The stars, but they become the gray wind

"It's okay... They haven't officially confirmed their relationship yet. Mother, you know I'm more used to taking things slowly in this area."

"Ah, if you ask me, Elena, you're progressing too slowly. If it were me, Sister Luoying would have climbed into my bed a long time ago." Anna grinned wickedly, not minding the trouble.

"How am I like you? When you see a beautiful girl, you can't wait to eat her up. I'm not a lesbian like you who falls in love with every girl she meets..." Elena said as she rolled her eyes at her scumbag sister Aquaman.

"Forget it, let's not talk about it. Mom, did you two have fun on the Salem during these ten years you were away?"

"I'm quite happy indeed. It's like a honeymoon for both of us. I even had a close conversation with the Salem's artificial intelligence. By the way...daughter, have you forgotten? Although it's been over a decade for you, at near-light speed, in our time reference frames, it's only been a few months."

"The intimate communication you're talking about with the Salem's AI isn't what I'm thinking of, is it?"

"Um... this is a long story... basically, when we were doing that thing, we were caught by Salem's sister. She also wanted to get close to us, and then for various reasons, we agreed..." Alicia answered her daughter's question while pawing at her finger with a guilty conscience.

"Mom, and Mother, you two... it's really hard to change your nature..."

"By the way, Anna, have you been happy during the fifteen years you've been with Elena?"

"Happy! How could I not be happy? Every day I can bring a different girl home to spend time with at night, and occasionally I can even drag Elena along to spend time with me. It's a pretty comfortable life."

"It might just scare that introverted sister Luoying or something.")

Anna added shamelessly.

"I see...it doesn't seem like a big deal. Although 15 years have passed here, from our perspective as a couple, the entire lightspeed journey only took a few days. We stayed in the Kylias star system for a few months, and you all know what happened next. After the stargate in the Kylias star system was completed, you returned directly to the Sky Star Mother Planet through the wormhole with our Salem aboard."

"From the perspective of feeling, it's probably just like taking a long journey."

Note 1: The Shkadov thruster, which looks like a giant mirror, concentrates the kinetic energy carried by photons emitted by the Sun and uses the law of conservation of momentum to reverse the Sun's motion (the principle of light sail propulsion). Although its acceleration is low, the speed of the solar system's movement will increase over time. For the Shkadov thruster to work, it must remain in a relatively fixed position, not rotating around the Sun, and the gravitational pull it experiences must balance the force of its radiation. This requires an extremely lightweight mirror, such as micron-thin reflective foil. The mirror's shape is also crucial. Enclosing the Sun in a giant spherical shell is impractical because it would redirect the concentrated light back toward the Sun. Instead, a parabolic mirror, with a controlled curvature, concentrates the light around the Sun and projects it in the same direction, maximizing thrust. Furthermore, to avoid impacting Earth, the Shkadov thruster must be positioned perpendicular to the plane of the solar system. Consequently, its disadvantage is significant: the Sun's limited range of motion in space limits our travel plans. The Shkadov thruster could theoretically move the solar system 100 light-years in 2.3 million years.

Chapter 157 Target: The center of the Milky Way, set sail!

[Stargate stabilizes… Loading… Superluminal negative energy alien Mio Sanko phosphorus dam flow begins to flow…]

[Superluminal negative energy flow injection completed... Startup progress 100%...]

【宏观虫洞分界面形成倒计时10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1，启动】

[The macroscopic wormhole interface has been formed, and the wormhole network has been connected...]

[Artificial Stargate No. 5247 operates stably]

……

"Huh... Is this the last one?" The pink-haired elf girl looked at the live broadcast screen and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Well... Currently, the stargates in all 5247 star systems controlled by the Sky New Civilization have been completed. The stargate in system 5247 has been connected to the Sky Star Civilization's entire superluminal wormhole network."

"The infrastructure construction work has been completed in stages... At least, now we can directly reach any of the more than 5000 star systems under the jurisdiction of Sky Star by passing through the star gate established in any galaxy, without having to use a light-speed spacecraft to travel for decades to cross the distant void between star systems." Kylias slumped back in his chair and relaxed.

"Although there is still some finishing work to be done, after about a year of construction, we can now ensure that each of the more than 5000 star systems has at least one large anchor wormhole that can travel to any star system."

The red-haired cat girl in the holographic projection state also showed a happy emotion.

"The infrastructure construction is complete. Now we have to consider the diplomatic issues..."

