Shane Freak
patreon
Chapter 722: Preparing for Return
🕑 Added 2023-10-12 07:33:22 +0000 UTCTransformers Begin : Table of Content/Chapter List
XXX-----XXX-----XXX-----XXX
A month's time can change many things.
Sun Cheng stood on the edge of Mariner Canyon, a cliff that rose thousands of meters high. Thanks to Decepticon's super vision, even though the canyon below him plunged over five thousand meters deep, Sun Cheng could still clearly see everything within.
Hundreds of various types of robots were bustling within the canyon, while a few Constructicons stood on the side, directing operations.
Upon closer inspection, it was not hard to spot two massive, strange structures in the vast canyon, each resembling Mongolian yurts with diameters of over a hundred meters.
And several kilometers away from the two already constructed gigantic yurt-like buildings, a third one was still under construction.
"The recent storms have been increasing in frequency," Sun Cheng thought aloud. "Artificial Intelligence predicts that the upcoming Mars storm season is approaching. Hopefully, we can finish the third factory before the storms arrive."
A month ago, Sun Cheng had just arrived on Mars. At that time, thanks to favorable weather, they hadn't experienced the legendary and terrifying Mars storms directly.
However, the good times didn't last long.
It seemed that the heavens wouldn't bless anyone indefinitely, and the good weather didn't stick around. Starting around the fourth day after Sun Cheng's landing on Mars, storms began to blow in continuously.
Initially, the storms were relatively mild, lasting only an hour or two.
But then, the storms gradually intensified, culminating in a day and a half of what felt like doomsday.
Because the ferocious winds were exceptionally powerful, the Mars base was ill-prepared, resulting in over a dozen robots being blown away during outdoor operations.
Although the Constructicons later located most of the lost robots using tracking devices and repaired them, four remained missing.
Today was a rare clear day, free from storms, but two fire exploration satellites relayed some alarming information.
Based on current Mars temperature variations, air pressure, and other data, an artificial intelligence system that Sun Cheng had brought from Earth and installed in the base predicted that a terrifying Mars mega-storm, lasting a week or more, was imminent.
During the storm, robots would be unable to work outdoors. Fortunately, Adam and Prometheus had devised various strategies during previous storms, drawing on architectural knowledge from Earth.
They designed the hemispherical structures in the canyon, resembling Mongolian yurts. These buildings were intended for underground metal mining and smelting operations. The two already constructed gigantic yurts were located near a mining vein, 17 and 39 kilometers away from the underground caves transformed into the Mars base.
These structures were specifically designed to withstand Mars storms. Despite their large footprint, they stood at less than ten meters in height.
The towering winds had difficulty posing a substantial threat to these relatively low structures. The interiors of the two massive yurts were constructed entirely of metal.
Except for the top layer, they were encased in a shell made of excavated earth and rock from the construction process, which was piled up to nearly two meters thick. This shell could withstand the impact of most rocks thrown up by storms, ensuring the safety of the Constructicons and robots inside.
Each of the two massive yurts had an excavation tunnel leading to the underground mining veins and a transportation tunnel that connected to the base underground.
However, all of this was still in the design phase for now.
Over the past month, despite almost ninety percent of the entire Mars base's Constructicons and various types of robots being dedicated to constructing the three massive yurts, the scale of the project was so vast that, up to this point, only the above-ground facilities of two massive yurts had been completed.
Regarding the underground transportation tunnels, which extended for tens of kilometers, Giant Yurt #1 had only just begun construction, and #2 hadn't even started.
However, once the storm arrived, the Constructicons and Robots wouldn't be able to carry out outdoor operations.
At that time, all the Robots would be concentrated on excavating the underground transportation tunnels on the Mars base.
It's believed that it wouldn't take too long for the underground tunnels to be successfully constructed.
In the construction and development of the Mars base, the scarcest resource was not rare metals or rare earth elements but water.
Water was a strategically vital resource for industry, and this was as true for Humans as it was for Cybertronians.
So far, Sun Cheng and his team had not found underground water resources on Mars, but they had discovered glacial regions and small amounts of solid ice.
Unfortunately, the area with the most recent sighting of solid ice was over seven hundred and eighty kilometers away from the Mars base. Until they built large-scale transporters, they couldn't make use of it.
However, this did not impede the gradual progress of the Mars base. Cybertron Planet was a metallic world, and although it had rivers, lakes, and oceans in its early days, they had become inaccessible due to millions of years of Civil War and the Skytiger Legion's destructive resource extraction in occupied areas. Natural water sources had long been depleted by the early stages of the Second Civil War.
In response, both Autobot and Decepticon scientists had developed a series of methods for artificial synthesis and generation of water resources to sustain industrial usage.
For instance, at the current Mars base, which had not yet reached full operation and had some deficiencies in various machine equipment, they could only rely on chemical synthesis and temperature variation to artificially create water resources.
Although the artificially synthesized water resources at the Mars base could not yet meet industrial demands, both Decepticons and Robots could tolerate it because they were not carbon-based lifeforms dependent on water for survival. As the Mars base continued to develop, the snowball effect would eventually lead to self-sufficiency.
While the natural environment here was not comparable to Earth, the initial development speed of the Mars base certainly couldn't compare to when Base Two was first established in South America.
However, this was an uncharted planet that no one else had set their sights on or developed. Sun Cheng and his team believed that with the growing number of Decepticon engineers and Constructicons being bred and more Robots being manufactured, the pace of development on Mars would only accelerate, eventually leaving Earth, which was already facing various constraints, far behind.
"So, more than a month has passed in the blink of an eye. I wonder how things are on Earth now? Should I go back?" Sun Cheng looked up at the sky, beginning to worry about Earth again.
Before participating in the first flight test of the Hope-class experimental spaceship, he had already informed Forerunner and a few others that if any uncontrollable danger arose on Earth, they should immediately notify him.
In the past month, no interstellar communications had come from Forerunner and the others, suggesting that Earth was likely safe.
However, it was impossible for him not to worry.
After some contemplation, Sun Cheng finally made up his mind.
"It's time to go back!"
But before that, he planned to conduct one more small experiment.
[Read at www.patreon.com/shanefreak, without ads and support the work.]
XXX-----XXX-----XXX-----XXX
Next Chapter >>Chapter 723: Experiment
