As soon as he heard the triple bonus, Tang Xingyun also shouted excitedly: "Double the vacation!" Triple Bonus! ”。

This means that after the deed is completed, he can enjoy half a year of leisure time, and more importantly, he will be able to get 15,000 imperial gold marks - enough for him to buy a large apartment for his old mother, who has been living in a small public rental house.

"Great, triple bonus!" Corporal Jerry Morris, the non-talkative Damage Control Coordinator, also exclaimed happily.

For Imperial soldiers who practiced military service, attendance and participation in war were the only opportunities to obtain material wealth. However, the sergeants were very happy, and several officers were silent.

"Okay, don't be too happy." Feng Jiang Ziyue reminded his subordinates loudly, "You don't need to make meritorious contributions, as long as you complete the task, you will be given three times the bonus, this task will definitely not be easy." ”

As an officer, he naturally knew the tricks of his superiors to fool his subordinates. In fact, an officer like him, who wore the Golden Caesar Medal on his chest, could not even get a full bonus once, let alone three times. Admiral Karios's words are simply painting cakes for them, and it is not clear that they all have the life to earn money but not to spend it.

However, Feng Jiang Ziyue could not tell his soldiers that he had only received eighty percent of the bonus at most once.

However, under the reminder of the captain, everyone calmed down.

"Okay, turn around and get ready to enter faster-than-light flight, target Taiji planet!" Feng Jiang Ziyue ordered loudly.

The captain gave the command, and the navigator Second Lieutenant Azai immediately activated the attitude control propulsion system of the "Siegfried", so that the cruiser quickly turned with the coordination of various jet propulsion. After aligning the direction of the Taiji planet, the three ion thrusters and eight afterburner chemical thrusters in the tail of the cruiser were operating at full power.

Metallic hydrogen is extracted from the fuel tank, rapidly ionized by a laser in the ionization chamber, transformed into a large amount of charged ionic gas, and then ejected by a powerful electromagnetic acceleration system from three huge tail vents side by side, propelling the spacecraft forward with a reaction force.

At the same time, the eight hydrogen-oxygen thrusters arranged between and on both sides of the ion vents also emit dazzling light, making up for the lack of acceleration performance of the ion thrusters with instantaneous powerful propulsion.

The tail of the "Siegfried" erupted with brilliant light, and it sprinted towards the highest reaction propulsion speed in the vast space - half the speed of light.

First Mate Lieutenant Dietrich immediately sounded the ship-wide alarm and broadcast: "Ten minutes of faster-than-light flight ready!" All personnel put on space combat suits! Fix your body nearby! ”

The wedge-shaped "Siegfried" flew a beautiful arc course in space, turned the bow of the ship and headed straight for the planet "Taiji".

The ship's crew nervously put on their respective space combat suits. The reason for this is that all unnecessary power systems and life support systems of the spacecraft must be temporarily shut down during faster-than-light flight. And in the event of an accident on the way, the destructive power caused is extremely powerful, and wearing a space combat suit can use its excellent protection and life support system to minimize the damage to the crew.

The controllers on the bridge also got into the space combat suits next to their seats, and then sat back on the console, buckled the safety bar, and secured their bodies.

Five minutes later, when the crew had put on their space combat suits and secured themselves with their nearest seat belts, they signaled to the bridge that they were ready. But the captain of the ship, Captain Feng Jiang Ziyue, still asked for voice confirmation: "All personnel report their readiness by number!" ”

After the twenty-six crew members reported to the captain one by one, Feng Jiang Ziyue then ordered: "Four minutes to prepare, check all preparations!" Compute Secure Nodes! ”

First Mate Lieutenant Dietrich immediately mobilized all the cabin monitoring systems, and the computer scanned them to find the interior furnishings that did not fit the speed of light. During faster-than-light sailing, no objects are allowed to fly around the ship. Floating objects will only cause a slight change in the stability of the ship, but it can cause fatal flight accidents to ships in a faster-than-light "warp bubble".

At the same time, the navigator Second Lieutenant Azaiga initiated the route calculation program, and calculated the specific coordinates of the danger areas that "Siegfried" should avoid on the way to the Taiji planet 1.7 light-years away and the specific coordinates of the redirection acceleration out of the faster-than-light state according to the known distribution of interstellar matter and the safety requirements of faster-than-light navigation.

Faster-than-light flight has been achieved for hundreds of years, but its technology and principles have not changed much.

