Chapter 320: Snatch

On the direct line between Chen Ming's foreign development stronghold and the empire's border, it was still quite far away from the empire.

Chen Ming's fleet transporting energy crystal crabs encountered a fleet from the mechanical tribe here.

Since the last time Chen Ming and Bai Quan agreed to hand over the development rights of crystal crab technology and the crystal crab population to the legion.

Chen Ming has already arranged the process of transporting the crystal crabs back to the empire.

He prepared a cargo fleet with the Colossus-class heavy cargo ship he now owned as the flagship, and planned to return slowly through the hyperspace channel.

A total of 1 cruiser, 20 destroyers and 20 escorts.

The quantity is not large, but it is just enough to transport the sufficient number of energy crystal crabs that Chen Ming mentioned before.

Although according to Chen Ming's current ability, the fleet can simply make three extreme distance jumps to reach the empire. The rest is left to the legion and the legion can think of ways to take away the crystal crab.

But if the supplies arrive too quickly, it will be difficult to cooperate with Baiquan.

After all, when the energy crystal crabs arrive in the legion, they must seize the time to start cultivating the energy crystal crabs and obtain energy crystals.

But when Chen Ming agreed, Bai Quan had just started to join the special materials department.

Although there are many positions available in this department, no results can be obtained without wrangling for a few days.

And once the crystal crabs are actually delivered, more people will definitely have ideas about these locations.

It is better to wait for Baiquan to occupy more positions in the special materials department.

Then Chen Ming transported the supplies to the right place, which just matched them.

Besides, the jump requires far more materials than normal navigation to maintain the jump engine, and continuous jumps consume not only materials but also mental energy.

Chen Ming is not in a hurry about transporting crystal crabs, so he might as well take his time.

At least wait until Baiquan is almost done, or the fleet really encounters something, before making the jump.

And under normal circumstances, Chen Ming's route to the empire is quite safe.

At most, only the last section, where it borders the empire, afterglow, and the machine race, is more dangerous.

So Chen Ming's idea is to let the fleet fly slowly in hyperspace.

He thought the journey would go smoothly, but unexpectedly something happened.

Moreover, the location where the accident occurred was not the most dangerous section of the road. Instead, it was at a location where the cruiser almost made an extreme jump.

There is still a certain distance from the mechanical race star field.

Why here?

Chen Ming didn't understand, but he immediately switched his vision to the Colossus level transporting the energy crystal crab.

This colossus has been controlled by him personally from the beginning.

Although there is no afterglow core on it, as long as Chen Ming needs it, the afterglow core can take over at any time and control the ship for battle.

However, as a cargo ship, the Colossus class mainly transports cargo and has little combat effectiveness.

And for Chen Ming, this batch of goods is the most important.

Even with his spiritual protection during the battle, it would be difficult for him to guarantee that the goods would not be damaged.

So when Chen Ming switched his field of view, the idea in his mind was to retreat as much as possible and not to get entangled with the mechanical tribe.

With the activation of Chen Ming's psychic power, an additional picture appeared in front of his eyes, the picture of the colossus-level sensor.

Through the door of the screen, you can see that the Colossus is in a hyperspace channel.

all around

dense clouds

After all, this place is far away from the Empire and any existence capable of exploring hyperspace.

Therefore, in this area that has only been developed by Chen Ming's highest point, hyperspace clouds have become the only main color.

At the front end of the narrow hyperspace channel that ended up was the mechanical fleet that attacked Chen Ming's fleet.

At a glance, the number of cruisers alone is already more than ten, and the number of lower-level spaceships is not to mention.

And this was a surprise attack initiated by the Machine Tribe.

So in fact, just now, Chen Ming was reminded by the afterglow of the escort fleet.

The machines have entered the range where they can fire.

Their cruisers have begun attacking.

The concentrated fire of large weapons from more than a dozen cruisers put the Colossus's shield at risk, and it could only barely resist.

But outside the line of fire of the exchange of fire, there are still a large number of mechanical gang jumping troops approaching.

Fortunately, there were no losses in the escort fleet.

When they discovered the attack of the mechanical cruiser, they hid behind the shield opened by the Colossus.

Now Chen Ming's attention is all here. It is not a problem to recover the afterglow core while the ship is destroyed.

The problem now is that Chen Ming only has one cruiser, which cannot defeat the dozen or so cruisers of the mechanical race.

Although he can increase the speed by overclocking various parts of the spacecraft, the increase cannot reach ten times.

A pair of dozens of people, or a pair of dozens of cargo ships, can't beat them at all.

It is impossible for Chen Ming to let the Colossus stay here.

What's more, what he just saw was the mechanical race at one end of the channel, in the direction of the fleet.

In fact, behind the fleet, at the other end of the channel, there is also a fleet of mechanical clan approaching.

