Alien Relic Hunter

"In fact, the Alpha Civilization has already prepared the new Ark." The nest master said, "It's just that they have lost the opportunity to set sail."

"You mean... Yagunaktor?!" Ke Lan was so excited that he subconsciously blurted out.

"Yes, Yagunaktor." The hive master continued, "It was originally the No. 0906 long-distance engineering operation ship used to search for resources when it wandered the earth. A long-distance engineering operation ship like this, in In the long drifting era, we dispatched a total of more than 100,000 ships..."

"There is also such an engineering ship on the Ark. After all, the Ark itself is too massive. There is a risk of crashing due to the influence of gravity if it approaches the celestial body with resources. Therefore, the resources are basically collected from the surface of the celestial body and transported back with this kind of engineering ship. Yes." Ke Lan said.

"No, No. 0906 is different from Ark's engineering ship." The hive master said in a gentle but powerful tone, "The people who operate these engineering ships are great warriors who are willing to dedicate their lives to the earth and human civilization... Of the 100,000 engineering ships, no more than one tenth can return to Earth."

"Why is the loss rate so high?" Ke Lan was slightly surprised.

"The mission of these engineering ships is not to simply mine resources on nearby celestial bodies, but to set off to distant cosmic areas to search for available resources or habitable galaxies that can 'park' the Earth in a wider range... Each The mission cycle of a long-distance engineering work ship is four hundred years, but after four hundred years, very few engineering ships can return home smoothly."

"Four hundred years? How to solve the problem of the life span of the crew?"

"There are several options: hibernation cabins on duty, AI replacement operations, and using frozen embryos or equipment to cultivate clones to 'create' new crew members on the ship, etc... In different eras, these engineering ships will adopt different methods. way to 'extend' one's working life... Of course, the four-hundred-year mission cycle is just a preset value. Many engineering ships do not even last for one hundred years and become space garbage. There are also a very small number of engineering ships. It miraculously returned to Earth after greatly exceeding its mission period."

"Yagunaktor... Engineering Ship No. 0906, must be one of those miracles, right?" Although he already knew the answer in his heart, Ke Lan still asked this question.

"To be precise, it is the most crucial miracle." said the master of the nest city. "Thanks to the fusion technology taught to us by human civilization in another time and space, the No. 0906 engineering ship sailed in the universe for one thousand and fourteen years. One hundred years, even five hundred years more than your Noah’s Ark.”

"Fourteen hundred years... I have a question, how do the people on the 0906 project ship survive?" Ke Lan couldn't help but ask.

Engineering Ship No. 0906 was just a small engineering ship over 100 meters long at the beginning. There were many engineering ships of this size on the Ark. Even Ke Lan’s God Hunting Group had two 100-meter-class ships under its name. Engineering ship (although it was half sold and half given to them by the Soma Consortium). The crew of this kind of engineering ship is only about two hundred people. If a large amount of automated equipment is used, only about thirty people are actually needed to make the ship sail normally and exert its full functions. The ecological recycling facilities on such engineering ships are also very crude, and they basically rely on external supplies. When the warehouse is full, a voyage can only sustain consumption for about one to two months at most.

Except for the engineering equipment that comes with the ship, there is basically no self-production capability... Even if the technology of the hive civilization is better than that of the Ark civilization, Ke Lan does not think that a group of people driving a 100-meter-level airship can do it in the It took more than a thousand years to travel through the universe.

"One more thing, when I was absorbing the memories of the 'corpses' on the second floor of the Tower of Babel, I was always concerned about one thing: in those memory fragments related to the Tower of Babel, there was never a figure of the crew. Why is this? "

"The era when the 0906 engineering ship set sail was the era when cyborg technology was the most popular and prosperous on earth. The crew of that engineering ship actually only had eight people. In order to survive long enough, all eight of them gave up. The physical body only transfers the specially processed brain to the 'equipment' on the ship. If you look at it from your point of view, the 0906 engineering ship is actually an unmanned ship, but there are eight self-aware robots on the ship. It’s just a biological computer.”

"Then 'Dr. Nino'..."

"He is one of the eight people who have had brain transplants. Dr. Nino was once one of the best materials experts on the planet, but after bringing Nino alloy back to Earth, his title of 'one' was erased. Lost." The master of the nest said with emotion, "I don't know if it's really luck, or if there is a human civilization from another time and space secretly helping them. Engineering ship No. 0906 is using the gas giant named 'S43-K26' Unfortunately, they were captured by the planet's gravity when it accelerated, but as a blessing in disguise, they discovered a brand new element on this gas giant planet, and developed 'Nino Alloy' in that desperate situation."

"I know this, it's mentioned in those memory fragments." Ke Lan nodded.

"But it is a pity that Nino alloy not only requires that special element to be synthesized, but also must be in the special environment inside the 'S43-K26' planet... We later sent out to the 'S43-K26' planet Dozens of fleets, but no news.”

"No wonder the Alpha civilization has never been able to successfully synthesize Nino alloy, so it can only use what is readily available in Yagunaktor... Fortunately, this ship is built big enough and has enough Nino alloy... Otherwise, this super ship The giant ship must have disappeared long ago.”

"The Nino Alloy used by the Alpha Civilization is only a very small part, and most of it was dug up during the Hive Civilization Era. By the time of the Alpha Civilization, a lot of the Nino Alloy used was filled back. In addition, Alpha Civilization has also made large-scale modifications to the interior of the ship, including adding folding spaces and setting up a 'Coffin of Gods'."

"Is Alpha Civilization planning to use Yagunaktor as a fallback route?"

"No, the Alpha civilization never planned to use Yagunaktor to escape... At that time, all the Alpha people had been branded by him. Even if they ran to the ends of the world, they would eventually become his nourishment. This ship is It’s prepared for you, otherwise, why do you think there are so many ‘ecological zones’ connected by space passages inside Yagunaktor?”

"..." Ke Lan was stunned. A strange idea suddenly popped into his head: Maybe, he should say "thank you" to Alpha Civilization?

But the words "thank you" seemed a bit light when placed in front of this giant ship.

"The top priority is to transfer the ownerless 'original energy' sealed at the top of the Tower of Babel to Yagunaktor, and then take all humans and leave this planet." The master of the nest said, "You still have time. , you still have a chance... to slowly digest the legacy left to you by these Alpha civilizations while escaping."