Ch.104104. Titan Expedition

About a week after completing the design for the growth-type bio-ship…

Kyuuuuuu?

‘Yes, that’s right. That’s how you move.’

The finally completed carrier-type Hive Ship, roughly the size of a large aircraft, was flying across the lunar surface with an adorable demeanor that seemed at odds with its massive bulk.

And if I had to describe the appearance of this innocently behaving Hive Ship in one phrase… well.

It had an exterior that gave the impression of an appropriate mix between a cuttlefish and a whale.

The streamlined body overall resembled the physique of a baleen whale or orca, but the dozens of tentacles growing from the upper rear portion brought to mind cephalopods like cuttlefish.

Additionally, eyes protected by semi-transparent orange eyelids were embedded throughout its body, eliminating blind spots, and various weapons were likewise installed across its entire form.

On its flanks, four laser cannons protruded like porcupine quills, designed to remain folded during normal operation and deploy during combat. Inside its abdomen was a large-caliber main gun stored for engaging large targets.

And this carrier possessed a secret weapon for future use against ships of humans or aliens developed based on mechanical technology—

Namely, a ramming horn designed to forcibly dock with (physically) and pierce through enemy armor plating, along with shipboard close-combat monsters created to wreak havoc once inside the enemy vessel.

One might wonder if ancient tactics like ramming and shipboard melee combat could possibly be effective in future space fleet battles, but this actually appears to be a quite meaningful strategy.

Since they’re inside the enemy ship, the opponents can’t attack freely for fear of damaging their own facilities, while the infiltrating monsters don’t need to worry about such things—they don’t even need to care about their own lives as they rampage.

Additionally, the carrier-type Hive Ship is quite massive in both weight and size, capable of physically breaching the outer walls of most vessels, and even if it fails, being expendable means we can simply deploy more.

Theoretically, with the energy from the miniaturized supply source installed in the interstellar Hive Ship, approximately 20 units could be produced per hour—that’s one popping out every 3 minutes.

Anyway, while the completed carrier-type Hive Ship was busily playing and absorbing energy to grow, I was taking some time to clear my head and think about the weapons to be mounted on the Hive Ship.

Obviously, the main weapon in space would be laser weaponry, which can travel up to 300,000 kilometers in a second and whose output increases proportionally with size, but this alone seemed somewhat insufficient.

If all mounted weapons were unified as lasers, they could potentially be neutralized by laser-reflective coatings, and moreover, lasers tend to have less firepower than one might expect.

While their power increases with proximity and size, this characteristic actually makes them less effective when small, making them questionable as secondary armaments or main guns for small vessels.

Therefore, one of the representative weapons I’m currently considering is a psychic weapon that uses the user’s psychic energy as ammunition.

As long as the distance is within 1,000 kilometers, its power remains virtually unchanged (beyond that, power is halved), and while its projectile speed is lower than laser light itself, it’s still dozens of times the speed of sound.

Furthermore, no weather conditions can affect psychic projectiles, so in summary, it’s an ideal type of weapon for small vessels to approach, fire, and withdraw.

Meanwhile, I designed several other weapons as well.

The most representative example is the bio-plasma torpedo, which is about the size of a utility pole with a saury-like body—a living suicide weapon similar to missiles in space warfare.

While its speed is quite fast, it can’t match the maneuverability of carrier-class small spacecraft, but it can demonstrate sufficient utility against massive, inevitably sluggish spaceships.

And as its name suggests, the bio-plasma torpedo derives its principle from self-destruction due to plasma weapon overheating, possessing enough firepower to potentially shoot down even larger-class vessels if lucky.

So in conclusion, the bio-plasma torpedo could be described as a weapon with a missile-like form but torpedo-like function and role.

Besides these, I tested various other enlarged long-range weapons, but to put it bluntly, none offered particular advantages over laser weapons.

Energy weapons consumed excessive energy relative to their firepower, while plasma weapons, when enlarged, would overheat and explode after firing more than 5 consecutive shots in about half the cases.

Additionally, ballistic weapons presented major problems with ammunition production and supply, and above all, these weapons had projectile speeds far too slow compared to lasers.

In extreme terms, compared to lasers that work flawlessly even in engagements spanning thousands of kilometers and deliver tremendous firepower at close range, one might question whether these alternatives could even hit their targets.

‘Grow well, my cute Hive Ship.’

Kyuuuung???

Anyway, after psychically stroking the adorable carrier-type Hive Ship that would become the cornerstone of my ever-expanding fleet, I began supplying bioenergy through the tentacles attached to its body.

I needed to grow it to at least cruiser-class capable of space-jumping to Titan within three weeks, so time was rather tight.

※ ※ ※

Three weeks later.

After sucking up the moon’s tremendous resources, I completed a rather impressive fleet.

Two cruiser-class Hive Ships capable of freely space-jumping within the planetary system—one grown from a smaller ship and one originally built as a cruiser.

Eight destroyer-class Hive Ships limited to space-jumps just beyond the atmosphere, and approximately 600 carrier-class Hive Ships to escort these massive vessels.

And inside these ships, about 500,000 crew members—also monsters for shipboard close combat—lay motionless in slumber.

These monsters, looking like a hyper-fusion of Xeno■rph and Zerg, possessed four arms, two legs, and a flexible tail that could be used as a fifth limb.

Of the four arms, the upper pair had hunter claws with blades extending from the elbow to the entire forearm, while the lower pair had normal hands with five fingers tipped with sharp claws.

These arms were equipped with various weapons according to their assigned roles.

The defensive type, deployed in case enemies made contact with our ships, was armed with close-combat weapons, shields, or shock cannons that fired shockwaves to minimize ship damage while engaging enemies.

In contrast, monsters fighting on enemy ships had no need to worry about damaging the surrounding environment, so they carried personal infantry weapons with small rocket launchers attached like grenade launchers, and plasma cannons for corridor breaching—an excessive level of firepower.

One might wonder why crew members are necessary when the ship itself is alive and can attack and move on its own, but the ship has only one brain and cannot handle thousands of tasks simultaneously.

Therefore, by distributing tasks among crew members who are bound together by the Hive Mind, they can move as one body.

Thus, I completed a fleet that could reasonably cope within the laws of physics of reality, provided no Dr■gon Ball-level monsters suddenly appeared.

Thanks to this, putting aside my anxieties for the moment, I finally initiated my first interplanetary space-jump to reach Titan, Saturn’s moon and my temporary base of operations.

The principle of space-jumping, as explained earlier, involves using psychic power to fold space like paper, navigating through the reduced space, then restoring space to normal, allowing instantaneous travel across light-year distances.

Furthermore, since space-jumping involves folding space itself rather than just affecting the Hive Ship using it, smaller vessels in the vicinity can also be transported together.

Therefore, my prototype fleet, including the carrier-class ships incapable of space-jumping on their own, successfully entered Titan’s orbit without any issues—

Go forth, pioneers!

With my playful command, the pioneer vessels embedded themselves into Titan’s surface, marking the beginning of my Titan colonization journal.