Chapter 1543: The Only Way to Communicate with Them
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
“What? They’re fighting outside?”
After hearing Nolan’s report, Hao Ren jumped out of his chair at once.
Nolan had already guessed Hao Ren’s reaction. “Go out and have a look. They’re still busy fighting.”
“How come they fight all of a sudden?” Hao Ren knew that Nolan was not joking, but he could not understand. “I thought that N-6 knows those guys out there, how come they fight instead… What’s going on out there?”
“I had the s.h.i.+eld on, and N-6 didn’t leave the area of the s.h.i.+eld, so what happened was that a dozen fighters outside were attacking my s.h.i.+eld with something as powerful as a water cannon, and N-6 was standing behind the s.h.i.+eld, looking stunned… It was pretty chaotic, but no one was hurt.”
“Go and have a look!”
N-6 was not alone, Hao Ren also arranged the Nangong siblings to accompany her to appear together. The original plan was to first let N-6 greet their compatriots, let them put down their weapons and agree to exchange, followed by the nice Nangong siblings, and then finally, Hao Ren and the rest of them, but this plan failed from the very beginning. The armed force launched a surprise attack before the Nangong siblings even had the chance to read out the first word of the speech. Fortunately, the s.h.i.+eld system of the Petrachelys had been regenerated completely, and all the fire had been blocked out, but the noise still scared the poor siren girl into a ball. When Hao Ren arrived, she had coiled up into a ball, shaking in the back of the hatch.
A dozen men in black combat suits, holed up in the forest on the edge of the crater where the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p had crashed, fired random shots at the Petrachelys’ side armor belts from a higher place. Their weapons were electromagnetic rifles and light plasma cannons. These were powerful weapons for a normal planetary civilization, but as harmless as the tip of Wuyue’s tail to the thick energy s.h.i.+eld of Petrachelys.
They could only create large amounts of light and shadow in the air tens of meters around the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p.
N-6 ducked back into the hatch as soon as the attack began. She was also confused by the sudden attack, and her logic circuit nearly overloaded and burned. She saw familiar faces among the attackers and tried to call out for a ceasefire, but it did not work.
“What’s going on here?” Hao Ren came to N-6, asked in bewilderment.
“I don’t know.” The robot girl shook her head. “They suddenly started attacking me when they saw me. I tried to talk to them, but they ignored me.”
“Do you know them?” Vivian asked, frowning.
“I know a few of them”, N-6 said, looking out cautiously. “The one leading the team is N-4, and there wre also two mates whom I see often, TD-22 and TD-26.”
“Did you do anything bad to them when you were at your base, so bad that their first reaction when they saw you was to fight with you,” Nangong Sanba asked. Hao Ren gave him the side-eye and told N-6, “Just ignore his question.”
“In short, let them cease fire first.” Vivian frowned and looked out of the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p. The attack was not a threat to Petrachelys, but they did not weaken their attack at all, which is a bit of a nuisance. “G.o.d knows what they are thinking… Talk to them first. If that doesn’t work, you’re going to have to anesthetize them.”
Hao Ren nodded, walking to the hatch together with Vivian.
In the bushes on the edge of the forest, N-4 was unloading the empty steel nail magazine and pus.h.i.+ng the new one into the buckle of the electromagnetic rifle, looking anxiously in the direction of the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p.
The s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p had a powerful s.h.i.+eld system. This was unexpected, but it was not going to rattle N-4 much. From the start, she did not expect to be able to fight a seemingly superior s.p.a.cecraft with a dozen or so individual weapons. She was hoping to determine the state of N-6, but the confirmation only made her more worried.
The ‘N-6’ was screaming for a ceasefire at the start of the attack. However, the special identification keys sent by N-4 and the members of the team were not answered. It all indicated that the one that came out of the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p was a fake, modified by aliens.
The aliens obtained N-6’s remains, but could only imitate her appearance and superficial memory. They were not aware of the existence of the emergency identification protocol, so they missed the point.