As early as the end of the twentieth century, a Mexican physicist named Miguel Alcubierre proposed the use of Spacewarp to achieve faster-than-light speed, and to form a theoretical Alcubierre Drive (also known as the "Warp Engine" Warpdrive).

Akuberi proposed a wave method to extend the space, causing the space in front of the vehicle to shrink and the space behind the vehicle to expand, and the axis formed by the front and rear is the direction in which the ship wants to sail. The ship moves forward with waves in this zone, which is called a "warp bubble", which is a flat period of time and space. The ship doesn't really move inside the warp bubble, but is carried by the warp bubble. This is a faster-than-light theory that adheres to the general theory of relativity.

This wave is to achieve the speed of light by shortening space - just like a car can no longer accelerate (the speed of light cannot be exceeded), but it can compress the distance (compress space) to achieve the purpose of reducing time (the purpose of faster-than-light is to reduce the time of interstellar travel) - of course, this analogy is not realistic.

It doesn't propel the ship to literally cross the speed of light, it's just that it takes as long as it takes to travel between the two destinations.

But scientists didn't know how to cause such a fluctuation, or how to leave the ship if it did.

It was not until the 24th century that quantum theory was further improved, breakthroughs in the research of dark matter and dark energy, the realization of large-scale production of antimatter particles, the maturity of nuclear fusion reactor technology, the large-scale application of superconducting technology, and the research and development of Akuberi engine technology...... These numerous cutting-edge scientific and technological successes led to a series of problems that plagued the Akuberi engine, which were solved one by one in terms of theory and technical application over the course of the following century.

The Akuberi engine went from theory to drawing and into space.

At the beginning of the 24th century, due to the development of the space of the solar system has formed a huge scale, coupled with the extensive use of space technology and superconducting materials, scientists successfully built a super-large-scale space particle collider in the space near Jupiter in the solar system. An epoch-making antimatter annihilation experiment was carried out - the "Jupiter Light" experiment.

The collider succeeded in producing a single gram of reverse hydrogen. After being cooled, this gram of antihydrogen is accelerated to a high sub-light speed in an electromagnetic acceleration system and finally ejected. At the same time, another electromagnetic acceleration system emits one gram of hydrogen at the same high sublight speed.

The two hydrogen jets, both positive and negative, finally crossed over, producing an astonishing annihilation.

According to the previous theoretical calculations, the annihilation of the positive and negative substances will convert 100% of the mass into energy, and the energy produced by the annihilation will be equivalent to the energy released by the simultaneous explosion of 20,000 tons of TNT explosives.

However, the annihilation of positive and negative hydrogen in space did not produce 100% energy release and large-scale luminescence and radiation as expected, on the contrary, the luminescence and radiation in the annihilation process were very small.

And there is one of the most sensational phenomena in the history of human science: most of the light and radiation produced by annihilation escape at a speed higher than the speed of light in the direction of the hydrogen and antihydrogen jets – light and radiation themselves achieve faster than the speed of light!

Scientists who were excited about the unexpected discovery soon made an even more unexpected discovery, the gravitational force and magnetic field of the space where the positive and negative hydrogen annihilation were located changed briefly, and even at the same time, the foreign light in the area where the annihilation was located was also distorted in the direction of the two jets, indicating that the space also fluctuated and distorted.

There are many "surprises" in the results of the "Jupiter Light" experiment, and they don't stop at space warps. The study of matter, dark matter and energy, and dark energy in the space after annihilation also helped people to further clarify the relationship between dark matter, dark energy, matter, and antimatter, and then further improved the Big Bang theory, and at the same time enriched the human cosmology, and finally gave birth to the realization of "faster-than-light".

There is no absolute "vacuum" in the universe, and this view was generally accepted at the time. Mainstream scientific opinion agrees that the universe is full of dark matter and dark energy, and that human beings and all visible and directly detectable matter exist in invisible and undetectable dark matter and dark energy.

Whether it is nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, or positive and antimatter annihilation, the process is more about converting matter and antimatter into non-directly detectable dark matter and dark energy. This could also explain why dark matter and dark energy make up the majority of the universe.

However, there are still scientists who disagree with this view - although many experiments since the "Jupiter Light" experiment have confirmed its "correctness".

