Chapter 1 The Moonbase

The lunar base already knew about the fierce battle taking place at the Zenith space station—it wasn't that the drone swarm's signal blockade had malfunctioned, but that anyone with eyes could look up from the lunar base and see a large patch of bright light in space surrounded by countless flashing points of light, and with slightly more sophisticated optical observation equipment, it was possible to clearly observe the space station, positioned in a high orbit around the mother planet, being "besieged" by a group of war machines of unknown origin.

War was obvious—at least, in the eyes of the lunar base personnel, they were facing a new war.

In fact, the moment the drone swarm cut off the Zenith's communications network, the lunar base issued a high-level security alert, and thousands of optical observatories and radar antennas turned in that direction. The inhabitants of the moon tried to figure out what was happening, but besides optical observation, all other means of communication—including all secret channels and emergency communication channels—were just static, and the radar returned completely unidentifiable, distorted signals.

Having lost convenient communication methods and radar observation, the acting officers on the moon found that they could only rely on their eyes to understand the situation on the distant battlefield. These artificial intelligence beings, representing advanced technology, felt as if they had suddenly fallen into some ancient era, and had to use the most primitive means to collect intelligence and formulate strategies based on it—just as recorded in the Great Library, humans in the medieval age of ignorance relied on waving flags, lighting fireworks, and "reading my eyes" to transmit signals on the battlefield. The acting officers were doing almost the same thing now, which caused some rare panic in the usually well-ordered lunar society.

But under the control of the mainframe located in the fortress, order was quickly restored, and a series of response instructions based on the current situation were issued from the fortress. A large number of space fighters took off from the lunar base, and the normally rarely activated space combat fast frigates also roared and left the spaceport: according to the results of optical observation, the besiegers of the Zenith were a mysterious enemy with extremely agile speed. The heavy battleships and heavy frigates would probably be useless against them. Only the continuous barrage of massive amounts of rapid-firing cannons could effectively strike those strange things, so the forces that rose from the lunar base were basically this type of fast unit.

Of course, the more important reason was that the acting officers had very few heavy warships available: in the fight against the Planet Devourers, heavy space warships that could only perform space bombing missions were almost useless, and these old relics had been phased out almost a dozen centuries ago.

Those support forces constantly taking off from the moon also fell into Hao Ren's eyes.

The cleverly disguised attack aircraft (Lili figuratively gave this aircraft a temporary name called "Trojan Horse") was approaching the moon according to its predetermined trajectory. Although it did not make direct contact with those support forces taking off from the moon, with a large number of aircraft rising from the moon, the appearance of such a damaged landing craft would undoubtedly be quite conspicuous—therefore, Hao Ren had been worried since just now whether this "Trojan Horse" would soon be recognized. However, as time went by, he found that his worries seemed unnecessary.

This aircraft was smoothly passing through every identity recognition checkpoint: even though it did not even have a pilot in the true sense.

In the cockpit of the aircraft, the seat was actually occupied by a data terminal, which projected a lifelike holographic image, which was the image of the aircraft's original pilot: this was to cope with the automatic image acquisition equipment on certain inspection platforms. On the screen in front of the pilot, the chat log between the lunar security system and the airborne computer was constantly displayed:

"XX Tower calling flight unit XXXX, submit identification code."

"XXXX responding, identification code submitted, requesting passage through Barrier One."

"XX Tower inquiring with flight unit XXXX, need to record the reason for your action."

"XXXX responding, this aircraft was attacked in the Zenith battlefield and lost its ability to counterattack. Because the space station is blocked by the enemy, it cannot return for repairs, so it is urgently going to the lunar base to perform maintenance procedures."

"XX Tower relaying instructions, Zenith-related information has been listed as a high-priority data by the mainframe. Please upload battlefield recorder data."

"XXXX understood, uploading battlefield recorder data..."

On one side was the shipboard computer whose core programs had been modified by the autonomous machines, and on the other side was the customs AI of the lunar security system. The two not-so-intelligent computers were chatting enthusiastically using an automatic question-and-answer program.

And Hao Ren had long anticipated that this warplane that had run out of the Zenith would be highly valued by the mainframe on the moon, so he had prepared a carefully crafted battlefield record in the airborne computer in advance. Now it seemed that this battlefield record had come in handy.

In this process, the "Trojan Horse" finally passed through all the air traffic control barriers and slowly descended, approaching a cluster of buildings composed of a large number of hemispherical domes on the surface of the moon. One of the domes in the cluster received the signal requesting entry into the port, so the hemispherical dome immediately opened a circular hole large enough for the fighter to enter. Inside the hole, a large number of operating mechanical structures could be seen.

