Xyrin Empire
Chapter 588 Wrecked Ship

Chapter 588: Chapter 588 Wrecked Ship

This was the assembly platform of the base, right next to the landing platform where we arrived. As the largest flat area in the asteroid fortification group, this place was entirely cast from silvery-gray Imperial Alloy. The ground was also etched with the emblem of the New Eden Federation and the imperial crest. All around the assembly platform, everything that came into view was brand new.

The smooth surface of the buildings, the alloy armor plates that the nano-builders had just finished growing, the air combat robots that had been assembled but not yet activated, and the spotless crystal matrix—the lifeless base was everywhere imbued with a crisp newness that felt particularly discordant.

Before we set sail, we had contacted this base once. Only twelve hours had passed since then, yet the base had already been abandoned due to an attack, and its garrison had vanished without a trace. What on earth had happened here?

"There’s still 10 percent power here," came General Visca’s voice through the spiritual connection. She had just crawled out of a functional building that wasn’t completely sealed and was now fussing with her disheveled hair. "It’s those beacons still lit with warning lights. They get their energy from Protos Crystal Towers set aside for backup use, which were luckily untouched by the attack and provided teleportation coordinates for the Void Wanderers. I’ve already rerouted their power to the artificial gravity generator, which will start up in about ten minutes. The remaining crystal energy can maintain gravity for twelve hours, giving the Heroic Spirits who aren’t used to the space environment some relief."

In an instant, everyone’s eyes focused on one person.

The King of Dai Mao’s antennas on his head sprang up all of a sudden: "I... I just haven’t gotten used to this floating sensation, that’s all! As a knight, I’m naturally more adept at ground combat..."

Before she could finish, Bedivere elegantly floated past her and, noticing Saber’s gaze, she immediately straightened up in midair, standing firm as Mount Tai with a knightly salute: "My King."

"Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses," seeing Altoria Dai Mao’s hair all curled up, I immediately went forward and patted her shoulder. "Stop dining and dashing with Sandora when we get back, and spend some time learning basic physics—it’ll get better..."

How should I put it? Before I could finish speaking, Saber had already knocked me away. She really needed more practice.

Someone who just couldn’t learn how to fight in zero gravity would normally not be part of this operation, but the Knight King’s pride wouldn’t allow her to hide in the safety of a spaceship, dazing at a giant because she couldn’t stand straight on the battlefield. The Lion King had pestered persistently, tagging along under the excuse of familiarizing herself with the skills. However, now it seemed that Saber had a long way to go before she could even learn to walk in space. Before that, unable to wield her swordplay, she could only serve as her very own space turret—firing a shot would propel her like the Long March 7 rocket over a hundred kilometers away, and then she would have to be towed back by the traction ship for the second shot.

Fortunately, just then, the lifesaving artificial gravity was restored. Altoria, who was almost floating off the assembly platform into the starry sea, flailed her arms and legs in the air and then flopped over the edge of the platform, sprawling face-down. The sister beside me, R, immediately sighed in disappointment: her chains had been prepared, and she was looking forward to tossing her darts to capture and play.

R was now thoroughly a bad influence.

"The base isn’t severely damaged," General Visca led the way in front of us. As the person with the strongest military expertise on the scene, the little girl was finally getting a chance to feel superior. "The destroyed guard towers and laser turrets indicate they all engaged in battle when the enemy appeared. Some fragments of warships collected nearby and the damage on the front of the base suggest that the enemy’s main forces didn’t get too close. But, due to the incomplete construction of the base, the output of the Energy Shields was insufficient. Moreover, the enemy likely possessed super weapons, leading to our Defense Barriers—despite the base’s complete firepower—being the first to fall. After that, a bit of bad luck—"

Visca pointed at two small dots in the distance, which were two asteroids that had been severed from the main body of the base and flung out. In between, they might have collided with something else, ultimately becoming two rapidly spinning unlucky eggs.

"The Ghost Energy Reactor was hit directly... those idiots... with so much technology at their disposal, their own clones ended up at this level, failing even to clone Divergent Space-Time Reactor technology..."

Keep your mouth respectful, my precious little sister. Not every Race can use Quantum Brains as their daily calculation tools.

The powerhouse of the base was shattered, and there was likely to be a massive leak of Ghost Energy. There could be no survivors. The Heroic Spirits squads that descended with us split into three directions to explore the base’s storage zone, residential zone, and armed production zone. Thanks to the boost from the World Tree Temple, they had a sensitivity even higher than the Xyrin Life Detection Device. We, on the other hand, were moving towards the command center in the middle of the base. That golden pyramid-shaped structure, the Star Spirit Hub, seemed to have not suffered significant damage and might still contain things worth retrieving.

"The base has not been completely destroyed, just the most critical structures," General Visca’s blood-red cat pupils emitted faint red light, as though she was scanning the structure of surrounding buildings. "Conventional energy conduits haven’t shown signs of overload, and so far, there’s no evidence of a large-scale enemy landing at the base. The stationed troops here likely managed to repel the first wave of enemies. They chose to withdraw of their own accord after realizing that the base couldn’t function and that their location was compromised. They took almost everything they could with them... Hm?"

