Galaxy 15 years.

0.083 light-years from the solar system in interstellar space.

It was dark and there was no other light source around except for distant starlight.

Empty.

Deep.

Quiescence.

It is the eternal theme of this starry sky.

At this moment, an irregular asteroid with a radius of about 288 kilometers slowly drifted by.

The star is escaping at a velocity of only 13.5 kilometers per second and is moving away from the solar system.

In fact, the movement trajectories of the stars in the starry sky are unpredictable.

Suddenly, a Tinder spacecraft flying from the Cooper Belt of the Solar System slowly approached the asteroid until the two sides flew at the same speed and entered companion mode.

The Tinder spacecraft's Tinder storage bay opened, and a launch vehicle carrying the Tinder ignited and flew towards an asteroid 12 kilometers away.

Less than 3 minutes.

The launch vehicle successfully landed on the surface of the asteroid with the flame of civilization on board.

Immediately, the transport compartment of the launch vehicle directly popped open, revealing the civilization fire inside, an improved version of the civilization fire, plus the life metal version of Homo sapiens, and the nuclear fusion power system of the fire spacecraft was used to transmit power over long distances.

Soon, a large number of living metal particles spread to the surface of the asteroid like a tidal wave.

The dark surface of the asteroid welcomed the first visitor in billions of years.

The Tinder spacecraft's Zhina Assist System quickly plans a development plan by scanning the components of asteroids.

More than a dozen synchronous robots are activated.

Immediately, one of the cabinets containing the synchronous robot popped open.

Zizi ...... A white mist emerged from the cabinet, and the synchronized robot in the frozen state quickly finished thawing, and the human face on its head slowly squirmed for a few minutes, and finally the robot opened its eyes:

"Arrived at your destination?"

Zhang Yu's synchronous robot floats out of the cabinet.

At this time, other team members also went online one after another.

"Captain!"

Zhang Yu looked at the others: "According to the task arrangement, let's start working!" ”

"Say!"

In the control room of the spacecraft, Zhang Yu carefully checked the specific situation of the asteroid.

At the same time, a small transport spacecraft carrying 6 synchronous robots flew out of the Tinder spacecraft and landed on the asteroid.

The asteroid is named "Stonefish".

After reading the specific situation of the stone fish star, Zhang Yu showed a smile on his face: "Not bad!" Stonefish contains 1.2% iron and 2.9% aluminum, plus other resources, which is much better than other asteroids in interstellar space. ”

"It's true, it saves us a lot of effort." Deputy Captain and Construction Engineer Barus also laughed.

The resource situation of Stonefish has indeed reduced a lot of their troubles.

After all, the core components of dark stars in interstellar space are mostly water, ice, dry ice, and silicate, and the content of metal elements is very small.

"Reported, Cage and they have successfully landed on Stonefish's Fish Eye Impact Crater."

Zhang Yu turned his head and ordered, "Let them start manipulating the nanobots to build a landing platform." ”

"Roger."

Although the companion flight of the Tinder spacecraft is semi-inertial, and only needs to occasionally use auxiliary thrusters to modify the flight direction, the working fluid of the Tinder spacecraft is limited, and they must try not to waste it.

In less than 23 hours, the landing platform in the Fish Eye impact crater was modified.

Zhang Yu, who received the news, immediately commanded the Tinder spacecraft to land on Stonefish.

When the Tinder spacecraft successfully landed on Stonefish, it meant that the work of transforming Stonefish began in full swing.

The first facility to be built was a water refinery plant, followed by a fusion power system manufacturing plant.

The joint operation of civilization fire and life metals can replicate most of the current technologies of Homo sapiens, which naturally includes controlled nuclear fusion power generation technology.

17 days later.

After the Stonefish No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant was put into operation, the productivity of nanorobots and controllable microorganisms with abundant electrical energy exploded exponentially.

At this time, inside the command center of the Stonefish Fortress.

Zhang Yu looked at the star map within a radius of 500 million kilometers from Stonefish, which is a star map with very high accuracy, but all asteroids that exceed 1 meter this time have been recorded in it.

I saw that on this star map, there were dense points of light, and these points of light were asteroids floating around.

Vice Captain Barus spread his hands helplessly: "Captain, there are no large asteroids within a radius of 500 million kilometers around. ”

The large asteroids in their mouths refer to asteroids with a radius of 100~1000 kilometers; Stars with a radius of 1000~3000 kilometers are called dwarf planets;

Stars with a radius of 10~100 km are medium-sized asteroids; Stars with a radius of 1~10 km are small asteroids; Stars with a radius of less than 1 km are miniature asteroids.

At this time, there are only 27 medium-sized asteroids, 428 small asteroids, and 58,397 micro-asteroids in the 500 million-kilometer radius of Stonefish.

The surrounding resources are so barren, it is not surprising to Zhang Yu, after all, this is an empty interstellar space, and he casually circled 4 of the medium-sized asteroids:

"Let's focus on mining these 4 medium-sized asteroids first!"

These four medium-sized asteroids have a relatively high metal content, making them a priority mining target for Stonefish Fortress.

"No problem, arrange it right away." Kaneda nodded, in charge of remote mining.

Half an hour later, a 5,000-ton mining spacecraft flew to the target at a speed of 100 kilometers per second.

And Zhang Yu began to prepare for the manufacture of weapons and equipment.

"Ebony Springs!"

"Captain, what's the matter?" Ebony Spring, who was in charge of combat readiness, floated over.

Zhang Yu didn't talk nonsense: "Which one are you going to use for the weapons and equipment plan of the Ministry of Space Defense?" ”

Ebony Spring, who had been prepared for a long time, replied calmly: "Plan 53, this is the best arrangement at present according to the resources we want to plug. ”

"Good! Hurry up and prepare! I always felt a little uneasy without weapons. ”

"The captain also got the phobia of lack of firepower?"

Zhang Yu shrugged: "There is no way, the nearest border fortress to us is also 72.3 billion kilometers away, and the surroundings are empty, we don't have a little cover here, who knows if there will be enemies suddenly appearing." ”

This is also one of the troubles of the Dark Star Project and the Star Fortress Project.

In interstellar space, any first-level civilization with relatively high technology can more or less detect the existence of dark stars.

Once the opponent's spaceship passes near the solar system, it will definitely prioritize mining the resources of the dark star as a supply.

As for why they didn't go directly into the planetary system to collect matter, the reason was naturally for safety reasons.

Aliens are certainly not that stupid, and they usually don't go straight into a planetary system without finding out the inside of an unfamiliar planetary system.