Chapter 72: The Horn of the Industry

During this period, the scientists aboard the fleet collectively lost their minds. They were waking up at 06:00 and refusing to leave their workstations until well past 22:00.

Their eyes were red and bloodshot. Heated debates and frenzied arguments over engineering schematics echoed through the cafeterias and elevator shafts at all the time.

Most importantly, this was entirely voluntary. If the Federation hadn’t implemented strict mandatory rest periods to prevent burnout, they would have happily worked themselves to death.

In the days that followed, the Wolfpack Design Bureau enjoyed its finest hour. The research milestones that had previously been overshadowed by the rival Tesla Institute were rapidly eclipsed!

This was because, during the long voyage to Mars, the Wolfpack engineers had quietly finalized a massive side-project: the successful miniaturization of high-output nuclear fission reactors!

Professor Hao Yu’s notoriously big mouth couldn’t keep the secret for long. Shortly after finalizing the prototype, he had proudly blurted it out to the entire Council.

Originally based on the massive power plants used in pre-collapse naval aircraft carriers, the Wolfpack team had successfully condensed the reactor’s physical footprint without sacrificing its megawatt output. Furthermore, the new design boasted incredible seismic and kinetic resistance.

This breakthrough was a game-changer for the Federation. What did it mean in practical terms?

It meant that if the other engineering teams wanted to build their theoretical super-trains and mega-excavators, they had absolutely no choice but to use the Wolfpack’s proprietary reactor design!

Oh, the pride! The triumphant, booming laughter of the Wolfpack engineers echoed through every deck of The Noah.

The young men and women working under Professor Hao Yu finally had their moment in the sun. They might not have picked up many refined social graces from their eccentric boss, but they had certainly inherited his bombastic, competitive madness.

Their joy wasn’t just about temporarily beating the Tesla Institute; it was about the profound sense of validation.

To a scientist, a hard-won breakthrough is like a child wining against his dad. Seeing that child recognized and relied upon by the entire civilization is the greatest feeling in the world.

The great horn of industry had sounded. In November of the New Era, what could only be described as the Third Industrial Revolution officially began. The Federation Government began issuing highly detailed operational mandates to every major enterprise and research institute.

Information systems, next-generation energy, advanced materials, and biotechnology were the four pillars of this revolution. Every laboratory, technical institute, and manufacturing bay was granted near-limitless access to power, raw materials, and industrial quotas.

The scientists were given a blank check to unleash their imaginations and push the limits of their genius.

Down on the Martian surface, the older, Lunar-era excavators were the first to break ground at the various resource nodes, and automated track-layers began laying the initial railway lines. Of course, these legacy machines were merely stopgaps to get the raw materials flowing.

As soon as the new super-machines rolled off the assembly lines, the old tech would be immediately scrapped.

Experts across all disciplines, chemistry, physics, mechanical engineering, and biology worked tirelessly through the night, seemingly immune to fatigue. The sheer scale of what they were building acted as a constant shot of adrenaline.

It was an engineer’s paradise. If you had a viable concept, you could draft it, prototype it, and deploy it without ever worrying about funding or bureaucratic red tape. In fact, command actively encouraged the most audacious designs.

It was incredible.

The development of advanced robotics quickly became the primary focus across multiple institutes. They were rapidly accelerating the deployment of autonomous control systems.

These robots didn’t need to be humanoid. They could simply be a massive articulated arm, an automated transport hauler, or a drilling rig, so long as they were fully autonomous and self-correcting.

Because their population was too small and the extraction quotas were too massive, total automation was their only path to survival.

This technology wasn’t some distant pipe dream. Automation software had been continually refined on Earth for decades. Pre-collapse automotive factories in the European and Pacific Sectors had operated with near-100% automation for years.

Now, the goal was simply to scale that existing architecture up and apply it to heavy planetary mining.

Furthermore, the recent leaps in autonomous navigation and localized AI made this possible. The scientists were preparing to hand over incredibly complex, dynamic tasks to the machines.

They weren’t trying to create true, sentient Artificial General Intelligence, that was still too dangerous and complex. They were building highly adaptive, programmatic expert systems capable of reacting to changing environmental variables.

Simultaneously, a new constellation of low-orbit satellites was being rushed into production to provide the GPS and telemetry networks required for the unmanned mining fleets.

The Noah, Captain’s Quarters

Jason sat at his desk, sipping coffee and reviewing the daily progress reports. Compared to the chaotic early days of the voyage, his schedule had stabilized. Unless a major crisis required his executive override, the ship ran itself. Watching the Federation grow stronger day by day was deeply fulfilling.

In his free time, Jason had dedicated himself to studying. A Captain needed a broad understanding of every discipline aboard his ship. While he lacked the deep, specialized knowledge of his chief scientists, his general comprehension had improved drastically. He could now read high-level engineering reports without needing a translator.

