“I can explain.” Li Xu turned and pointed at the main control screen. “But there’s something more important we need to do right now.”
“Answer me first. Did you take the core of that reconnaissance vessel?” Cheng Weilu stared straight at him, unmoved.
“No. But I already knew the core was gone.”
“When?”
“The second day after I woke up.”
“……”
In other words, when Cheng Weilu had told Xiao Wei to shut down the monitoring of the rear cargo hold, this man had already checked it. He simply hadn’t told her.
The moment she salvaged the ship, she had reported it to the military. The handover had to take place. Finding Li Xu had been an unexpected incident, and the fact that he could operate the military equipment was something she had never anticipated.
Whether Li Xu had been there or not, once she had accepted this job, perhaps she had simply been destined to suffer this calamity.
Cheng Weilu took a difficult breath to calm herself. “Fine. I believe you.”
“You’re not blaming me for not telling you?” Li Xu looked somewhat surprised.
Cheng Weilu shook her head. “You had no obligation to tell me. I can only blame my own terrible luck… And thank you for getting me out of the interrogation room.”
If she had stayed there any longer, she would very likely have ended up like the salvager who had unfortunately encountered Arvid before, suffering brain damage and damage to her mental strength, and becoming unable to work as a salvager ever again.
Li Xu looked at her and said seriously, “I, on the other hand, think I’m incredibly lucky to have met you, Miss Cheng.”
“Let’s talk business.” Cheng Weilu waved her hand and stood up.
Li Xu led Cheng Weilu toward the main control screen. “In short, I entered the base’s control center and activated an emergency protocol. Under this mode, aside from this data center, all of the base’s basic functions will be shut down. Communications will be cut off, and the exits will be closed, so no one inside can get out. That’s how I was able to bring you out, but now we have no way to escape the base.”
“How long can this mode last?”
“The mode itself has no time limit unless the highest-level backend command is used to deactivate it.”
Li Xu added, “But the emergency protocol is an abnormal state. Even though internal communications have been cut off, external communications are still functioning normally. Any abnormality here will be detected. The nearest base can arrive to provide support in as little as half an hour.”
“So we need to deactivate this mode and break out before reinforcements arrive?”
“You could put it that way. But we can take it one step further…”
Cheng Weilu recalled hearing the alarm, being brought underground, then losing consciousness for ten minutes, and the two of them spending some time talking back and forth here…
She cut him off. “How much time do we have left?”
Li Xu calmly glanced at the central screen. “Three minutes.”
!!!
This trip had truly been the worst luck she had ever had!
“Miss Cheng.” That trademark gentle and amiable smile appeared on Li Xu’s face again. “May I ask you once more, what is your mental strength value?”
Cheng Weilu no longer cared whether he smiled beautifully or not. She only wanted to roll her eyes at him. “At a time like this, could you please not be so curious? What can we even do now?”
Li Xu operated the large screen of the main control console several times. The entire base’s backend defense system was activated, and streams of data began projecting into the air. Cheng Weilu couldn’t understand the command codes and settings at all.
She also still couldn’t figure out why Li Xu, a man who had been in hibernation for fifty years, was so familiar with this postwar base and its backend systems.
“I can’t break through your mental firewall.” Li Xu pointed at the blue-gray streams of data continuously scrolling through the projection in the center of the control room and handed her an optical-brain helmet. “But perhaps you can try breaking through this firewall.”
“Two minutes left.” Li Xu reminded her.
Li Xu’s gray eyes quietly watched her, his expression serious. There seemed to be anticipation in his gaze… and perhaps something else. Cheng Weilu couldn’t understand it, but she was certain he wasn’t joking.
For some reason, she felt a little irritated, as though someone were guiding her into a trap, yet she couldn’t find any evidence.
There was no point thinking about that now.
But there was one more thing. “I don’t know what exactly you’re trying to do, but if you sell me out…” Cheng Weilu walked over and took the optical-brain helmet from him. Her amber eyes met Li Xu’s directly. “Please back up Xiao Wei’s data and put it under the management of the public archive. The management fee is very cheap. For Robert’s sake, since it made clothes and shoes for you, give it some of the money. I haven’t even paid its salary for this month yet.”
Li Xu had not expected her to make such a request. He paused, lowered his eyes, and asked, “How much is its monthly salary?”
“3,500 star coins.”
Li Xu nodded solemnly. “All right. I promise you.”
She did not hesitate any longer. She immediately put on the optical-brain helmet and walked beneath the projection in the center of the control room. The mental signals linked successfully in an instant. Before Cheng Weilu could even catch her breath, billions upon billions of data streams immediately engulfed her like a storm.
