PFC Chapter 3422 Sons of Midnight (21)
Chapter 3422 Sons of Midnight (21)
Chapter 3422: Son of Midnight (Twenty-one)
The outpost is not big, even smaller than the space station. There are not many people working inside. According to the male employee who opened the door for them, there are more Chinese people recently, but there were fewer people before.
After all, there is no Internet connection here, and the outside is bare, so there is really nothing to see. The main job here is to collect data about Jupiter and transmit it back to Earth. Although the bus comes every week, you cannot leave your post without special circumstances. The work is dull and boring, and few people are willing to do it.
Through the staff's introduction, Schiller learned the basic situation of the outpost.
Callisto is a synchronously rotating satellite. Its relationship with Jupiter is equivalent to that of the moon and the earth. It always has only one side facing Jupiter. That side is equivalent to the front of the moon.
The location of the outpost they were currently in was actually on the back side of the moon, that is, the side not facing Jupiter. Schiller was actually a little curious as to why the outpost was not built on the front side.
But he thought about it and realized that Callisto is far away from Jupiter. Looking at Jupiter from Callisto is actually not much bigger than looking at the Moon from Earth.
If it is built on the front side, employees would see Jupiter rising instead of the sun and the moon every day, which would give them a strong sense of abnormality. This may increase their loneliness and affect their mental health.
As the third largest satellite in the solar system, Callisto is about the size of 2.6 moons, still much smaller than the Earth. So even if the outpost is built on the back side, it won’t take much time to get to the front side. Considering the mental health of the employees, it was finally decided to build it on the back side.
After visiting the outpost, Stark began to ask questions, mainly asking whether they had found any strange spaceships, whether they had seen any suspicious activities, etc.
The answer given by the outpost staff was no. Although a little disappointing, it was not unexpected. Roxxon Company was so guilty that it would definitely not be able to swagger in front of the official outpost of human civilization.
Stark concealed the name of Roxxon Company and briefly told the staff about the current situation. Employees who have worked here for a long time must know more about this place and should be able to give some useful speculations.
Sure enough, the employee confirmed Stark's previous guess. He said, "If someone is really secretly mining here, they will definitely put their base on Io. On the one hand, there is sufficient thermal energy there, and on the other hand, Io is the largest satellite closest to Jupiter."
"If they were to travel between Jupiter and its satellites by mining ships, they would definitely choose the closest one. This would save energy and be faster. If they were afraid of being discovered, the shorter the journey, the more covert it would be. Overall, Io is the best choice."
"Of course, Europa is not far away. And Europa's orbit is better. So it is possible to choose Europa. I even feel that there may be bases on both planets."
"Why?" Stark asked curiously.
"If, as you said, they are mining but they don't send ships to transport the ore out, then there must be a place to store the resources, right?"
"Io is close and has plenty of thermal energy, but it has a big disadvantage, which is frequent geological activity. Io has the most volcanoes in the entire solar system, and they erupt at any time. It's not a good place to store resources."
"Europa is a little further away and very cold, but it's relatively calm. We can build warehouses there, store a lot of resources, and then transport them all at once."
Stark nodded, thinking that what he said made a lot of sense, because they knew that Roxxon Company was likely to have used magical means of transportation, most likely some kind of portal.
Aside from human portals, most civilization portals have a big disadvantage, which is that they require a relatively stable environment. Once the runes and framework are damaged, the portal is basically unusable.
If Roxxon Corporation is not using Earth technology, but portal technology from other civilizations, it may also be limited by this shortcoming. That means it is impossible to build a portal on Io, and can only go to other more peaceful planets. Then it may be on Europa.
Since both planets are suspicious, we should investigate them one by one. But the order is also very important. Stark thought about it and said, "We should split our forces into two groups. The main force will go to investigate Europa first, and the remaining one will keep an eye on Io."
"Just because Roxxon is mining Jupiter doesn't mean anything. If we rush over and interrupt their mining process, not only will we not be able to defeat them in one fell swoop, but they may also bite us back and accuse us of wanting to monopolize the resources of the solar system."
"But if they really used magic to transport resources out of the solar system, then the process of transporting the resources would be irrefutable evidence of their treason. We have to get the evidence first, and then things will be easier."
Schiller nodded with satisfaction. He thought so too.
Roxxon Corporation is a dog company that is very good at abusing legal weapons. In the original comics, it has sued superheroes more than once, and even sued Thor and made him lose the case.
On the surface, they are using the law to protect their own rights, but in fact, they are setting traps for others, filming some specious evidence and then bribing the jury. They are just bullying the superheroes because they don't have enough time and energy to sue them.
