Chapter 307 The Framework of the Interstellar Expeditionary Force Takes Shape

The image shows the capture site of the Severex-27 satellite at an altitude of 200 kilometers.

"Anchor point number three driven in! Array team, immediately take over the damping and buffering!"

In the microgravity environment, engineering cultivator Chen Shi clung tightly to the rock strata, shouting into the communication channel. Before him lay a metal-rich asteroid, weighing approximately four hundred tons, that had just been encased in a titanium crystal net.

According to the originally highly proficient operating procedure, the array team should have activated the damping array within 0.5 seconds to smoothly absorb the enormous kinetic energy of the asteroid being forcibly pulled to a stop.

But this time, a fatal disconnect occurred.

"The control center is forcibly cutting off the track! The No. 3 heavy-load compartment of the transport line is entering the same airspace. The spiritual pressure network is causing crosstalk, and the damping array is delayed by one second!" The array group's feedback was accompanied by strong electrical noise.

In that one second of delay, the physical recoil force of four hundred tons surged violently back through the titanium crystal mesh.

Crack! The rock beneath Chen Shi's feet shattered, and he was violently flung into space by the immense inertia.

"Some loose rocks have broken off! Guards, get ready!"

Upon seeing the rapidly flying rock fragments, the sword cultivators on the outer perimeter instinctively unleashed their fierce Gengjin sword energy, following the operational logic of the surface defense line, attempting to shred the fragments in mid-air.

"Don't cut it! That's an auxiliary load-bearing node!" Chen shouted desperately in mid-air.

It was too late. The sword energy shredded the rock, along with the auxiliary traction cable hanging from it, into powder with extreme precision.

With one core auxiliary cable missing, the entire capture net twisted violently under extremely uneven stress. The extension truss on the outer side of the forward base emitted a tooth-grinding metallic groan as it was ripped off at a fifteen-degree angle. Finally, only through the forced overloading and unauthorized intervention of several heavy robotic arms on the main platform was the asteroid barely managed to be firmly pressed into the tethering zone.

There were no casualties, but all the astronauts floating in the vacuum were terrified.

……

On the ground, in the Kyoto Joint Control Room.

The high-ranking officials, who had just watched the holographic replay of the "Wolf Hunt" mission, were ashen-faced. There were no accusations, only a suffocating heaviness.

"Chen Shi's anchoring was very accurate, without any mistakes." Lin Feng's voice was hoarse and strained as he leaned on the control panel. "The delay of the formation group was to make way for the transport capsule; the swordsmen's slashes perfectly complied with the ironclad rule of 'clearing unidentified projectiles' in the Surface Tactics Regulations."

"Each of them individually is an elite." Lin Feng raised his head and looked at Wang Mingyuan and the military generals, "but put together, it's a disaster that almost destroyed half of the main truss."

The meeting room fell into dead silence.

With the high-pressure operation of large-scale infrastructure projects, the construction site of the high-speed rail has become too massive. Four main lines are simultaneously turning in the sky: mining, cold forging, transportation, and reverse energy transmission. They can no longer operate this planetary machine using the makeshift team model of "whoever is present takes over".

"Surface tactics are deadly in a vacuum," the military representative said in a deep voice. "Sword cultivators are used to air resistance and to cutting down anything. We must select a group of people to completely shed their surface habits and establish a dedicated escort force focused solely on deep-space microgravity combat and perimeter cleanup."

"The same goes for construction." A veteran expert in the engineering team said through gritted teeth, "Those who drive piles can't manage scheduling. We need a group of pioneers who can dedicate themselves to construction in the dead of night."

The former president of the Academy of Sciences pushed up his glasses, his tone extremely serious: "The maintenance of the Star Gathering Platform and the voltage stabilization array that supplies power to the mother star have zero tolerance for error. My array masters and weapon refiners must be separated from all miscellaneous tasks and placed in an independent restricted zone."

