Chapter 727: Hope

After more than twenty days of refinement and parts manufacturing, the small spaceship personally designed by Sun Cheng finally entered its final assembly stage, more than half a month after he returned from New Iacon.

After receiving notification, Sun Cheng personally arrived at a river valley factory located six kilometers away from the main control center of Base No. 2.

"Master, welcome to the assembly workshop of the Hope! We are currently conducting the final assembly!"

When he arrived, Atlas was presiding over the assembly workshop, personally supervising the final assembly work.

Sun Cheng nodded and stood quietly to the side watching them perform the final assembly, with no intention of interrupting.

The main force responsible for the assembly work was fourteen Decepticon Workers; inside the spacious workshop, transport robots were constantly moving in and out, bringing parts one by one from dozens of different production factories and stacking them in designated locations within the factory.

The fourteen Decepticon Workers moved back and forth, picking up piece after piece and assembling them together with extremely high efficiency.

At times like this, the super productivity of Mechanical Life was fully displayed.

The data network of Atlas, the fourteen Decepticon Workers, and the hundreds of transport robots around them were linked together.

Their Cores constantly compared data, and every connection was accurate and error-free.

Some Workers could easily move large parts weighing one or two tons;

Some Workers scanned with their eyes, recording real-time data for every installed part and the ship's hull;

Some Workers carefully embedded chips only a few centimeters in size into key equipment;

Some Workers transformed their ten fingers into welding torches, spraying blue light to quickly weld disconnected parts together.

Despite the seemingly numerous millions of parts, in reality, it would not even take long for them to piece them together completely and assemble them into a spaceship.

This is the current Base No. 2, possessing a powerful production and manufacturing capability with nearly thirty Decepticon Engineers, hundreds of Workers, and over one hundred thousand robots of various types.

The assembly speed of the Workers was very fast; not long after Sun Cheng arrived at the assembly workshop, a spaceship began to gradually take shape.

The final finalized spaceship was roughly similar in appearance to what he had originally designed, but there were significant changes on the inside.

This was an experimental spaceship born from modifying a small spaceship of the Hunter Civilization using relevant technology from an Explorer-class spaceship of the Cybertronian civilization.

Because it was a transitional experimental spaceship born under the premonition of an imminent war, neither Sun Cheng nor the Decepticon Engineers, Huan, and Explorer 203 who later modified it, upgraded it in terms of technology or tonnage.

This was a flat, streamlined spaceship, overall resembling an isosceles right triangle, looking three or four parts similar to the United States B-2 stealth Bomber.

The length of the spaceship at finalization: 27.51 meters, wingspan 32.3 meters, height: 15.36 meters; the final empty weight of the spaceship reached 94.25 tons, and the maximum takeoff weight reached about 164 tons.

The main material of the ship's body was Tai Lu Meng Hejin and chromium alloys among more than a dozen metal materials, which not only could greatly reduce weight but also significantly improved high-temperature resistance.

In terms of the propulsion system, the Decepticon Engineers upgraded the originally designed engines once again.

Nearly a year had passed in the blink of an eye since the initial modification of the engines on the Hunter Civilization spaceship.

Over the past year, with continuous participation in various manufacturing, design, and innovation, the Evolution speed of the Decepticon Engineers under Sun Cheng was much faster than he had previously expected.

As their accumulated knowledge and technology grew, Atlas and the others now indeed possessed the ability to further improve the previously modified Hunter Civilization small spaceship engines.

Utilizing updated production and manufacturing processes, combined with brand-new scientific concepts, the improved engines were more powerful; the four engines, combined with a brand-new propulsion system, could allow this small spaceship to reach a speed of 370 kilometers/second, shortening the time from Earth to Mars to about thirteen days.

The Hope was not a cargo spaceship; it could carry at most three to four Decepticons at a time, and they could not be like Hailishi.

For Sun Cheng and Base No. 2, this experimental spaceship was enough.

The final design of the Explorer-class spaceship had been revised, some basic parts had begun to be produced, and a larger final assembly factory had already started construction.

If everything went as smoothly as Sun Cheng had originally envisioned, it was expected that after half a year, one would be able to see that spaceship start final assembly just like the current Hope.

Standing patiently in the workshop, watching the small spaceship take shape bit by bit, Sun Cheng looked at the two robots that had arrived at his side at some unknown time, and the corners of his mouth twitched imperceptibly.

"Huan, how are the preparations for the robots I wanted from the factory, and the supplies in the Warehouse?"

The two robots that had quietly come to Sun Cheng's side just now, while he was focused on watching the spaceship take shape bit by bit, were none other than the Central Main Control Intelligence of Base No. 2—Huan, and its new friend—Explorer 203, the Central Main Control Intelligence of that Cybertronian Spaceship that crashed on Earth.

Perhaps it was infected by Huan; the last time he returned to Base No. 2 to prepare the spaceship data he designed for Atlas and the others to study and perfect, he discovered that Explorer 203, like Huan, had also let the Decepticon Engineers help it specifically manufacture a robot avatar.

With this avatar, they could control it to wander around the base at will.

Initially, Sun Cheng had also asked Huan if it wanted a body manufactured for it, so that it, possessing extremely high intelligence, could become a true Mechanical Life.

But Huan refused; the Super Intelligence of Cybertron seemed to have a very perfect set of logical algorithms written by its designers.

In their view, serving the people of Cybertron was their everything.

The reason it let the engineers manufacture a robot body for itself was only to better serve Base No. 2.

Sun Cheng's suspicious personality made him regularly check Huan's database to observe this Cybertronian Super Intelligence he had obtained from the attack there, and incidentally verify whether Atlas and the others were doing anything behind his back.

From the many times he had looked through Huan's database in the past, it had not deceived Sun Cheng.

Because of this, within Base No. 2, his trust in Huan was actually higher than in Atlas and those Decepticon Engineers who would occasionally harbor some small ulterior motives.

"The robots have all been produced and assembled, and are currently stored collectively in Warehouse C-14. Other supplies are also fully prepared and can be loaded at any time."

Sun Cheng smiled with satisfaction and turned his head to look at the Hope spaceship, which was undergoing its final inspection, but his thoughts could not help but fly to that fiery red planet hundreds of millions of kilometers away from Earth.

"Mars, I'm coming!"