Chapter 169 Slow Down

The staff stared at the light of the tail flame and the changing time next to it, but the rhythm of space was not as fast as they imagined, so after watching for an hour, they returned to their work one by one.

No other reason, just because the deceleration time is not completed in an instant.

The maximum acceleration of human mountain-class warships can reach 150G, and it takes eight hours to decelerate from 15% of the speed of light.

Human unmanned probes also need about the same time.

Obviously, this probe did not complete the deceleration in a few minutes.

In fact, most actions in space are like this. There are situations like "lightning flash" and "instant arrival", but they will not happen to aerospace civilizations.

Just think about it, the universe is so vast that even light takes several years to travel the shortest distance, not to mention aerospace civilizations that have not even reached the speed of light.

So it is common to wait for several hours or even more than ten hours after detection. Fortunately, this time is not too long, and there is also AI monitoring in real time, so humans don’t have to worry too much.

"Marshal Yue, one of the three probes has completed deceleration first. From the perspective of optical effects, it is undergoing attitude adjustment. The next step should be to explore the Aldebaran star system."

"Continue to observe, focusing on the opponent's main fleet." Yue Yuan immediately issued a new instruction: "Notify the Wudangshan and Emeishan fleets to prepare."

From the position of humans, we can see that the attitude adjustment is in progress, which means that the opponent's probe has actually completed the attitude adjustment and is heading in a certain direction. It is unknown whether it will go to the closer Aldebaran B first or directly to Aldebaran A.

From the position of the light source, humans can determine the location of the three probes.

From the current situation, the three probes have just entered the overall range of Aldebaran and started to accelerate. Yue Yuan started to decelerate at such a long distance, which should be heading to the red dwarf star Aldebaran B.

Sure enough, after a few minutes, the person in charge of observation reported the direction of the three probes that had completed deceleration one after another, which was indeed Aldebaran B.

The semi-axis length of Aldebaran B is 559.6 AU, which is the red dwarf that rotates around the center of mass of the void with the orange giant Aldebaran A.

This distance is much farther than the distance from Pluto to the sky, more than ten times.

A little conversion will show that at this distance, there is a time difference of 77.5 hours between the real state of the probe seen by humans and the other party.

So the focus of human attention is not these three probes, but those probes that came to Aldebaran A before.

Of course, from the deceleration time of these three probes, humans got the data that they have been eager for more than four years, that is, the acceleration value of the other party's spacecraft.

125G.

This is the data obtained by humans from these three probes.

It is very high, but not as high as human warships, and as a probe, it is most likely an unmanned probe, so this data can only be used as a reference for the performance of the other civilization's spacecraft, and cannot be used as a judgment of the acceleration value of its warship.

Of course, this is related to the overall mass and engine thrust of the probe, but it can also be roughly judged from the overall.

When the first batch of probes appeared, there will be a second batch of probes.

Humans didn't have to wait long before they saw signs of another batch of probes from an unknown civilization slowing down.

This time, they were much closer, having completely surpassed the orbit of Aldebaran B and were considered to be in the inner circle of the Aldebaran binary system.

There were a total of 8 probes in this batch, and the time taken to decelerate was also 125G. These 8 probes, just like the positions where they appeared, completed deceleration and headed straight for the giant gas planet where humans were.

Presumably, by this time, the unknown civilization had already discovered that there were no planets on the red dwarf side.

Seeing this situation, humans who had been observing with camouflage telescopes did not move, but waited patiently, waiting for the fleet to enter the deceleration state.

What humans are most worried about now is that the unknown fleet has not started to decelerate, and the 8 probes will rush to the asteroid belt to discover the human fleet.

However, as long as they see the unknown fleet start to decelerate, people do not need to wait for the fleet to complete deceleration. After all, they have already started to decelerate, and it is impossible to waste energy to turn around and accelerate again, and there is also an information time difference due to distance.

Now the speed of the eight probes that have completed acceleration has slowed down, and the fleet is still advancing towards Aldebaran B at 14% of the speed of light. Humans believe that they can still see the unknown fleet slowing down before the probes enter the asteroid belt.

If they can't wait, then Yue Yuan will not foolishly let the eight probes enter the asteroid belt, but directly let the Wudangshan and Emeishan fleets rush out to intercept.

In any case, the unknown fleet must not be allowed to detect the human arrangement.

From the images sent back by the telescope, the people on each mountain-class warship are nervously watching the eight probes getting closer and closer.

It can be seen that these eight probes are not concentrated at one point to fly to the asteroid belt, but are very scattered, which is very consistent with the general detection situation.

In theory, at this time, humans should be radio silent, but because of the neutrino communication, humans still maintain internal communication and do not need to build a relay base station.

Neutrino communication can ignore obstacles and communicate point to point.

Under normal circumstances, a first-level civilization cannot master this communication technology, which is the communication advantage of humans.

And because humans are all within the Hill sphere of the giant gas planet and are very close to each other, the communication delay is not that exaggerated, and the maximum delay is only 1 minute.

"Slow down!"

Within a minute, the information that the unknown fleet began to slow down was synchronized to the bridges of ten mountain-class battleships.

Yue Yuan was also refreshed and looked at the image that had been displayed on the big screen.

The first thing he noticed was the position of the 8 detectors, the nearest of which was less than 0.1 astronomical units away from the outermost edge of the asteroid belt.

At present, the unknown fleet is unknown, and it is still 30 astronomical units away from the giant gas planet. This unknown is equivalent to the position of Neptune relative to the sun in the solar system.

Its real action is about 4.1 hours behind the image observed by humans.

"It started to slow down at such a close distance. It seems that the gravitational acceleration that this civilized creature can withstand is also quite large." Seeing the parameters displayed on the screen, Yue Yuan said in his heart.

Then he took another look at the eight probes that were flying towards the asteroid belt with fusion thrusters spewing out, turned on the communicator, and immediately gave orders to the Wudangshan and Emeishan fleets to go out and block them.