The enemy retreated in a hurry, and Ye Fei, who breathed a sigh of relief, scolded hatefully: "How come it is like an outer bone man, as soon as the battleships come out, there are a bunch of them?" All pay attention, the Eagle will return to the Sun Star Gate immediately, Lao Mo, the command over there will be handed over to you. ”

"Leave it to me." The Mongol captain Selemo confidently agreed.

There are quite a few ethnic minority officers and soldiers in the Celestial Army, but due to the population ratio, there are not many ethnic minorities among the senior commanders. However, after hundreds of years of ethnic integration, the original differences between the various ethnic groups have become almost none, and there are basically no differences in living habits or traditions except for differences in archives.

"The Sky Harrier Hunting Harrier is dragging the Star Gate, Lao He is responsible for the overall planning, the farther away from the side layer as possible, notify the fortress to suspend construction, and transfer the position with the fortress, Falcon, build a defense with me." Ye Fei continued to order.

The Eagle entered the Star Gate, and the two Sky Harrier-class warships also launched towing operations under He Jian's command.

Since He Jian, who commanded the Sky Harrier, and Qi Jia, who commanded the Harrier, were at the same level, Ye Fei used the word that was not very clear at the level of coordination, rather than the rigid word of command.

The enemy ships in the nebula did not attack again, but Ye Fei did not dare to be careless, and together with the Falcon battleship, they disintegrated on the spot and established a hemispherical defensive layer.

"Report, call from headquarters!"

"Take it in!"

Wu Han's bust appeared in the corner of the screen, his face full of depression and anxiety: "Ye Fei, how is the situation?" ”

"Minister!" Ye Fei hurriedly saluted, "Everything is normal." The attack of the enemy army has been repulsed. ”

Wu Han breathed a sigh of relief: "Haven't you checked everything near the Star Gate?" Where did the enemy come from? What the hell is going on? ”

More than a year ago, after the allies completely defeated the Waiguren, Nie Jianrong took the initiative to leave his post of Minister of Defense and Minister of National Defense, which he had served for more than ten years, and officially retired to the second line, and Wu Han took over the post of Minister of Defense.

Unexpectedly, it was only a little more than a year, and the Orion Star Gate was attacked by an unknown enemy, if the Orion Star Gate had a mistake, Wu Han would die a hundred times.

For him, this is simply the biggest crisis since taking office!

"It's not clear what the enemy is going on, but it's only that the enemy is from inside the nebula." Ye Fei told the truth. After thinking about it, he suggested. "Minister, we haven't checked the situation inside the Nebula for a long time, and I think it's time now."

Wu Han sat down in his chair and sighed: "Don't you want to me, but how to solve the problem of flying?" The Orion Nebula is sixteen light-years in diameter. At the speed of regular flight. How much teenager can but clearly? ”

"It's better to be slow than not to check. If we had explored the nebula earlier, we might have been able to detect this attack earlier. Ye Fei racked his brains and tried his best to persuade, "Minister." We can't just keep waiting, even if it's slower, ten years won't be twenty years, or thirty or fifty years, and one day we will be able to find out, right? ”

It's not that faster-than-light warships can't fly in nebulae, but in addition to the fact that their speed is limited by unknown reasons, the optical system is the biggest obstacle.

Humans don't know anything about what's going on in the dense Orion Nebula, don't look at the density of the nebula is very low, but the battleship enters at the speed of light, and the gas density in front of the battleship will be superimposed in an instant, and the direct consequence is that the optical system becomes blind, except for the extremely bright stars that can be discovered in advance, all the remaining celestial bodies cannot be discovered in advance - the light explosion is not omnipotent, and the small celestial bodies may explode under the impact of the light explosion of the battleship, but what if it hits a planet?

This is a nebula, a place known as a hotbed of stars, and there are so many real stars, isn't it strange that there are a few brown dwarfs in the horns? It's okay to have two giant planets anywhere, right?

Whether it is a brown dwarf called a failed star or a huge giant planet, it is not a small battleship that can resist the light explosion, and the only result is that the military adds two shocking marks of "missing" to the name of the battleship.

