Chapter 173 Scouting Party

Nolan's report surprised Hao Ren. He couldn't help but recall that he had just discussed this topic with Nolan—it had been six days since his group had crashed on this planet, yet the survivors living in the sky hadn't come down to take a look. He had thought it was quite strange at the time.

Well, now they were finally here, arriving six days late with guns and cannons.

"How many are there?" Vivian frowned and asked Nolan.

"Only eighteen people, carrying various light and heavy weapons and detection equipment. Their transport plane is parked in the forest and hasn't moved since, apparently establishing a temporary simple camp. This seems to be a well-trained reconnaissance force with a clear purpose."

Hao Ren raised his eyebrows. "Are you sure they're coming for us?"

Nolan nodded. "Confirmed—they were scanning me with radar and stuff just now, but I turned my antenna around and flashed them with it, blinding their radar."

This sounded like encountering high beams on the road and retaliating with a burst of solar flares… Had Nolan been racing ships too much lately?

n-6 was confused by the sudden seriousness of the humans in front of her, who started communicating rapidly. She couldn't understand what they were saying this time either—because Hao Ren and the others had turned off the translation plugin during their internal discussion—she finally couldn't suppress her curiosity any longer. "What's happening?"

"Ah, I was just about to ask you to confirm," Hao Ren looked at n-6, "You haven't already sent that recovery signal or anything, have you?"

Even though he thought it was impossible for the surviving rebel army in the sky to arrive so quickly, even if n-6 had sent the recovery signal just now, Hao Ren still asked casually to confirm the situation.

The robot lady shook her head. "I haven't had time yet…"

"Then it seems it's just a coincidence," Izhaks said in a muffled voice, "There's a group of armed people approaching here. They should be from the same place as you."

"Forces from Zenith?" n-6's eyes widened in surprise. "How could there be ground forces…"

Seeing the robot girl's reaction, Hao Ren was a little surprised. "Is it strange to have ground forces?"

"Apart from sending out Recyclers, Zenith rarely dispatches ground forces to the surface of the mother planet, because ground forces are almost useless in the war against the Planet Devourers," n-6 shook her head, "Insufficient data, unable to analyze which echelon they come from. I need to make contact with them."

This was exactly what Hao Ren was waiting for. "Of course, only you can handle this. Come with us, we'll take you to the exit."

In the dense forest, n-4, as the temporary commander, led her newly gathered team members, who were not even familiar with each other, cautiously forward. She gripped the electromagnetic assault rifle in her hand tightly, but this powerful individual weapon couldn't give her much more sense of security at the moment—the surface of the mother planet was fraught with danger, and landing on it was almost equivalent to giving up half of your chances of survival. This was the consensus of all Executors, and at this moment, she felt it even more deeply.

Especially after the squad's radar equipment was destroyed by an unknown energy pulse, the danger factor in this place skyrocketed.

"Left side, clear." "Right side, clear." "Communication with the camp is normal." "One kilometer away from 'that thing'."

The squad members quickly exchanged information via short-range radio. Everyone kept their voices very low. Although their sensors couldn't scan any real enemies, a heavy pressure still made everyone vigilant.

n-4 bit her lip. This human-like action indicated that she was an "elite unit" with a service age far exceeding her colleagues. Her longer service age and more battle merits allowed her to download more humanized data packages from the "Great Library." These data packages allowed her to think more like a human, possess more advanced emotions and fuzzy processing capabilities, and it was these characteristics that allowed her—and those temporarily assembled team members—to participate in that operation.

And ultimately fall to this point.

Was there… a little regret?

A team member's voice brought n-4 back to her senses: "Captain, that should be it up ahead."

n-4 nodded. Although she had been slightly distracted before, the Executor's logic circuits would not be affected by this level of distraction. The part of her that was executing the mission was still faithfully executing various battlefield commands, so she had realized the appearance of the target before the team member spoke to remind her. She signaled the team members to hide in the nearby bushes, then looked past the sparse plants towards the behemoth not far away.

It was lying quietly in the center of the forest. The huge shock wave created during the crash had directly "cleared" a large area of the forest into a huge pit. The trees on the edge of the impact crater were tilted and scattered, and only a large number of scorched rocks and carbonized tree trunks could be seen inside the impact crater. After several days, the high temperature in the impact crater had long since dissipated. The only thing that could prove that a spaceship crash had occurred here was the ship quietly lurking at the bottom of the pit.

The style of the ship was unheard of. Its main body was silver-white, with a long axis of more than five hundred meters and a maximum width of about two hundred meters. The overall shape was wide in the middle and narrow at both ends. It had heavy armor and various external equipment that had never been seen before, and there was a striking and bizarre painting on the upper deck of the ship—it was a portrait of some alien creature. The creature had sharp fangs and extremely serious and cold eyes. The triangular ears stood on top of its head like the most vigilant warriors, and it looked like a hero among predators.

