Epoch of Twilight

Chapter 558: Conversation and Preparation for War.

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

The Extraterrestrial Information Bureau. Acting as Mankind’s only center of information regarding Extraterrestrial life forms.

Ever since humans had discovered the Glassian expedition fleets four years ago, the bureau had expanded at a rate like how a balloon expands when air was blown into it. Originally, nobody knew about the bureau’s existence as it had only employed close to a hundred of person. But now, it had expanded to employing thousands of staffs for the department as of now.

Even after the conflict between the humans and Glassian, the Bureau never let go any of their staffs, but instead steadily employed more personnel and expanding the Bureau.

The whole Bureau had been divided into eight sectors: the Star Map Calculation sector, Astronomic Investigation sector, Universal Signal Monitoring sector, Extraterrestrial Civilization Exploration sector, Technological Advancement Reviewing sector, and finally the Extraterrestrial Civilization Diplomatic Embassy sector.

Certainly now that when Mankind had discovered the civilized extraterrestrial life form, the Glassian.

...

At this moment, there was nothing but silence found within the council hall of the Extraterrestrial Information Bureau.

A dismantled Glassian vessel, which had its long-range quantum communication equipment fixed by humans, was displayed on the platform.

Naturally, only a huge space vessel would get fitted with a long-range quantum communicator which was capable of establishing interplanetary communication with a high success rate. Without a doubt, the quantum communicator’s hardware size wasn’t compact at all. Although this type of enormous equipment, towering at 30 or so meters, obviously won’t fit inside the council hall, as of now only the quantum communicator’s receiver had been set up on the platform (mainly to pick up on-site’s sound and then transmits the signal to another equipment connected to the receiver).

A negotiator and his assistant rehearsed from a draft in a low voice for a moment, then both of them drew in a deep breath, formed up a good luck hand gesture. Electricity surged through the communicator equipment and each tiny lights bulbs lit up in a domino effect. Finally, a green light signaling a normal working condition of the equipment was emitted.

The signal channel had been established in a relatively short matter of time.

"This is the Humans speaking, representing the Human Civilization, officially requesting a diplomatic meet up with the Glassian to negotiate deals and terms. If you had received the signal, please respond immediately, I repeat, please respond immediately!"

The negotiator carefully and smoothly delivered the line, just as rehearsed in the Glassian language. He continuously repeated the message three times in total.

To the previous generation, they were not unfamiliar with the Glassian language. During a past era decades ago, to learn and study theGlassian technology, many individuals decided to pick up their language and practice it frequently. For the Extraterrestrial Information Bureau’s Diplomatic Embassy sector, it was a crucial skill that they had to master.

Today, most the world’s most powerful men had gathered. Besides those who were busy with other engagements, these men had gathered within the council hall, paying extreme attention to this historic phone call to an extraterrestrial civilization. Casting off any hatred against the Glassian, Mankind’s arch nemesis, this was undoubtedly Mankind’s first official communication with another civilization from outer space.

However, as time passed, the communicator remains silent besides a series of white noise coming through, nothing else came in.

However, what had occurred was within expectation. After all, even if the long-range quantum communicator was used, it was impossible for the communicator to transmit the signal across a few dozens of light years in a short amount of time, but what was unfortunate was that no one knew how long it would take for a response.

The group of men had waited from the early morning to the afternoon and from the afternoon till sunset.

Suddenly breaking the silence, a whisper came out from every speaker to spur commotion throughout the council hall.

When the hungry bunch of men thought the communication with the Glassian was a failure, a string of Glassian language spilled out from the speaker, the whole council hall fell into silence.

"Humans? You’re humans?" This was the voice that came from over 30 light years away. Under all the disturbance and noise generated from the universe, the response sounded unstable, with frequent changes in the voice volume, and at times a sharp ear piercing noise.

However, even if someone didn’t understand the Glassian tongue would also sense the fear and shock within those voices

This was a mysterious feeling in their state of mind. As the side that lost the war, they wished this loss was just another accident. It must’ve been due to other factors that had affected the expedition fleet (just as the truth), if so the probability of this happening was close to none. The Glassian had trembled before the advancement pace of the Humans.

"I’ll repeat, this message came directly from Humans. Now representing the Human Civilization, we are officially requesting a diplomatic meeting with the Glassian. Whoever you are, please contact your superiors immediately, we come in peace."

Again with the waiting for a response from the Glassian, this would definitely be known as mankind history’s longest and slowest negotiation.

...

While the Glassian was lowering their guard, this was the same time that the Extraterrestrial Information Bureau was advancing their scam tactics.

Mankind had also started production expanding in an exponential pace when technology had expanded past smart-era, its total production scale had long surpassed human limitation, and the production scale was only decided by the superiors’ will, resources, and the environmental restrictions.

