The gunship descended after entering the mountains, and a huge opening suddenly appeared on the side of a mountain peak not far from Fisher, revealing a long airport runway inside, flashing with warning lights.
"Welcome to Mother Base, sir!" The pilot skillfully landed the gunship on the runway and gave Fisher a flamboyant American military salute with two fingers.
"Good skills, Lieutenant!" Fisher shook hands with the pilot, then jumped out of the cabin and walked towards the group waiting to greet him.
"Last time I was here, this was just one runway. You guys work fast; now there are four!"
"After all, we have a bunch of big guys now, so we have to widen the entrance, otherwise it's easy to get a traffic jam!" Samuel, swinging his long mechanical arm, walked in front, followed by his student and secretary, Dr. Olivia, a scholar of quantum mechanics and space development.
From Fisher's perspective, it seemed Dr. Olivia was also a fanatic mechanical enthusiast, constantly drooling over the half-mechanized Samuel Hayden.
"Speaking of which, this thing has already swallowed nearly a hundred billion of our money!" Kate said with emotion, looking at the F-52 fighter jet parked in the hangar.
"It will be worth every penny, madam!" Olivia turned her head and said seriously, "This thing can redefine the world order!"
Kate, as the chief housekeeper of Gigas, was originally troubled by the huge financial investment, but Olivia's address of "madam" made her ecstatic.
"I hope so!"
Everyone boarded the shuttle and drove straight along the deep tunnel. After Gigas took over this area, tens of thousands of construction teams worked day and night, almost hollowing out the entire mountain range.
The interior housed almost all important facilities, including dry docks, laboratories, and military production lines. It could be said that besides the Boston factory, this was Gigas' second largest sub-base, which Fisher specially named Mother Base.
After speeding along the cool tunnel for half an hour, the scene before everyone's eyes suddenly opened up.
"What is this?" Kate suddenly felt a little excited, smelling the faint scent of the sea in the air.
"Our No. 1 dry dock. Here, our Aegaeon is right here!" Samuel Hayden explained, "The dry dock is connected to the artificial lake we built. Once Aegaeon is completed, it will set sail from here!"
"An artificial lake, but I smell the sea!" Kate was puzzled.
"The artificial lake is where we draw water from the sea, and it's also the base's water source. We've built four seawater purification plants to meet the base's daily needs, and there's even surplus capacity to supply nearby cities!"
"Is that Aegaeon?" Kate's gaze was now fixed on a massive metal creation in the dry dock.
The Hecatoncheires were children born to Gaea and Uranus, three in total, named Briareus, Cottus, and Gyges. They were all enormous and ferocious monsters, even larger than the Titan gods and the Cyclopes.
Shortly after their birth, their father Uranus, seeing them as ugly monsters, disliked them greatly, which led to their subsequent fate.
They were imprisoned in Tartarus by Cronus. Later, after Zeus rebelled, the Hecatoncheires made a deal with him, helping him overthrow his father.
In the Iliad, Homer mentions a story not found in other Greek myths: some Olympian gods, led by Poseidon and Athena, attempted to overthrow Zeus.
But the sea goddess Thetis summoned a Hecatoncheires to protect Zeus, causing the gods' rebellion to fail. This Hecatoncheires was called Briareus by the gods, and Aegaeon by humans.
In the world of Ace Combat 6, there is also a behemoth called Aegaeon, which is the Estovakian Navy's P-112 airborne cruise control aircraft.
The initial concept for this behemoth was to control a large air space with carrier-based aircraft and cruise missiles. Fisher had to put in a lot of effort to get the blueprints for this thing.
First, he fought desperately in the war to become an ace, and then he was selected by the Estovakian Navy to be a member of the P-112's aircrew, only then did he get all the data for the P-112.
"The wingspan is 433.3 meters long, 102.39 meters high, it can carry 72 F-52 fighter jets, and has 7 'Halo' cruise missile silos. I can hardly imagine anything bigger in this world!" Samuel's face was full of accomplishment.
He had watched this thing being built day by day.
"Not necessarily, Dr. Hayden, don't speak so definitively!" Fisher remembered that Hydra had built such a large intercontinental bomber during World War II, although the power source was the Cosmic Cube.
However, with such a big butterfly effect from himself, he feared that both S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra would explode.
But whether they exploded or not was irrelevant to Fisher. In the face of absolute strength, any conspiracy and trickery were hollow, unless you had both powerful strength and played conspiracies and trickery, like Dormammu in Sherlock Holmes, "I've come to bargain."
