From Titan Corporation to the Empire of Man

Chapter 679 "The Military Application Prospects of Interdimensional Channels"

The blizzard peaked at midnight.

The pitch-black sky was pressed down very low by thick clouds, as if one could reach out and touch the surging grayness.

The snowflakes were no longer falling gently, but were torn into sharp fragments by the gale, whistling and crashing against the reinforced glass of the skyscrapers, producing a fine, almost metallic hiss.

The city's light pollution was swallowed up by the blizzard, and the dazzling neon signs were blurred into hazy patches of color, like oil paint soaking in water, slowly spreading out.

The technological creations of UED's capital city seemed fragile and insignificant in the face of nature's fury.

The signal lights in the air traffic control tower were still flashing stubbornly, but the once busy hovercraft route was now deserted. Only a few autonomous snow removal drones were struggling through the snow and wind, their ion engine nozzles flashing blue light like dying fireflies.

The maglev track on the ground was buried by snow, and the intelligent snow melting system was operating at overload, but it still could not keep up with the speed of the snow accumulation.

Occasionally, the sirens of emergency vehicles would pierce through the wind and snow, but they would soon be swallowed up by the howling wind, as if they had never existed.

In the darkest corner of the city—

In the shadows beneath overpasses, near the vents of abandoned pipes, and beside heat leaks from heating systems, huddled people forgotten by the glamorous facade of UED.

Wrapped in cheap thermal blankets provided by the government, they huddled together like hibernating animals, their breath instantly freezing into ice crystals in the cold wind.

The drone's scanning beam occasionally swept past them, coldly recording data on "low-energy-consuming population in the city," before indifferently departing.
Dawn tore through the blizzard's curtain.

When the first ray of sunlight pierced through the clouds, the entire city seemed to be restarted.

The blizzard's remains shimmered with tiny diamond-like sparkles in the morning light, while UED's intelligent municipal system was already operating efficiently.

Snow removal robots poured out of the underground hatch like a swarm of silver ants, quickly melting the snow in their path and revealing the smooth composite road underneath.

The hovercraft channel was the first to resume operation.

The private cars of the wealthy take off from the exclusive helipads on the top floors of skyscrapers, their streamlined hulls reflecting the morning light, and the ethereal blue ion streams at their sterns drawing elegant arcs in the low sky.

They enjoy independent waterways, are not subject to traffic control, and can even bypass security checks to enter the core government area directly.

Holographic projections inside the submarine display morning news and economic data in real time, while a uniformed butler serves his master a cup of freshly ground espresso made from coffee beans grown in a Martian greenhouse.

Middle-class commuters are not so lucky.

The ground-level maglev lanes were already completely jammed during the morning rush hour, with the densely packed civilian maglev vehicles resembling insects frozen in amber.

The passengers inside the car were impatiently banging on the steering wheel or refreshing the timer for lateness on the holographic screen.

For every minute they delay, credits will be automatically deducted from their payroll accounts.

The holographic billboard at the intersection is still playing UED's recruitment propaganda on a loop.

"Fight for the glory of humanity!"

The image of officers in sharp uniforms presents an absurd contrast to the office workers crammed into train carriages and munching on synthetic protein bars in reality.

The awakening of the slums, however, is even more silent.

The surviving homeless people shook off the ice from their thermal blankets and lined up to receive nutritional paste distributed by a charity.

It was a viscous, grayish-white colloid with a metallic smell, yet it provided enough calories to sustain life for a day.

Three hundred meters above them, the building's golden dome was bathed in the morning light, its nano-coating refracting the sunlight into dazzling rainbows, as if mocking the suffering below.

Although the Earth Federation's technology is sufficient to support this shining capital, the decay of its social structure even surpasses that of Mengsk's Terran Empire.

At least the poor in Tyrannosaurus can curse the emperor in taverns and then drink cheap beer, while the lower classes in UED have their channels for venting stifled by the "mental health monitoring system." Anyone whose negative emotion index exceeds the standard will be forcibly sent to the "re-education center."

Their orbital defense platforms can indeed launch devastating missiles, and their soldiers possess "theoretically" perfect physical attributes, but they cannot maintain morale in extreme environments with a bottle of whiskey and profanity like the Tyrannical Marines and Rangers.

Even in some peripheral star systems, the UED's colonization efficiency is not as good as that of the Tyrannical slave miners, at least the latter can generate savage productivity with whips and liquor.

