Chapter 28: Buying Time
A few days later, the number of armed Clones Tom had added to the 10 mining bases reached 20,000, averaging 2,000 per base.
In addition, the Main Base still had 4,000 armed Clones, and new sets of equipment were still being produced at an average rate of 3,200 sets per day, meaning 3,200 armed Clones could be created daily.
At this time, the Monster Birds, totaling over 70,000, finally moved to the vicinity of the base cluster and launched an attack on Tom’s 11 most core bases from all directions, without missing a single one.
Eleven battlefields simultaneously erupted in extremely fierce combat.
However, the combat was not limited to these 11 bases; smaller-scale battles were also occurring in more locations.
These were the railway lines.
At this moment, the railway lines’ electrical circuits had been destroyed by the Monster Birds; Tom had no choice but to urgently activate a batch of steam locomotives to take on the subsequent material transport tasks.
Tom knew that he could not win a war of attrition against the Monster Birds.
The only way to defeat these Monster Birds was to use the lives of the Clones as a cost, to stalemate the front line, and to buy time for himself to research and produce firearms later.
Since large-scale production of firearms was necessary, material replenishment was indispensable.
These railway lines must be protected! The production of the mining bases must also be maintained, not for a moment can it stop!
Thus, a strange sight occurred at the 10 mining bases.
Outside the bases, thousands of armed Clones fought desperately, sacrificing their lives, with flesh and blood flying everywhere.
Inside the bases, the original mining Clones were still meticulously working, extracting large quantities of minerals, completely unaffected by the external combat.
Afterward, these minerals were loaded onto trains, and huge steam locomotives spewed thick smoke, departing towards the Main Base under the protection of the transport combat team specially formed by Tom.
While fighting the Monster Birds and repairing the damaged railway lines, the train’s speed was so slow, less than ten kilometers per hour, but even so, train after train still left each mining base and converged into the Main Base.
After unloading the minerals, a large number of armed Clones would board the trains, carrying large amounts of supplies, and return to the mining bases; once a frontline Clone died, they would immediately be replaced.
The battle thus reached a stalemate.
To maintain the current situation, Tom had no choice but to commit 16,000 consciousness link shares to the combat, simultaneously controlling an average of 1,000 per mining base, 4,000 at the Main Base, and a total of 2,000 for various railway escort teams, bringing the total to 16,000 armed Clones joining the battle.
The battle situation stabilized for a time. But this so-called "stability" was probably only for Tom.
For the Monster Birds, they probably thought they were continuously achieving victory.
After all, under their attacks, an average of 2,000 to 3,000 delicious enemy corpses were devoured by them every day; what else could this be but victory?
"You want to eat, then I’ll let you eat!"
The death of thousands of Clones every day filled Tom with ferocity: "Just wait, there will be a day when you can’t eat anymore!"
At this moment, in the Main Base and various important mineral bases, a total of 4,000 Clones were performing various tasks, such as mining, planting, breeding, or transporting, supporting the operation of the entire base system and continuously supplying the front line with cold weapon equipment and food.
But besides these 4,000 Clones, Tom still had over 1,000 remaining Clones who, despite the extremely fierce and high-pressure battle, had not been deployed to combat or logistics production.
They were doing something else.
In the core area of the Main Base, in the laboratory located amidst various factories like metal smelting plants, processing plants, and chemical plants, these 1,066 Clones were divided by Tom into 100 teams, all of whom were dedicated by Tom to the research and development of gunpowder weapons.
Tom knew almost nothing about firearms, especially modern firearms.
Aside from knowing the basic principle of modern firearms—that gunpowder burns violently in the barrel to produce gas that propels the bullet at high speed—and that firearms consist of a barrel, bullet, and grip, Tom knew nothing else.
The knowledge base of the Shenkong (Deep Space) Spaceship also did not contain relevant knowledge.
You were sent to Loshen Star for scientific exploration; why would the human world put such knowledge in the knowledge base?
But it was still the same saying.
It doesn’t matter! Knowing the basic principle is enough! What I don’t know, I’ll research myself!
So these 100 firearm research teams all plunged into the research of firearms.
Tom had each of these 100 teams select a possible research direction, simultaneously conducting experiments on every aspect of firearm construction, including barrel material, internal mechanical structure, bullet design, powder charge, gunpowder type, and firing mechanism, to find the most suitable materials or construction methods.
Among the 10 people in each team, one person would specialize in researching various gunpowder ratios to find the most suitable gunpowder materials, and another would specialize in operating metal drilling equipment, attempting to drill various metal materials to find the most suitable material for the barrel.
Another person specialized in researching firearm structures, continuously processing individual parts and attempting to assemble them, while others researched bullets and how to combine gunpowder with bullets.
The 10 people in each team had clear divisions of labor and cooperated in an orderly manner.
Especially the most important point was that there was a coordination mechanism between different teams with no delay or communication cost.
When the gunpowder experimenter of Team 66 accidentally found a relatively suitable formula for firearm gunpowder, all other teams’ gunpowder experimenters knew about it instantly.
They immediately stopped the gunpowder formulas they were experimenting with, discarded them directly, and then immediately replicated Team 66’s formula, and on the basis of this formula, conducted further research and attempts to further optimize the performance of this formula.
When the personnel of a certain team made a new discovery, their progress would also be simultaneously known by everyone else, and this situation would play out again, with everyone again abandoning their current formulas and beginning further research based on this new progress.
Not only gunpowder, but the same applied to other firearm components.
Barrel, receiver, hammer, firing pin, spring, receiver structure, bullet...
Through the mutual cooperation of these 100 teams, Tom’s knowledge of firearms, which was originally almost blank, rapidly expanded like a balloon.