To deal with this kind of shit company, you must hit the snake at its weakest point. First, get evidence of their being a traitor, so that they can't turn over in the public opinion field, and then things will be easier.
Although Stark usually behaves carelessly, he is generally reliable. He continued, "The other party must know that the portal is their lifeline. They will definitely send a lot of people to guard it, and there may be some traps that we don't know about."
"It would be even better if we can secretly get evidence on Europa. If we are discovered, the person who is watching Io will make some noise. If we make them busy and unable to take care of themselves, we can get away smoothly."
"Then I'll go to Io," said Schiller.
Stark looked at him with some distrust and said, "There's no moon here. Are you sure your spell will work?"
Although there was nothing under the hood, Stark seemed to see the look in the other person's eyes as if he was a retard.
Moon Knight raised his hand slightly, and a moon rose above Jupiter's satellite.
"Alright, alright, I know you're awesome." Stark waved his hand and said, "Spider-Man and I are going to Europa."
Then he threw Schiller a headset and said, "Put this on. If something happens, I'll call you through the headset and you act accordingly."
After discussing countermeasures, the two parties took action separately.
Schiller flew towards Io. There was no air traffic control here, so he teleported directly to a place not far from Io.
Even though he acted confident before, he was still asking Kong Su in his heart: "Are you sure your ability can be used here? Don't let me jump down and you tell me it can't be used..."
"Don't worry." Kong Su said unhappily, "If you can see me, I can be used."
"Why does it work? There's no moon here."
"Don't ask so many questions about magic... Well, if you really want to know, there is no concept of galaxies in Egyptian mythology. There are no planets, no orbits, and no mutual obstruction."
"The moon and the sun are eternal, and the stars are just embellishments among them. The moon and the sun on the magical level are hardly affected by the state of the planets in your real world."
"If the moon disappears in your universe one day, my magic will not fail. Because the moon in the magic definition still exists and will never disappear."
"Then why did you spend so much energy to cover the celestial moon?"
"It also takes a lot of power for me to cover the celestial bodies Mars, Jupiter, and Mercury. Because I have to use divine power to completely cover the light source of the sun that they reflect. Do you know how much divine power that takes?"
"Then you can't shield them from the magical level?"
"Then can ordinary people see magic? If they can't see the stars on the magical level in the first place, what's the point of covering it up?"
Schiller was speechless.
"I can control the moon because I have divine power, not because I, the moon god, have any special ability for your satellite." Kong Su said, "My ability only stays on the romantic fantasy of ancient humans about the moon. You can't ask me to keep up with the times just because your era has developed and you have realized more functions of the moon. This is impossible."
"Okay." That was all Schiller could say.
In fact, he thought it was good that Kong Su could not control the moon. Otherwise, if the Chinese drove away the earth one day, he would have to chase after them by driving the moon.
Schiller flew around Io and saw a strange building at the foot of what may be the largest volcano on this satellite. It really didn't look like a human creation.
The main reason is that this color scheme doesn't look like something humans could build. Their outpost on Callisto is white, and the space station near Earth is blue and white. Even the new starships are painted black for combat purposes, with dark blue as an accent.
But this building at the foot of the volcano is purple.
Schiller couldn't understand what kind of human architect would design a space building in purple, and purple and black. Moreover, the shape would not be out of place in the game setting, and it didn't look like a functional building, but rather a temple.
"Why does this style look familiar?" Schiller said to himself.
Schiller suddenly remembered that the style of this temple was a bit like Asgard. But Asgard usually used gold, so he didn't remember it for a moment.
"It can't be that Roxxon is colluding with Asgard, right?"
This conjecture was overturned in a second. Asgard would not look down on Jupiter's mosquito legs, and there was no need to be so sneaky.
Asgard's mining process is roughly like this: find a resource planet, send out a battleship, aim, fire, smash the planet into pieces, clean it up and take it home.
Most advanced civilizations in the universe do this. Only those civilizations that have not yet left the galaxy have a lot of equipment to mine there.
If it is not collusion with Asgard, then it is possible that it is collusion with other civilizations in the nine kingdoms. Because Asgard, as the master of the nine kingdoms, their aesthetics and culture have greatly influenced other civilizations here, resulting in other civilizations having more or less some shadow of Asgard.
At this time, Schiller remembered that in the comic "War of the Realms", Roxxon Corporation exchanged the mining rights of all minerals on the territory of Malekith, the leader of the dark elves, for the skull of the Frost Giant King Laufey.
"Roxxon Company's partner is the dark elf?"
I caught a cold recently due to the change of seasons. My headache made me want to die, so I might be late.