translator: loop
When these people first entered the training camp, all of them wanted to stand out. They were nothing if not courageous.
Chu Si definitely didn’t believe Tang’s exaggerated shivers. He waved his hand and said, “What’s so strange about the East Tower?”
“You know this, but when Fort Barney was sealed, cryo-capsules had not yet been invented,” Tang said.
Chu Si nodded. Of course he knew this, the order for the production of cryo-capsules, now in common use, had been signed when he was executive.
“But guess what? In the equipment room on the second basement floor of the East Tower, we found a cryo-cabin that was very similar to a cryo-capsule, but not single-occupancy.”
Tang couldn’t help but grimace in disgust as he spoke. He spread out his hands, “It was about this long of a cabin! When the planet exploded, we didn’t have time to be picky, so we all jumped in. Who knew that the cyro-cabin had an alarm? That’s how we were woken up two months ago.”
“Yeah, it was a male electronic voice, repeatedly saying ‘the preset time will end in two minutes and the unit will stop working’ or something like that.” Le Pen rolled her eyes and recalled, “It probably said that seven or eight times, followed by a countdown of thirty seconds, and then the cryo-cabin opened automatically. We were just waking up, still a little confused, and didn’t understand the situation, discussing what to do next. But—”
The girl fished out her communicator from the pocket of her military pants, bit the tip of her tongue, and flipped it to face Chu Si: “Look, Executive, every day after that, our communicator would automatically receive several messages.”
The screen was too close, and Chu Si had to move back slightly to see the contents of the message on the top row:
17:51:12
Data transmission interrupted, self-destruct aborted.
17:51:03
Data transmission started.
17:50:36
Command search completed, no command source found for S001.
17:48:25
Automatic command search.
Chu Si raised his eyebrows, “A ghost messaged you?”
“Right?! We all thought it was a ghost!” Le Pen swiped her finger and the messages occupied her entire screen, with no end in sight. “Every day, our communicators automatically connect to a device from an unknown source. It’s fine for it to search for the source of the S001 command, but what’s that self-destruct?! We didn’t know whether it wanted to destroy the data or destroy us, so we forcibly cut off each transmission.”
Chu Si asked, “Have you checked its source?”
Le Pen stuffed the communicator back into her pocket, patted it, and snorted: “We checked. Tang borrowed the only two operating consoles on the first floor of the East Tower, and watched the signal trace day and night. During that month, we worked in shifts. One group conducted a blanket search outside, and the other group watched the signal trace, but we couldn’t find any source of intrusion.”
“Couldn’t find anyone and couldn’t find the source of the intrusion…” Chu Si thought about it and said, “Then there could only be one possibility.”
“It’s a local signal from inside Fort Barney, and it’s extremely well-hidden.” Tang snapped his fingers and pointed at Chu Si, “That’s what you’re trying to say, Executive, isn’t it? Thinking the same thing as us! But it’s not much use for us to know.”
The East Tower of Fort Barney had already been destroyed in that incident. Although there was no visible damage on the outside, the equipment inside was in a mess. For Tang to find two usable consoles was already very difficult.
This kind of extremely well-hidden signal could never be found by two small consoles.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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“Qtja? Tbe vlvc’a tjnf qfgwlrrlbc ab jmmfrr la ktfc sbe kfgf bgvfgfv ab mifjc atf abkfg eq?” jrxfv Jte Vl.
“We had access, but our authority was limited to the East Tower. The Central Fort and the West, South, and North Towers were all inaccessible.” Tang “tsk”ed, “So, such a task was just nonsense. Looking for a ghost, was receiving just a little more help impossible?”
“We were careless at first, and thought it was an ordinary local signal. Once it exceeded a certain range, it couldn’t be received.” Le Pen stroked her forehead and spread a hand helplessly, “So we started from there. Fortunately, Joel had a mini-module printer. We removed all the energy panels and module materials that could be disassembled in the East Tower, built a few module houses in the forest, and the result… bah!”
The first day they moved out, they really didn’t get another message.
But the next day, the ghost came back. This time, the four messages were preceded by one more, which read: Repositioning completed, coordinates 2856, 1920. The worst thing was that there was a picture attached, a front view of their base.
