Will the kemonomimi encounter Alien Ranch Story?

“I’ll dismantle that thing. You might accidentally trigger the self-destruct system.”

"What is this 'warp engine'?"

"The thing that can make this thing fly at the speed of light, even if it's the smallest simplified version, can also be seen as a micro-shield generator. It's all the same thing, not very useful to us, unless I'm preparing to launch a manned spaceship someday."

"Old Xia, I've noticed that you don't seem very... saddened by the deaths and injuries of your kin?"

"Yeah, I'm used to it. After all, for me, the war and my childhood ended almost at the same time. Although it was already the end of the war, people still die..." Old Xia shrugged.

"It's too frequent and too common. If you have to feel sad every time you see a corpse or wreckage, you can't live like this. Because there are mountains of these blood-stained wreckages in the shipyard, in quantities you can't even imagine."

"I've visited military repair depots, and when those warships that had passed through harmlessly with bullet holes were being repaired, they used buckets to count the number of bodies."

"bucket?"

"Well, don't expect that kind of weapon to leave you with intact limbs. Usually, a direct hit will just turn you to ashes, while if you're killed indirectly, if you're lucky, when you go back to repair the ship, the crew will use a vacuum cleaner to collect the part of you floating in the cabin and put it in a biocontamination-proof container for your family to use for burial."

"When you've seen enough of this, you'll be like me, no longer feeling any sadness about death. You'll realize that living isn't something to be taken for granted; death is," Old Xia said, speaking with a touch of raunchy humor as he worked. "That's why the funerals we have there are so interesting. You should check them out if you have the chance..."

It's probably the kind of cheerful atmosphere a professional team would have, because sadness is meaningless for both the dead and the living. So, it's more of a ritual to celebrate that the survivors were alive.

“Speaking of funerals, let’s collect all that sand and scraps of flesh outside. Find a bucket, oh, and this is also included…” Old Xia pulled a bright yellow bucket out of a cabinet. “Here, it’s for collecting the body. It’s great for holding ashes, scraps of flesh, meat sauce, or anything like that. Do you need me to find you a vacuum cleaner? Once it’s collected, I’ll go back and give him a funeral that follows the customs of his hometown.”

"Uh..." White Rabbit's face had turned a little green. He was thinking that this guy might have gone completely crazy from playing with wet parts too much, but after thinking about what Old Xia said, he should say the other way around. He had seen a lot of these loose corpses, and the level of gore from playing with wet parts was practically child's play.

The dismantling work was very quick and smooth, as there was no technical difficulty involved. The frame nodes were quickly melted down, and the plates and compartments separated on their own. Originally, this was designed to withstand impacts and attacks. The frame and compartments would partially disintegrate due to the inability to withstand excessive impacts, thus avoiding severe damage to the overall structure.

Of course, it also facilitates the dismantling of lifeboats. These functions are commonly found in small civilian vessels. Military warships, on the other hand, have a different design philosophy and are not so easy to dismantle. Otherwise, ship dismantling would not be a technical job.

With the help of an inside man like Lao Xia, the usable parts were quickly disassembled. The communications station was completely destroyed, but the control panel was still usable, and that was the last part to be disassembled.

The avionics equipment was dismantled as much as possible, and the same went for the life support equipment. The reactor had been basically removed. The last thing left was the micro warp drive and two lightweight arc jet engines. Although the latter was badly damaged, Lao Xia insisted on removing it.

"There are two broken ones. I'll see if I can handcraft some replacements and maybe fix them into an engine with about 30% reduced performance. It won't be enough to send another spaceship into space, but at least it can make a larger airplane..."

"Rat-a-tat-tat!" Gunshots rang out from outside. The Yeti squad, equipped with Snow Rabbit rifles, was exchanging fire with an Ursus patrol. Spells blasted across the sand dunes, sending up flying sand particles. "Boss, Ursus is coming. We need to speed things up, or there will be more and more of them."

“Anti-meteor laser… Damn, it’s broken. Give me another 15 minutes.” Old Xia, who was searching through cabinets and looking for toolboxes, glanced at the damage control report. “I told you long ago, adding a lifting and protective turret to the anti-meteor laser wouldn’t cost much. Adding a few more wouldn’t make a difference. When I was in elementary school, they had it installed like this on the outside. I’ve already graduated from college, and they still have it installed on the outside!”

