Chapter 949: Planet Fortress—Who Designed This Unfortunate Thing?

"Now, I feel like they are shaking."

Lilina scratched the guardrail in front of her and murmured to herself, but her eyes were sparkling, "Hey, I suddenly saw some interesting life reactions just now. It seems to be hidden inside that planet fortress... It’s so profound that I almost even deceived the Pope.”

Sandora and I looked at each other, and the latter pondered for a moment and said to Lin Xue: "What did you see just now?"

"Escape, annihilation, hatred, despair, wandering to this day..." The eldest lady closed her eyes slightly, with an indescribable sense of desolation and sadness in her tone. The girl with the power of the prophet seemed to be immersed in a world that we cannot understand for a moment. In the time and space viewed with the naked eye, the whole person had a lonely temperament. When I saw this, I quickly slapped her on the back of the head: "Speak humanly!"

"These unlucky guys made the Empire survive once before," Lin Xue rubbed the back of her head and stretched out her legs to kick me. "Now they still have a few survivors hiding in the planet fortress. Don't ask for more. , go up and see for yourself. My suggestion is not to cause any casualties, so you'd better tie up Pandora and Huesca first..."

The two short winter melons immediately looked at the eldest lady and gritted their teeth.

The vast majority of the ghost fleet are uncontrolled death ships, but obviously there are still living people in this entire fleet cluster. They are hiding in the large ships in the inner layer of the fleet and on the planet fortress at the core of the fleet. They are avoiding The imperial spaceship, unfortunately, ran into the macro world. Now that the imperial fleet appeared in front of them, the latter instinctively wanted to escape. This should be the situation so far. Judging from the fact that the other party did not hesitate to use a spaceship to self-destruct to lure the Imperial Army to launch a general attack, in order to gain one minute of void jumping time, it seems that the other party has a good understanding of the parameters of some of the Empire's key equipment. If there is no new Garden of Death, equipment. Maybe they can really escape from this place. Shandora just thought for a moment and made a decision, ordering the main force to continue to gather outside the ghost fleet cluster, while using the fully charged artillery array to deter these ghost ships with unknown intentions, and then let the Imperial Admiral lead twenty Two Avenging Angel-class elite motherships and a few light spacecrafts approached the planet fortress at the core of the Ghost Fleet.

"Isn't this a bit risky?"

My sister was more cautious. She glanced at the dark ghost ships with flashing lights with some worry. "They are not idiots. Once they misunderstand each other and fight desperately, the Imperial Admiral may not be able to withstand it."

I glanced at Lin Xue. The other party nodded to me: "They will not take the initiative to attack. Of course, the premise is that we don't fire first."

"But it's safer for me to make a statement first."

I thought about it and ordered the communicator on the officer platform to be switched to the frequency band for external full-frequency broadcasting. Then I thought for a minute, "By the way, what should I say better? It means that we are here for love and justice. It needs to be very sensational, the kind that makes you want to take out your house book and give it to someone as soon as it sounds like it.”

Lilina looked at me with admiration: "Wow, boss. You really never make drafts!"

I didn't know whether this girl was praising me or hurting me, but out of habit I threw her into a nearby basket.

"Whatever, they won't respond anyway, but it's somewhat beneficial."

Lin Xue glanced at me and said helplessly.

I thought about it. Turn on the communicator and said in the full-band broadcast: "The ghost fleet...well, I don't know what your name is. In short, this is the Royal Fleet of the Xiling Empire. I am the commander of the fleet. You have entered the empire's ruling area. The fleet will conduct routine inspections. You can relax your nerves. The fleet will not attack you. We hope you can cooperate with our actions. During the routine inspections, we hope you will not try to leave the scene or act irrationally, otherwise we have the right to …”

Lin Xue pinched me from behind: "Hurry up and get to the point!"

I quickly summed it up in two sentences: "Anyway, we are landing now. Don't just fire artillery, otherwise the entire Imperial Army will attack."