As the sun fully enveloped the city, a shuttle bearing the UED military insignia flew over the slums, its shadow briefly covering the crowd queuing below.

No one looked up.

They have long since learned not to gaze upon those unattainable lights.

The railcar sped through the morning light, the magnetic levitation field beneath the tracks emitting a deep hum, like the breath of some giant beast.

Lyon leaned against the bulletproof glass window of the carriage, gazing at the silhouette of the city rushing past outside through his reflection.

He wore a worn-out pilot jacket with a nanofiber woven bulletproof lining, and his seemingly ordinary thick work pants were actually fitted with dynamic camouflage modules.

His boots were covered in slushy snow, a stark contrast to the gleaming synthetic floor inside the carriage.

The train weaves between towering skyscrapers covered in adaptive glass that adjusts its light transmittance according to the intensity of sunlight, reflecting the golden-red morning light like a row of burning giant swords stuck in the earth.

Holographic advertising projections floated between passengers inside the carriage, promoting the latest neural access chips and military-grade performance enhancers.

A woman in a UED office uniform is complaining about her commute while looking at her wristwatch, while two security guards stand behind her, their pupils gleaming with the light of implanted scanners.

Lyon's gaze swept over the connecting area between the carriages—

Mike and Chris were not in this carriage; they were dispersed in other carriages as planned to avoid attracting the attention of any group.

Mike might be pretending to be an office worker engrossed in browsing the news, while Chris would probably choose to stand near the emergency brakes. The special forces commander always seems to have an obsessive desire to control the exit location.

At the stop before their destination, Mike and Chris got off the train.

The platform's lighting system was malfunctioning due to the early morning snowstorm, and the cold white light flickered, casting distorted shadows of passengers.

Mike pulled his hat down low and followed the flow of people toward the exit, his gait naturally mimicking the weariness of the shift workers around him.

His shoulders slumped slightly, his eyes lowered, as if he had been exhausted by a whole day of meetings.

Chris maintained a perfect sense of distance, neither drawing attention nor appearing to deliberately avoid social distancing.

They walked through an aerial walkway, with hundreds of meters of urban canyon below, where the morning rush hour's floating traffic wove a net of light.

The connecting corridor leads to the mid-level commercial area of ​​a giant building, where neon signs of fast food restaurants cast cheap pinkish-purple light and shadow on the glass curtain wall.

The store was packed with busy office workers. A long queue stretched out in front of the automatic ordering machine, and the meat patties sizzled on the hot plate, emitting an almost too perfect "charcoal grilling flavor".

Those are chemical signals concocted in food laboratories, specifically designed to stimulate the human hunger instinct.

Mike chose a window seat, where the floor-to-ceiling windows faced the UED staff office building two kilometers away. The pyramid-shaped building was looming in the morning mist, and its top quantum communication array was rotating, like a crown woven from metal thorns.

"Beef Burger Synthetic Coffee".

Chris placed the plate on the table; the food packaging label displayed a false promise of "75% real meat."

He sat down with his coat slightly open, but the pulse pistol hidden inside was not visible; however, no one around him would notice.

All the customers were either engrossed in their own holographic screens or wolfing down the heat that was about to be converted into productivity.

Mike tapped the table lightly with his fingernail, and the bone conduction microphone under the nano-coating transmitted the sound to Chris's ear implant:
"Ready in position."

At the same moment, Lyon stepped into the mirrored lobby of the office building.

The revolving door "swallows" Lyon into a completely different world.

The hall floor is paved with deep red sandstone transported from the Martian colony, each piece inlaid with gold-thread-like mineral veins.

A 20-meter-high holographic projection floated in the center, looping footage of the UED fleet's "peacekeeping operations" in various areas, but the carefully edited images did not show any civilians being vaporized by plasma cannons.

There were long queues at the security checkpoints.

Lyon observed the pattern of guard rotation.

Every forty-five seconds, the third guard would unconsciously glance at the coffee machine in the lounge.

He blended into the biometrics area with a group of mid-level employees. When the scanner's red line swept across his iris, the deception layer began to work, injecting falsified employee information into the system.

"Good morning, Engineer Rains."

The security check AI spoke in a sweet voice.

His fake identity had neither too high nor too low access levels, just enough to enter the non-core R&D areas on floors B3 to B5.