Visca suddenly discovered something, dashed to the front, then ran back with an object the size of a water jar.

"The Protos probe, it seems to have broken down, but there are no damage marks on the surface. This builder might still remember something."

The little guy had an excited look on her face. At a height of one meter and twenty centimeters, holding something nearly as big as her "water jar", it seemed to weigh nothing. She then threw it on the ground rudely, and both Big Sister and I felt the ground shake beneath our feet.

...Even if it wasn’t broken, at this point it should be well past repair, this little girl was really used to rough-handling those monster machines produced by the Empire.

As the most important unit for daily operations, the probes manufactured by Protos naturally underwent modifications by Xyrin Technology. But those were internal improvements targeting the AI and Energy systems; their appearance remained the same endearing round and plump shape. The front half resembled big eyes made up of various industrial ray Focusing Prisms, and the middle was a chubby alloy belly, with the tail housing an anti-gravity device and thrusters. Visca was now crawling in front of its "big eye", her little hand grabbing the shiny Focusing Prism and pulling it out forcefully.

This violent little sister didn’t have time to study the simplistic automatic robots of the Protos Natives. She had detected that their Memory Core was near the head, and was looking for the nearest way to dig it out.

"Hey, kid, be careful not to break..."

I hastily went forward to stop Visca’s violent disassembly, when suddenly the "eye" of the probe lit up abruptly.

A beam of blue-white high-energy material stream hit Visca right in the face before I could react. The latter’s little head leaned back at an angle of over ninety degrees, and the little girl’s forceful action suddenly stiffened.

Again, in an instant too quick for me to react, the suddenly-attacked Visca recovered her stance and swung a Sweeping Leg — in the next instant, the entire prism section of the probe was sent flying like a meteor.

Such a violent solution.

"Tch, I knew you couldn’t trust these stupid AI," Visca muttered, then reached in and pulled out a triangular crystal block from the smoking probe head, turning to show off to me with a grin, "Hehe, Brother, this didn’t get kicked to pieces... Eh? What’s wrong?"

Should I remind her to look in a mirror?

Despite being hit by a probe’s Particle Gun, her face was unharmed, but it was entirely blackened now!

"Wow!" Visca finally realized that her little face was probably blending into the cosmic background, and started frantically wiping it with a handkerchief. "Damn... The attack power of that thing was too low, the Automatic Shield didn’t even activate... Didn’t expect it to end up like this..."

Oh, a face that can withstand a particle gun shot, it didn’t even bother to activate the Shield. Visca, you’re really pushing me to be sarcastic, aren’t you?

Big Sister and I took a side each to help wipe Visca’s blackened little face, but all we did was turn her into a painted clown. I’m not even sure what principle the attack was based on — the power wasn’t much to speak of, but it sure was colorful.

By the way, I should mention, the feel of Visca’s cheeks was really quite pleasant — soft and supple. If you didn’t remind me, no one would believe that they could withstand an armor-piercing bullet.

"All right, let’s see what this damn probe has recorded."

Like a child throwing a tantrum, General Visca forcefully wiped her face, streaked with black and white, and held the memory core in her hand. Without any other apparent action from her, the memory core began to glow on its own.

Several seconds passed in silence.

"...Um, Brother, wait a second, this is using Protos language encoding. I need to download a compatibility pack..."

So, that "beep beep beep" sound inside your belly was because of this, huh?

"There we go!" Visca had downloaded the language pack from the mainframe of the Void Wanderer, and finally decrypted the shattered crystal’s memories, "Let’s see... spaceship, irregular army, pirate attack, seems like there’s nothing valuable... Hmm, at the end it was struck by some kind of space weapon, shields overloaded. The pirates here are quite formidable... Brother, this base was attacked by local pirates!"

Pirates? Pirates capable of using space weapons? How wonderful it would be if they had the strength to establish a nation!

Visca toyed with the pitiful memory core for at least five minutes, until it turned into gas with a burst of light, and all its information was finally extracted. The probe had witnessed the entire process of the base being attacked by a massive mixed fleet, but whether they were pirates was still uncertain—the pirates and the government army on this planet hardly differed anyway. At the end of the memory, the probe recorded an order for a full retreat. It seemed that the stationed troops here had found a safe new base, but the probe was destroyed at that moment. The exact location of the army’s final evacuation point was not recorded, and finding other memory bodies would not be easy either. Anything intact in the base had already been moved out, and only rubbish was left behind.

A tall figure landed lightly beside me like the wind, the returning Medusa from her investigation of the living quarters.

"There’s the smell of blood and death, but no bodies."

The long-haired purple-haired elder sister reported somewhat discouragedly, and behind her followed a group of disheveled Heroic Spirits ABCD.

"We collapsed an excavated asteroid," Sister R’s mouth curved up slightly, "but I managed to get out in time!"

Hey! Clearly, your team members were buried in there, right? Even if I know Heroic Spirits won’t get hurt that easily, shouldn’t you be more aware of your role as a leader?

