Chapter 588: Broken Ship

This is the assembly platform of the base, next to the take-off and landing platform where we landed. As the largest flat area in the asteroid fortification group, this place is entirely made of silver-gray Imperial alloy, with New Eden etched on the ground. The emblem of the Federation and the coat of arms of the Empire, as well as everything around the assembly platform, are brand new.

The smooth building surface, the alloy armor plates that have just been grown by nano-builders, the air combat robots that have not yet been started after assembly, and the spotless crystal matrix, but the lifeless base has a brand-new feeling everywhere, making people feel extra special. Incongruous.

We obviously contacted this base once before, but only twelve hours have passed since then. The base has been abandoned due to attack, and even the garrison here has completely disappeared. What exactly happened here?

"There is still 10% power here," Viska's voice came from the mental connection. She had just emerged from a functional building in front that was not completely enclosed and was pulling her messy hair. "That's it. The few beacons that still had warning lights on were powered by the spare Protoss Crystal Tower. Fortunately, they escaped the attack and provided teleportation coordinates for the Void Rangers. I have transferred their energy to The artificial gravity generator is on. It will start in about ten minutes, and the remaining crystal energy can maintain gravity for twelve hours. Heroic spirits who are not used to the space environment can relax a little bit."

Suddenly, everyone's eyes were focused on one person.

The antenna on King Da Mao's head suddenly straightened up: "I... I'm just not used to this feeling of being helpless! As a knight, you are meant to fight on the ground..."

Before she could finish speaking, Bedivere floated gracefully from the front and noticed Saber's gaze. The latter immediately stood upright in the air and gave a knightly salute as steadily as a mountain: "My king."

"People always have what they are good at and what they are not good at." I saw that Arturia's stupid hair was curled up, and I immediately stepped forward and patted him on the shoulder, "Don't go out to eat Overlord Dinner with Sandora when you go back. Just learn basic physics and you will get better..."

How should I put it? Before I finished speaking, Saber had already let me shoot her away. She really needs to practice more.

Originally, it was impossible for such a guy who couldn't learn to fight without gravity to participate in this operation, but the pride of the Knight King would not allow her to hide in a safe spaceship and face a person just because she couldn't stand up straight on the battlefield. The Colossus was in a daze, and the Lion King almost stalked him and finally came over like a bastard in the name of familiar skills. But now it seems that Saber still has a long way to go before he can learn to walk in space. Before that, he can't perform well. As for her swordsmanship, she could only serve as her own space fort - firing one shot and then fleeing for more than a hundred kilometers like the Long March 7, and then being towed back by the tugboat to fire the second shot.

Fortunately, the life-saving artificial gravity was finally restored at this time. Arturia, who was about to float off the assembly platform and fly to the sea of ​​stars, danced in the air for a while before lying on the edge of the platform with all her body prostrated. Sister R next to me immediately sighed in disappointment. Tone: She has the chain ready, just waiting to throw spears and tie people up.

Sister R is now completely bad at learning.

"The damage to the base is not serious," Viska walked ahead of us. As the person with the strongest military expertise at the scene, the little girl finally had an advantage. "The destroyed sentry guns and laser turrets show that they were used when the enemy appeared. They all entered the battle in time. Some battleship fragments collected nearby and the damage scars on the front of the base showed that the enemy's main force did not get too close here. However, due to the incomplete construction of the base, the energy shield output was insufficient. Coupled with the fact that the enemy may have super weapons, the defensive barrier was destroyed first even though the base had complete firepower, and then, a little bit of bad luck——"

Viska pointed to two small points in the distance. There were two asteroids that flew away from the building complex. The alloy skeletons connected to the main body of the base were blown off from the front, and then were thrown out. There may be other objects in the middle. Something collided with each other and eventually turned into two unlucky guys spinning rapidly.

"The Nether Energy Reactor was actually hit head-on... Those idiots... gave them so much technology, but the imitation they made was still at such a level that they couldn't even copy the technology of the Space-Time Reactor... "

Keep your mouth shut, my dear sister, not all races can use quantum brains as daily computing tools.

The power zone of the base has been torn apart, and there may be a large dose of psionic energy leaked. There can be no survivors. The several heroic spirit teams that followed us were divided into three directions, and went to investigate the storage area, residential area and other areas of the base respectively. In the armed production area, the bonus from the Temple of the World Tree allows them to have higher sensitivity than the Xiling life detection device, and we move closer to the command center in the center of the base. The golden pyramid-shaped building, the Xingling hub seems It wasn't seriously damaged, and there might be something worth collecting inside.

"The base has not been completely destroyed, but the most critical building has been destroyed." Viska's blood-red cat eyes released a faint red light, seeming to be scanning the structure of the surrounding buildings. "There are no signs of overload in the conventional energy pipes." , and so far there has been no sign of a large-scale enemy landing on the base. The troops stationed here should have successfully driven away the first wave of enemies, but they took the initiative to retreat after discovering that the base was unable to work and its location was exposed. , they took away almost everything they could... huh?"