Riding a battleship in the nebula with dozens of times the beam is simply looking for death and suicide, and only those who are tired of being crooked dare to do this - it is indeed possible to find the celestial objects in the nebula through some special detection methods, but this method requires long-term observation and calculation or close-range instrument detection, which is not suitable for warships.

"Don't you want to do that?" Wu Han looked lost, "Think about how much money you need to support this plan?" In recent years, in order to deal with the Outer Bone Man, I have increased military spending for more than ten years, and the military expenditure has just dropped in the past two years, and even I, the Minister of Defense, do not want to increase military spending to succeed. ”

"But Minister, the situation is different now, these new enemies are not Outer Bone People, they are an enemy that we have never encountered before, can't we do something special?" Ye Fei argued, "At least figure out where the enemy is, right?" Isn't it possible to drag the stargate in a day or two, so why just put the stargate here and wait for the enemy to fight? ”

"Fuck off, I know the truth better than you, but it's not easy. You also know that even our military is not monolithic. Wu Han said dejectedly.

Stargate can penetrate more than 1,500 light-years of distant space, but Giant Star and Gliese 581 have consumed most of the country's energy, although Stargate has not given up, but the possibility of relying on Stargate to develop far space on a large scale in a short period of time is simply zero.

The current situation is that both the military and political circles are calling for stopping the development of the Orion Nebula and concentrating on expanding the periphery of the solar system, hoping that the country's top leaders will change the existing policy and go into deep space step by step, instead of suddenly creating an enclave 1,500 light-years away that must rely on local blood transfusion, as is the case now.

Of course, this does not mean abandoning the stargate, but it is temporarily shelving the stargate, giving up the plan to develop the Orion Nebula in the near future, and it is not too late to develop it in the far space when the time is ripe in the future.

I have to say that although such an idea is conservative, there is some truth to it. In the past few years, the attention of all countries has been focused on how to seize space resources, and it is difficult to reappear in the situation where the three countries pulled each other back before the war, and the dawn of permanent peace is beginning to appear. The impact of the war on the country is disappearing, and it is normal to cut military spending and focus on people's livelihood.

At present, the country's main energy has shifted from war to the development and construction of the Giant Star, the development of a planet, the money and materials needed are simply a bottomless pit of dissatisfaction, fortunately, the construction of the Giant Star has been initially on the right track in recent years, and the country has put forward a generous policy for immigrating to the Giant Star, and some voluntary immigrants have begun to appear.

According to the plan, the state will select qualified candidates from among the voluntary immigrants to serve as officials at all levels of the Giants, and the managers of all government departments will be selected from the immigrants, except for the political governor and the military defense commander. In this way, the state's control over the giant star can be guaranteed. It can also promote the development of the Giant Star.

In the near future, the Giant Star Defense Force, composed of free immigrants, will be fully responsible for the internal security of the Giant Star, and the criminals on the Giant Star will gradually transition, and they will be willing to stay on the Giant Star and be released as free people. Those who do not want to stay will be at the end of their sentence. Permission to return to Earth - as the Giants are infested with dangerously large creatures. As a result, the general population of Giants is allowed to possess personal defense weapons, rather than a complete ban on guns as in the mainland.

"So what do you say?" Ye Fei spread his hands, "Even if you don't need the Star Gate now." You can always use it in the future, right? What line is it here? ”

"Forget it, you give me the Orion Star Gate, I'll try it here, even if the military budget can't be increased, I will think of other ways." After speaking, Wu Han cut off the communication.

Ye Fei didn't know how Wu Han wanted to convince the central boss, but basically he couldn't run the lion who raised the additional budget several times, and then he compromised and retreated, and it seemed that he had given up the original plan and cut part of the budget, but in fact, the bottom line was the amount of additional budget that needed to be added.

Ye Fei was not familiar with these political tricks and didn't bother to pay attention to them, but he was very worried about whether Wu Han would be able to succeed, so he kept thinking about how to conduct an internal investigation of the Nebula without additional military spending.