N-4 thought her judgment was perfectly correct.
She was there for two purposes: to confirm the status of N-6 and take it back if she could, and to cover a few members of the team while there were retreating, so that they could tell the rest of the camp to get away from the place as soon as possible. Now that there was no way to bring back N-6 on the spot, and the goal of covering the retreat of others had been achieved, then she would withdraw…
As soon as N-4 had the idea of retreating she was stunned by a lightning ball falling from the sky.
Hao Ren watched the female soldier in the distance who was stunned by the lightning ball and froze for a moment. “Didn’t we say we try to communicate with them first…”
Vivian looked a little embarra.s.sed, too. “The gravity on this planet isn’t quite the same as on earth, and the bats didn’t figure out their path — I was just going to throw the lightning ball right next to them to scare them so they’d be quiet and listen to us…”
Hao Ren covered his forehead and said, “… Well, it’s not a big problem. It seems that there’s no peaceful communication this time anyway.”
Vivian conjured up a new bat. The little bat then released the bright electric light, like a dazzling lightning ball. Vivian tossed the little bat up and down and said, “Don’t worry, I’ve found that electromagnetic attacks work especially well for these guys… But then again, Nolan said half of them had retreated into the woods soon after the firefight. Are we going to go after them?”
“No, just get some of them back.”
The sudden fall of N-4 caused a brief moment of confusion among the crew. They found that the aliens in the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p were launching a counterattack, so they immediately switched to a defensive retreat. One of them wanted to take N-4 back but another lightning ball hit him in the face when he was halfway there.
Then came a lightning storm, like cannon fire plowing the ground.
Vivian’s electromagnetic attack was very effective for these attackers. Hao Ren had no chance to help at all. He just watched as Vivian floated in the air throwing b.a.l.l.s of lightning and knocked all the attackers unconscious.
Several of the attackers were quickly tied up and taken to an empty cabin on Petrachelys.
N-6 looked at her former teammates and asked worriedly, “Are they… all right?”
“Don’t worry, they’re not dead. They just pa.s.sed out.” Hao Ren could not figure out what they want and why did they attack them. And what surprised Hao Ren more was that: each of them, like N-6, was a robot — a team made entirely of robots.
No wonder Vivian’s electromagnetic attack was so effective on them. Although these high-tech artificial fighters also had protection against electromagnetic strikes, such as core systems with the electromagnetic s.h.i.+elding protection layer, to be honest, it was nothing to Vivian’s lightning b.a.l.l.s.
N-4 and several members of the operation did not remain unconscious for long. The EMP shock only triggered the emergency protection mechanism of their logic circuits but did not cause much damage to their bodies. The data terminal commanded a few autonomous bots to give these robots electrotherapy and then successfully restarted all of them.
As soon as N-4 opened her eyes, she saw a man with short hair with a smile on his face and a woman with scarlet eyes standing in front of her. N-6 was standing with them, and behind them also stood a couple of men and women, watching her.
And she was firmly attached to a metal chair by some kind of strong binding device.
Captured, captured by a group of human-like aliens.
N-4 ran her logic circuits at full speed, a.n.a.lyzing the situation and planning an effective escape plan, or a self-destruct plan if it did not work. But before she could speak, the smiling man said, “I’m sorry to have to say h.e.l.lo this way, but you won’t talk to us in a calm way, so we have to force you to.”
N-4 stared warily at the man in front of him and said nothing.
Hao Ren got a little headache. Another robot. And this robot looked far less easy to communicate than N-6. He remembered that N-6 had come to a happy agreement with them shortly after waking up, but this robot was not even willing to talk to him…
He could not blame N-4, after all, the two contacts were very different. N-6 was saved by him, but N-4’s situation was totally different. She was attacked by electromagnetic rifle bullets, 10000 volts of high voltage, and subsonic bats…