Viska suddenly discovered something, ran forward quickly and then ran back holding something the size of a water tank.

"Protus's probe seems to have been broken, but there are no scars on the surface. The builder may still remember something."

The little guy had a somewhat excited expression on his face. He was holding a "water tank" that was almost as big as her at a height of 1.2 meters, and it looked as if it was nothing. Then he threw the latter roughly to the ground. My sister and I suddenly felt that we were under our feet. There was a shaking.

...Even if it's not broken, it should be almost done by now. This girl is really used to those monster machines produced by the empire.

As the most important daily work unit, the exploration aircraft manufactured by Protos have naturally been transformed by Xiling Technology, but those are all internal improvements for the AI ​​system and energy system. Their appearance is still so simple and round. , the front half is a variety of industrial ray focusing prisms that look like big eyes, a fat alloy belly in the middle, and the tail is an anti-gravity device and thruster. Viska is now lying in front of its big eyes, holding the shiny thing with its small hands. The focusing prism was pulled out hey hey hey.

This violent little sister didn't have time to study the crude automatic robots of the Protoss. She just detected that the memory core of the latter was near the head, and wanted to find the nearest way to dig it out.

"Hey, girl, be careful not to break it..."

I quickly stepped forward to stop Viska from violently dismantling it. Suddenly, the "eyes" of the detective suddenly lit up.

A stream of blue-white high-energy material hit Viska head-on before I could react, causing the latter's little head to tilt back more than ninety degrees, and the little girl's pulling movements suddenly stiffened.

It was still a moment before I could react. As soon as Viska, who was suddenly attacked, recovered his posture, he pulled back and swept his legs. Suddenly, the entire prism part of the probe flew out.

What a violent solution.

"Hey, I should have known that this kind of idiot AI is unreliable," Viska muttered, stretched out his hand and pulled out a triangular crystal block from the head of the smoldering probe, turned his face and showed it off to me, "Hehe , Onii-sama, this one was not broken...Eh? What's wrong?"

Should I remind her to look in the mirror?

I was hit by the particle gun used by the detective to defend myself. Although the defense was not broken, it was completely black!

"Wow!" Viska finally realized that his little face might have looked like the background color of the universe. He hurriedly took out a handkerchief and wiped it, "Damn... the attack power of that thing is too low, and the automatic shield has not been activated at all... …I didn’t expect it to be like this…”

Ah, a face that can withstand particle guns, but it doesn't even bother to activate the shield. Visca, are you forcing me to complain?

My sister and I both helped Viska wipe her dark little face. In the end, it just turned the little girl into a big-faced girl. I don’t know what the attack was like just now. It wasn’t very powerful, but it was pretty good. .

By the way, Viska's face feels really good and soft. If you didn't remind me, no one would have thought that this thing can withstand armor-piercing bullets.

"Okay, now let's see what this damn detective recorded."

Just like a child having a bad temper, Viska wiped her black and white face hard, and held the removed memory core in her hand. She didn't see any other movements, and the memory core Lighted up on its own.

Several seconds passed with no movement.

"...Hmm, brother, wait a minute, this is encoded in the Protos language, I will make the next compatibility package..."

It turns out that the constant "beep beep beep" sound in your stomach since just now is because of this?

"Okay!" Viska downloaded the language library from the Void Ranger's host and finally parsed out the memory of the damaged crystal. "Let me take a look...the spaceship, the miscellaneous army, and the pirate attack. There seems to be nothing of value. ...Well, in the end it was hit by some kind of space weapon, and the shield was overloaded. The pirate group here is quite powerful... Brother, this base was attacked by local pirates!"

pirate? Pirates who can afford space weapons? How great it would be to build a country with this strength!

Viska struggled with the poor memory core for at least five minutes, until the latter turned into a gaseous state in a flash of light, and all its information was finally extracted. The probe witnessed the base being attacked by a large mixed fleet. The whole process, but it is not certain whether the latter are pirates - there is no difference between pirates and government troops in this world. At the end of the memory, the spy plane recorded an order for the entire army to retreat. It seems that the garrison here A safe new base has been found, but the reconnaissance plane was destroyed at that moment. The location where the army finally evacuated was not recorded, and it may not be so easy to find other memories. Everything in the base is intact. It had been moved away and all that was left was in tatters.

A tall figure landed next to her as lightly as the wind. Medusa, who went to investigate the residential area, returned.

"There was a smell of blood and death, but no bodies were found."

Sister Zi Changzhi reported somewhat discouragedly, and behind her, followed a group of disgraced heroic spirits ABCD.

"We dug up a hollowed-out asteroid," Sister R's lips turned up slightly, "but I ran out in time!"

Hello! Your team members were obviously buried in it, right? Even if you know that heroic spirits won't be injured that easily, can you still give me some self-consciousness as a leader?