The head of the coordination agency wiped away cold sweat: "There's also the elevator throughput and life support rotation. The high-speed rail must have an independent logistics system with the highest right-of-way; otherwise, incidents like this, where cargo holds and capture nets compete for space, will continue to occur."

One by one, real-life lessons learned through blood and tears were laid out on the table. Standing in front of the holographic screen, Wang Mingyuan summarized and wrote down these scattered demands, which were forced out by the perilous situations.

Escort operations.

Engineering development.

Formation material processing.

Transportation logistics.

"Finally, we need a command center that can coordinate these four chains from 200 kilometers above the ground, free from the delay on the ground."

Wang Mingyuan typed the last entry heavily, turned around, and looked at the five functional blocks on the holographic screen. They were not exquisite theoretical designs, but rather a survival skeleton forced out by the nearly out-of-control four hundred tons of meteorite.

"We can't call this the high-speed rail construction team anymore." Wang Mingyuan took a deep breath, his eyes flashing with a chilling sharpness. He typed the names of these five blocks at the very top.

Interstellar Expedition

Three days later, at an altitude of 200 kilometers, the first phase of the Starry Sky Advance Base was established.

This steel construction site, which grew wildly in a vacuum, is undergoing its first "rearrangement" since its establishment.

It lacked any aesthetic appeal and even appeared extremely crude. The monks of the engineering sequence simply welded thick titanium crystal isolation walls onto the originally spacious general-purpose compartment using the most primitive methods.

The southernmost area, equipped with heavy blast shields and a temporary arsenal, was designated for the escort combat sequence, and non-combat personnel were prohibited from entering. The redundant space on the north side was filled with cutting arms and pipelines, becoming a messy hangar for the engineering sequence. The cold forging table and power supply regulator for deep space materials were physically isolated, becoming a restricted area for the array material refining sequence. And those temporarily modified rest cabins were affixed with life support nameplates representing different sequences for the first time, and were put into staggered operation.

This was only an extremely preliminary and crude demarcation. But against the cold backdrop of the universe, this mining site projected for the first time the cold, hard outline of a "legion fortress".

Meanwhile, the first batch of mixed-team collaborative test runs took place at the training grounds on both the ground and high-orbit tracks.

The past practice of individual soldiers adapting to "vacuum survival" has been completely discontinued, and has been replaced by cross-series collaborative exercises.

A group of engineering cultivators were driving piles in a simulated micrometeorite flow, while the escorting sword cultivators had to clear the perimeter and, at the same time, must not interfere with the temporary damping net laid by the array masters.

The first test run was extremely awkward.

The sword cultivator's burst of true essence inadvertently disrupted the array master's gathering node; the logistics team's life support pod entered at the wrong time, blocking the engineering team's robotic arm trajectory. The drills repeatedly went wrong, and the command channel was filled with curses, with everyone feeling that the other was getting in their way.

But this was no longer a group of scattered individuals fighting their own battles. They were clumsily working together, adjusting parameters in anger, beginning to learn to entrust their backs to other sequences, and learning to mesh with each other like gears.

It was late at night. In the Kyoto Joint Control Room.

Wang Mingyuan sat alone at his desk, opening the thick book, "The Overall Blueprint for Ten Years of Deep Space Construction".

In the core chapter of the blueprint, he solemnly embedded the "Interstellar Expeditionary Force Framework." Looking at this document, he was perfectly clear-headed: this so-called "expeditionary force" was far from being fully developed.

Training remains rudimentary, equipment is still a transitional product based on surface modifications, and so-called expeditions can only extend to a few hundred kilometers outside the Earth's perimeter at most.

It's still just an empty skeleton.

But as Wang Mingyuan's fingers traced those cold, hard Chinese characters, his heart still couldn't help but flutter slightly. It was the shock of civilization, after groping in the long darkness, finally seeing clearly what it should look like for the first time.

Everyone knows that this is not the start.

But this massive construction site hanging at Earth's doorstep is no longer just for mining and energy transmission. It has finally grown a backbone leading to deeper space.