Chapter 100 The Central Control Station

Since they had already explored the central control station in the Qunluan, Hao Ren and the others found the location of this control center without much effort. At least in the outer area, the structure of the central control stations of the two arks was largely the same.

The control center was a scene of dilapidated and old glory. Ancient machinery was covered in dust, and some trivial objects were scattered all over the floor: this should be the result of each artificial gravity failure. Next to the main control console in the control center, Hao Ren found a corpse. Unlike the Qunluan, the shelter maintained a normal temperature and atmosphere, so the remains he found had rotted into a skeleton.

The deceased was wearing the same clothes as the old man on the Qunluan. Due to repeated gravity abnormalities, it was now impossible to determine the position and state of the captain at the time of his death. Hao Ren carefully pushed the skeleton aside, and then restarted the main console in front of him according to his experience (the console key was inserted in the machine panel). As expected, there was backup power here, and the ancient control terminal was still barely usable. With a humming sound from the machine, lights lit up on the main console, and other nearby equipment also began to operate.

Considering that the ark's ecosystem had been running for the past few hundred years, some servo terminals should have been running unmanned before the reactor exploded. Now Hao Ren wanted to check these machines to find the reactor damage report and emergency disposal plan. After opening the database, he quickly retrieved the structural diagram of the entire central control station, which clearly marked the various areas of this giant facility.

According to the structural diagram, the entire central control station was composed of four parts: located in the center was a huge fusion reactor. This fusion reactor was buried in the deepest part of the facility, and its structure could not be seen from the city inside the ship. This reactor provided powerful raw energy for the shelter city, but it did not supply energy directly, but transferred energy to the second part of the facility, a series of giant generators. Those generators were under the outer shell of the Ancestor's Furnace that could be seen from the city inside the ship, and the third part of the central control station was the smaller cylindrical metal pillars around the Ancestor's Furnace, which were some components related to the life support system.

The fourth part, needless to say, was the control area of the entire facility, which was where Hao Ren and the others were now, located on the outermost edge of the Ancestor's Furnace.

After carefully analyzing the functional zones on the structural diagram, Hao Ren felt a lot more at ease: the explosion that had occurred earlier was on the main outer shell on the front of the Ancestor's Furnace, and that was where the main generator set was located. Although the failure of the main generator was a huge problem, it was a blessing in disguise compared to a major explosion in the fusion reactor deep inside.

"Here," Hao Ren pointed to the facility's outer shell on the screen, "underneath here is the main generator's coil. If we repair this, the shelter can last for a while longer. I brought a lot of autonomous machines, they should have no problem repairing this simple thing."

"What about after it's repaired?" Nangong Sanba asked casually, "The most important thing is how to solve the problem here in the long term."

Hao Ren nodded slightly: "That's right, we can't let these ships drift in space all the time, so in the end we still have to find a place for them to settle down. I've already ordered Nolan to carry out a large-scale dismantling of the Qunluan Ark, and I'm also trying to get her to crack the navigation systems of the other scrapped arks. If everything goes well, she will be able to gain control of these ships, and then... steer them to a more suitable planet."

"Aioi or Tanagrus?" Lily interjected.

"The atmosphere of Tanagrus is toxic to the humans in the ark, and not just the atmosphere, the planet's ecosystem is completely unsuitable for the people on this ship to survive. Aioi has no land..." Hao Ren scratched his hair, "Let's put this aside for now, I think it's more important to repair the reactor here first."

As he spoke, he looked out through the thick glass window of the control room. From here, he could see many of the internal structures of the central control station. The ancient pipes and machinery reflected a faint light in the dim light, and the dust in the air made everything seem to be shrouded in a dirty mist. He opened his personal space and released several round autonomous machines covered in tentacles. After handing the generator set structure diagram to these little fellows, the autonomous machines made a series of cheerful chattering sounds and ran out one after another, rushing along the dirty ancient pipes towards the generator set.

Then he looked at Vivian: "Can you still sense the location of the 'artifact'?"

"It hasn't responded since just now," Vivian frowned slightly, "I can only judge based on the previous feeling that the artifact is probably in the deepest layer of this facility, which is... this location."

As she spoke, she reached out and pointed to the screen of the main console, which showed the structural diagram of the central control station, and the place where she pointed was the junction between the generator and the fusion reactor, the most central location of the entire facility.

Hao Ren searched for a while on the facility structure diagram and finally determined a feasible route: "Then let's go over there and take a look... Data Terminal, what are you doing?"

He saw the Data Terminal flying to the side at some point, hovering around the bones of the dead captain, and constantly scanning the other person's skull with a blue beam of light, so he asked curiously.

The Data Terminal replied while examining: "Oh, nothing, I just checked the cause of death of this person. This person should have died of illness. There are signs of chronic corrosion on his skull, which should have been caused by some kind of chronic disease during his lifetime."

"Chronic disease?" Hao Ren glanced at the skeleton lying on the ground, feeling vaguely concerned: the last commander of the ark died of a chronic disease, rather than the accident or other accident he had previously guessed. This seemed to imply some kind of information.

But there was only this skeleton here, and the information that could be obtained was really insufficient. Even though he was concerned, he couldn't think of any clues.

"Let's leave him here for now," Hao Ren nodded slightly to the skeleton, then stepped towards the exit of the control room, "The autonomous machines are repairing the generator, let's take this opportunity to see what the artifact that Vivian sensed is."

The group left the control room and continued to move towards the reactor, while at the same time, large-scale engineering operations were also being carried out in an intense and orderly manner in the space outside the ark.

After receiving Hao Ren's order, Nolan took over some engineering-model drones from the machine swarm, and now she was sending these highly efficient "workers" to those arks. One by one, the silver-white drones appeared from the dark space, and like a swarm of ants pouncing on their prey, they turned into streams of light and surged towards the huge ark warships. The drones began to cut the outer shells of the old ships, and bright rays of light, like starlight, constantly burst out on the latter's dark and heavy armor plates. From space, it looked like a bizarre fireworks display.

Currently, the ships being cut were those that had been confirmed to have no life signs, because there was no need to worry about causing casualties, so Nolan could confidently and boldly use brute force to figure out the structure of these arks. As the earliest ark to be explored, the Qunluan was being dismantled the fastest and most thoroughly of all the arks.

Now, this more than 130-kilometer-long interstellar giant ship had undergone a major transformation. Under the cutting of hundreds of thousands of mining drones, one-third of the Qunluan's outer shell had been peeled off, and its front end had exposed some complex mechanical structures, and a series of neat chambers could also be seen: those chambers were connected by corridors and appeared to be for human use. According to these structures, the "bridge" of the ark was also manned during navigation, but perhaps this too-long journey finally磨灭(mó miè - effaced) the navigators' confidence, and in the end, the ark's crew all hid in the shelter and handed over the upper-level systems to the intelligent host.

The Tortoise Rock Platform circled curiously around the bow of the Qunluan, taking pictures while circling it. On the bridge of the Tortoise Rock Platform, the little imp Elizabeth was boredly tugging on Gun's tail, ignoring the cat girl's weak resistance while muttering: "Nolan, what are you doing?"

"Keeping a souvenir," Nolan replied casually, "As a ship, I've dismantled a ship that's so much bigger than myself, don't you think it's worth commemorating?"

Elizabeth thought for a while: "...But don't you think you're like a pervert who takes nude photos after stripping people naked?"

Nolan: "..."

In this way, Hao Ren's team was working both inside and outside the ark.