A sensation of weightlessness swept over her. It was as if she had stepped into empty space, her entire body plunging downward into an endless deep sea.
Before she could collapse, Li Xu caught her in time.
Like a drowning person who had encountered a piece of driftwood, Cheng Weilu clung tightly to Li Xu’s hand, her entire body in a semi-conscious state.
In a short period of time, she had endured the impact of an optical-brain interrogation, briefly undergone sound-therapy recovery, and then immediately connected to a massive pool of data. After such intense, multiple forms of stimulation, Li Xu had never seen anyone remain conscious throughout.
The data streams on the projection raced by and rearranged themselves. A new firewall baseline was being established.
She had succeeded.
Li Xu lowered his head and looked at the person beside him, his expression unreadable, his tone almost like a sigh—
“Meeting you really is an incredibly, incredibly lucky thing, Miss Cheng.”
─────── ✦ · ˚ ✧ · ˚ ✦ ───────
The infrastructure and information-system configuration of Gray Dove Base had basically been replicated from Mountain River Base seventy years ago.
Mountain River Base was located on Apollo Star within the Dawnlight Fortress and represented the highest level of the Alliance’s military technology at the time. But when the Dawnlight Fortress was destroyed, Mountain River Base disappeared into the depths of space along with it.
After Arvid was promoted to lieutenant general of the Alliance, he obtained all the classified construction documents and materials for Mountain River Base from the military. He wanted to build an even better one himself.
However, the Alliance had been severely weakened by the war and lacked the conditions necessary to support rapid economic and technological development. On top of that, Gray Dove Base was extremely limited in resources. The completed base was only one-twentieth the size of Mountain River Base, while its information-system configuration used only some of the original modules.
But even the barren environment could not stop Arvid from having his way. He forcibly transported resources from other planets and built more than a hundred identical miniature bases.
Hundreds of small fighter craft circled above the platform of Gray Dove Base.
Under the emergency protocol, the takeoff and landing systems installed on the platform had also been shut down. The fighter jets could not connect to the ground for landing control, so the flight formation had no choice but to resort to the most primitive method, lining up to land.
When the first ten fighter jets were less than 300 meters above the ground, the takeoff and landing system on the ground platform suddenly responded. Just as the pilots were about to attempt to establish a connection with the ground, the fighter jets in automatic mode immediately issued an alarm:
“Landing rejected by ground control. Landing aborted.”
The ground platforms of Gray Dove Base were equipped with ample ammunition and firepower. Any fighter jet or spacecraft not authorized to land by the ground platform would trigger an automatic counterattack if it attempted to land by force, indiscriminately attacking any objects within 200 meters of the ground.
The fighter formation that had abruptly stopped could only hover in the air. The formation leader continued trying to contact Commander Arvid and the base information center, but there was still no response.
No one knew what had happened below.
Underground in the base, Arvid Parker was experiencing, for the first time in his decades of military service, what it was like to be trapped in a control room for half an hour, completely helpless.
He drew the photon gun from his waist and fired at the door more than a hundred times in one breath until the barrel overheated and forcibly terminated the continuous fire.
Even so, the door was left with only a few laughable little holes. Most of the base’s construction materials were specially designed alloys, highly resistant to heat and explosions.
He could not get out. Communications were down. Even the lights were gone.
Inside the control room, the words “low-class” on the screen were the only thing accompanying him, as though they were there to laugh at him.
Someone who had been dead for fifty years should stop haunting him.
Arvid’s lips tightened as the neatly arranged silver hair at his temples fell loose. He raised his gun and shot the surveillance screen to pieces.
Could it be that the decades of peace and relaxation after the war had made him too complacent? Now, even a rat sneaking into his base could cause such a mess.
Which rat was it, exactly? Could it be the subordinates of the person who had survived the fortress battle back then?
Arvid’s expression shifted unpredictably. Even after fifty years, several names still surfaced in his mind.
The lights in the room suddenly came back on. The flashing alarm lights and sounds stopped, and the emergency protocol was deactivated.
“Commander!” An aide opened the door and rushed in. “Commander, are you all right?”
Arvid raised his hand to check the time.
Exactly half an hour.
“All personnel, enter combat readiness.” Arvid walked out with the photon gun in his hand. “From now on, seal all exits. Without my permission, no one is allowed to leave the base.”
The aide immediately relayed the order while reporting the basic situation. Internal communications were functioning again, but the abnormal data from that period had not yet been restored and would require time to investigate. The fighter forces that had come to provide support after detecting the anomaly had already arrived above the base, but they could not land.
“The ground platform system is refusing to allow the fighter jets to land, and the command cannot be modified.”
