... The council disappeared in front of me and Sandora again just after speaking halfway, and it reappeared after several seconds this time, and it was flickering all over my body. Seeing this situation, I couldn't help but feel a little worried: "Then What... are you okay?"
"It doesn't matter." The parliament still looked indifferent, "My data subject is placed on the planet, and the interference of the extension body on the network will not affect the subject. The amount of data in the Unard aggregate is too large, and we have no With advanced mass projection technology like yours, if I want to appear on the remote nodes of the network and be able to contact the material world, I can only use this kind of bandwidth and environment demanding... "Flickering, disappearing, reappearing, the council continued Said: "...extended body technology."
Ke Kekina looked at his long-lost and newly reunited old partner: "Actually, you don't need to use the extended body to come here. If you use the conventional projection, you can still see the scene."
"But I want to 'touch' that thing myself, and I want to know what kind of thing brought you such a catastrophe." The council smiled slightly, looking at Kokokina's erratic face, "contact with the material world, It's my only pleasure... ”
Three seconds later, the council reappeared in front of us, and she looked at Lin Xue sincerely: "Well... can you turn off the small device in your hand? Although you think it's nothing, it is still very fragile to our network great influence."
I glanced at Miss Lin, and found that she was using a data terminal to play interstellar online, and she was online with Bubbles: Immediately, I knew what was going on with the frequent and abnormal interference from just now, and at the same time I felt sorry for the council. deeply apologise.
At this moment, the rail car that relies on the tractor beam to transport people between the space station and the large spacecraft also arrived at the terminal smoothly. We felt a slight vibration under our bodies, and then the porthole next to us opened, and the outside was already the scene inside the spacecraft .
A group of people came outside, and there are already many staff members here to respond, most of them have their eyes on me and Sandora more or less, how should I put it. Although the communication between the empire and the exiles is now becoming normalized, this cannot change the status quo that the imperials are rare creatures in the eyes of the exiles. It is indeed quite curious that we appear in front of them.
"Oh, it looks... What an old spaceship." Lin Xue raised her head and looked around, and couldn't help mumbling. According to the history of the exiles we know, this colonial giant ship should have been built when it was the Exiles Fleet. It is an antique tens of thousands of years old. We have to admit that this is a very magnificent giant spaceship. If people on earth saw it, they would probably be amazed, but it is undeniable that it is old and ruined. The alloy floor of the ship's mooring port can be seen with serious signs of wear and tear. Although this special metal will never rust, years of erosion have also left them devastated. The light in the wide berthing port is very uneven, and many places are even dark. Local artificial gravity has a deflection of at least five degrees. It makes people feel very uncomfortable, and the atmospheric circulation here seems to have stopped completely. The low air pressure is not like an environment prepared for creatures. Most of the staff on site are wearing special fully enclosed work clothes: another one Some are probably racially specific and can survive in low pressure and oxygen-free environments.
"The Ankakh series is the oldest colonial giant ship model. It was built with no experience at the beginning. It has many design deficiencies. No one would have thought that its ecosystem would need to be maintained for so many years," said Ke Kekina. Floating in front of us to lead the way, although this spirit creature also has human-like limbs, he seems not used to walking, more like a ghost floating around, "In addition, we are not yet proficient in phantom energy technology, There have been several accidents on the Ankach 5, and its ecosystem is the worst among all giant ships. When it escaped, only one-sixth of the shelters of the ship could survive. But compared to Compared with Ankahe 6, which disappeared in the depths of the void hundreds of years ago during the psionic furnace rampage, it is actually quite lucky."
how to say. My biggest problem when communicating with these exiles is that I always get into awkward situations from time to time. Although the other party didn't mean it at all, I don't have to take all the responsibility. But when it should be embarrassing, it will still be embarrassing. This can only be said to be a result of personality - just like a real literary youth, even scolding the street can't help but use parallel sentences...
The long axis of Ankakh 5 is more than 100 kilometers long. Of course, the passage in the ship is even more crowded. The target warehouse is in the middle of the giant ship. It is definitely not possible to walk there. , we can only go there by a small shuttle. To pass through the gate in the surface area, you need to cross a large plain attached to the isolation bulkhead (this plain was supposed to be a residential and ecological area, but it has now become a dead place due to poisonous gas and pollution, and you can only see it through the portholes. to the abandoned urban buildings, the scorched earth, and some distorted plant remains), and then flew directly into the intricate pipe network cabin of the giant ship from a large crack in the second-level blockade wall that did not look like a normal design Finally, after crossing a small town built near the cooling core and still dimly lit, we arrive at the warehouse where "the thing" is stored.