Shandora pressed her forehead: "It was a huge mistake to let Arjun play freely..."

I'm having fun, anyway, as long as the meaning is expressed clearly, I always think that the diplomatic rhetoric between the two civilizations is idle. You use a lot of rhetorical methods... can people understand? Even the cultural backgrounds are different. In Bibulu's hometown, "Have you eaten?" is a curse word... You see, it's off topic.

After broadcasting the declaration prohibiting exchange of fire three times on the entire frequency band, the Imperial Admiral led the selected elite escort fleet towards the hinterland of the ghost fleet cluster. I noticed that after the Imperial flagship's sudden action, those ghost ships were all There was more or less panic. The specific manifestation was that the lights on many spacecrafts flickered like a convulsion, and those identified spacecrafts subconsciously increased the engine thrust - but there is a Garden of Death system to modify this area. The void information structure, except for the Imperial Army, all spaceships have lost the ability to sail in the void, and those ghost ships were eventually stopped in place.

Just like what Lin Xue said, although the ghost ships caused a big commotion, no warships rashly exchanged fire with the imperial ships. Until we approached the huge planet fortress, there was no conflict, even though everyone felt The atmosphere in this space was extremely tense, but Lin Xue's prediction was still correct.

There is only one thing that is regrettable. We did not receive a response from the other party in the end. All the ghost ships remained silent. The star warships in the core area greeted the landing craft from the Imperial Admiral in a lifeless darkness.

The landing team boarded a special defense landing craft that looked like plant pods and arrived at the surface of the planet fortress, nicknamed the "Rotten Potato". The landing of the landing craft and several frigates did not elicit any response. After leaving the ramp, we saw only a piece of land in front of us. With the dark and deep sky and earth, the atmosphere here is a bit depressing.

"It has an atmosphere, and it seems to be denser than the earth." My sister shrugged her nose and frowned slightly, "It just tastes worse."

"Earth creatures cannot survive in this kind of atmospheric environment. There are some toxic trace elements," Sandora lightly stomped her feet. The little leather boots made a short clanging sound on the metal ground. "All ghost ships have this kind of atmospheric environment, perhaps simulating the ecology of 'their' home. The surroundings look desolate, and no animals or plants have been found. As carbon The home planet of basic organisms. The environment here is not comfortable."

I found a small high platform and stood on it to look far into the distance. What you can see is the bare dark metal land that stretches all the way to the horizon. Only from very far away can you see the slight undulations of the earth, forming a parabola across the entire sky. This planetary fortress, which looks lumpy from a distance, is actually quite smooth in detail. There are no animals or plants here, nor rivers, lakes, or mountains. Such as complex terrain, all parabolic things are made of alloy armor with smooth surfaces. Standing on the ground of the planet, it is like facing an almost infinite square. With such a monotonous scene, even the Imperial Star Battleship is much friendlier than it looks.

The planetary fortress under our feet has an atmosphere, and it is thicker than the atmosphere on the earth. There is a trace amount of light source in the atmosphere, which allows people to directly observe the surrounding environment with the naked eye. These light sources are emitted uniformly from the boundary of the atmosphere. Rapid analysis and detection show that they are self-luminous phenomena caused by chemical reactions in this layer of the atmosphere. When the landing craft penetrated the atmosphere, it interfered with these chemical reactions, causing several small black holes to appear at the edge of the atmosphere. Looking up, you can see that they are spreading at the very high zenith, but the glowing phenomenon has reappeared in the center. ——Perhaps in a few minutes they will be connected to form a huge black circle.

In addition to our whole family, we also landed together with three teams of heroic combatants and scouts. The mission of these special teams composed of armored scorpions, ravens and leader bees is not to protect the leader, but to protect the scouts and explore the crust of the planet fortress. , find the entrance as soon as possible, because previous scans showed that there is a very strong energy reaction under the crust of this fortress, and we cannot guarantee whether we can still guarantee safety after going deep into the opponent's base.

