Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones-Chapter 403: Build Them

As of now, that Purple Moon spaceship carrying Human compatriots has been flying alone in space for over 2,000 years. Calculating at the Purple Moon spaceship’s speed of 90% the speed of light, it has likely traveled a distance of about 2,000 light-years.

In the previous stage, after miraculously escaping the interception of the Destroyer Civilization, he also flew in the direction of that spaceship for about 1,000 years. But even so, his current distance from that spaceship is still around 1,100 light-years.

Even if he flies at full speed, it will take about 600 years to catch up.

But... even if it takes 6,000 years, Tom will not give up.

Before, the level of technology was insufficient, and the speed could not reach 90% the speed of light, making it impossible to catch up. Now that he has finally broken through to become a Gravity Civilization and mastered superluminal travel technology, no matter how difficult the journey ahead, Tom will definitely pursue them.

Under the embrace of this boundless darkness, this fleet advanced rapidly while maintaining its daily scientific research tasks.

Time flew by, and over 600 years passed quietly.

Another 1,000 light-years were crossed by Tom.

The warp travel ended, and this fleet once again entered a state of conventional travel.

Accompanied by a shift in light and shadow, the boundless darkness that filled all sight quietly dispersed, and the starry sky reappeared in Tom’s vision, even denser than before.

Being closer to the Silver Heart, the density of stars increased again.

Surrounded by myriad stars, looking at the ten thousand giant aerospace carriers that were now completely clean, their total mass having decreased from a peak of 10 billion tons to only about 100 million tons at this moment, Tom sighed softly.

Supplies were almost depleted, with only some reserves remaining in the heavy transport ships, but they wouldn’t last much longer. At this point, it was necessary to enter a solar system for replenishment.

Changing course, Tom’s massive fleet began to decelerate towards a solar system just 1.6 light-years ahead, then moored within the solar system, and the grand construction immediately began.

This time, Tom not only needed to replenish supplies here, mining at least 100 trillion tons of various materials to completely fill those aerospace carriers, but he also needed to do another thing.

According to the intelligence obtained from the Purple Moon Civilization earlier, their fleet was now located ahead of that Human spaceship.

However, after thousands of years and thousands of light-years of long-distance travel, due to the influence of natural factors such as interstellar radiation and dust impacts, the Human spaceship, which had always been in a state of inertial navigation, could not maintain a perfectly straight line and was bound to have deviations.

It was not currently on its intended course. According to Tom’s estimation, taking the original course as the baseline, by the time it reached the distance he was currently at, its deviation range was approximately pm 4 light-years.

This was precisely the reason why Tom had been pursuing it all this way, even surpassing that spaceship, yet had never been able to find it.

A circle with a radius of 4 light-years has an area of about 1,125 quintillion square kilometers. And that spaceship could potentially pass through any point within such a vast area in the next 20–40 years.

To intercept that spaceship, Tom had to deploy enough detectors within this vast area. Moreover, this interception net had to be sufficiently dense, with no possibility of omission.

Otherwise, that spaceship could become a fish that slipped through the net, passing through a place Tom couldn’t see.

At this stage, the most advanced detector Tom could manufacture, combined with the volume, reflectivity, and other characteristics of that Human spaceship, could detect it within 10 million kilometers with a 90% probability.

If the distance was reduced to 7 million kilometers, the detection probability would increase to 100%.

But to prevent any accidents, Tom set the detection cross-sectional area for each detector with a radius of only 6 million kilometers.

Thus, one detector could cover a detection area of approximately 28.27 trillion square kilometers. To completely cover the entire interception area with a radius of 4 light-years, Tom needed to build a staggering forty trillion of these detectors!

Calculating the mass of one detector at 2 tons, plus an average of 1 ton of auxiliary equipment per detector, such as communication, power supply, and maintenance devices, the mass of one detector would be 3 tons, and the total mass of the detectors Tom needed to build would be as high as 120 trillion tons!

Compared to the total of about 140 trillion tons of supplies Tom’s fleet carried when it set sail, this number did not seem large.

But the problem was that detectors were not raw materials like gold, silver, copper, iron, water, carbon dioxide, methane, ethane, which were supply materials, but rather higher-level industrial products.

Producing such industrial products required not only a large amount of raw materials but also specialized factories.

"120 trillion tons, 40 trillion detectors... No problem, build them!"

At this moment, the total engineering force of 80 billion engineers, scientists, technical workers, logistics support personnel, etc., out of the 150 billion intelligent life forms available, plus Tom’s 100 billion clones, this enormous engineering power, unimaginable to ordinary civilizations, was poured onto the 6 large planets in this solar system.

Factory after factory sprung up, countless in number, located in vast space, in planetary orbits, on the surface, and underground.

Space elevators extended directly from the surface to space, and transport ships shuttled back and forth, a scene of bustling activity.

At this stage, in addition to necessary replenishment, Tom invested all the basic materials he mined into the detector production factories.

Within just ten years, Tom completed the construction of 100,000 detector factories. And this was merely the final assembly plant.

Upstream from it were an even greater number of component factories, producing shells, cables, communication modules, thrusters, optical components, computing chips, and even further upstream, metallurgy, forging, mining, and so on.

The number of these factories was even larger, exceeding 10 million!