"As a woman, wouldn't being dirty affect your image?" Faced with my complaint, Sister R turned her head unnaturally, and then faced a dirty cat face diagonally below her, and suddenly she was covered in cold sweat. "General Viska is very sorry. Please don't mind what I just said to myself!"

"The same goes for the storage area and the armed production area. There are no corpses, no wreckage, and the evacuation was clean." The other two groups of heroic spirits also rushed back, and their findings were similar. "All the buildings are now empty shells. Everyone who can be moved has been moved.”

"Well, if the strategy changes after repelling the enemy, they will definitely take everything they can. The bodies of their comrades will definitely not be left in the abandoned base with nothing, including the base buildings. The signs of being violently opened at least indicate that the remaining people retreated in an orderly manner under safe conditions, but it’s a bit strange.” I looked around at the dark and silent asteroid complex around me, with only a few building lights still running. Everything was distorted and bizarre, "Even if they abandoned the base, they should report to the rear, but Elsword did not receive the communication at all, and there was no code left here to explain their whereabouts. Did the garrison evacuate?" Didn’t you know we would be arriving soon?”

"Who knows," Sister drew circles on the ground, "There is nothing left, and there is no way to investigate what the evacuated exploration troops are doing..."

"Uh, what about that, sister?" I looked at my sister with some trepidation as she kept drawing circles on the alloy floor. It felt like the temperature all around was approaching absolute zero. "What are you doing?"

"Destroy this place in a while, and release a chain curse to make the guys who attack here suffer bad luck. Well, I'm not very skilled. The actual effect and success rate cannot be guaranteed, and I don't know how aliens breed offspring. …”

Seeing my sister covered in black mist and saying such chilling words in a calm tone, even Medea, who is known as the witch, rushed out ten meters away with "Good card" written all over her face. "Pa, everyone in the empire really likes Kapa", and I urgently want to know, it all involves people's reproduction methods. My former simple and gentle sister, what on earth are you cursing now...

At this moment, Sakura's voice suddenly sounded in the communication link, with a little nervousness: "This is the communication tower, this is the communication tower... There is a small spacecraft approaching, and its target is this base. Do you want to terminate the operation?" ?”

"Spaceship?" Sister stood up, "Are you sure there is only one small spaceship?"

"Well, it just jumped out from thousands of kilometers away. It is only about 500 meters long. According to your classification method, it should be regarded as a small spaceship. The target speed is not fast, but it will definitely reach the base within two hours. .”

"Don't be busy attacking yet." I was also very curious about a lonely small spaceship that suddenly appeared at this time. I didn't know the origin of the other party, so I immediately ordered, "The Void Ranger sank into the fold of space, in the abandoned base. The heroic spirits inside have turned invisible, let’s see what the other party is doing.”

A minute later, we all entered the invisible state, hiding in the corners and waiting for the unknown small spacecraft.

Just as Sakura reported, about two hours later, the slow ship finally appeared.

"So broken..."

This was my sister's first sigh.

Looking at the rectangular spacecraft that was stumbling on the take-off and landing platform to find a landing spot, as if one of its engines was still a little faulty, I wholeheartedly agreed.

It’s okay if the hull is a little damaged. It should have withstood the baptism of war, and some traces of modification can be ignored. Anyway, the spaceships in this universe are a hodgepodge of various technologies, but - the two large armor plates on the belly of the broken spaceship are obviously different from those around it. Not the same color, right? One of the eight engines arranged in two rows behind your butt is obviously not igniting, right? The piece of iron fluttering at the stern of the boat facing the wind (if there is wind) is definitely not designed like this, right?

And I don’t know if it’s an illusion, but among the bunch of antennas in the middle of the ship, there seems to be one... or is it tied to a bracket with iron wire?

Can this weird thing really go into space? How did you leave the atmosphere? More importantly - did this thing really jump over? The pilot of the spacecraft over there, please apologize to all the physicists in the universe!

"I...I need to re-evaluate the technological creativity of those lower races," Viska stared blankly at the rectangular spaceship that was as thick as a large piece of sliced ​​bread, especially its iron wire tied to the bracket. Antenna, "The battle-damaged spaceships we retrained are stronger than this one. How did it break away from gravity?"

In our embarrassing moment, the dilapidated spaceship that was almost challenging the bottom line of technology finally completed its landing. It took fifteen minutes to find a balance, which was enough for others on the battlefield. Beat it into briquettes. The moment I saw this scene, I came to the conclusion: Those enemies in front were definitely not the enemies that had attacked this base. Otherwise, I would have to search the deep space and shoot all the exploration teams stationed here one by one. .

In this cruel universe, there are still such weird spaceships that dare to turn into ashes single-handedly. I immediately lost my hostility towards them, and then patted Viska's little head: "Girl, try to monitor their contact channel. "

"The intrusion has been successful a long time ago." Viska squinted his eyes, and his little face rubbed a piece of dust on my pants. "It's so easy. I can probably listen to that kind of undefended communication equipment with an FM radio." …”

Hey, this is over...