The scale is exactly the same as the machine family cut off earlier.

Being attacked from both sides, one to twenty, if you don't run away, why should you stay and wait for death?

Chen Ming immediately tried the means at hand to escape from the enemy fleet.

But the mechanical tribe was obviously well prepared.

The pulse blocking device disrupted the hyperspace channel system of all ships in Chen Ming's fleet.

The fleet could not leave hyperspace or use the hyperspace channel jump engine.

The real jump engine was also blocked by the mechanical race from the front and back.

If in a normal universe environment, Chen Ming's ship would fly out easily with such a small blockade distance.

But now, his fleet is in hyperspace.

There is only a narrow channel as the only space for movement.

The channel is surrounded by extremely dense channel clouds.

The mechanical race really only needs to block this section of the channel.

Unless Chen Ming rushes directly into the cloud, bypasses the mechanical race's blockade fleet, and tries to escape.

But there are obviously problems to be solved in doing so.

The hyperspace lightning flashing in the hyperspace channel cloud will form a disturbance in the circuit network and signal network of the ship when it hits the ship.

This disturbance will greatly hinder the normal operation of the equipment and interfere with the stability of all systems.

Of course, this also includes the jump system.

The ship cannot jump in the hyperspace channel.

In other words

If Chen Ming cannot get rid of the pursuit of the mechanical fleet and cannot find the channel in the cloud, then his fleet will be constantly destroyed by the lightning in the cloud.

Once the fleet is lost in the hyperspace channel cloud, the result is unimaginable.

But corresponding to the risk of getting lost is a battle between a cruiser and more than 20 cruisers.

Obviously, compared with the threat of the hyperspace channel, the mechanical fleet is more terrifying.

It is still necessary to retreat into the cloud first and wait for the arrival of reinforcements.

And Chen Ming had already notified several Alpha-class afterglows to prepare for battle when he received the news just now.

Now the distance between the freight fleet and the temporary base is only one extreme jump distance.

As long as Chen Ming's reinforcements arrive, they can fight.

As long as he delays for five minutes, giving him five minutes to assemble the fleet, he can immediately kill the attacking mechanical race.

Under Chen Ming's control, the Colossus class and the escort fleet directly rushed into the hyperspace cloud beside the channel, bearing the bombardment of countless lightning and hiding in the cloud.

While Chen Ming was doing this, he had another idea in his mind.

That is, when necessary, he actually has another choice,

Abandon this batch of energy crystal crabs, dismantle the fleet directly, and send away the afterglow core.

The reason why he had to abandon the energy crystal crabs instead of sending them away like sending away the afterglow core was very simple.

Although Chen Ming can already teleport creatures, the transportation of creatures takes the channel of the scarlet dimension, and any creature that wants to pass through the scarlet dimension safely has two prerequisites.

One is that it has not experienced dimensional infection.

The other is that it is in an unconscious state, or Chen Ming uses psychic energy to block the external perception,

to prevent it from being drowned by the ocean of knowledge when passing through the scarlet dimension.

The former is a condition that is easy to achieve, but the latter requires Chen Ming to spend a lot of mental energy to protect these creatures.

And the cargo hold of the entire fleet is stuffed with more than 100,000 energy crystal crabs. If you want to save them all, Chen Ming will not be able to consume enough mental energy.

Even if you only save a part of it, it will be enough for Chen Ming to drink a pot.

And if you only save a small part, then Chen Ming might as well wait for the next cargo ship to deliver the goods.

So as long as Chen Ming didn't want to lose these energy crystal crabs, he could only bear the losses on the ship that might come from the channel cloud or from the mechanical fleet.

He chose to bear it.

And just after Chen Ming rushed into the cloud, the mechanical fleet followed him like crazy and rushed into the cloud.

And what's more exaggerated is that the mechanical family also prepared a device for the exploration ship to remove the hyperspace channel cloud on a cruiser.

Even if Chen Ming's fleet entered the cloud first, it didn't take long for the mechanical fleet that came later to catch up.

The high-density channel cloud will hinder the speed of the spacecraft sailing in it.

Chen Ming, who was sailing in front because of the cloud, had no way to get rid of the mechanical fleet with exploration ship equipment behind him.

In just over a minute, Chen Ming's fleet was caught up and entered the range of the mechanical fleet behind.

He was forced to open the shield at the rear of the ship to block the firepower from the rear.

Fortunately, the mechanical race only installed exploration equipment on one cruiser, and they could only open a channel wide enough to accommodate up to seven cruisers at the same time.

Compared with the previous dozen cruisers, the pressure on seven cruisers was reduced by nearly half.

As long as the shields and armor took turns to bear the damage from the rear, relying on Chen Ming's high-speed repair ability, the spacecraft could barely be kept from being destroyed in the face of the concentrated fire of seven cruisers.