"This... let me confirm again, are you sure you want to do this?" The red-haired cat girl confirmed again with the pink-haired elf girl in front of her.

"I didn't just impulsively apply to join this diplomatic, scientific, and exploratory fleet. I've given it careful consideration. Contacting a civilization with a completely different biological form is incredibly meaningful for us. That's why I've proactively requested that the Salem be part of this diplomatic fleet, bound for the center of the galaxy."

"Besides...we weren't the only ones there. Our sisters were there too..."

"As for the diplomatic matters, leave them to Lina and the others. I will mainly be responsible for scientific exchanges with them on this trip, such as research on cosmic cognition."

"Well... since that's what you think... I won't say anything. However, considering the unprecedented distance of this voyage, the Salem must conduct a detailed self-inspection before setting sail."

"Well... remember to send me a copy of the inspection report. You know the Salem is so huge. There are many places on board that I normally wouldn't go to. There are even some compartments I haven't set foot in for at least decades. Although I can use sensors and various equipment to gain a thorough understanding of these areas of the ship that I rarely visit, I can't go directly there. If I only observe indirectly through various equipment, I'm bound to miss some details."

"The newly installed high-dimensional space jump engine, naked singularity reactor and Alcubierre warp engine as a backup means of superluminal travel still need some debugging to cope with such a long distance voyage." The red-haired cat girl reported to Kylias.

"Go ahead. By the way... I'm going to a spaceport on the other side of the star ring. I left some things there and need to get them. I might have to be away for a few hours." Kylias stood up from his chair and walked towards the exit closest to the bridge.

"Understood... While you're gone, I'll conduct a detailed self-inspection and debugging of the spacecraft."

…………

On the airtight pier of the spaceport, the pink-haired elf girl looked back at her spaceship, which was like a giant 26-kilometer-long key. If viewed from directly above the spaceship, it looked like an Eye of Horus. The ring structure at the tail of the spaceship contained the newly installed naked singularity reactor. The naked singularity, enclosed in an absolutely smooth Penrose sphere, was the key to generating superluminal negative energy flow and an indispensable part of the entire spaceship's superluminal navigation.

At the same time, in this huge annular structure area that occupies the entire tail of the spacecraft, there is also a miniature wormhole. A large amount of strange quark group matter is transmitted from the neutron star energy well across the distance of light years through this miniature wormhole to maintain the operation of the high-dimensional space jump engine. Due to the use of an inertia-free propulsion system, the entire spacecraft does not have an obvious tail engine nozzle like the spacecraft of the old era. However, Kalyas knows that some of his fellow Sky Star people like to retain a retractable or deformable engine nozzle structure at the tail of the spacecraft, and eject the gamma-ray jet produced by the annihilation of matter and antimatter that can reach the speed of light or the relativistic jet of the miniature black hole of the black hole reactor itself that can reach an exhaust speed of more than 0.3c from the nozzle structure at the tail of the spacecraft, and propel it in the same way as the working medium spacecraft of the old era, in pursuit of a certain retro artistic sense. When Kalyas designed and built the Salem, at the persuasion of a friend who liked retro art style, he retained such a deformable and hidden engine nozzle structure at the tail of the Salem. The tail nozzle structure was not because Kalias liked retro-style spaceships, but was to be prepared for emergency situations. If all other propulsion systems of the spaceship failed, were damaged or malfunctioned, the Salem could still use the engine tail nozzle retained at the tail of the spaceship to eject relativistic jets at up to 30% of the speed of light from the black hole reactor, providing power for the spaceship and allowing the entire spaceship to still maintain sub-light speed navigation capabilities. According to the information Kalias knew, he was not the only large spaceship of the same specifications as the Salem that retained this design. Although the number of spaceships using this emergency propulsion design was quite small within the entire Sky Star civilization, considering the huge number of spaceships held by the Sky Star civilization, this number was still quite large. About 1% of the large spaceships in the entire Sky Star civilization would retain nozzles at the tail of the spaceship for ejecting relativistic jets or high-energy gamma-ray jets. Even the spaceship driven by the four sisters of Sky News retained a similar design.

Kylias did not stay on the pier for too long. Through the single-person micro wormhole transmission device built on the spaceport not long ago, it only took her a few seconds to arrive at the Star Ring Spaceport on the other side of the planet. Not far away, on the berth of a small spaceship was the target of Kylias's trip.

A small silver-white spaceship with sharp edges and only 100 meters in length.

…………

"Speaking of which...isn't the name of our spaceship a bit too hasty?" Yuki looked at the purple-haired girl who was entering the official name of the spaceship into the identification system.