After they cut off the self-destruction sequence, they immediately demolished the house that had only been built for a day, and moved further away from Fort Barney. However, they still couldn’t escape. The message stopped for a day, then came again.
In this way, they moved all the way from the central forest area to the edge.
“According to the on-scene pictures we received, the forest here is full of buried cameras…. Oh, the flyeye we mentioned earlier, that’s the nickname we gave to the cameras.” Tang explained: “We tried to conduct a search once, but the range was too large, and yielded very little results.”
He stomped on the ground: “This place where we are now is considered our longest stay so far. Possibly because of our proximity to the edge, the ghost has been peaceful for three days. But no matter how tired we are, we have to leave a person to watch a communicator, so as to not suddenly receive a message, and become too late to abort the self-destruction sequence.”
“But this is still too passive.” Chu Si frowned.
“Very passive! Although Fort Barney has been sealed for a long time, when it was built, all the most powerful and highest-level technology was used, so its defense system is very powerful.” Tang said, “We thought of a lot of elegant methods at the time, but they were no use! After a lot of discussion, we decided—”
He described the results of their discussion in a very mild tone for Chu Si, which, when expressed in layman’s terms, was the phrase— blow it all up!
“Yeah! So we got a little job going.” Le Pen winked and snapped her fingers at a man next to her, “Liu! Bring out those treasures you made!”
When he first joined the training camp, Liu was not much of a talker, and occasionally, when teased, would smile shyly, showing a single dimple. Yet this seemingly gentle and honest person was best at making all kinds of homemade high-lethality weapons.
Back in the day, a few of them were playing around with the pocket bombs Liu made and ended up blowing up the one-room apartment they shared.
Chu Si remembered that incident very well, and naturally guessed what the so-called “treasure” was.
Sure enough, Liu got up and went to his room to carry in a bag of pocket bombs the size of pearls.
Chu Si lost his smile: “… you sleep on top of these things every day? Not afraid of being blown to the sky?”
“Not every day, these were just finished three hours ago and are fresh out of the oven.” Liu replied with a smile, “We plan to go tomorrow to Fort Ba—”
His words had not finished when several people’s communicators gave a “ding” at the same time, and even Chu Si’s rang.
Everyone’s faces changed abruptly, Tang didn’t even look at it and flew into the surveillance room. “Damn little bitch back again to flirt! Bring all the communicators here, let’s first abort the self-destruction sequence!”
Chu Si took out his communicator and looked at it. It was indeed a positioning message with a live image attached, exactly as Le Pen and the others had described.
He followed Le Pen into the surveillance room as Joel rushed in, clutching his own communicator, with Jin following behind.
Tang’s fingers tapped quickly on the console and the lines of code quickly appeared on the screen.
“Did you guys relocate the East Tower console here?” Chu Si asked.
Tang replied casually, “No demolition for nothing! Come on, come on, come on!”
He snapped the last key, took the communicators of the group, and rubbed them on the sensors of the console one by one.
When Chu Si got his communicator back, he saw a new message pop in— data transmission interrupted, self-destruct aborted.
Chu Si had a problem, and the problem was he couldn’t stay idle.
Being threatened like this, if he could still sit back and wait to be threatened a second time, then he wouldn’t be Chu Si.
Chu Si threw the communicator back into his pocket, turned sideways, and extended a hand to Liu, lifting his chin: “Those little treasures of yours, share a few with me.”
Liu: “Executive, you want them now? Don’t you want to rest for a night?”
“No, I’m okay. You guys are busy with your work, I’ll go for a walk.” Chu Si took a few pocket bombs and counted them. “Six? Too little, give three more.”
Liu: “…” These were fucking high-destructive bombs, not candy!
Tang and Le Pen were also a well-known trouble-making duo in the training camp back then. When they heard what Chu Si said, they immediately looked at each other, leaning over and smiling at Liu: “Liu, give us a few too. Come on, the message has come to our door, why are we waiting for tomorrow, lets’s act early!”
“You guys…” Liu didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and simply stuffed all the pocket bombs into their hands. “All right, all right, don’t delay, let’s go together!”
The baby-faced Joel hesitated for a moment: “That Mr. Braids whose butt got poked and his daughter…”
As soon as he said this, the little mop quickly took a pocket bomb from Chu Si’s hand, looked up at Chu Si again, and then stood beside him with a serious face.