"What's the current progress?" Fisher leaned on the high railing, looking down at the dense engineering personnel and machinery, which seemed as tiny as ants.
"Only the keel has been completed, and the internal structure is still very slow! After all, we are following the modified blueprints step by step. Before, we only built a verification machine less than a hundred meters long to confirm the perfection of the technology.
And there are two smaller ones also underway next door, so manpower is really scarce, after all, we need both progress and secrecy!" Samuel complained.
"Emmm, how's your research on C6 going?"
"The reverse engineering of C6 is still not complete, but there's no problem with imitation, it's just that I can't guarantee the safety!"
"Then let's imitate a few hundred first, experiment on a small scale, if there's no problem, then directly mass produce them. Those robots can do a lot!"
"Understood, I'll arrange it as soon as possible!"
"Alright, let's go see how the big birds are doing!" Fisher patted the railing and led the way to the next room.
Less than two kilometers from this dry dock was another huge workshop. Here, there was a big baby that was more than two hundred meters wider than Aegaeon, but not as long.
Sparks from the engineers' cutting rained down from it like raindrops.
"Armory Bird, Arsenal Bird. To be honest, if drones can develop to this extent, I guess there won't be anything left for us pilots in the future!" This time, Olivia introduced it.
"No, Doctor, drones will not replace manned aircraft, never. War cannot become something where you can kill an opponent with just a button; such a war would not satisfy their desires!"
"That's right. In fact, for the operation of the Arsenal Bird, we adopted two modes: one is remote ground control, and the other is manual pilot control.
To prevent drones from being remotely hacked, we also set up a one-key remote network disconnection mode, but once activated, this thing will have to rely on four pilots working together to fly!"
"So, these two things have swallowed two-thirds of our income over the past few years, right?" Kate calculated the huge numbers and was already a bit annoyed.
"Yes, but their maintenance costs will be relatively low, especially Aegaeon. We only used fusion reactors for power, and once it's running, the maintenance costs will be similar to one and a half Nimitz aircraft carriers!"
"That's good. To be honest, Fisher, are you really building these things not to rule America?" Before Kate's words fell, the remaining few immediately had sparkling eyes.
"Rule America? How is that possible? Such a big mess, who would want it!" Fisher waved his hand.
"Alas!" Hearing their boss's statement, the scientists were quite disappointed. Most of them were recruited by Fisher because they were outcasts or dissatisfied with their situations, so they naturally had no good feelings for America.
Especially Dr. Samuel Hayden, when he got this illness and was kicked out of the research institute, his luxurious mansion and cars were repossessed.
If he hadn't focused on saving money and had some family wealth, he probably would have starved to death on the streets with his wife and children before Fisher even invited him to join Gigas.
"But if we're going to unify, let's unify the whole world. I've already thought of a name. If that day ever comes, Blue Star will be renamed the Interstellar Federation, or Star Alliance for short, and then we'll build a space station in outer space and name it Citadel!"
After hearing their boss's statement, the few people who had just been disappointed immediately perked up.
"Don't think about it. The trifles on Earth aren't worth me building these weapons. Our goal is the sea of stars. These are just appetizers. Once we're proficient, we'll build the real big guys that can perform deep space travel!"
"Then, sir, when do you think those aliens you mentioned will come to Earth?"
"As short as two or three years, as long as seven or eight years. By then, we'll be facing the survival of a race! And these are necessities for us to buy time!" Fisher pointed to the Armory Bird below his feet.
Due to its earlier construction time, this Armory Bird, codenamed "Freedom," had already completed its main construction, and its power system was also installed.
It was now undergoing final finishing touches. If all went well, it would take flight in two months.
As for the other one, codenamed "Justice," its progress had to be suspended because the heat dissipation issues for the pulse energy cannon and laser cannon had not yet been resolved.
"Justice" could only proceed with construction once Fisher managed to acquire Vibranium.
"By the way, sir, regarding the bolter weapon you mentioned earlier, I took some time to make a sample. Would you like to see it?" After inspecting the basic situation of the three big guys, Samuel Hayden remembered a self-defense weapon Fisher had proposed to him earlier and eagerly asked.
"Oh, you said you have a sample?"
"Yes, as you instructed, 19mm caliber, rocket-propelled, diamond warhead. But as for those prayers you mentioned, I don't have the tools, so I didn't engrave them, but I had people specially refine the outer casing!"
"Quick, quick, bring it over, let me see!" Fisher was overjoyed and quickly ordered.
Emmm, a chapter of 3200 words, not 4000. Sorry, everyone.