You must know that even if the upper echelons agree to the plan to explore the nebula, and have allocated enough funds, how to enter the nebula is still a big trouble, and any warship that enters the nebula must be refitted in a targeted manner, but fortunately, as long as it does not enter the superluminal state, the possibility of encountering danger is not high.

So how do you get into a nebula under normal circumstances?

It is definitely the stupidest way to go directly into it, and the most troublesome thing in the universe is to not be able to figure out the location, not only can it not be located in the nebula, but it is too deep to even distinguish the direction, and it is better to make a hole in the nebula without clouds...... Hole?

There will certainly be no clouds in the vicinity of the celestial bodies formed by the contraction of the nebula, because all the material that makes up the nebula is absorbed by these celestial bodies!

Thinking of this, Ye Fei was suddenly stunned, as if he had grasped something in his mind.

It is the celestial body that absorbs gas, but it is the gravitational pull that causes the nebula to contract, and if you launch a gravity projectile into the nebula...... What will happen?

Immediately after that, Ye Fei's gaze fell on the fortress that was only one-third completed.

Orion Fortress has a modular design, and the overall volume is larger than the stargate, but if necessary, the entire fortress can be divided into six and reassembled on the other side after passing through the stargate, which means that which split is built can be put into use immediately without waiting for the other splits to be completed.

If it weren't for this, only a third of the fortress would have been completed, and it would not have been possible to catch up with the battle.

But this is not the point, Ye Fei thought of another initiative on the fortress.

Humanity's use of artificial gravity has entered a new stage, as early as when the Aquila was built, the anti-gravity engine was put into practical use, but on Orion Fortress, the anti-gravity technique will reach the extreme, this is the anti-gravity repulsion shield!

The name sounds quite advanced, but in fact, it is not mysterious at all, it is the use of anti-gravity techniques to set an invisible anti-gravity repulsion layer on the surface of the fortress, and any entity that approaches the fortress will be pushed by repulsion.

Although this technique is only experimentally installed on Orion Fortress, even if it is put into use, it is impossible to resist energy weapons such as lasers, at most it will eject low-speed cannonballs or slow-flying celestial bodies towards the fortress - this technique was not originally used for combat, but against the small celestial bodies that appear from time to time in the Orion Nebula!

If the desired effect is achieved, similar devices will be installed in the Orion and Solar gates, thus avoiding accidental impacts from small objects.

However, now Ye Fei has found a new way to use this technique, as long as the battleship is equipped with a repulsion shield. When you enter the nebula, won't you be able to push away all the nearby clouds and create an empty passageway?

The gravity bomb has a limited amount of time to work, and if you want to use the gravity bomb to create a passage to the interior of the nebula, the cost of money and resources will be astronomical - this nebula is sixteen light-years in diameter, but it is only a part of M42, and the entire Orion molecular cloud occupies an area of hundreds of light-years!

If we want to explore all of this large area, it will definitely not be able to complete it in thirty or fifty years, and if there is no breakthrough in human astronautics, I am afraid it will take hundreds of years and dozens of generations of efforts.

In addition, it remains to be seen why the gases in the nebula are clustered together. Although the edge layers of the nebula are surging very slowly. But is it possible that nebulae will also disperse?

Whether it is a gravity bullet to open the way, or a repulsion shield to open a hole, will the space that already exists in the nebula be gradually covered by nearby gas?

For a while, Ye Fei had a lot of thoughts, and the more he thought about it, the more he felt that his ideas made sense. Can't help but order: "Scissors." Shoot a gravity bomb into the nebula! ”

"What?" Scissors glanced at Ye Fei in surprise. "Chief, did I hear me right?"

"Less nonsense, hurry." Ye Fei glared at the scissors viciously.

"No problem!" Scissors hastened to answer. "This is the first time that the new gravity bomb has been combated!"