"Ah, is there? Wasn't this the name everyone came up with after discussion?"

"I'm not referring to that... I'm referring to the future you who, when you ask about this name, looks like you've already anticipated it..."

"Isn't this perfectly normal? Since I'm the one who came back from the future, I naturally already knew what we'd name the ship, right?"

"But..." Yuki raised his hand and opened a holographic interface, which was showing the vote on the official name of the Gray Wind mothership. The top six names on the list were six names that the foursome were extremely familiar with.

"Why is this option called Dark Angel with no secret number ranked at the top?"

"And what are these things below?"

"There's also the Second Empire's Semper Loyal, Send Tanks to the Sky One by One, Turn the Ditch and Flip, and the Sword Shrimp... What the hell are those top six options?"

"I think... it's most likely that our sisters on Sky Star came up with this name after they learned about some widely circulated models of Earth in our world through Luoying's memories?" Calisi wiped the sweat from her forehead awkwardly.

"Can you at least give it a normal name? If I were to tell other alien civilizations about these names, I'd die laughing. How could so many people vote for such a weird name?"

"It's probably because... Sky Star's own spaceship production capacity is too large to even come up with names. Most of the ships only have numbers, and only a small number of frequently used personal ships or interstellar immigration ships have names?"

"I heard from Elena and the others that many people on Sky Star like to play around with the names of their spaceships. Is the name of her spaceship considered relatively normal in the entire Sky Star civilization?"

"I heard that Lina's personal spaceship is called 'As Long as It Flies, It's Victory'?"

"Ah...this..." Jiecheng covered his face with his hands, speechless.

"Don't be so depressed...at least the first name is a relatively normal one, right?"

"Forget it, you're right. At least the first one at the top of the voting list is a normal name. But I think it is necessary for us to improve our sisters' aesthetic concepts in naming." Yuki vowed secretly.

"Okay... OK, input completed!" After typing the name of the spaceship, Carlisle pressed the confirmation button on the screen.

"From now on, this ship's official name in Sky Star's identification system will be [Fantasy Light]!"

"But speaking of which, among all those weird names, the one that tops the list is actually a normal name. Among all those names, this normal name is really a bit too unique, isn't it?"

"According to Lina and the others, this name actually has some meaning."

"What does it mean?"

"Hmm... Fantasy. It means we have brought technology to the Sky Star civilization that previously only existed in fantasy. Curved Light means bending space to exceed the speed of light."

"The ship itself carries fantastical technology, the ability to bend and manipulate space to travel faster than the speed of light."

"As for why this name firmly occupies the top spot... I think it's probably because... we and our ship have special significance to our sister sky civilization, right?"

"Other names might just be jokes and inappropriate for this spaceship. This is the only name that suits it best."

"Fantasy Light... from a metaphorical point of view... it's a really good name..."

Kellyas stood in the cockpit of his small spaceship, checking the various data on the surrounding screens, but while checking the spaceship that was completely designed by himself, Kellyas frowned.

"Tsk... that won't work here. We need to add some additional components. Maybe we can try a miniaturized relativistic missile or a kinetic KKV?"

"Hmm... the reactor's output power could be optimized... the power of this gamma-ray laser is too low, and its protection capabilities are also quite problematic..."

"Perhaps it should be a stasis field shield based on a mass-energy conversion field?"

"But that kind of equipment seems to require a lot of energy... This reactor right now can't even run it..."

"Ahhh... really... I should have left more design redundancy. Now this broken spaceship just can't support all the components I want to add. I can't even install an additional reactor. The laser power can't be increased either. I should have made it bigger." The pink-haired elf girl complained, holding her head in dissatisfaction.

"Don't keep thinking about adding so many weird things to the spacecraft. If you add so many energy-intensive things, the spacecraft's reactor will certainly not be able to support it." The figure of the red-haired cat girl appeared on a screen to the right of Kylias's body.

"But I just want a small, versatile spaceship that's compact, fully functional, high-powered, and has balanced performance. Why is it so difficult?"

"That's nonsense... You're cramming so much stuff onto a small spaceship. If it were just a small boat carrying a cannon, it would be fine, but look at the design specifications you set for yourself."

