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Chapter 461 The Farthest Frontier

Many such vessels had been sent, each of them targeting specific asteroids in the belt. This one in particular was approaching 4 Vesta. Its velocity had already decreased to a point where it would survive if it impacted its target, but the engine continued slowing it down as it approached for a soft landing.

*Initiating anchors.... Initiated. Deploying anchors for catch maneuver,* the VI responsible for monitoring and controlling the vessel logged and reported back to the central AI.

*Approaching target. Distance 600... 500... 450....* It continued reporting and logging the flight data as it approached 4 Vesta, continually updating the record as it happened.

When the rangefinder reported fifty meters remaining, the deployed anchors were launched and the tungsten “stakes” coated with a layer of electrical steel shot out of the vessel and penetrated deep into 4 Vesta, trailed by ropes woven of carbon nanotubes. They deployed side spikes, securing themselves within the body of the asteroid as the vessel reeled in the slack in the lines.

As the pulley system reeled in the slack, the VI piloting the vessel increased power to its thrusters, bringing the ship into positive delta v to maintain tension on the cables as the vessel was slowly winched to the surface of the asteroid. Once it was within five meters of the “ground”, the engines were finally shut down.

After the vessel powered down and rested on its landing gears, sliding doors on its ventral surface opened and a manipulator arm with a built-in atomic printer on it reached out of the vessel and got to work.

It dug deeper and deeper into 4 Vesta, disintegrating the material in its way and printing a longer and longer arm as it went until it reached a depth of 500 meters, where it finally met a layer rich in the necessary materials it required to create a larger printer without needing to cannibalize the vessel that had brought it to the second-largest asteroid in the main asteroid belt.

The process would take a few days, due to the difference in size between the miniature atomic printer on the manipulator arm and the printer it was striving to create.

Vesta wasn’t the only asteroid targeted in the initial landing wave, either. All ten of the largest asteroids in the belt were targeted: 87 Sylvia, 89 Julia, 65 Cybele, 704 Interamnia, 52 Europa, 511 Davida, 10 Hygiea, 2 Pallas, and 1 Ceres. The landing sequence was the only difference; some of those asteroids, like Ceres, generated enough of a gravitational pull that the landing vessels could land normally.

Still, all nine of the other vessels in the first landing wave anchored themselves to the ground and dug an atomic printer-equipped manipulator arm deep into the substrate, where it would replicate itself and begin construction.

……

A week later, while Aron was making his appearances at funerals around the world, the large atomic printer construction finally finished in the last asteroid, and all of them had built enormous fusion reactors deep within their individual asteroids.

*Initiate startup sequence,* the AI overseeing the ten VIs ordered.

The VIs loaded the new fusion reactors with fuel. This time, instead of relying on tritium and deuterium, the ten new reactors were loaded with the same fuel as the largest fusion reactor in the solar system: pure hydrogen. The researchers in Lab City had long abandoned the lower-temperature lower-power elements, deuterium and tritium, in favor of hydrogen, which required much higher ignition temperatures and far, far tougher containment methods.

A few minutes later, the hydrogen in each of the ten reactors was heated to hundreds of millions of degrees and ignition was achieved. Once the plasma in the reactors stabilized, the enormous generators came to life.

*Initiate atomic printer self-test.*

The printers ran their diagnostic subroutines as, despite being printed by another atomic printer, there was always a minuscule chance that a problem may occur due to external factors. No matter how small that chance may be, there was no harm in spending a few minutes running the self-tests.

*Diagnostic complete. System status: green.*

*Beginning production.*

The industrial-size printers began collecting material from their surroundings and printed harvester units to extend their reach. Due to their size, it had been deemed more efficient to send VI-driven harvesters out than to make the printers themselves mobile.

The work proceeded smoothly, with harvester after harvester leaving the industrial printers and drilling ever outward, returning load after load of material as they began hollowing out the asteroids they were housed within. Once a critical mass of harvesters was reached, the large printers then printed constructor swarms en masse, sending them out to reinforce the tunnels carved by the harvester units with the same hadfield steel and chromium alloy used for armor by the empire.

The industrial printer in 1 Ceres, on the other hand, was working on something different. All of the reinforcement the constructor swarms built had an additional element to it: gravity plating. It also contained not one, but twelve full-sized fusion reactors in the center of the 590-mile-wide dwarf planet.

Gravity plating, it had to be noted, was also what made it possible for the RES-QR bots to flip the bird at the laws of physics, as well as the eerie stillness of the hovering rescue ships used during the attack. It was capable of countering the effect of gravity based on how much energy was pumped through it.

And twelve fusion reactors could pump quite a lot of energy through the gravity plating in Ceres.

Once the reinforcement and building process was completed, Ceres was destined to be moved into geosynchronous orbit over Eden as the terminal for a space elevator and Earth’s first common-use space station.

Even as the construction continued, the fusion reactors were brought up to their safe margin of 80% capacity and began the sisyphean task of deorbiting Ceres. After falling out of its orbit in the main asteroid belt, it would then be moved to its final destination. And by the time it took up its position, the interior construction would be complete and it would be ready for the first batch of imperial citizens that wanted to brave the farthest frontiers.