Currently, the absolute highest priority was the completion of the Aegis Industrial Complex. This massive surface facility commanded a workforce of six thousand scientists and engineers, alongside two thousand heavy-machinery specialists!

A total of eight thousand personnel, roughly 16% of the Federation’s total population!

They were working in rotating shifts around the clock to fabricate the heavy machine tools and automated assembly lines: the hydraulic stamping presses, the engine fabrication bays, the automated QA inspection lines, and the precision parts foundries.

Simultaneously, software labs were coding the AI oversight programs for these assembly lines. The moment the physical structure of the Aegis Complex was complete, it would immediately begin churning out advanced mechanized equipment.

Like a snowball rolling down a mountain, their production capacity was about to grow exponentially.

Jason picked up the latest report and read it carefully.

“09:00 Hours: The first Type-III precision component assembly line successfully passed its stress test. This line is dedicated exclusively to fabricating high-tolerance parts for Mining Rigs 08 through 27. Zero anomalies reported; all tolerances met or exceeded design expectations.”

“This specific assembly line architecture can be fully replicated in seven days, requiring an input of 1,530 tons of refined steel…”

Jason nodded to himself. At this rate, the Aegis Industrial Complex would be fully operational within two to three months.

“12:00 Hours: The primary rail network connecting the initial resource nodes has been completed. The legacy Lunar trains have passed track-testing and are operating at standard capacity, hauling roughly 20,000 tons of raw ore per transit.”

“Fifty-one legacy excavators have initiated primary surface operations. Average daily yield per unit is holding at 10,000 tons, sufficient to meet immediate baseline requirements.”

“The structural design of the ’Super-Train’ is being aggressively fast-tracked, with the Wolfpack Design Bureau serving as the primary contractor. Projected payload capacity per transit is estimated in the one-million-ton range.”

“This is getting ridiculous,” Jason muttered to himself, shaking his head at the sheer scale of the projects. It was true what they said: the only limit was their ambition.

He ran a quick calculation in his head and frowned. “Wait, this math doesn’t check out. Even if we upgrade to 100,000-ton capacity excavators, that’s not going to put a dent in three hundred billion tons of glacial ice. We’d be digging for centuries.”

“We won’t be using standard excavators for the ice, Captain.”

His executive assistant, Lily, happened to be in the room and overheard his muttering. “The engineering teams determined that using heavy excavators for the polar ice is highly inefficient. They are deploying a swarm of specialized, low-cost cutting drones.”

“Cutting drones are mechanically simple, incredibly cheap to fabricate, and can be mass-produced by the thousands.”

Lily brought up a schematic on the main screen. “Because the Martian glacial ice is heavily aerated with trapped carbon dioxide, its structural density is quite low, nowhere near the hardness of bedrock. Instead of digging, the drones use thermal-kinetic lasers to slice the ice into uniform cubic blocks. Automated cranes then lift the blocks onto conveyor networks that feed directly into the super-trains.”

“A standard two-meter cubic ice block weighs roughly eight tons. The drone can cut and load a block in ten to twenty minutes. The entire process is fully automated. Zero human oversight required.”

“According to the current logistics model, deploying 300,000 cutting drones, operating on a 20-hour active, 4-hour maintenance cycle will yield 150 million tons of ice per day. If we scale up to 600,000 units, daily yield doubles to 300 million tons. At that rate, the entire three-hundred-billion-ton quota will be processed in under a thousand days.” Lily rattled off the statistics flawlessly.

“Material cost per drone: 3.3 tons of steel, 13 kilograms of copper, and trace aluminum…”

She recited the data calmly. The drone’s chassis was essentially a reinforced metal box with a laser cutter; its material cost was equivalent to a pre-collapse civilian sedan. Lily actually knew the specs by heart because she had personally contributed to the drone’s sensory array design.

Now that Jason’s schedule had stabilized, Lily was free to spend most of her time in the labs, only stepping in for major executive briefings. She was a brilliant scientist in her own right, and right now, every mind was needed on the front lines of industry.

Jason stared at the screen, his scalp tingling. Hundreds of thousands of autonomous drones… they were going to strip-mine the planet using a mechanized swarm tactic?

But he couldn’t blame the engineers. Faced with an impossible quota, brute-force numerical superiority was the only logical solution.

He thought about it for a moment. Hundreds of thousands of drones, each requiring the raw materials of a standard car. It sounded like a massive fleet, but was it really that unachievable?

Back on Earth, a single major automotive plant in the Pacific Sector could pump out 1.5 to 2 million vehicles a year!

Once the Aegis Industrial Complex was fully online, churning out simple drones by the hundreds of thousands would be child’s play.

Three hundred billion tons of ice. Roughly equivalent to the volume of three of Earth’s Great Lakes. It was a staggering number, but for the first time, Jason truly believed they could conquer it.

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