The reason why space fluctuates and distorts is precisely because matter and antimatter are rapidly transformed into dark matter and dark energy in the process of annihilation, which causes the dark matter and dark energy in the area where the annihilation is located to increase rapidly, resulting in space fluctuation and distortion. To use an inaccurate but vivid analogy, it is like pouring a drop of water into a calm water surface that can cause the water surface to fluctuate and distort.

The fluctuation and distortion of space has led many scientists to believe that it is dark matter and dark energy that make up space, and that this space can be "compressed" by means such as the "Jupiter's Light" experiment.

The unexpected discovery of the "Light of Jupiter" experiment made the "warp bubble" envisioned by the Akuberi engine a reality. Since no object with mass can speed itself faster than the speed of light, humans can reduce the time spent traveling across the stars by compressing space, also known as "warp bubbles", which is actually squeezing dark matter and dark energy in the universe.

So scientists finally invented the "Akuberi traction" form - an antimatter jet engine produces annihilation to carry out a "directional blast" of space, compressing the space in front of the aircraft, creating a "warp bubble" that drives the spacecraft beyond the speed of light. Depending on the scale of annihilation, the warp bubbles generated fluctuate at different speeds, and thus the multiple of the ship's excess of the speed of light will also be different.

"All set!" First Officer Lieutenant Dietrich reports.

"Okay, open the bow armor shield!" Feng Jiang Ziyue commanded loudly.

Second Lieutenant Azay, the navigator of the pilot, quickly entered the command. The armor plate in the middle of the cruiser's flat bow calmly retracted into the hull, revealing two side-by-side jets of the Akuberi engine.

"Last-minute preparation." Feng Jiang Ziyue stared at the digital clock on the console and shouted.

The ship's unnecessary power was cut off, even the air circulation of the ship's life-sustaining system was stopped, and all weapons and early warning systems stopped working. The interior of the ship was as dark as space, only the four consoles of the captain, first mate, navigator and damage management on the bridge were lit up with various display images and indication buttons, and a huge three-dimensional image was projected into the space of the bridge.

This stereo image shows a series of data such as the fusion reactor, the Akuberi engine, the flight attitude, the spatial variation, the speed of light magnification, the node coordinates, and so on, in the form of graphs, functions, numbers, and analog images.

The eight energy bars at the bottom of the stereo image were quickly filled, indicating that the eight fusion reactors on the cruiser had reached their maximum output and were fully supplying power to the Akuberi engines at the bow.

A large red ring chart in the center of the stereoscopic image is lit up one by one. It shows that the Akuberi engine is gradually completing one inspection and test after another before starting.

The Akuberi engine is a huge one, taking up nearly two-thirds of the hull of a ship that is 300 meters long, 60 meters wide, and 20 meters high. It is actually composed of two superconducting electromagnetic accelerators, one large and one small, and the front end of each acceleration system is a jet port with a diameter of nearly half a meter.

The small accelerator does not produce antimatter, but only extracts the metallic hydrogen in a module called the "hydrogen library" at the end of the terminal into the vacuum pipe of the electromagnetic acceleration system with the corresponding mass according to the superluminal rate and the scale of the warp bubble under the control of the computer, and then accelerated by the powerful electromagnetic field to close to the speed of light, and finally ejected in the form of a jet.

The larger one is three times the size of the smaller one and consists of multiple systems:

A set of systems in the rear produces anti-hydrogen - in a vacuum and a strong magnetic field, the gaseous radioactive metal is bombarded with an ultra-short pulse of high-energy laser beam, so that it decomposes a large number of antiprotons, antineutrons and antielectrons, and then sent into the deceleration system by the magnetic field isolation, which is decelerated by the electromagnetic field in the vacuum pipe and polymerized into antihydrogen atoms, and finally compressed into metal antihydrogen by the strong electromagnetic field after a large amount of accumulation;

Metallic antihydrogen is also manufactured for each faster-than-light flight, and then enters a new vacuum-accelerated pipeline driven and controlled by an electromagnetic field, and finally emits simultaneously with a metallic hydrogen jet in another accelerator at the same mass and at the same speed in a small angle.

The time to complete this process is very short, and when the power supply reaches sufficient power, it can be fired, and a jet of hydrogen and anti-hydrogen particles can be shot out in one second. However, the previous preparation process often takes a lot of time.

In fact, the Akuberi engine has a thunderous name throughout the human world - the "Akuberi Cannon". The hydrogen and anti-hydrogen particle jets emitted by it can be used to destroy opponents, and decisive battles between starships often rely on the bombardment of this cannon to determine the winner.