"As a woman, being all dirty like this, doesn’t it affect your image?" Faced with my snark, Sister R awkwardly turned her head away, then found herself face-to-face with a dirty, cat-faced General Visca, breaking out in cold sweat, "General Visca, I am extremely sorry, please don’t mind what I just said to myself!"

"The storage area and the armament production area are the same, no bodies, no wreckage, the evacuation was clean," the other two groups of Heroic Spirits also hurried back, their findings largely similar, "All the buildings are now empty shells, anything that could be moved has been taken."

"Hmm, if they evacuated strategically after repelling the enemy, they would certainly take away everything they could, and they definitely wouldn’t just leave their comrades’ bodies in an abandoned base. There’s nothing left, no signs of the buildings being forcibly opened, at least it shows that the remaining people retreated in an orderly fashion under safe conditions. Yet, it’s a little strange," I look around at the dark and silent asteroid complex, with only a few still-functioning buildings casting distorted and strange lighting, "Even if abandoning the base, they should have reported to the rear. But the Light of El didn’t receive any communication, and moreover, there’s no left-behind code to indicate their whereabouts. Could it be that those stationed troops didn’t realize we’d be arriving here so soon?"

"Who knows," Big Sister drew circles on the ground, "Nothing is left, there’s no way to investigate what those evacuating exploration troops were up to..."

"Erm, what, Sister," I watched Big Sister warily as she continued to draw circles on the alloy floor, with the temperature around seemingly approaching absolute zero, "what are you doing?"

"Let’s destroy this place later, and by the way, release a chain curse that brings misfortune upon those who’ve attacked here. Hmm, I’m not quite skilled at it though, and I can’t guarantee the actual effect or success rate. Plus, I have no idea how aliens breed their offspring..."

Seeing Big Sister enveloped in swirling black mist and speaking such chilling words with a nonchalant tone, even Medea, known as the Witch, zipped back ten meters with a face full of "Good Kapa, Imperial People are indeed too Kapa." Meanwhile, I was desperately wondering—now that we’re delving into the topic of their reproductive methods, my once innocent and gentle Big Sister, what on earth are you cursing now...

Just then, Sakura’s voice suddenly erupted through the communication link, tinged with a hint of nervousness, "This is the communication tower, this is the communication tower... A small spaceship is approaching, its target is this base. Should we abort the operation?"

"A spaceship?" Big Sister stood up. "Are you sure there’s only one small ship?"

"Yes, it just emerged from a jump a few thousand kilometers away. Its length is about five hundred meters. According to your classification methods, it should be considered a small ship. Its target speed is not fast, but it will definitely arrive above the base within two hours."

"Don’t rush to attack," my curiosity was piqued at the sudden appearance of a lone little spaceship—I wanted to know what the other party was all about, and I immediately ordered, "Void Wanderer, sink into the space fold. All the Heroic Spirits within the abandoned base, spiritualize into invisibility. Let’s see what the other party is up to."

One minute later, we were all invisible, hiding around corners waiting for that mysterious small spaceship to appear.

True to Sakura’s report, about two hours later, that slow-moving spaceship finally showed up.

"So dilapidated..."

That was Big Sister’s first reaction.

Looking at that rectangular ship clumsily searching for a landing spot on the landing pad, as if one of its engines was also malfunctioning, I deeply agreed.

The ship’s body was slightly damaged, but that could be overlooked, considering it a baptism by the flames of war. Some modification marks could also be ignored, since the spaceships in this universe were a hodgepodge of various technologies. But—those two big chunks of armor plating that were clearly a different color from the surroundings on the ship’s belly? One of the eight engines, arranged in two rows behind its butt, obviously wasn’t igniting, right? The sheet of metal flapping at the ship’s rear—if there were wind—was definitely not designed that way, right?

And I couldn’t shake the feeling that among the pile of antennas in the middle of the ship body, there was one that... was actually tied to the bracket with wire?

This oddball thing can actually travel into outer space? How did you even make it out of the atmosphere? More importantly—is this thing really capable of jumping through space? Whoever is piloting that, go apologize to all the physicists in the universe!

"I... I need to re-evaluate the technological creativity of those low-level races," Visca stared dumbfounded at the rectangular spaceship that was as unassuming as a large slice of bread—especially its wire-tied antenna, "Our refurbished war-damaged spaceships are better than this. How did it escape the pull of gravity?"

While we were feeling bemused, that beaten-up ship finally completed its landing ordeal after struggling for fifteen minutes to find balance. If this had been on a battlefield, the ship would have been turned into a beehive in that time. From this moment, I concluded: Definitely not an enemy that had attacked this base before; otherwise, I would comb through deep space and execute each and every exploration team that had ever been stationed here.

In this brutal universe, the existence of such a bizarre spaceship wandering alone made me lose all hostility toward them. Then I patted Visca’s little head. "Girl, try to tap into their communication channel."

"Already successfully infiltrated," Visca squinted her eyes, her small face smearing a streak of dust on my pants. "It was way too easy. That kind of undefended communication equipment, you could probably tune in directly with an FM radio..."

Hey, this is too much...(To be continued. For further information, please log onto www.qidian.com. There are more Chapters, support the author, support genuine reading!)