The gravity bullet exposed a fatal weakness during the Battle of Nameless Starfield, and the military never actually used the gravity bullet again. The relevant research institutes, after listening to the opinions of the military, made some improvements to the gravity projectile. The new gravity projectile is no longer fired by a heavy gun, but is delivered by a missile, and the range of the gravity field has also been changed from a spherical all-round gravity field to a circular gravity field, that is, the gravity in the front and rear directions has been canceled.

The purpose of eliminating the gravity in front of you is to avoid the object in front being affected by gravity, and the impact of the gravity projectile will affect the speed of progress; The reason for removing the gravitational force behind is that when gravity catches an object behind it, it loses part of its forward speed by attracting the object behind it!

In fact, both the former and the latter are based on the law of conservation of momentum, and the ultimate goal is to make the gravity projectile fly faster and farther.

Soon, the Aquila shot out a missile, and when it was about to enter the nebula, the warhead separated from the missile body under the action of time-delay guidance, generating a strong gravitational force four times that of standard gravity, and the clouds within a range of thousands of kilometers were affected by gravity.

However, the gravity bomb worked for too short a time, and the gravitational force dissipated after a while, but the gas affected by the gravity did not stop, and still flew in the original direction, and there was no sign of the formation of a hole in the nebula at all, but it became more and more chaotic because of the influence of the gravity bomb.

It really responds to the old saying that "one stone stirs up a thousand waves".

The surface of the nebula reminded Ye Fei of the atmosphere in the outer layers of a giant planet, but the nebula is in the exposed cosmic space, unless all the gases are gaseous molecules, they will definitely become solid because of the low temperature of the universe, that is to say, the gas in the nebula is actually countless small solid particles condensed from various substances including hydrogen, not real gases!

How can a colorless and transparent gas block the observation of an optical system?

It is estimated that only those nebulae surface gases that are close to the stars and ionized by the star's energy are likely to remain gaseous.

The results of the experiment made Ye Fei extremely disappointed, and it seemed that he could only test whether the Repulsion Shield was effective.

But soon he couldn't help but let the scissors launch several gravity bombs in a row, and the six gravity bombs entered the nebula in a string, working in turns one after another, and finally opened up a thin area of gas with a depth of more than 10,000 kilometers and a diameter of more than 1,000 kilometers under the side layer!

The reason for this is that this huge hole is still full of chaotic gases, but the density is much smaller than elsewhere.

At this time, Ye Fei finally gave up, and was going to contact Wu Han after a while to apply for a repulsion shield system.

At this moment, a black shadow suddenly flashed at the bottom of the cave, and the clouds around the black shadow immediately surged towards the black shadow at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Ye Fei was taken aback, and urged Che Qi to enlarge the image, and after zooming in three times in a row on the screen, a planet with a pale blue surface appeared on the screen, and countless clouds and moths rushed to the planet like a fire, this planet was like a hungry glutton, frantically devouring the nearby clouds.

In a matter of moments, a huge hole appeared at the bottom of the cave, with the blue planet at one end and the straight tunnel in the nebula at the other.

"Wandering planets?" Ye Fei was as surprised as everyone else.

Stray planets are planetary masses that do not orbit any star and are constantly drifting in the universe, and it is speculated that there are more wandering planets in the Milky Way than stars based on observational data. However, wandering planets do not emit light by themselves, and can only be observed indirectly, so humans have never been close to any wandering planets.

Even encountering a wandering planet in the empty void can cause a wave of amazement, let alone seeing a wandering planet in a nebula.

However, this is not the end, the optical system also captured a swarm of blue light and shadow near the planet, and when you zoom in, you can see that it is the strange warships that have jumped out of the nebula!

They constantly haunt the surface of the planet and between the nebulae, like fish swimming in the water, and like birds flying in the sky, leisurely and free, and it is completely unrecognizable that they have attacked the stargate with ferocity not long ago.

Ye Fei's mind was completely messed up, a wandering planet, and those enemy ships infested it, what was the situation? Could it be that this is an interstellar race similar to the Outer Bone Man, and that planet is their nest like the Bone Mound?

Is it such a coincidence? (To be continued......)