Chapter 28: Secrets of the Stellar Drift

Qiongxiao.

Command bridge, strategy meeting room.

Commander: Vice Admiral Mu Qingxue.

Executive officer: Colonel Ye Lingwei.

Chief of staff: Colonel Serena.

First Squadron Commander: Major General Qin Xuan.

Second Squadron Commander: Major General Wang Jiancheng.

Third Squadron Commander: Major General Sun Wei.

And…

Commander of the newly formed mixed fleet: Lieutenant Colonel Lin Yu.

These are the attendees for this meeting—the core leadership of the Fifth Fleet.

“Everyone’s here. Let’s get started!”

“Take a look at these files first. They just came in from Headquarters on the Moon!”

At Mu Qingxue’s words, a virtual panel materialized in front of everyone.

Displayed on them was a file.

To be exact, it was an interrogation report.

With the cooperation of several departments, this was a preliminary report on interrogations of alien prisoners captured from the surviving Fourth Fleet warships.

And this—

Was humanity’s first chance to gain concrete intelligence on the enemy.

At last, finally, they could discover who their foe truly was.

Lin Yu felt a sudden jolt of anticipation and dove into the report with sharp focus.

Five minutes later…

After quickly scanning every detail, Lin Yu let out a slow, heavy breath.

The document revealed that the alien civilization was called the Klein. They came from a place 137 light-years from the Solar System.

They didn’t have any sort of jump technology. Instead, they used a rare astronomical phenomenon known as a ‘cosmic current’ to cross dozens of star systems, until they reached the Solar System.

But what exactly was a cosmic current?

The file gave a brief explanation.

It’s a unique cosmic phenomenon.

Between two star systems less than ten light-years apart, the mutual pull of gravity can create an astronomical feature much like an ocean current.

Cosmic currents are found throughout the Milky Way, even across the universe.

If you can find the entrance, all you have to do is pilot your warship inside.

Inside these currents, you can’t accelerate, decelerate, or change course. The ships simply float along with the current until they emerge.

The speed? Roughly eighteen times the speed of light.

Which means, traveling from the Solar System to the Proxima Centauri system would take about 85.6 days.

Humanity—

Could finally go beyond the Solar System.

But at the same time, civilizations like the Klein could also invade the Solar System.

For humanity, this historic discovery—

Who could say if it was a blessing or a curse?

Beyond that, the Klein had only come to the Solar System because their homeworld had been conquered by another civilization.

The Klein fleet now in the Solar System was, in reality, a group in exile. The fleet’s size? Not even a tenth of its former glory.

As for the Klein’s original fleet size…

Just imagining it left everyone breaking out in a cold sweat.

Tens of thousands of warships?

Unbelievable. Absolutely insane.

But what came next in the report made everything clear.

Why did the Klein once have such an overwhelming fleet?

Because—

Their territory had once spanned eight star systems.

With resources far beyond what humanity could dream of.

But that wasn’t why the Klein became targets for the other civilizations.

Even owning eight star systems meant little; to some civilizations, those resources were still pitifully meager.

So why? That took some understanding of how stars are spread throughout the Milky Way.

The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with four main arms and several smaller ones—about 250 billion stars in all.

Most of these stars are in the four primary arms; the Solar System sits on a minor arm called the Orion Spur.

The so-called local arm isn’t directly connected to the galaxy’s center like the main arms—the Orion Spur drifts on its own, both ends unconnected to anywhere else.

There are fewer stars in the Orion Spur too—about 200 million, not even one percent of the galaxy.

And the Solar System—

Is in the most barren part of the Orion Spur.

For the galaxy’s dominant civilizations, not to mention the Solar System, even the Orion Spur as a whole was barely worth a passing glance.

But at the same time, because it’s so poor,

The civilizations here don’t have to worry much about invasion from the main arms.

Nobody wants to waste energy on this place.

Having covered galactic geography, the report moved on to its next major topic.

Namely—

The hierarchy of civilizations.

In the universe, civilizations are divided into thirteen levels.

Primitive civilization, and then Levels One to Ten, plus two supreme tiers: Super Civilization and Divine Civilization.

But that’s on a cosmic scale.

As for the Milky Way—

The strongest civilizations have barely reached Level Four.

According to the Klein prisoners—

A Primitive Civilization can’t leave its homeworld.

Level One: leaves the homeworld, fully develops its own star system.

Level Two: begins colonizing other systems, controls at least two star systems.

Level Three: energy technology breakthroughs, total mastery of stellar or similar-level energy, fleets fully equipped with energy weapons.

Level Four: further energy breakthroughs, weapons reach the pinnacle of energy tech, shields and jump tech become standard.

Level Five: entry into spatial technology.

……

Beyond Level Five, it’s not that nothing exists,

But—

No one really knows.

Even this thirteen-rank scale has simply been passed down through Milky Way history.

Where it originally came from is a mystery nobody can solve.

In today’s Milky Way, even a Level Five civilization is just a rumor.

They say one existed a million years ago, but—

Who really knows?

According to these standards, Lin Yu thought about where humanity stood.

He couldn’t help but find it kind of funny.

Energy weapons? Nearly all are still stuck in the lab—nowhere near mass production.

But the Zhulong does meet Level Three standards.

Still, calling humanity Level Three isn’t right—even the basic Level Two milestones seem out of reach. At best, they’re really just Level One.

So, strictly speaking, humanity as a whole is still stuck at Level One.

They’ve only surpassed Level Two or are close to Level Three in a few select fields.

Alright, not like this was his problem to solve right now.

The real heart of the report was why the Klein had been invaded.

Because—

The Klein are known as an ‘atypical civilization’ within the Milky Way.

What does that mean?

It means—

Their technology has followed an unconventional path.

Most galactic civilizations follow the same route.

Go all-in on energy tech until Level Four, then switch to spatial tech research.

But the branches of technology are endless, and there’s more than one way forward.

Some civilizations inevitably take a different path. The Klein—

Are one of them.

They’re a civilization that—

Took steam technology to its highest limits.

Yes, the very same steam power humanity once used during the Industrial Revolution.

The key difference: while humans progressed from steam to the age of electricity, the Klein did the opposite.

They remained with steam and kept refining it.

In the end—

By perfecting steam technology, the Klein now stand before humanity.