“Cannot be modified?” Arvid frowned.
“The command authority for the entire base’s backend system has been reset. Our current authorization is completely insufficient. The engineers are trying, but they cannot break through the system’s firewall at present.”
The aide continued, “…The salvager in the interrogation room is also gone.”
She was probably the source of the disturbance. It seemed that this woman’s original purpose had been to infiltrate the base.
Arvid gritted his teeth. “Find her. Alive or dead, I want her found.”
…
When Cheng Weilu was jolted awake, she discovered that she was no longer in the data center. She was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat of some cockpit. Only the faint glow of the instruments illuminated the cabin, while outside the porthole was complete darkness, with nothing visible.
Soft sound waves were still playing beside her. Li Xu had put the helmet back on her.
Li Xu was wearing a fighter pilot’s helmet in the main pilot’s seat. Noticing that she had awakened, he turned his face toward her and smiled. Behind the translucent visor, his bright, curved eyes flashed before her.
Li Xu made a gesture to indicate departure. The space outside the window immediately lit up. Cheng Weilu looked up and discovered that they were in a vast, empty underground space. Fighter jets were arranged in neat rows all around them, while the enormous ceiling above was retracting toward both sides.
They should be inside the base’s underground weapons depot.
Cheng Weilu turned her head to look at Li Xu, unable to figure out how he had found this place or how he had managed to activate the equipment.
Immediately afterward, Li Xu piloted the fighter jet into the air. She stared in astonishment as one fighter jet after another around them rose into the air as well.
The ceiling opened completely, and more than a hundred fighter jets in the weapons depot flew out with him.
As the fighter jets left the ground, Cheng Weilu realized that the main exit of the weapons depot was located directly beneath the center of the surface platform. Above the base, dense formations of fighter jets from other bases had already gathered in the air.
The other side seemed bewildered by the sudden appearance of the fighter group and did not act rashly. Message alerts kept flashing in the communications channel. Whether they came from the other side or from inside the base, they were all attempts to contact the formation, but Li Xu ignored them.
Cheng Weilu had never operated a military fighter jet before, so she could only watch the flight display on the screen.
Piloting this unremarkable fighter jet, Li Xu deftly weaved through the gaps between the two groups of fighter jets, constantly changing position.
Each time he changed position, he hovered for about a minute. On the flight display, Cheng Weilu saw that the other fighter jets, which had originally been hovering under automatic control, would be “awakened” by it. After identifying the nearby support fighter jets, they began launching attacks on their own.
The attacks were all extremely minor. Either they fired a burst of automatic energy rounds, which were deflected by the defensive shields activated by the opposing side, or the entire fighter jet would make a show of ramming into them, only for the opposing fighter jets to evade at the last moment…
In short, they put on an impressive show, but their effective attacks amounted to zero.
There had originally been a hundred fighter jets circling above the base. With the more than a hundred fighter jets that had taken off from below the platform, they were now all mixed together, like a swarm of crazed headless flies darting and crashing about everywhere.
The sky above the base was in utter chaos, as lively as a boiling pot.
Cheng Weilu was dumbfounded. Unable to hold back, she asked, “Pilot, could you tell me what exactly you’re doing?”
“Creating chaos.” Li Xu seemed to be in a particularly good mood.
“And then?”
It was certainly chaotic, but it seemed completely useless. The two of them were even part of the swarm of headless flies.
“Then we…” Li Xu deactivated automatic mode and pulled the control stick. The fighter jet dove downward, heading straight for the ground.
Cheng Weilu was thrown hard against the back of her seat by the immense inertia. Her ears rang, and she could only vaguely hear Li Xu’s amused voice.
“We take advantage of the chaos and escape.”
They did not actually crash, but Cheng Weilu was startled by the enormous battleship at the weapons depot’s exit. It raised the artillery turrets on top, and dense rows of dark gun barrels pointed toward the sky. The fighter jet quickly adjusted its direction and once again returned to the chaotic fighter group.
Inside the base, Arvid finally reacted. Standing in the cockpit, he watched as the operator finally locked onto the troublemaking fighter jet among the hundreds of aircraft.
“Commander, attacking the target now may accidentally hit the other fighter jets.”
“Let them get out of the way themselves.” Arvid’s face was livid. “Fire!”
When a storm of stray fire came raining down, Cheng Weilu no longer had the leisure to admire Li Xu’s superb piloting skills. She looked at the sky outside the porthole, blazing as though engulfed in flames, and somehow felt remarkably calm.
She had no idea how things had gone from salvaging a spacecraft and picking up scraps to this point.
At that moment, she had only one thought:
“Is this the price I pay for randomly picking up handsome men?”
…
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