds.

What's even more exaggerated is that the machine race also prepared a device for the exploration ship to eliminate the clouds in the hyperspace channel on a cruiser.

Even if 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 sailing in them.

Chen Ming, who was sailing with Yun in front, had no way to get rid of the mechanical fleet with exploration ship equipment behind him.

In just over a minute, Chen Ming's fleet was overtaken and within the range of the mechanical fleet behind them.

He could only be forced to open the shield at the rear of the ship to block the fire from the rear.

Fortunately, the mechanical tribe only installed exploration equipment on one cruiser, and they could only open a channel wide enough to accommodate up to seven cruisers at the same time.

Compared with the previous dozen or so ships, the pressure on the seven cruisers was reduced by nearly half.

As long as the shield and armor take turns bearing the damage from the rear, relying on Chen Ming's high-speed repair ability, he can barely keep the spacecraft from being destroyed in the face of the concentrated fire of seven cruisers. However, the fleet that the mechanical race came to attack this time included more than just cruisers.

They also have those gang-hopping fleets.

In hyperspace lanes, all ships and everything have a speed limit.

The upper limit of this speed is related to the mass. The greater the mass, the smaller the upper limit that can be achieved.

The upper limit of the speed that the cruiser's mass cannot reach is obviously far less than the upper limit of the speed of the small spacecraft equipped with the mechanical family used to jump gangs.

I saw a large number of jump ships and assault boats approaching the Colossus class through the passage opened by the cruiser equipped with exploration equipment. The Colossus can be threatened at any time.

Chen Mingdu had already controlled the Colossus class to give up attacking the mechanical cruisers and instead attack the gang-hopping ships.

Some of them still got past the shield of the colossus and rushed into the range of the jump gang.

These assault boats, whose front ends were like drills, burrowed directly into the Colossus-class armor. Even if they were immediately squeezed away by the metallic liquid used by Chen Ming to repair the spacecraft, some of the mechanical clans still remained in the newly drilled gap.

They continued to violently destroy the gap that Chen Ming had repaired, trying to tear open a hole from the outside that could enter the interior of the spacecraft.

As if the mechanical clan knew the effect of Chen Ming's psychic energy, all the nearby mechanical bodies were approaching the place with the largest number of jumping gang members, constantly attacking the gap.

The destructive power of the concentrated fire made it too late for Chen Ming's psychic powers to repair the armor plate.

The mechanical body of the mechanical race simply relied on the stacking of attack methods and the repair efficiency of Chen Ming's psychic power in a small area to be online, so that a passage to the Colossus-class cargo bay was torn open.

Although they were immediately counterattacked by Chen Ming's robots placed inside the Colossus, the influx of machines was still like a tide that was difficult to completely stop.

Some of the machines charged deeper into the Colossus, while others actually chose to unload the cargo bays closest to the gaps they opened.

And while their individual numbers were still enough to maintain the gap, all the unloaded warehouses were thrown out of the gap.

A total of 8 small warehouses near the gap were all taken away by the machine clan.

A mechanical cruiser behind also 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 that the cruiser turned around, the other mechanical spacecraft also began to slow down and stopped chasing.

Instead, they covered each other and turned around, leaving the clouds.

They directly abandoned the mechanical tribe troops who were jumping gangs and chose to retreat.

Chen Ming not only did not feel happy when he saw this scene, but his heart sank even more.

Because these mechanical tribes obviously came with a purpose.

And they left only after achieving their purpose.

Their purpose is to seize the warehouse, and only after they do so will they choose to retreat.

I saw the fleet of the mechanical race withdrew outside the clouds of the hyperspace channel, turned off the device that hindered the jump, started the jump, and disappeared in front of Chen Ming.

Chen Ming's reinforcements haven't arrived yet, and he doesn't dare to pursue him in the opposite direction.

They can only leave here.

At this time, less than four minutes had passed since Chen Ming received the news that the fleet was attacked.

After Chen Ming confirmed that the mechanical tribe had really left, he quickly cleared away the mechanical tribe that had entered the cargo ship and returned to a relatively safer channel.

Continuing to stay in the channel cloud is just a waste of electricity.

He was constantly thinking about what was going on in his mind.

At present, it seems that the mechanical tribe is definitely coming towards him prepared.

A large number of cruisers blocked the channel, and at the same time specially prepared to join the gang of ships and seize the cargo warehouse.

Moreover, the mechanical tribe actually brought exploration equipment to prevent Chen Ming's fleet from directly rushing into the channel cloud.

It would be unbelievable to say that the Machine Clan was not prepared for Chen Ming.

The question is, when did the Machine Tribe discover his spaceship? How were you prepared for the fleet encirclement and attack?
Chen Ming usually doesn't use this channel at all. He may have had some spaceships to explore it when it was being developed.

Everything he obtains from the empire and needs to be sent to the front line is usually sent through the boss's colonial warehouse.

The farthest is to transport it to the planet where the mechanical race controlled by Chen Ming is newly stationed, and then use spiritual energy to send it to the main body.

Although it is quite tiring, Chen Ming has gotten used to it for a long time, and the effect of training his psychic abilities is also very good.

Therefore, Chen Ming thought about it and found out that the reason why the machine race was prepared to attack him was most likely related to the empire's recent actions.