Although the Barnard star system was the only star system available to Mankind, the resources the star provided for the advancement was far more than enough.

A single 4th planet’s total resource quantity would be equal to every rocky planet found within the whole solar system.

At the surface of the 4th planet, it represented the mark of Mankind’s activity in towering engineering marvels, as if viruses were rapidly spreading everywhere. No matter if the surface atmosphere was to be frozen into a frost layer or the underground rocks, they would all be mined in a destructive manner, extracted into various elements, building factory after factory, machinery after machinery, as well as up to at least millions of gallons of fuel for the nuclear fusion furnace.

This type of vast human activity had also affected the planet’s temperature. Originally a tundra planet, with an average temperature of 3°C annually. Now with the planet’s temperature continuously rising. When the war reached its third year, the whole planet had already started forming a sort of light ozone and showed signs of weather changing.

And within this year, the humans had their first reactionless drive-powered spaceship which began its testing phase.

But only one of this model of the spaceship was built and the previous 30 prototype designs for the ship were scrapped.

It was not that the ship had its flaws, it was the other way around. Its design was flawless, incorporating every Glassian technology, allowing the human’s technological capability to further improve to the next level.

The ship’s surface had appeared to be built with a smooth mirror surface, the reflection rate of the lights (the reflection rates of the vertical light ray when shined directly upon) was close to a 100% even though the light particle was still faster than light speed, it can be still effective when resisting those light particles.

The ship’s highest reactionless drive rate can achieve up to 4.5 times of light speed, surpassing the Glassian vessel which had a drive rate up to only 3 times of light speed.

The reason for all the prototype designs for the ship was vetoed over and over again was that the reactionless drive was still in its experimental stage when it fully developed throughout this year and when this special type of power furnace was fully functional. It immediately displayed an unrivaled superiority to all previous engine models.

Even though this was only the first iteration of its kind, its highest energy output percentage had already surpassed human’s largest fusion furnace’s energy output percentage by up to 300 times or more. 10 of these were required to provide a satisfactory energy supply to the original design of the space shuttle.

Also, even the fuel had saved plenty of space, even if it was a simple exchange of fuel source, it could easily free up to 15% of space.

The energy expenditure of this initial iteration of reactionless drive vessel was like a water dam filled with water that had just opened its gates, it was like a flood discharge. Part of the space had to be used to store pure water (nuclear fusion fuel) and increase fusion furnace array.

This 15% of extra space was not to be looked down upon.

Mankind will never remain peaceful with the Glassian. War had almost torn Mankind’s history apart, as compared to the Glassians’ attitude towards military affairs as if child’s play, human’s attitude towards military affairs was picky to the slightest detail, having a deep obsession to maximize a weapon’s capability to the limit. You wouldn’t find yourself seeing humans who were onboard the military airships idle.

Let’s not talk about the 15% of the newly freed up space, even if it’s a 1% freed up space, if not utilized properly it’ll be considered a huge waste.

The extra spaces meant that the design for the spaceship could be decided much more calmly. Under the rule that the new design wouldn’t increase the ship’s build, the only thing required for an even more powerful thrust would be a simple increase in the anti-matter reaction furnace.

The only flaw it had was that the anti-matters reserve was limited.

These past few years, the anti-matter prepping techniques had been improved. As of now, the energy or anti-matter conversion ratio had reached 10,000 to 1, which meant 10,000 parts of energy could only be converted into a part of anti-matter energy. However, ever since Mankind had set up a temporal colonial settlement over at the Barnard star system, humans’ anti-matter production scale remained at a measly level. And during wartime, the production model never expanded.

First was it was a huge waste of energy on a scale never before seen, second was that there was not much demand for anti-matter, as it was useless as an intergalactic warfare weaponry when facing against your enemy light years away, so the best type of weaponry for intergalactic warfare would be the light speed weaponry, as they’re the fastest and the most effective weapon known to the world.

As so, the humans had stayed at the system for over a decade and the anti-matter reserve had slowly stocked up to a total of a few thousand tons, and most of them were scavenged from the Glassian vessel, but even with all these amounts of anti-matter reserves were not enough to act as fuel for a 30 light years trip for the reactionless drive space shuttle.

Luckily this flaw could be easily offset, as of now with Mankind’s technological advancement, it was little to no effort to scale up the anti-matter production plant.

In just one year, during the fourth year, the anti-matter production model had expanded almost ten times reaching 5,000 tons.

When the fifth year came by, the anti-matter production had reached 80,000 tons, and the price they paid was that during these two years, the 4th planet’s temperature had risen yet again by another 10°C.

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