"1.5 YW output power, photon energy level over 500 GeV, gamma-ray laser with a range of 80 light seconds, 1000 miniaturized near-light-speed relativistic missiles, and an axial gun based on gravity control technology. It can also accelerate a hundred-ton projectile to over 0.95°C at a distance of less than a few dozen meters. If necessary, the main gun can be connected to a black hole reactor, and the relativistic jet generated by the miniature Kerr-Newman black hole can be ejected at a speed far greater than this. You even plan to store several near-detonation miniature black hole Penrose sphere bombs in the cabin... Honestly, Sister Kylias, your design specifications are absolutely no problem on a ship the size of the Salem, but if you want to cram it into a small boat only a hundred meters long, it would be strange if you could succeed, not to mention the fuss you want to make about the small boat's shield."

"Sister Kylias... you've been tinkering with this thing for so long, but you still don't understand why you want to cram so many things onto one ship. What you should have done is redesign a larger spacecraft instead of messing with this small civilian spacecraft that you've almost messed up beyond recognition. Now only the shell of this spacecraft is left, still in its original appearance. As for performance, after stuffing the equipment and things you mentioned in the specifications on board, it's a miracle that this ship can still leave the spaceport normally. I think instead of being obsessed with how to cram the Titan ship's equipment into the small spacecraft, it's better to redesign a larger spacecraft. This small ship... in the words of Miss Luoying, she has borne a burden that she shouldn't have to bear."

"No! I just don't believe it. I don't believe that I can't modify a small civilian spaceship that is compact, easy to use, and has many functions and is complete!!!" Kailias declined the red-haired cat girl's suggestion and planned to continue to work on this unfortunate small civilian spaceship that had been tossed half to death.

The red-haired cat girl on the screen touched her forehead helplessly when she saw her partner's expression of refusing to give up.

…………

A month later, at the L1 Lagrange point in the sky,

At this time, more than 100,000 spaceships gathered at the L1 Lagrange point, so many that they covered the sky and the sun. The fleet was arranged in a dense formation vertically at the Lagrange point, and this fleet was about to set sail for the center of the Milky Way.

[All fleets... Entering the jump countdown 10, 9, 8, 7...]

In this huge formation of 100,000 spaceships, the Grey Wind mothership, newly named the Ray of Fantasy, and the Salem were located in two adjacent positions in the formation. Listening to the countdown coming from the communication, Calisi and Kelias in the captain's seat silently placed their hands on the start button of the jump engine.

[5, 4, 3, 2, 1, all fleets, jump engines activated, begin cluster jump!] At the command of a cold female voice, a fleet-scale warp bubble formed around the dense formation of the fleet. Every ship adjusted the frequency of its own jump engine's high-dimensional warp bubble to the same parameters. A mirror-like high-dimensional warp bubble, tens of thousands of kilometers in diameter, enveloped the entire fleet. The moment the warp bubble completely closed, the massive fleet vanished silently into the three-dimensional universe in the blink of an eye.

…………

When navigating in a high-dimensional space, apart from the spaceship in the same warped bubble as yourself and the distorted starlight from the three-dimensional universe remaining on the crystal wall of the high-dimensional warped bubble, you can't see anything if you look out from the spaceship in the high-dimensional space navigation state.

Therefore, Renlong was communicating with Luoying, Elena and others on the Salem not far away through communication.

"Are you used to the feeling of superluminal travel?" Renlong asked Luoying on the communication screen.

"Rather than being used to it, it's more like having no feeling at all. After all, during FTL travel, there's neither the strong push back you get from normal acceleration, nor any discomfort."

"It seems that even a ship as old as the Salem is still well-suited to high-dimensional space jump engines."

"Salem's own previous self-inspection of the spacecraft went quite smoothly. Upgrading old ships with basically fixed basic structures is the strength of the von Neumann self-replicator."

"That's good... After all, most of the ships involved in this fleet-wide jump are newly produced. Only a few, including the Salem, were subsequently modified and equipped with high-dimensional jump engines. It seems that her high-dimensional jump engines and those of the other ships in the fleet resonate perfectly during the large-scale cluster jump."

"If the resonance frequency of the high-dimensional space jump engine is too far off when it's activated, the ship causing the error will likely be ejected directly from the warp bubble formed by the entire fleet. If my luck is even worse and the ejection position is just wrong, the entire ship may be cut in half by the closing warp bubble."

"Is it so dangerous?" The shadow on the screen asked nervously.

"That's not the case. The situation I described above will only occur during large-scale fleet jumps. There's an extremely low chance of such an accident occurring due to a large error in the resonant frequency of a single ship's jump engine. As long as no major malfunction occurs in the jump engines of individual ships, the probability of such an error occurring is essentially zero."