However, the fleet that the mechanical race came to attack this time was not only cruisers.

They also had those boarding fleets.

In the hyperspace channel, all spaceships and everything have an upper speed limit.

And this upper speed limit is related to mass. The greater the mass, the smaller the upper limit that can be reached.

The upper speed limit that the cruiser's mass cannot reach is obviously far less than the upper speed limit of those small spaceships of the mechanical race equipped for boarding.

A large number of boarding ships and assault boats were seen approaching the Colossus class through the channel opened up by the cruisers installed with exploration equipment by the mechanical race. They can threaten the Colossus at any time.

Chen Ming had already controlled the Colossus to give up attacking the mechanical cruisers and turned to attack the boarding ships.

Some of them still passed the Colossus's shield and rushed into the boarding range.

These assault boats with drill-like front ends directly drilled into the Colossus's armor. Even if they were immediately squeezed out by the metal liquid that Chen Ming used to repair the spacecraft, some of the mechanical race still remained in the gap that had just been drilled.

They continued to violently destroy the gap that Chen Ming repaired, trying to tear a hole from the outside to enter the interior of the spacecraft.

The mechanical race seemed to know the effect of Chen Ming's psychic power. All nearby mechanical bodies were approaching the place with the largest number of boarding individuals and constantly attacking the gap.

The destructive power of the concentrated firepower prevented Chen Ming's psychic power from repairing the armor plate in time.

The mechanical race's mechanical bodies relied purely on the stacking of the number of attack methods and the fact that Chen Ming's psychic power had a high repair efficiency when acting in a small range, so they forcibly tore open a passage to the Colossus's cargo hold.

Although they were immediately counterattacked by the robots that Chen Ming had placed inside the Colossus, the influx of mechanical races was still as difficult to stop as a tide.

Some mechanical races charged deeper into the Colossus, while the other mechanical bodies actually chose to unload the cargo holds closest to the gap they opened.

And while their number was still enough to maintain the gap, all the unloaded cargo holds were thrown out of the gap.

A total of 8 small cargo holds near the gap were all taken away by the mechanical race.

A mechanical race cruiser behind also immediately captured the cargo hold that was thrown out, and chose to turn around and no longer follow Chen Ming's fleet into the clouds.

At the same time as the cruiser turned around, other mechanical race spacecraft also began to slow down and also stopped chasing.

Instead, they turned around and left the clouds while covering each other.

They directly abandoned the mechanical race troops that were boarding and chose to retreat.

Chen Ming looked at this scene and not only did he not feel fortunate, but his heart sank.

Because these mechanical races obviously came with a purpose.

And they left only after they achieved their goal.

Their goal was to seize the cargo hold, and only after seizing it would they choose to retreat.

The mechanical race's fleet retreated outside the hyperspace channel cloud, turned off the device that hindered the jump, activated the jump, and disappeared in front of Chen Ming.

Chen Ming's reinforcements had not arrived yet, and he did not dare to chase them in the opposite direction.

They could only leave.

At this time, less than four minutes had passed since Chen Ming received the news that the fleet was attacked.

After Chen Ming confirmed that the mechanical race had really left, he quickly cleared out the mechanical race that had entered the cargo ship and returned to the relatively safe channel.

Continuing to stay in the channel cloud was a waste of electricity.

He was constantly thinking about what was going on in his mind.

At present, it seems that the mechanical race is definitely prepared to come at him.

A large number of cruisers blocked the channel, and at the same time specially prepared boarding ships to seize the cargo hold.

Moreover, the mechanical race actually brought exploration equipment to prevent Chen Ming's fleet from directly rushing into the channel cloud.

If you say that the mechanical race is not prepared, Chen Ming doesn't believe it.

The question is, when did the mechanical race discover his spaceship? How did they prepare the fleet to surround and attack?

Chen Ming usually doesn't use this route at all, and he may have used some spaceships to explore when he was exploring.

All the things he obtained from the empire that needed to be sent to the front line of exploration were generally sent through the boss's colonial warehouse.

The farthest was to transport it to the planet where the mechanical race controlled by Chen Ming was newly stationed, and then use psychic energy to send it to the main body.

Although it was quite tiring, Chen Ming had been used to it for a long time, and the training effect on psychic energy was also very good.

Therefore, Chen Ming thought about it and thought that the reason why the mechanical race was prepared to attack him was probably related to the recent actions of the empire.

Since Chen Ming said last time that the mechanical race star field was relatively empty in the rear defense of the empire.

The empire often sent reconnaissance fleets to bypass the mechanical race star field to conduct reconnaissance.

The mechanical race is not stupid, so they will naturally strengthen the defense in the rear and expand the territory belonging to the mechanical race in the rear.

Then, by chance, the patrolling or pioneering mechanical fleet discovered Chen Ming's cargo fleet, so after some preparation, they came to attack Chen Ming.