Since Chen Ming said last time that the mechanical star field is empty compared to the empire’s rear defense.

The empire often sends reconnaissance fleets to go around the butt of the mechanical race star field to conduct reconnaissance.

The machine race is not a fool, so it will naturally strengthen the defense in the rear and at the same time expand the territory belonging to the machine race in the rear.

Then accidentally, the patrolling or pioneering mechanical fleet discovered Chen Ming's cargo fleet, so after some preparations, they came to attack Chen Ming.

But this idea is problematic if you think about it carefully.

Because normally fleet dispatching requires not only time but also logistical support.

And this was an attack by the mechanical tribe that was obviously premeditated, planned in advance, and had logistical preparations.

Not all ships sailing like Chen Ming do not need to prepare logistics at all.

Chen Ming can use psychic energy to satisfy fleet logistics.

No matter who else is there, they have to ensure logistics.

The fleet that attacked him obviously needed it too.

A temporary base with basic industrial facilities is the best guarantee.

Chen Ming could tell from the fact that the mechanical fleet was finally able to leave through the jump, that the mechanical fleet definitely did not jump over to block the road, but sailed over.

Even if the machine race can jump over first, then squat on the road to maintain it, and then come to Chen Ming after the maintenance is completed.

The jump will also cause the loss of combat readiness supplies, resulting in a slight reduction in the ship's combat capability.

But judging from Chen Ming's battle with the mechanical cruisers just now, their combat effectiveness has not been lost at all.

They definitely didn't jump over.

They must have a stronghold nearby.

At this time, Chen Ming suddenly thought of a method of colonial expansion that was common to the Empire, the Machine Tribe, and Yuhui.

It is to first find a suitable galaxy to serve as the core of the subsequent star field.

Then start from this core and expand around.

It is very likely that there is a temporary stronghold of the mechanical race in a nearby galaxy, and that is the core of their development.

You must know that the mechanical tribe is absolutely fully prepared to attack Chen Ming's fleet. They have taken into account various complex situations and made various preparation measures.

If we follow the premise that the fleet of the mechanical race is here to develop, then it is understandable that they would bring a cruiser equipped with exploration ship equipment.

At the same time, the device of blocking the jump engine is something that is not usually used at all. After all, unless the entire galaxy is blocked, it is difficult to completely block the whereabouts of a cruiser.

But this device that blocks the jump engine would be very valuable if it could be used to protect itself so that any cruiser that dared to get close and attack the stronghold would not be able to jump away.

It just happens to explain why the fleet that attacked Chen Ming had such a thing.

And Chen Ming also had a subtle perception of the hive network belonging to the mechanical clan from the individuals of the mechanical clan he had just captured alive, and through the hive network of the mechanical clan under his control.

Chen Mingneng could vaguely sense that the source of the cellular network was not far away.

Adding up all the factors, Chen Ming felt that the actual situation should be close to what he guessed.

As for the purpose of the mechanical clan doing this...

Chen Ming was certain that the machine clan had no idea what he was transporting to the empire.

But they knew that anything that could be transported from outside the empire to the empire would definitely not be anything casual.

It would be best if we could snatch it back and verify what it is. Anyway, it wouldn't be a loss to kill the empire's fleet.

Just try it.

After determining what is being transported, they can then decide whether to attack Chen Ming's fleet again.

If the mechanical race were not fools, they would soon discover the specialness of the crystal crabs, and would definitely find a way to transport the crystal crabs away as soon as possible.

At the same time, preparations were made again for an attack on Chen Ming's fleet.

Although Chen Ming will definitely not give the machine clan this opportunity.

But the mechanical tribe has already achieved its initial goal of seizing the cargo hold.

What is stored in the cargo hold are all living energy crystal crabs.

Although there are several cargo holds containing crystal crabs that Chen Ming modified using insects, it is not difficult to get rid of these crystal crabs.

But there are also a few cargo holds that contain ordinary energy crystal crabs.

If ordinary energy crystal crabs are taken away, the machine clan may figure out the special features of energy crystals.

Once they are allowed to breed a new generation of crystal crabs, a lot of troublesome things may happen.

Chen Ming suddenly had a new understanding of the seriousness of this matter.

If the mass production technology of energy crystals is really developed by the machine race, then the empire may suffer severely in the war with the machine race.

The machine race must not be allowed to take away the energy crystal crab.

He had to sort things out once and for all.

It shouldn't be too difficult.

Since Chen Ming was sure that there must be a mechanical clan stronghold nearby.

Then the mechanical clan will definitely send the warehouse there.

He is going to the mechanical clan's stronghold.

Destroy the stronghold and retake the cargo bay.

The reason why he couldn't defeat them just now and could only run away was because there were too many mechanical races, and he only had one rocket ship.

This time, he was going to take the initiative to attack.

But before Chen Ming really went to attack the mechanical tribe, he had another consideration.

That is, if he conflicts with the Machine Tribe, will it lead to a full-scale war between the Empire and the Machine Tribe?
He just wanted to take advantage of the war to get some benefits for himself, for the people around him, and to do some research, but he didn't really want to drag himself into the quagmire of war.

He has to understand the consequences of what he does before he can do anything about it.

So Chen Ming immediately called Bai Quan.

(End of this chapter)