"I'm naturally confident about the other ships, but I'm concerned that the Salem and other older ships, which have been in service for quite some time, might have a slightly higher probability of this kind of error compared to newer ships."

"But now it seems I was overthinking it. Even a rather old ship like the Salem is perfectly adapted to high-dimensional space jump engines and fleet-level cluster jumps."

"Phew... I was so scared. I thought I just had a brush with death." Luo Ying on the other side of the screen patted his chest with lingering fear.

"Don't worry, the probability of this happening is so low that it can be almost ignored. Calculations show that the probability of such an accident happening is one in ten billion trillion. If you really encounter it, it means that your luck is so bad that even a god can't save you."

"In general, the high-dimensional space jump technology that Cabot gave us is quite safe. On the other hand, the Alcubierre warp drive has a higher probability of encountering danger during long-distance travel and jumps."

Chapter 158: Springboard to the Center of the Milky Way

15000 light-years away from the Sky Galaxy, a red dwarf star with a mass only 0.3 times that of the parent star of the Sky Galaxy is quietly burning in the dark starry sky. Six planets have been orbiting this red dwarf star with a surface temperature of only 3200 degrees for more than 100 million years. Because they are too close to the red dwarf star, all six planets are locked by the red dwarf's gravity, and only one side always faces its own sun. The unstable periodic stellar activity of the red dwarf makes the surface temperature of these six planets far exceed that of Venus in the solar system. For most creatures, the planets in this galaxy are undoubtedly a hell where life cannot survive.

.........

At the Lagrange point of Planet No. 1, a mirror-like sphere with a diameter of tens of thousands of kilometers suddenly appeared in the calm space. After a few milliseconds, the mirror-like sphere that had just appeared disappeared, and hundreds of thousands of interstellar spaceships instantly occupied the entire L1 Lagrange point of Planet No. 1.

"The overall error of this fleet-scale cluster jump is less than a Planck unit. The entire fleet is in good condition and can make the next jump at any time!"

Salem's virtual image reported to the elf girl captain on the bridge.

"Very good... Let the unmanned fleet prepare to launch the von Neumann self-replicating machine onto the surface of the planet!" The experienced pink-haired elf girl captain skillfully gave orders to the unmanned fleet that followed her.

More than tens of thousands of cargo-type airdrop pods loaded with von Neumann self-replicators were ejected from the launch ports of thousands of engineering ships on the left wing, rushing towards the planet from the L1 Lagrange point in a graceful arc orbit.

In just less than an hour, tens of thousands of drop capsules began to enter the atmosphere of Planet No. 1. Looking up at the sky from the surface of Planet No. 1, it was as if a meteor shower appeared in the atmosphere, but this meteor shower was created by countless artificial orbital drop capsules.

Countless drop capsules evenly spread over the entire hemisphere of the planet's night side started their own reverse thrust engines when they were still a few hundred meters away from the surface, and landed steadily on the surface of a planet that could be called a high-temperature hell in a soft landing manner. The landed drop capsules opened their own cargo hatches, and countless nanomachines like silver sand poured out of the cargo hold and began to collect all the surrounding usable minerals and material resources according to the program. Using these acquired minerals, they established a complete set of fully automated industrial systems in the era of interstellar civilization on the surface of the planet, gradually dismantling the entire planet and turning Planet No. 1 into a Dyson cloud surrounding a red dwarf star.

.........

While the von Neumann self-replicating machines on the ground began to follow the perfect closed-loop process of large-scale resource collection → self-replication → establishment of a complete industrial system → utilization of the complete industrial system to speed up resource collection efficiency → accelerated self-replication, large-scale engineering operations were also being carried out in space.

[The massive asteroid is in place, the von Neumann self-replicator has been launched, and the asteroid disassembly has begun]

Dozens of large asteroids with diameters exceeding 100 kilometers were dragged to the L1 Lagrange point of Planet No. 1 by the tractor beams of engineering ships. Countless nanomachines were dropped onto the surface of the asteroids, gnawing on the asteroids arranged in a ring-like form in space, and exponentially replicating themselves through the matter on the asteroids to complete the construction of a new artificial star gate.

"All the nanomachines in the asteroids are operating well. The estimated completion time for the project is 8 hours, 07 minutes and 23 seconds." The red-haired cat girl reported to the pink-haired elf girl in a rare and rigorous manner.

"Understood... Have the engineering fleet launch some jump-inducing beacons in the system first, and leave some ships here to monitor the progress of the artificial stargate project. We'll begin the next jump in an hour!"