As Leon entered the elevator car, a woman reeking of perfume stood beside him. She was rapidly browsing a document using a neural link, holographic text flowing across her irises, unaware that everything she saw was being silently invaded by the data collector in Leon's sleeve.

When the elevator stopped at the B4 floor, a data packet transmitted by Mike flashed on Leon's retinal projection screen—

The reflected light from the fast food restaurant window was analyzed into a spectrum, revealing abnormal energy fluctuations in a room on the seventh floor of the office building—the very data center they needed to investigate.

The corridor lights suddenly turned a dim red, the alarm was suppressed by an intelligent system into a gentle buzzing sound, and an AI voice came over the loudspeaker:
"Routine fire drill, please do not panic."

Leon knew that this was a cover created by Chris hacking into the building's management system.

He strode toward the fire escape, his nano-soles absorbing the sound of his footsteps. Outside the window, across the morning mist two kilometers away, Mike was pointing a laser listening device disguised as a condiment bottle in his direction.

In the greasy air of the fast food restaurant, Chris took a bite of the tasteless synthetic meat, his gaze fixed on the office building.

The real action has only just begun.

The morning mist gradually thinned under the scorching sun, but the shadows inside the office building grew thicker.

Lyon quickly ascended the fire escape, precisely avoiding the scanning angles of the surveillance cameras with each step. His nano-mask constantly adjusted its optical refractive index, ensuring that his figure appeared as only a blurry block of color on the monitor screen.
Just like the occasional brief malfunctions that occur in the system, they will not alert the security AI.

The emergency lights in the passageway cast a blood-red halo, stretching his shadow into a distorted "monster" that crawled silently across the metal wall.

B5 layer, non-core data area.

The air-pressurized door at the end of the corridor is labeled "Server Maintenance Room," but Lyon's invisible holographic glasses have already revealed the true spatial layout behind it, which is a secondary intelligence hub disguised as an ordinary server room.

He took out the authentication chip that Mike had prepared in advance and gently placed it on the access control sensor area.

The quantum code on the chip surface began to attempt to crack it at an extremely high frequency. The whole process took no more than three seconds, and the door lock made a slight "click" sound.

A wave of cool air hits you in the room, and hundreds of data arrays are neatly arranged, the hum of cooling fans creating a kind of hypnotic white noise.

Lyon quickly located the terminal in the third row and took out a prism-shaped data needle from the inner pocket.

The moment the needle was inserted into the interface, a dark blue pattern appeared on its surface. This was a quantum hacking device specially made by the Human Empire's intelligence department, capable of directly hijacking all signals in the optical cable.

"Connect to the main database," Lyon commanded in a low voice.

The retinal projection immediately unfolded a complex user interface, with countless encrypted files cascading down like a waterfall.

He quickly filtered through his targets—

Biometric key of UED expeditionary force general

The logistics dispatcher's neural implant code

Every piece of information, such as the warp coordinates of the garrison fleet on the outskirts of the Koprulu Sector, was listed as "encrypted and protected," but these protections were as fragile as paper in the face of Imperial technology.

Suddenly, an encrypted communication request popped up on his private channel.

It was Mike's voice, digitally disguised with a slight electronic buzz: "The press conference has been moved up to 11:30. They just released the holographic agenda announcement—the focus is on the third section."

Leon tapped his fingertip lightly in the air, retrieving the data packet that Mike had transmitted synchronously.

The holographic projection unfolded, displaying a three-dimensional layout of the middle-level auditorium. The title of the third session, which was highlighted, was "The Military Application Prospects of Interdimensional Channels".

Meanwhile, observation points were set up inside the fast food restaurant.

Chris stirred the synthetic coffee in his cup with a straw, a layer of oily sheen floating on the surface of the liquid, while his gaze never left the seventh floor of the office building, the preparation area for the press conference.

Through the various functions of the invisible holographic glasses, he could clearly see staff adjusting the holographic projection equipment, and several figures dressed in high-ranking military officer uniforms talking behind the scenes.

“Target confirmed.” Chris reported calmly, “The man in the blue suit is Logistics Chief Hoffman, and the female officer to his right is Lyons, the Director of Warp Technology. Both of them have direct access to all inter-universe projects.”

The so-called "alternate universe project" is actually a "space gate that can lead to other universes" project.

Clearly, the United Earth Federation (UED) also transmitted intelligence about the existence of a space gate on Mar-Sarah back to Earth through spies and agents deployed in the Koprulu Sector.
(End of this chapter)