"Here!" Old Xia tossed a box to the white rabbit. "What's this?"

"First aid kit, and this, modular weapon case and damage control drone pod, I mean the smallest size." There were quite a few things in the cabinet, but they were all standard emergency items.

"Boom!" "Boss, their assault ships are coming up! We didn't bring any heavy firepower!"

A particle-beam-like magical attack fired from the light Originium cannons on the assault ship swept across the vicinity of the wreckage.

If the Ursus people hadn't also been reluctant to damage the wreckage, the Yeti squad would have suffered heavy casualties.

As for why the Ursus people don't want to destroy the wreckage, well, the scene of the mining bomb explosion at the last excavation site is still there; who wouldn't be scared after seeing that?

"Alright, attach the transport boat and get going!" The warp drive and the two jet engines are quite large, and the armored vehicles brought by the Yetis can't be taken away. Fortunately, Lao Xia had planned to take the whole boat away from the beginning, so there is still a slower transport boat that is lagging behind.

The warp drive is about the size of a large industrial generator, and it is completely sealed in a semi-circular shell. Old Xia dismantled it along with the ship's deck below.

If it weren't for his symbiote and the professionals who knew how to bypass the inspection certificate verification, it would have self-destructed by now due to the security mechanism being triggered. Then there's the nearly 20-meter-long arc jet engine, which can only be hung on a trailer and towed by a vehicle. Fortunately, it's an engine used for spaceflight, and to reduce dead weight, it's not too heavy, otherwise it would be difficult to tow it away.

As for the remaining odds and ends, they could simply be tossed into the armored vehicle's trunk and that would be the end of it. Unlike the Windrunner, this was a complete spaceship, meaning the cockpit was essentially intact. "Level IV security protocol triggered, destruction initiation..."

"Run! It's going to collapse!" Small explosions began to occur in various parts of the main frame, which was already difficult to dismantle.

Subsequently, the entire spaceship wreckage collapsed at a visible speed, rapidly breaking into several fragmented compartments, and then began to catch fire.

All electronic and sensitive devices caught fire, leaving only the seemingly undamaged but actually valuable items completely burned to ashes.

The Yeti squad fought and retreated, their rifles proving very helpful, although the lack of heavy weapons put them at a disadvantage against the sorcerers hiding inside the armored assault ship.

Conversely, the fact that this heavy rifle treats all enemies except heavily armored ones equally frustrates the Ursus people and prevents them from getting close.

"The Yan people have come too!"

"Start the engines quickly, we have to get out of here!" The transport ship rumbled away from the battlefield, followed by the Yeti squad, and the Ursus people breathed a slight sigh of relief.

Although the other party clearly took several large items with them and made a considerable haul, it was only a small amount compared to the entire wreckage.

Less than five minutes after occupying the wreckage, the Yan army arrived, and a fierce firefight ensued between the two sides over control of the wreckage. Ultimately, the well-prepared Yan army successfully drove away the Ursus people and pulled the main wreckage back.

Old Xia and his companions, dragging two large objects covered with tarpaulins back to Longmen, attracted almost no attention from anyone except Old Wei.

Of course, Lao Wei had no intention of reporting him. To him, it was like getting mud on his crotch—if the Emperor of Da Yan found out, who would believe that it was just an accident and not something he had instructed?

So, Lao Wei frowned and erased as much of the relevant information and records as possible. Fortunately, Lao Xia didn't say what he was going to do. His Yeti team was quite responsible in terms of secrecy and security, so only a very small number of people knew about it.

As soon as he returned to Lungmen, Lao Xia went into the workshop and started tinkering. Then he notified Amiya Logistics to bring the largest transport vehicle and the Titan tank company to escort a very important piece of equipment back to the Snowfield Workshop.

"So, that was just the aftermath of the last incident?" Kal'tsit asked curiously.

"Yes, I didn't expect them to jettison almost the entire hull in time, leaving only the main structure to survive, but that's all they survived." The warp drive was damaged, the life support system was overloaded, and while jettisoning the cargo containers to reduce weight and volume did avoid the meteorite, it also meant the loss of most of the supplies.