Joel: “Hey—”
Chu Si: “Miss Fergus, you cannot play with this.”
“You guys go ahead, I’ll stay at the base to take care of them. Mr. Braids is inconvenient to move right now,” Joel thought about it and said.
“Okay! Let’s not waste time, let’s go!” Tang waved to everyone and rushed out.
It was a long way from the base to Fort Barney, and it took them nearly forty minutes to walk there even with their specially-trained speed.
“Good thing there’s no one else here, feel free to blow things up!” Tang said to Chu Si as he emerged from the forest.
There was a small slope where they were standing, down which they could enter the door on the first floor of the East Tower. Then they could go around a semicircular lawn to get around to the gate that opened to the outside of the Central Fort.
Chu Si narrowed his eyes, followed Tang and Le Pen down the slope, and said: “The destructive power of these pocket bombs is still a bit limited, to completely blow open the gate is difficult.”
Le Pen said: “It doesn’t matter, we don’t expect to blow the gate open at once. We just need to loosen it up a bit. There aren’t many useful things in the East Tower, but there are still some tools there. We can pry open the gate. Based on the toughness of its material, we’ve calculated that it’ll take about two days to pry it open.”
Tang snorted: “We’ve survived two months, two days is nothing! Besides, this was the fastest way we could think of! Who told us not to bring some beam cannons?”
As soon as the conversation become about weapons, Liu couldn’t help but sigh: “I kind of miss the days when a beam cannon could be used casually. Aim four, and even the gates of hell could be opened.”
Le Pen “ah”ed and said, “If we had another A12 antimatter cannon, it could…”
Tang rolled his eyes and said, “Stop dreaming, my darlings!”
Chu Si paused, “I don’t have an antimatter cannon, but I have an antimatter fuel tank…”
“No, no, no, no, Executive, we just want to open a gate, we don’t want to send the entire Fort Barney into the sky.” Tang was about to shake his head off.
‘That antimatter fuel tank could get you killed just by hearing about it.” As he walked along the lawn toward the gates of the Central Fort, Tang was still exclaiming, “Your idea’s too crazy, don’t—”
He was halfway through his sentence when he suddenly questioned, “Wait! Why do I hear a noise at the front gate? It’s like…”
“It’s like the sound of a gun barrel hitting metal.” Liu was very sensitive to this sound, and hurriedly accelerated two steps.
The group could just see the side of Fort Barney’s gate from afar as they rounded the largest piece of the lawn.
“Wait!” Chu Si yanked back a few people who were still going forward.
The very moment they stopped walking, a shattering explosion blasted out abruptly by the gate.
The flames were wrapped in heavy smoke and shot up into the sky, like a giant cloud in the sea of stars.
Boom—
A second one;
Boom—
The third;
When Tang was thrown to the ground, he was dizzy for a long time before raising his head with difficulty, staring at the three giant clouds in a daze, popping out two words: “I…fuck…?”
“Cough… this is really going to blow Fort Barney into the sky! What the hell? Which psycho would be so crazy?” Le Pen coughed up the dust in her mouth while looking at Chu Si in bewilderment.
Chu Si: “…” He suddenly had a bit of a bad feeling.
Tang said, while standing up with difficulty, “It’s a damn good thing this is Fort Barney, where every wall is blast-proof and blocks some impact, or we’d be scattered into a handful of ashes by now.”
Chu Si stood up and was about to say something when he suddenly felt something fall on his head.
“Who?” He turned with a frown.
“Who else could it be, my executive?”
The lazy voice of Sa’e Yang rang out without warning, right above everyone’s heads.
Chu Si took two steps to the side and looked up to see Sa’e Yang standing tall and straight on the wall. He had one hand in his pocket, and the other was carrying a silver metal launcher that looked very familiar.
He smiled at Chu Si in a condescending manner and asked in a drawling voice, “My dear, what are you doing here with a couple of little fools, sneaking around?”
The author has something to say:
The little fools rushed forward together and raised their middle fingers at the unknown person
Sa’e Yang is back!!!!
Welp. Time for Sa’e Yang to return the favor I guess