Chapter 28: Buying Time
A few days later, the number of armed Clones Li Qingsong had deployed to his ten mining bases reached twenty thousand, an average of 2,000 per base.
In addition, there were another 4,000 armed Clones at the main base. Meanwhile, new sets of equipment were still being produced at an average rate of 3,200 sets per day, which meant that an average of 3,200 new armed Clones could be created every day.
At this point, the flock of strange birds, now numbering over seventy thousand, finally moved into the vicinity of the base cluster. They launched an all-out assault from every direction, targeting all eleven of Li Qingsong’s core bases without exception.
Extremely brutal battles erupted simultaneously across eleven battlefields.
However, these eleven bases were not the only places where fighting broke out. Smaller-scale battles were also occurring in many other locations.
Namely, the railway lines.
By now, the birds had already destroyed the railway’s electrical circuits. Left with no choice, Li Qingsong had to urgently commission a batch of steam locomotives to handle the upcoming supply transport missions.
Li Qingsong knew he couldn’t win a war of attrition against the strange birds.
The only way to defeat them was to buy time by sacrificing the lives of his Clones to hold the line, giving him a chance to research and produce firearms.
Since he needed to mass-produce firearms, resupplying materials was essential.
These railway lines had to be protected! Production at the mining bases also had to be maintained—it couldn’t stop for even a moment!
Thus, a strange spectacle unfolded at the ten mining bases.
On the bases’ perimeters, thousands of armed Clones fought to the death, a chaotic maelstrom of blood and flesh.
Inside the bases, the original mining Clones continued their work meticulously, extracting vast quantities of ore, completely unaffected by the fighting outside.
Afterward, the ore was loaded onto trains. Giant steam locomotives, belching thick smoke, set off for the main base under the protection of transport combat teams specially formed by Li Qingsong.
Fighting the strange birds while simultaneously making emergency repairs to the damaged tracks, the trains’ progress slowed to less than ten kilometers per hour. Even so, train after train continued to depart from the various mining bases and converge on the main base.
After unloading the ore, large numbers of armed Clones would board the trains, carrying massive amounts of supplies, and return to the mining bases. Whenever a Clone on the front lines died, a replacement would arrive immediately.
The situation settled into a stalemate. To maintain it, Li Qingsong had to pour 16,000 of his consciousness links into the fight, controlling a total of 16,000 armed Clones: an average of 1,000 for each mining base, 4,000 at the main base, and a combined 2,000 for the various railway guard squads.
For a time, the battlefront stabilized. But this so-called "stability" was likely only from Li Qingsong’s perspective.
From the strange birds’ point of view, they probably thought they were steadily winning.
After all, their attacks allowed them to devour an average of two to three thousand delicious enemy corpses each day. If that wasn’t victory, what was?
"You want to eat? Then I’ll let you eat!"
The deaths of several thousand Clones each day filled Li Qingsong’s heart with savage fury. ’Just you wait,’ he thought. ’The day will come when you won’t be able to stomach another bite!’
Right now, a total of 4,000 Clones across the main base and the various key mining bases were engaged in all sorts of tasks—mining, farming, animal husbandry, transportation, and more. They supported the entire base system’s operation and provided a continuous stream of melee weapons and food for the front lines.
But aside from these 4,000 Clones, Li Qingsong had a final reserve of just over 1,000 more. Despite the extremely tense stalemate and immense pressure of the battle, he had not committed them to either combat or logistical production.
They were doing something else.
In the core area of the main base, inside a laboratory situated between the metal refinery, fabrication plant, chemical factory, and various other workshops, these 1,066 Clones had been divided by Li Qingsong into 100 teams. He had thrown all of them into the research and development of gunpowder weapons.
Li Qingsong knew next to nothing about firearms, especially modern ones.
Other than the basic principle—that gunpowder burns explosively in a chamber to generate gas that propels a bullet at high speed—and that a gun consists of a barrel, a bullet, and a grip, Li Qingsong knew nothing.
The knowledge base of the Deep Space Spaceship contained no related information either.
You were sent to Ceres for scientific research; why would the Human World put that kind of knowledge in the database?
But it was the same thought as before: ’It doesn’t matter! Knowing the basic principles is enough! I’ll just research the rest myself!’
And so, all 100 firearm research teams threw themselves into their work.
Li Qingsong had each of the 100 teams select a promising research direction, covering every aspect of firearm construction: barrel material, internal mechanics, bullet design, powder charge, gunpowder type, firing mechanism, and more. They simultaneously ran experiments to find the most suitable materials and structural models.
In each ten-person team, one member would specialize in researching various gunpowder formulas to find the most suitable propellant. Another would operate the metal drilling equipment, testing holes in different metals to find the best material for the barrel.
Yet another would focus on the firearm’s structure, constantly fabricating components and trying to assemble them. Others studied bullets and how to combine them with gunpowder.
All ten members of each team had clearly defined roles, and they coordinated with one another in perfect order.
Most importantly, a coordination mechanism existed between the different teams that had zero delay and no communication overhead.
When the gunpowder researcher on Team 66 chanced upon a relatively suitable formula for firearm propellant, every other team’s gunpowder researcher instantly knew it.
They immediately stopped testing their current formulas, discarded them, and replicated Team 66’s formula. From there, they began subsequent research and experiments, aiming to further optimize its performance.
Whenever a member of any team made a new breakthrough, their progress was simultaneously known to everyone else. The same process would repeat: everyone would abandon their current work and begin new research based on the latest advancement.
This wasn’t limited to just gunpowder; the same applied to every other part of the firearm’s construction.
The barrel, the frame, the hammer, the firing pin, the spring, the overall structure, the bullet...
Through the collaborative efforts of these 100 teams, Li Qingsong’s knowledge of firearms, once a complete blank, expanded as rapidly as an inflating balloon.