As for the Pandora sisters, they didn't come - I was afraid they would tear down the house.

"Ola, as the commander-in-chief, try not to start a fight after discovering the other party."

Before splitting up, Sandora specifically told the leader of the leader bee a few words, because the latter should be considered the most sane and calm among the three types of heroic combat soldiers, and asked her to restrict this mission that required peaceful operations to the safest place. Method - If I let the machete girl from Vega give orders, I would be very worried that she would attack from one side of the planet to the other side with a big knife...

"Even under attack?"

Aura asked quietly. The smooth half-covered visor prevented us from seeing her current expression. Of course, you can also think that "smooth" is the expression of the leader bee, although this is a bit strange.

Sandora glanced at Lin Xue before nodding: "Even if she is attacked."

Aura nodded calmly, and Vega, who was not far away, immediately put away his ship-cutting knife in frustration, and six mechanical joints creaked and drew a bunch of Chinese knots on the ground...

"I always feel a bit depressed." Raven 001, currently the most eccentric among all the senior officers of the empire, muttered. It's not surprising that she was dissatisfied. How can you say that ordinary imperial soldiers are not attacked? When killing is not allowed.

However, with Lin Xue's guidance leading the way, she could only obey unconditionally. After some awkwardness, Raven and Vega assigned their own soldiers to follow the team and quickly disappeared before our eyes.

The Imperial Admiral hovering over the planet fortress has previously launched some temporary satellites. Now these miniature detectors, which are not much larger than the boxes of mercury lamps, have begun to orbit this dark "rotten potato" and will scan The situation was transmitted to the landing troops on the surface. Sandora launched a temporary communication platform on the small high ground where we were to learn about the satellite scanning situation and the progress of each reconnaissance force. The close-range scan was indeed very different from the previous long-range detection. Soon we found the location of various facilities of the planet fortress on the energy distribution map marked by the satellite - of course, in Tavel's words, that is theory. This is the case.

Shandora identified the energy readings that seemed almost identical to me bit by bit, and explained in a low voice: "Air defense gun positions, large ship hangars, mine platforms for rapid ground defense, and suspected fields The acceleration ring of effect weapons. The weapon system of this fortress is very complete, but it focuses on defensive warfare within the star system. And there is no mathematical law modification facility related to the law system. This fortress may not be offensive. And more emphasis is placed on survivability, Arjun, look at these shield recharges...well, you probably can't understand..."

I don’t think she needs to be so clear about it.

"This is the first time I have seen a planet fortress made by a civilization other than the empire." Sister said with great interest, "I always feel that this thing is quite high-end. How does it compare with our planet battleships?"

"Star Battleship. In fact, it is not too high-end." Sandora's hair began to slowly fill with golden light spots, while whispering, "No, it should be said that Star Battleship is a kind of over-definition." It’s so extensive that it’s hard to say whether it’s high or high-end technology. Many civilizations have the ability to build such giant fortresses, as long as they can master the driving methods that are independent of macroscopic forces, such as coordinate-like driving or curvature driving, and have enough internal space isolation technology. .You can make star battleships. Some galactic-class civilizations that have just entered space also have the ability to hollow out certain metal planets and transform them into colony ships. If I have to say it, a space capsule with only a bunch of thrusters can also be considered a planet fortress. ——But that thing has nothing to do with a real battleship. The lowest-level star battleship may only be able to cruise in the low-light speed range. It has the limited ability to provide mobile colonization needs, and the most advanced one may be like the Warsong, capable of It can easily turn the entire galaxy upside down. And the one under our feet is somewhere in between... I don't know much about the physical properties of the interstellar alloy it uses, but if my guess is good, it can be exactly the same as what the Empire is currently manufacturing. The 'Zero' class star battleship combat even has obvious advantages when facing some early models."

I was immediately surprised.

