Epoch of Twilight

Extraterrestrial Intelligence Agency.

As the only external intelligence agency for mankind today.

Since humans detected the Bossian expedition fleet four years ago, the establishment of this department has rapidly expanded like a balloon. From a small department of a hundred people that almost no one cares about, it has now expanded to a large department of a thousand people. .

Even after the war, this department has not been cut in the slightest, but has continued to expand steadily.

The entire intelligence bureau is divided into eight sub-offices, covering star map calculation, astronomical investigation, cosmic signal monitoring, exploration of extraterrestrial civilizations, technological level assessment, and diplomatic negotiations with extraterrestrial civilizations.

Of course, Boxing is the only extraterrestrial civilization discovered by humans today.

...

At this time, a meeting room of the Extraterrestrial Intelligence Agency was full of seats and there was no sound.

A long-distance quantum communication device that was dismantled from the Boxing spacecraft and repaired by humans was placed on the stage.

Of course, only large spaceships are equipped with ultra-high-power long-distance quantum communication equipment for interstellar communication. It is naturally impossible for it to be so small, but such a huge equipment with a height of nearly 30 meters is obviously impossible to put in a conference room. Now on the stage is only its pickup (a device that captures the live sound and sends it to the back-end equipment)

A negotiator and an assistant whispered to each other for a while, then took a deep breath, and made a ready gesture. The current was quickly connected to the communication equipment, and each small light represented a normal situation. Light up one by one.

The signal channel was opened soon.

"This is a call from human beings. Now it represents human civilization and officially requests to negotiate with you. If you receive a signal, please answer immediately, please answer immediately!"

The negotiator prudently and fluently spoke a series of Bosing language, and then repeated it three times.

For many people of the older generation, the Bosian language is not unfamiliar. In a certain era, in order to better absorb the technology of the Bosian people, many people have worked hard to learn this language of a foreign civilization, and For the foreign affairs office of the Foreign Intelligence Service, proficiency in this language is even more necessary.

A lot of high-level people came today, except for those who really couldn’t leave because of something, almost all of them went to the conference room to pay attention to this historic call. Apart from Boxing, the blood feud of human beings, this is undoubtedly the first time that human beings have formally communicated with Another Civilization Dialogue.

However, the time passed by every minute and every second, and the communication equipment was silent for a long time, except for noisy interference, there was no sound coming.

However, this is expected. After all, even quantum communication, at a distance of tens of light years, will experience a certain delay, but I did not expect it to be delayed for such a long time.

A group of people waited from morning to noon, and from noon to afternoon.

From the original silence, to the later whispers, and finally to the noisy discussion.

Just when the hungry people thought that the communication had failed, a series of hurried Boxing words came from the loudspeaker, and the entire meeting room fell silent.

"Human? Are you human?" This voice from nearly thirty light-years away, under the heavy interference of the universe, seemed a little erratic, sometimes light and sometimes heavy, and occasionally with a shrill sharpness.

But even people who don't understand Boxing's language can hear the unbelievable shock and panic mixed in this voice.

This is a delicate mentality. As the losers of this war, they hope that this defeat is just another accident, and that off-site factors have affected the expedition fleet (this is the case), even if the probability is almost impossible, and Feeling panic about the speed of human development.

"I repeat, this is a call from human beings. Now, on behalf of human civilization, I formally request to negotiate with you. No matter who you are, immediately contact the upper echelons you can contact you. We are here with peace."

Another long wait, this is destined to be the longest negotiation in history.

...

While the Extraterrestrial Intelligence Agency is implementing strategic deception and lowering the vigilance of the Boxing people.

Human beings have also started a great explosion of productivity. When technology has developed into a mature intelligent age, the size of the total productivity has broken away from the shackles of the population. The size of the productivity is only determined by the will of the upper class and the limitations of resources and environmental damage.

Although the Barnard star system is just a star system, it has abundant resources for human development.

The total mass of one No. 4 planet alone is equivalent to the sum of all rocky planets in the entire solar system.

On the surface of planet No. 4, the huge engineering machinery representing the traces of human activities spread and expanded rapidly like a virus. Whether it is the "ice layer" after the surface atmosphere was frozen and solidified, or the underground rocks, they were all destructively mined. , separated into various elements, and become factories, machines, and fuel for nuclear fusion furnaces counting in millions.

This huge human activity has even affected the temperature of this planet. The temperature of the frozen No. 4 planet is rising at three degrees Celsius every year, and by the third year after the war, this planet has already had a thin atmosphere and certain climate change.

Also in this year, the first curvature spacecraft of human beings began to test voyage.

However, the construction of one spaceship of this type vetoed the plan to build nearly 30 subsequent ships.

It's not that this spaceship has obvious flaws, it's perfectly designed, absorbing the technology of the Boxing people, and making human science and technology a big leap forward.

The surface of the entire spacecraft presents an absolutely smooth mirror surface, and the reflectivity of light (the reflectivity of light to the vertically incident light) is close to 100%. Even photons traveling faster than light can effectively resist them.

Its highest curvature can reach 4.5 times the speed of light, far exceeding the three times the speed of light of the Boss spacecraft.

The reason why the follow-up shipbuilding plan was rejected was because the antimatter power furnace, which had been in the experimental state, also matured this year. As soon as this special power furnace was born, it showed the advantage of crushing.

Even if it is just the first prototype, its maximum energy output is more than 300 times that of the largest fusion furnace built by human beings, and only ten units are enough to supply the energy demand of the entire spaceship originally designed.

Coupled with the space saved in terms of fuel, even a simple replacement can free up 15% of the space.

This first-generation curvature spaceship is simply a flood discharge dam for energy consumption, and a considerable part of the space is used to store pure water (nuclear fusion fuel) and increase the fusion furnace array.

Don't underestimate the fifteen percent space.

Human beings are not Bosingians who have been in a long-term peace and have never had foreign enemies. Wars have almost run through the entire human history. Compared with the Bosingians' attitude towards military affairs, human beings' thinking about military weapons is completely picky, and their pursuit of weapon performance has reached the limit. , on human military spaceships, you won't see the slightest space idling.

Not to mention 15% of the space, even 1% is a huge waste.

Not only can it make the design of the spaceship more calm, but with the extra space, without expanding the size of the spaceship, it can have more powerful kinetic energy simply by adding an antimatter power furnace.

Except for one flaw, antimatter reserves are limited.

In recent years, the preparation technology of antimatter has improved significantly, and now the conversion rate of energy/antimatter has reached 1/10,000, that is, 10,000 parts of energy can be converted into 1 part of antimatter energy. However, since temporarily living in the Bardner star system, human production of antimatter has been in a state of small-scale production, and even in wartime, the scale of production has not expanded at all.

Firstly, there is a serious waste of energy, and secondly, there is not much demand for antimatter, so it has no effect on interstellar warfare. In the face of long distances, light-speed weapons are the most mainstream and most effective weapons in interstellar warfare.

Therefore, humans have stayed in this galaxy for more than ten years, and the total antimatter reserves are only thousands of tons, a considerable part of which is harvested from the Bossian spacecraft, but this amount is far from enough for a curvature spacecraft that spans nearly 30 light-years. energy requirements.

Fortunately, this shortcoming can be easily made up for. With the current level of human technology, simply expanding the scale of production is a piece of cake.

In the fourth year, in just one year, the scale of antimatter production expanded tenfold to five thousand tons.

In the fifth year, the production of antimatter reached 80,000 tons, and the price paid was that the temperature of planet 4 had risen by another ten degrees in the past two years.