"Then, they disagreed. Some prepared for an emergency landing, some opposed it, and then another group repaired the escape ship. It took them almost two years to find a relatively safe route into the planet's atmosphere..."

"So that means the remaining people are still floating in the sky, and they could fall down at any moment?"

"Hmm, it's like they brought down an industrial smelting array with them, and then smashed an area the size of Lungmen into a barren wasteland. But don't worry, that's impossible. Their posture is ruined. My biggest question right now is whether their super-membrane communication equipment is working properly, after all, the cargo ship's equipment has a much greater power than mine."

"However, thinking about it carefully, it's probably broken. Otherwise, they wouldn't have gone to such lengths to make an emergency landing on the planet's surface."

Is that device absolutely necessary?

"Yeah, it's a delivery beacon, what else? Fly over using a warp drive? That would take centuries to get there."

"What other technical resources do they have?"

"The vast majority were lost, at least according to the records left by this engine room engineer. They threw away all the cargo containers and even carried out a hull-breaking operation, leaving only the main compartment at the very front to pass through that meteor shower. By the way, your orbit is full of Originium blocks, some several kilometers in size..."

"Also, was your moon blown up or hit by something? It only has this tidally locked half, and about 1/6 of its volume on the far side has disappeared. That's probably where the debris and Originium blocks in orbit came from."

“I don’t know either,” Kal’tsit said with a wry smile. To the Terrans, she could indeed claim to be “omniscient,” but to Old Xia, while she wasn’t completely clueless, there was certainly a lot she didn’t know.

"The only ones left are probably the industrial smelting arrays that are still floating in a safe area. Don't think too much about it; I estimate they won't float for long before they get hit and blown away."

Moreover, that was a smelting array in its unassembled, packaged state; even if it were to crash-land intact, I wouldn't be able to put it back together.

That kind of work requires a Level III space megastructure engineering certificate; on the ground, I doubt you even have the equipment to lift it.

"However, there is some good news. I have disassembled the arc engine and the warp drive. If you really want to go to space, as a senior member of the Retro Rocket Enthusiasts Association, I can guarantee that I can send you up there for a few hours. But I can't guarantee that you won't get hit by those floating things."

"No thanks, I'm not that curious..."

"Also, the damage to the arc engine isn't too serious, but it's not minor either. If we're talking about serious damage, it only affects replaceable components. If we're talking about minor damage, it'll probably be quite troublesome to repair. At most, I could try piecing the two engines together to see if I could build a new one. As for a single engine like this..."

It can probably barely manage atmospheric flight, unless you put it on a vintage rocket, in which case I could launch you to the moon.

"So, theoretically speaking, once I'm done with this, I can consider designing an atmospheric flight vehicle. With that micro warp engine, it should be usable, and it can also be protected by a small vortex shield."

The shield uses a gravitational field to deflect incoming projectiles. However, it requires a relatively long prediction distance; at close range, it's almost ineffective.

Of course, to get to the point where you can effectively engage in close-quarters combat, it usually means that you need to fly slowly for half a day within the Covenant's attack zone, and roughly... half of your combat power will die along the way.

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Puns about Tomorrow's Sun Ark

Chapter 37

The electric arc jet engine is a standard nuclear engine that uses nuclear energy to ionize the working fuel into a highly dense plasma, which is then directionally ejected through an electromagnetic field. Due to the combination of its thermal expansion speed and electromagnetic acceleration, it can achieve a very high exhaust velocity, which can almost be considered as a continuous ultra-miniature nuclear explosion jet.

Theoretically speaking, Lao Xia could even modify it into a plasma cannon with a vacuum range of about 20-30 kilometers.

Of course, that's meaningless. In space, that range is roughly equivalent to holding an ear pick in your hand. Even if that ear pick is deadly, it won't let you defeat an enemy carrying at least an RPG.

In principle, the warheads of the Covenant's conventional interceptor missiles are quite similar, except that the jet has a longer range of 3000-8000 kilometers or more, a shorter duration, and releases energy that is hard to say is much greater than this engine.

However, it is usually enough to penetrate armor that has not been specially reinforced, and can also be used to test whether the opponent has a shield system.

After all, even if the enemy has installed a shield system in space, it won't be as obvious as a glowing dome in the animation.

