Chapter 56: Huge Consumption
At this moment, in the orbital path around Loshen Star, another larger space base had appeared, in addition to the space laboratory that had originally been constructed.
The space laboratory was long and narrow; while it was long enough, it lacked sufficient thickness and width.
Though this space base was not as long, it was spherical, with a diameter of about 600 meters.
Numerous brackets extended from it, like needles stuck into a large ball.
Those were ship berths.
When a ship needed resupply, it could approach, secure itself to these brackets, and then pipelines would extend out to provide the ship with various supplies.
In addition to material supply brackets, there were also numerous personnel passages, ship repair stations, and so on.
This large sphere, with a diameter of 1200 meters, had a total internal volume of approximately 0.9 cubic kilometers.
At its core were many huge tanks, stored according to strict isolation policies.
One batch of tanks stored liquid methane, ethane, hydrogen, and similar substances, with a total storage capacity of 1.5 million cubic meters and a total mass of about 800,000 tons.
Another batch of tanks stored pure oxygen, with a total storage capacity of 1 million cubic meters and a total mass of about 1.1 million tons.
Beyond these two most important material reserves were storage spaces for numerous ship parts, repair tools, shells, bullets, missiles, generators, various equipment, and dense, extremely complex internal passages.
At the same time, it also possessed Tom’s most formidable firepower and strongest defense to date.
Its entire outer shell was made of special bulletproof steel, with an average thickness of 100mm, followed by buffer layers, retardation layers, fiber layers, etc., reaching a total thickness of 300mm.
Unless bombarded with shells, even continuous machine gun fire could not penetrate its defenses.
In addition to the heavy outer shell, it was also equipped with a variety of weapon systems.
It was equipped with 1500 high-rate-of-fire machine guns, 200 autocannons, and 200 interstellar missile launchers.
It was also equipped with 20 of Tom’s newly developed high-precision radars, continuously scanning the entire surrounding airspace around the clock.
Furthermore, Tom planned to deploy at least 100 battleships around this space base as protection immediately if a battle occurred.
This entire set of measures represented the limit of Tom’s defensive capabilities.
If even this could not protect the base, then there was nothing else he could do.
This was the first task Tom completed in these two years.
The second task was that Tom finally assembled his first space battleship fleet.
With over a million Clones working desperately, thousands of enormous bases and factories roaring day and night, and the abundant resources of Loshen Star providing support, Tom finally built a full 500 Mercury-class Battleships!
At this moment, they were docked around Space Base One, guarding it and flying with it.
Machine guns, autocannons, missiles, radars, optical observation equipment, optical positioning equipment...
Various combat equipment made this fleet look menacing and formidable.
Numerous cargo ships transported supplies and fuel from the base clusters on the surface of Loshen Star to the space base, and the battleships did not need to land on the surface, directly obtaining sufficient supplies from the base.
Thus, they menacingly broke free from Loshen Star’s gravity field and headed for Deep Space.
Here, they split into two teams and began repeated high-speed maneuvers and repeated coordinated actions.
Large numbers of blank rounds were fired, and large numbers of lasers simulating interstellar missiles were launched; for a time, this area of space was filled with the fires of war.
This was an exercise.
At this moment, Tom only possessed some theoretical knowledge of interstellar combat, with no practical experience.
Just as the Clones had to quickly accumulate cold weapon combat experience when facing Monster Birds swarms, the same was true now.
After practicing collective combat, next came pursuit battles, then melees, planetary defense battles, and so on and so forth.
Because the Deep Space communication network had not yet been built, for this exercise, Tom had to temporarily lay out a communication network and have every battleship enable coordinate sharing for the exercise to proceed; otherwise, it would have descended into chaos long ago.
After a day of drills, the fleet returned to the base.
Without even analyzing the gains from the day’s exercise, Tom first noticed a piece of data.
Just one exercise alone consumed 25,000 tons of fuel for this fleet, with thousands of tons of various blank rounds and simulated projectiles consumed, and accounting for the Clones’ own consumption, over 30,000 tons of materials vanished into thin air.
And these more than 30,000 tons of materials would require 1000 cargo ships to make two round trips to replenish.
Adding the cargo ships’ own consumption, approximately 50,000 tons of materials were gone.
"If the number of Clones were even smaller, I wouldn’t even be able to afford these exercises," Tom sighed.
After a brief rest and replenishment of various supplies, the fleet exercise began once again.
There was no choice; the enemy could arrive at any time, and if they didn’t seize the moment to prepare for battle, it might be too late later.
While mass-producing, mass-transporting materials, and mass-exercising, Tom was also controlling tens of thousands of Clones to carry out the last of the three planned tasks: research into Deep Space communication network technology.
Two years had passed, and thanks to the diligent efforts of the Clones, this technology finally achieved a breakthrough.
"Once the communication network is built, I will be able to send probes to God-Enemy Star, and the fleet will be able to move away from the planet into space, instead of always circling Loshen Star."
Tom immediately mobilized his intellect, drew up blueprints for the Deep Space communication network, and then immediately began production and construction.
The most crucial components of this communication network were 100 large antennas with a diameter of 45 meters.
Originally, not so many were needed; 20 would have been enough. However, to prevent destruction during wartime, Tom directly increased the number fivefold.
Some of these large antennas were laid out in a roughly uniform manner, following a certain geometric structure, across various parts of Loshen Star, such as the poles and the equator, while others were laid out in Loshen Star’s orbit.
For each large antenna, Tom implemented as much protection as possible, striving to maximize its survivability.
In addition to these large antennas, Tom also manufactured thousands of satellites, scattering them like sand around Loshen Star, and even launched some satellites, allowing them to begin orbiting the Sun.
Thus, centered on Loshen Star, a dense and vast communication network was established.
The moment this communication network was completed, Tom launched a probe.