Along the way, I saw a starship that was not so much a colony ship, but rather a steaming wreckage of a spaceship. The dilapidation of the cascading ecological zones, transportation networks, and concentrated residential areas was shocking, and I couldn’t help but feel shocked. Dare to imagine how they survived in such an ecological environment in the last few hundred years of exile. The most embarrassing thing is the big hole in the middle of the second-level blockade wall. At that time, two material synthesis factories and a small residential area near the rift were instantly irradiated into powdery crystal substances, and the remaining pollution has not been cleaned up until now, and the residents near the contaminated area had no Going there, he could only risk his life to live in a shelter separated from the deadly dust by a wall - these are all told by Kokokina on the road, he knows all about the accidents that happened to every colony ship in the Fifth Fleet .
I don’t know if Sandora was touched by the dilapidated scenes she saw along the way, her complexion was not very good-looking, when the shuttle arrived at the destination, she whispered: “Ah Jun, I’m a little An uneasy feeling."
"Indeed, the situation with the Fifth Fleet is really..."
"No, I didn't mean that," Sandora's voice sounded in the spiritual connection. "Is there some other reason that makes me feel... uncomfortable, maybe it's my intuition that something is going to happen."
I gave Sandora a strange look, and then suddenly thought: As a person who has witnessed tens of millions of years (maybe longer?) of history, and has been exposed to more touching events than exiles, there is almost no upper limit for calmness Queen of the Empire, could Sandora lose her composure because she saw a deserted ecological ship? Obviously impossible.
Just when I was about to ask further what was going on. But Ke Kejina suddenly said: "The one in front is."
Sandora waved her hand lightly, signaling not to worry about her, and then pulled me off the shuttle.
In front of everyone is a large group of metal structures that have been severely deformed and damaged, and their materials and functions cannot be seen at all. It is roughly square, with a side length of about ten meters. In front of us stood like a small building, its surface was covered with twisted metal plates, and jagged fragments of parts protruded from under the broken metal plates, all parts of it were pitch black, but it was unknown This color became like this later, I can't feel any noteworthy energy reaction inside it, although there are traces of radiation and secondary energy, but it can't reach the level of "alive", it looks like a ball from Scrap metal chunks salvaged from the battlefield. If there is anything that attracts attention, it is that this alloy lump is ugly enough.
"Uh, you said... because you accidentally discovered this thing, and then the Melovas called?"
I looked at Ke Kekina suspiciously, and suddenly felt that things were a bit funny: I thought I would see some treasure, such as the buzzing high-tech non-burnable garbage of the Empire, but I didn't expect that what appeared in front of me was just a ten-meter A square piece of iron that doesn't even have a high-energy reaction inside. And I observed the mechanical structure exposed under the damaged alloy shell, and found that their design was abnormally crude. Not to mention comparing it with Imperial Technology. Even compared with the spacecraft of the Fifth Fleet, it is not a thing of the same era. Although my own expertise isn't very polished...well, I admit it. My professional knowledge is just a bunch of things, but because I usually see those high-tech gadgets that are not obvious, I still have a little discernment in related fields. The square wreck in front of me is quite old and backward no matter how you look at it. The product—more than half of its internal circuits are still connected by mechanical latches!
"History... shit, it's so long that it's impossible to tell," the eldest lady reached out and touched the shell of the thing, and immediately became speechless, "God knows when this was made, and according to the normal historical process, it should have disappeared long ago It's a joke."
"It's just a guess now," Cocokina seemed to shrug his shoulders, or maybe just waved his hands, "a statistician discovered this by accident. This unknown object was originally discovered outside the world barrier. When we were overhauling a faulty node, we found it stuck in the base of the security station. Later, the maintenance team sent it to the research department to try to analyze its source. As a result, a few days later... those Melovas appeared Yes. This unknown object was packed and sent to the spacecraft along with the scientific research data."
"It's hard to prove that the Merova people are attracted by this thing." I frowned.
"However, they pursued the huge ship Ankakh 5 and tried to stop it with almost half of their forces, but at the critical moment, they seemed to be timid, as if they were afraid of damaging something," said three members of Cocokina. Both eyes lit up at the same time, showing his agitation, "So we have been suspecting that something on Ankach 5 caught their attention, so we began to organize a manual search of all registered goods on Ankach 5, Not even a single nail was missing, and finally we found this one... block of unknown origin."
Cocokina's description finally made me and Sandora pay attention to it. In this way, the intention of those Melova people's actions is too obvious. There is no doubt that they came for the cargo of Ankahe 5, but just For such a square
"Didn't you find any other suspicious items?" I looked at Ke Kekina's blurred figure worriedly.