If a luminous phenomenon occurs, it means that the entire system is actually radiating energy outward at an astonishing rate, which also means that you are the brightest lighthouse in the universe, attracting all kinds of attacks, both overt and covert.

Since that's the case, Lao Xia wouldn't allow this thing to be played with by someone like Master Ke, and he also doesn't have the ability to repair it. The one-way fluid confinement magnetic field inside is enough to make Master Ke scratch his scalp, provided he doesn't use that kind of "magic" to cheat.

The repaired engine and its supporting equipment together are roughly the size of a large marine engine.

If it's limited to low-speed flight within the atmosphere, it's more than enough, not to mention the miniature warp drive.

It's worth mentioning that the Covenant doesn't usually have a rule against jumping within the atmosphere, because it's hard to say how much trouble such a person would cause others, but they would usually kill themselves.

Planetary gravity can distort and affect the manifold integrity of the jump field to some extent. Unless you are an expert in aerobatic maneuvers, you shouldn't expect to be able to coordinate this issue in time. The result of manifold disruption is... you will be torn to shreds by gravity.

The compensation and balancing system has its limits. It allows you to activate the jump function in low orbit, not to risk your life by sticking close to the ground. And Lao Xia doesn't intend to risk his life. He just uses it as a luxury microgravity balancer to further increase the tonnage of the flight vehicle.

Of course, this design work is not very complicated. He doesn't even need to design anything; he just needs to copy the things he has repaired before. The only problem is that many of the components required for the flight control system are not available on the market, so he has to find a way to solve this problem.

Moreover, he faces a very troublesome technical challenge: Lao Xia cannot build an atmospheric spacecraft, as spacecraft and atmospheric spacecraft are completely different concepts.

Putting everything else aside, even just following his usual practice of flying a plane would cause an accident—he reached the predetermined speed, okay, then shut off the engine—

For statically unstable aircraft, once a spin begins, it depends on whether your crew protection level or the speed regained by restarting the engine is more effective.

However, building large aircraft is a long process. Right now, we need to sort through the new batch of Covenant supplies we have acquired. The first aid kits are not very useful; their main purpose is to replenish some scarce medicines, and they are all the most basic kind. There are no surgical tools provided.

"That's why I hate formalism!" Old Xia pulled out the items from the first-aid kit one by one. "Besides two treatment needles, the rest are all for treating minor injuries and initial wounds. They didn't even prepare a laser non-invasive scalpel..."

Gamma lasers are used to penetrate directly into the human body, destroying targets by taking advantage of the different absorption rates of peak energy by specific cells.

In fact, similar technologies exist on modern Earth, but they are not miniaturized or refined to this extent.

"How to say?"

"These are all for inspection purposes. They have everything that should be there, and absolutely nothing that shouldn't be there."

Old Xia sighed. "To be honest, it's good enough that we have everything we need. At least we don't have this kind of mess where you open it and find that everything has expired for ten years when you need it."

"Then the toolbox too. The biggest find was a nanofluid shaping gun, but it didn't come with a particle blueprint, so it's basically useless. Speaking of which, who made this ridiculous rule? Who the hell can have a particle blueprint when they're offline?" Old Xia complained.

"If I can connect to the galactic main network, do I still need a survival kit? I can order a small shuttle right away, fly onto orbit in eight minutes, and then call a passenger bus and leave."

"Could there be any memory cards or something?" White Rabbit was also rummaging through this pile of odds and ends. It really was too fragmented; a significant portion of it had been damaged and scattered to varying degrees during the crash.

I was in a hurry to dismantle it and leave, so I just threw everything into the truck bed and hauled it away. I didn't have time to sort it out. Now that I've brought it back, I've found that these pieces are all... bizarre.

"No, maybe there was, but we didn't notice it at the time. Then again, who was the idiot who came up with the idea of ​​an ultra-thin storage revolution back then, which now seems like a completely idiotic concept?"

Ultra-thin, high-capacity storage, storing the most data while minimizing volume and weight, making it an essential product for interstellar logistics, trade, information exchange, and data storage.

The only problem is that, because it was made so well, even with its black paint and fluorescent edges, it's not easy to distinguish from a pile of messy crash debris.

"Every fragment looks similar to a memory card. Didn't the designers consider how people would find these things immediately after a crash?"