Of course, in the absence of a fight, it is an engine that pulls humans into the speed of light.

In the center of the stereoscopic image in the bridge, all the grids on the donut chart are lit up.

"The Akuberi engines are ready, Captain!" Second Lieutenant Omar Azay, the navigator, reported loudly, "The battleship has reached full speed, half the speed of light!" Request that the fire insurance be lifted. ”

"Good, Azay." Captain Feng Jiang Ziyue said appreciatively, then opened a small cover on the captain's console and broke off all the eight small pushrod switches inside.

The central ring chart on stereoscopic imaging immediately turns from red to green.

Azai continued to ask loudly, "Ask for the Akuberi speed level!" ”

Captain von Jiang Ziyue glanced at the Imperial Standard Time, which is used as the interstellar voyage time on the stereoscopic image, and gave the order without hesitation: "Akuberi speed level four. ”

Akuberi velocity is the unit of speed of faster-than-light travel. In fact, it is not a unit of velocity in classical physics. Although the result is consistent with the calculation and derivation of bit removal in time, in fact there is no such velocity in the universe, but rather a description of the process of compressing space so that the displacement time is equivalent to the corresponding multiple of the speed of light.

The lowest level of Akuberi speed is level zero, also known as Akuberi standard speed. This speed does not actually exceed the speed of light, but only half the speed of light, and it does not reach the speed of light until the zero point of the second level of the Akuberi speed. Half the speed of light was chosen as the standard speed because for centuries, the upper limit of the speed of artificial thrusters has not exceeded 150,000 kilometers per second.

The Akuberi speed is 0.5 times the speed of light at the zero level, 5 times the speed of light at the first level, 50 times the speed of light at the second level, and 500 times the speed of light at the third stage...... In tenfold increments. Theoretically, there is no upper limit to the speed level of the Akuberi, but the higher the level, the more energy is required. In actual interstellar travel, a human spacecraft has never exceeded level 8 (50 million times the speed of light).

Unmanned notification ships that frequently shuttle to and from all corners of the universe to relay information to people occasionally fly to an unimaginable speed of 7.3 in Akuberi.

Manned spacecraft can generally only fly up to the sixth level, and only some reconnaissance ships and research ships equipped with non-standard Akuberi engines with perverted power like unmanned spacecraft dare to take humans to the seventh level.

As for the speeds of levels eight and nine and beyond, it now seems that they will always be dreams or legends.

In the days of Newton's classical physics, there was a very popular saying: give me a stick long enough and a support point to pry the earth!

In the era of Akuberi interstellar physics, there is also a very popular saying: give me an Akuberi engine with enough power, and I can instantly cross the entire universe.

Because according to theoretical calculations, when the speed of Akuberi reaches infinity, it can also compress the entire space of the universe, and the aircraft can fly from one end of the universe to the other in an instant—but if human beings really develop to that day, they may become gods! The entire universe has been compressed, and it is likely that the universe has returned to the "point" before the Big Bang!

At 5:07 a.m. on April 7, 2918 AD, they rushed to the planet Taiji at the speed of Akuberi at level 4, enough for them to rush to the planet for lunch.

"Akuberi speed level four, ask the engine to fire!" Azaj made a final confirmation.

"Allow firing!"

"Shoot!" Azay's shouts rang out from the ship's communications.

I saw two bright lights flashing from the front end of the "Siegfried" traveling at high speed in space, flying forward at a high sub-light speed. In an instant, two bright lights met about a kilometer in front of the cruiser. Suddenly, a powerful annihilation was generated, and at the same time, the dark energy and dark matter in front of it were strongly squeezed, and a large amount of light continued to surge forward like water being splashed.

A "warp bubble" that cannot be directly observed is created. It's not quite accurate to understand it as a bubble, because the space in front of the spaceship is rapidly compressed by the large amount of dark energy and dark matter produced when it is annihilated, but the space behind the spacecraft expands at the same rate.

The high-speed flying "Siegfried" is like a surfer standing proudly at the head of the waves, accelerated by the fluctuations of this space and carried to the depths of the universe. I saw a dazzling light erupting from the tail of the "Siegfried", rushing into the light of the annihilation of the hydrogen and anti-hydrogen jets. As the light from annihilation vanished, so did Siegfried.