Cocokina spread his hands: "There is a list of all the goods transported by Ankakh 5. Except for the unknown origin of this block, the others are resources that we have produced from our home planet in the past two hundred years. Those things are more It cannot be the culprit that brought the Melovas here. And although the cube looks unremarkable, it has a secret that we can't explain at all: it appears outside the world barrier, that is, in It traveled across the void before we found it."
"But it doesn't have a structure that can travel through the void." Sandora said with a frown. Her eyes fell on the twisted and broken shell of the cube, and the complex mechanical structure exposed from under the shell, "There is no engine, no order field shield generator, and the energy level is not enough... In this way, either, it was A larger carrier ship was thrown into your world, and then attracted the Merova. Or, it is a part of a large spaceship that crashed in the void, and it just came to you by coincidence... "
Then the Melovas were also attracted. No matter how you look at it, the Fifth Fleet is seriously lying down this time. So now there is one last question: what do those Melovas see in this square
I reached out and smacked the cube's metal casing with too much force. A small piece of heavily corroded metal fragments just fell off. I picked up the fragment and squeezed it. I found that their strength may be the weakest among the interstellar alloys I have ever seen—I mean it and other interstellar alloys. Compared with the high-strength alloys made by civilizations, if compared with ordinary civilizations still trapped in their own universe, the technological content of this cube may also be called superb. After a simple judgment, I came to a conclusion: the material of the target object is only ordinary material, and the level of technology is hard to say, but it is absolutely incomparable with the Empire, and it will not surpass those Melovas who have almost learned their skills from the Empire. There is no special energy reaction inside. The possibility of a lump of treasure hidden in the iron shell was preliminarily ruled out. I turned my head and glanced at Sandora: "Do you want someone to take it apart on the spot? It's all broken like this. I don't think I need to think about protection methods. The inside is probably a mess."
"I..." Sandora's reaction was weird. She had been staring at the cube with a thoughtful expression from just now, and seemed to be thinking about other things when she spoke, "I don't know...but Looking at it, I have an inexplicable sense of familiarity... "
"Be careful when disassembling," Lin Xue said suddenly just when I wanted to ask Sandora further. "There seems to be something in here... let me see."
Missy said. He leaned forward and pressed his hand on the surface of the cube, his eyes glowed with a slight white light. I entered the Prophet mode, and I squeezed Sandora's hand a little worriedly, but suddenly found that the reaction of Aurelia on the other side was also a bit wrong: she was staring at the square in a daze just like Sandora, and the person behind her The wings swayed slightly unconsciously, completely lost in thought.
"Kite? Kite?" I called to Alleria. "What's wrong with you?"
"Your Majesty..." The other party came back to his senses, and his wings trembled slightly, "Ah, sorry, I was in a trance."
"You and Sandora have weird reactions," I frowned, "Is everything okay?"
"I don't know," Alleria breathed out to restore her usual calm look, "I may have the same feeling as Her Majesty Sandora, looking at this cube, I suddenly felt an inexplicable sense of intimacy... Your Majesty, please don't be fooled by the appearance of this cube, maybe we need to be cautious about this thing, it seems that it is not without reason that it can attract the Melova people."
At this time, the eldest lady had finished her scanning work, and she leaned over with a strange expression: "Wood, this is a coffin."
Sandora and I said "ah" at the same time, and Lin Xue said again: "The coffin, or it is a tomb, I can't see more clearly, you know, I am a prophet, not an X-ray machine. Let the research center Come on people, bring the finest dismantling equipment they can find, and don't break the 'stuff' inside, there is a broken energy junction at the core of this cube that needs special attention, in the other few In a historical line, there have been more than a dozen dismantling failures caused by this energy junction alone."
I immediately contacted Shadow City and asked the research center to organize a group of the most skilled technicians to rush over immediately. According to Lin Xue's suggestion, we decided to dismantle this mysterious cube right here to increase the success rate.
The council and Cocokina knew that things had progressed and that we needed a quiet environment, so they ordered irrelevant personnel to evacuate the scene, and only the two of them stayed here with Sandora's consent. Soon, a team of experts from Shadow City came to Ankach 5 with a full set of equipment, and the team was led by an acquaintance: Victor or Tokvi or Ketuowei or Kwitor.
By the way, he is leading the dismantling of Hei Shuo, and currently all the dismantling experts in Shadow City are in his hands.
"Your Majesty, Mistress, Tokewei is here to report!" The dark-skinned senior technician saluted me, Sandora and Lin Xue, and then his eyes fell on the unknown cube. Sure enough, his reaction was the same as that of Sandor just now. La and Aurelia's reactions were exactly the same: lost in thought, lost in thought.
"Your Majesty, what is this?" The senior technician was puzzled, "There is a strange sense of familiarity, as if I've seen it somewhere before."
"This is a coffin," I exhaled, and quickly pointed to Xue Lin, "By the way, what she said... RQ