This was the automated repair factory built by the acting officers.

"I didn't expect it to be so easy," Hao Ren couldn't help but say to n-6 as the aircraft slowly landed in the dome building, "The entire process is controlled by an automatic system, and it doesn't seem to be a particularly intelligent one... If you arranged some high-level AIs, like a bionic robot like you, to guard the checkpoints, I'm afraid it wouldn't be so easy to sneak in. At least you could ask some more flexible questions."

"However, that would greatly reduce efficiency and waste the lifespan of our logic circuits," n-6 shook her head. "The automatic system is enough. It's efficient, fast, and can process data for large groups entering and exiting in batches. If it weren't for people like you with technological strength far surpassing ours, the automatic identification system would not be so easily deceived—and if we encounter an opponent of your level, I believe even upgrading the identification system would be useless. You can easily develop new countermeasures."

The logic of the robot Miss was still so simple, straightforward, and practical. She didn't feel embarrassed at all because her race was in a disadvantaged position. She seemed to be just stating the facts, but it made Hao Ren a little embarrassed.

"Ahem, actually, if it's not necessary, we still hope to establish communication with surviving civilizations like yours through normal channels," Hao Ren touched his nose. "However, due to the circumstances, I really have no choice."

At this time, Lili glanced at the screen hanging in the cabin: "Landlord, landlord, we're flying in... it seems like something is approaching."

After entering the dome building, the control of the aircraft was automatically taken over by the building's maintenance system. In order to prevent triggering an alarm, the data terminal did not stop this process. At this moment, Hao Ren looked at the situation outside and saw that the acting officer's attack aircraft he was riding in was being grabbed by a set of powerful mechanical arms and sent to a metal platform—a large number of servo mechanisms were rising from the ground around the platform. Each small mechanical arm was equipped with an electronic eye emitting a red light at the front end. They were moving around the scarred attack aircraft to confirm the damage to this war machine and prepare to formulate a repair plan: if this continued, they would soon discover the abnormality of this aircraft.

However, Hao Ren had already made arrangements for this. At the same time as the maintenance platform was activated, a small gap opened in the hatch of the attack aircraft, and a blue light rushed out in the blink of an eye. Its speed was so fast that the mechanical arm closest to it only slightly tilted its steel head. The electronic eye installed on the engineering claw flickered twice and regarded the beam of light as a normal lens flare.

However, the data terminal had quietly flown to the corner of the repair shop. According to the information provided by n-4, it quickly found the hexagonal metal device installed on the wall: this was the control center of the repair shop, and it was also connected to all the automated systems of the nearby building complex.

The data terminal stuck itself to the surface of the metal device, and the display on the front end of the metal device immediately refreshed with a large amount of data and patterns. As the external code was injected, the threads on the screen changed from green, representing normal operation, to red, representing errors, and then all returned to normal.

At least it looked normal on the surface.

"The virus is in effect, partner," the data terminal sent back the message. "The scope of the infection is expanding, you can come out."

A slight mechanical friction sound came from the belly of the "Trojan Horse", and then the armor plate used for disguise flipped open completely. Hao Ren led the others out one by one: they were swaggering around under the eyes of a large pile of electronic eyes, but the surrounding mechanical arms did not react to this at all.

Lili curiously poked the mechanical hand closest to her with her paw. The mechanical hand then moved to the side sluggishly, but there was no greater reaction other than that.

"Don't poke it, these things won't react," Hao Ren patted Lili's head, letting the husky's strong curiosity restrain itself slightly. "The data terminal has injected viruses into all the systems of this repair center, and now they firmly believe that they are performing a complex but successful repair procedure."

"The virus cannot provide cover for too long," n-6 reminded. "According to the prescribed procedures, the pilot of this attack aircraft needs to go to the nearest barracks to report and execute combat data extraction procedures within one hour, so we only have one hour. After that, the acting officers will know that something is wrong here—the mainframe will also know."

Hao Ren nodded: "That's enough, we just need to leave this place."

All the systems in the repair center had been infected by the virus, and since the acting officer society from top to bottom was based on artificial intelligence and automatic control systems, the operation of this repair center was controlled by computers—therefore, Hao Ren and his party left this place almost openly. Besides having to bypass some patrolling soldiers, they didn't need to care about any monitoring equipment.