But this idea is problematic if you think about it carefully.

Because normally, the dispatch of the fleet requires not only time but also logistical support.

And this is an attack by the mechanical family that is obviously premeditated, planned in advance, and logistically prepared.

Not all ships sail like Chen Ming, who do not need to prepare logistics at all.

Chen Ming can use psychic energy to meet the fleet's logistics.

No matter who else, they have to ensure logistics.

This batch of fleets that attacked him obviously also need it.

And a temporary base with basic industrial facilities is the best guarantee.

From the fact that the mechanical family fleet was able to leave by jumping, Chen Ming can judge that the mechanical family fleet is definitely not jumping to block the road, but sailing.

Even if the mechanical family can jump here first, then squat on the road for maintenance, and then come to Chen Ming after the maintenance is completed.

Then the jump will also lead to the loss of war supplies, resulting in a slight reduction in the combat capability of the ships.

But from the feeling of Chen Ming fighting with the mechanical cruiser just now, their combat effectiveness has not been lost at all.

They definitely did not jump here.

They must have a base nearby.

At this time, Chen Ming suddenly thought of the common colonial expansion method used by the Empire, the Mechanical Clan, and Yuhui.

That is, first find a suitable galaxy as the core of the star field in the future.

Then expand from this core to the surrounding areas.

It is very likely that there is a temporary base of the Mechanical Clan in a nearby galaxy, which is the core of their development.

You must know that the Mechanical Clan is absolutely fully prepared to attack Chen Ming's fleet. Considering various complex situations, various preparatory measures have been taken.

If the Mechanical Clan fleet is calculated based on the premise that it is here to develop, then it is understandable that they bring a cruiser with exploration ship equipment.

At the same time, the equipment for blocking the jump engine is something that is not used at all in normal times. After all, unless the entire galaxy is blocked, it is difficult to completely block the whereabouts of a cruiser.

However, if this device that blocks the jump engine is used to protect oneself, so that any cruiser that dares to approach and attack the base cannot jump away, it will be very valuable.

It can also explain why the fleet that attacked Chen Ming had such a thing.

And Chen Ming also subtly sensed the honeycomb network belonging to the mechanical race from the individuals of the mechanical race he just captured alive through the mechanical race honeycomb network he controlled.

Chen Ming could vaguely sense that the source of the honeycomb network was not far away.

Adding up all these factors, Chen Ming felt that the actual situation should be almost the same as his guess.

As for the purpose of the mechanical race doing this...

Chen Ming was sure that the mechanical race did not know what he was transporting to the empire.

But they knew that it would definitely not be something random that could be transported from outside the empire to the empire.

It would be best if they could snatch it back to verify what it was, anyway, it would not be a loss to kill the empire's fleet.

Let's try it.

After determining what the transported things were, they could decide whether to attack Chen Ming's fleet again.

If the mechanical race is not stupid, they should soon find out the specialness of the energy crystal crabs, and will definitely find a way to transport the energy crystal crabs away as soon as possible.

At the same time, prepare to attack Chen Ming's fleet again.

Although Chen Ming will definitely not give the mechanical race this opportunity.

But the mechanical race has achieved its initial goal, seizing the cargo hold.

The cargo hold is filled with live energy crystal crabs.

Although there are several cargo holds that contain energy crystal crabs transformed by Chen Ming using insects, it is not difficult to dispose of these energy crystal crabs.

But there are also several cargo holds that contain ordinary energy crystal crabs.

If ordinary energy crystal crabs are taken away, the mechanical race may figure out the specialness of energy crystals.

Once they breed a new generation of energy crystal crabs, many troublesome things may happen.

Chen Ming suddenly has a new understanding of the seriousness of this matter.

If the mechanical race really develops the mass production technology of energy crystals, the empire will probably suffer in the war with the mechanical race.

The mechanical race must not be allowed to take away the energy crystal crabs.

He has to solve the matter thoroughly.

It shouldn't be too difficult.

Since Chen Ming has confirmed that there must be a base of the mechanical tribe nearby.

Then the mechanical tribe will definitely send the cargo hold there.

He is going to the base of the mechanical tribe.

Destroy the base and take back the cargo hold.

He could not defeat them just now and could only run away because there were too many mechanical tribes and he only had one rocket.

This time, he will take the initiative to launch an attack.

However, before Chen Ming really attacks the mechanical tribe, he has another consideration.

That is, if he clashes with the mechanical tribe, will it lead to a full-scale war between the empire and the mechanical tribe coming early?

He just wants to take advantage of the war to get some benefits for himself, and to get some benefits for the people around him, and do some research, but he doesn't really want to drag himself into the quagmire of war.

He must figure out the consequences of his actions before he can do anything.

So Chen Ming immediately called Bai Quan.