"So, they might have had a deep relationship with the empire during their glorious period. Such a powerful civilization has no reason not to be included in the anti-abyss front. It's a pity that I know nothing about them..." Sandora smiled helplessly. said.

At this moment, we suddenly received a message from Aura. They found something suspected to be the entrance to the planet fortress thousands of kilometers away from here!

With the help of space teleportation, thousands of kilometers are approaching in an instant. We quickly completed the rendezvous with Aura. She had already asked the leader bee to use the power of the mirror image to set up a large-scale temporary base nearby. There was no armored scorpion at the scene. figure.

"They have gone down with the scouts," a certain raven (I really couldn't tell what number it was, although judging from the cheerful look on the other side, he must be a veteran with a higher number) said with a shake of his head, "In Only those guys with muscles growing into their heads can perform operations in such a narrow place. If you hurry up, you might be able to join the scouts before the nervous machete gang demolishes the house..."

I looked at the so-called entrance not far away. It was a passage like an ant nest, located in the center of a relatively gentle hill. The entrance of the passage formed a hole with a slope of about 45 degrees. The radius at the narrowest point was about It is more than ten meters long. Standing on the edge of the hill, you can feel the cold wind blowing up from below. There are no iconic symbols on the smooth metal pit walls around it, indicating that this opening is probably not for people to walk through - - Of course, based on the consistent moral character of this book, it may be that the wind has blown the road signs away over time, or it may be worse, the road signs on the ground have faded.

...Anyway, let’s go down and have a look.

Aura was left to lead her bees to guard outside the entrance. I jumped into the big hole with my family. After going down, I discovered that the hole was not as deep as I thought: there was only a drop of about a hundred meters. , compared with the starship corridor that is often several kilometers long, this height is indeed a small step.

However, after landing, what appeared in front of us was a tubular passage that sloped downwards with no end in sight, indicating that the real destination extended a long way underground.

I contacted Vega. She had already traveled hundreds of kilometers with the scouts - charging in at supersonic speeds all the way. I began to feel that it was a huge mistake to let her participate in this kind of exploration mission, but I am thankful for it. She at least remembered the rule of not hurting other people's plants and trees, and did not use her own ship-cutting knife to clear the way, otherwise she would have run thousands of kilometers by this time.

Vega also reported to us a noteworthy situation:

The underground of this planetary fortress extends in all directions, with forks everywhere. Scans show that they are an extremely complex transportation network, and due to the existence of psionic interference, the scan cannot be easily extended to the entire planet as before, and can only be carried out in a few nearby areas. It can be used within a hundred kilometers. The team she leads has been divided into three routes. Considering safety issues, the troops will no longer be divided on the road ahead, but the road to the bottom will be randomly selected. In other words, moving forward in these passages, we I can only find a general direction without having to meet her.

These underground passages are completely different from the bright and straight corridors in the space fortress that I remember. Although they also have flat floors, the walls are irregular pipe-shaped like mines. Gray-black metal covers these uneven surfaces. The straight pipe walls don't look very clean in the dim light. There are lights in the passage, but it's hard to say that this is normal lighting. It should just be a low-light light used in emergencies. Anyway, it looks dim. It made my eyes uncomfortable. After walking inside for a while, I couldn't stand it anymore. I shook my head decisively and called Alaya and Xiao Qijing out. One adjusted the daylight and the other the long-range light, and the searchlight opened the way ahead...

Exposed cables can be seen everywhere on the walls and top of the corridor along the direction of the passage. I don’t know whose idea it was to design such exposed pipes. Safety and stability are not considered for the time being. Just from the aesthetic point of view, they look like they are unfinished. Like an unfinished building, Sandora complained about the poor wiring methods as she walked, while Qian Qian kept curiously associating this twisting tubular passage with an ant hole.

Then... we walked into an unusually wide and irregular hall. In front of us were fifty or sixty passages of various sizes and in random locations.

Qianqian jumped up while holding my arm: "Look, Jun, I just said this is an ant hole!" (To be continued)