Using the image of a predator as the ship's painting should be some kind of totem symbol, which might mean that the ship came from a civilization full of combat tendencies.

But in any case, the elegance and beauty of the ship itself could not be denied.

Although she had seen this thing in blurry intelligence photos before, seeing it with her own eyes at this moment still made n-4 couldn't help but admire in a low voice: "What a… beautiful spaceship."

Six days ago, this unidentified aircraft suddenly appeared above the mother planet's atmosphere, and then crashed on the planet's surface. The high-energy pulse generated during its crash instantly damaged the sensing systems of several detection satellites that happened to be illuminating this area, so that the superior command nodes did not confirm what the "crashed object" was until three days ago.

But what was even more abnormal was the reaction of the superior command nodes after that: the "main brain" in the fortress had no intention of investigating this "crashed object" at all, and even rejected all applications for remote exploration of the planetary surface. This unidentified spaceship seemed to have become a "forbidden zone," and the main brain ordered all actions to avoid it.

If nothing had happened later, n-4 would have faithfully executed the orders from the main brain. She would not have come here at all.

"This ship… seems different from the previous intelligence." A team member discovered an abnormality and said in a low voice.

n-4 carefully observed the spaceship at the bottom of the impact crater, and she also noticed the same problem.

This ship… doesn't seem to be injured at all, which is not normal.

Because the main brain shielded all information related to this spaceship and called off all exploration activities, n-4 only had a blurry picture in her hand. That picture was a scene taken by a satellite when the mysterious spaceship had just crashed on the surface of the mother planet (the satellite was subsequently burned into scrap metal by an energy pulse). Although the picture was not very clear, it could still be seen that the crashed spaceship looked miserable, with terrible damage that could almost be described as being cut in half and disintegrated in many places. It would not be an exaggeration to say that it had become a pile of wreckage, but the one in front of her…

n-4 narrowed her eyes. She felt that the ship in the center of the impact crater was as good as new. The injuries in the photos were gone, and the main body of the ship that had been cut in half was completely repaired, and even had some equipment that was not in the photos at all.

It was as if it was another ship.

"Over there—Captain, look at what that is!"

A team member pointed at the stern of the ship and exclaimed in a low voice. Through the shared information chain, n-4 immediately noticed that detail: she saw a piece of twisted and deformed armor plate falling off the stern of the ship, and then a new armor plate wriggled out of the ship's interior like biological regeneration…

"This ship is alive!" n-4 exclaimed in a short voice. "It's been regenerating!"

She instantly thought of the radar that had been burned by an unknown energy pulse before—that radar was suddenly damaged when it turned its antenna near the crash site of the ship. Now it seemed that this was a very obvious hostile signal!

A "living" spaceship, it had been lurking on the planet's surface for a few days, and now it had almost completely regenerated, and it had also shown obvious hostility. The ship was also painted with a painting representing combat tendencies (Lily's big headshot). These pieces of information instantly gathered together, and n-4 immediately realized that she and her team members were in danger.

However, retreating was not a wise move—thinking of the burned radar, n-4 knew that she and her group had probably already been targeted by this living spaceship.

And been classified as enemies.

The logic circuit was deducing quickly. The best solution was to leave some people to attract the ship's attention, and the others would retreat to the camp and quickly leave this place to plan for the future. This solution could guarantee the highest safety. The alternative solution was to try to establish contact with the ship and gamble on whether this space visitor could be communicated with. This solution lacked rationality and was too naive, but it was also an option.

However, just as she was about to announce Plan A, the ship suddenly moved.

She saw a hatch opening on the side of the ship, and then a figure walked out of it.

A team member called out in a low voice: "Captain, that seems to be n-6."

n-4 poked her head out, and her logic circuits generated a little garbled code. She saw that n-6, who should have died in the last mission, was indeed standing there. Although there were some strange things about her body, her appearance was basically the same as before. More importantly, she was releasing n-6's identification signal.

But…

n-4 suddenly gripped the electromagnetic assault rifle tightly. She found data that did not belong to the Executor from the identification signal emitted by n-6. It was a code injected by incomprehensible alien technology, and she also sensed many abnormal energy fluctuations from n-6, the intensity of those energy fluctuations even exceeded that of the Titan Guards!

n-6 was hijacked by aliens! n-6 was transformed by aliens! n-6 was no longer n-6!

"Pick up your weapons!" Ms. n-4 quickly completed all reasoning. "That's just a parasite stuffed into n-6's shell! n-6 has been replaced by the alien life in the ship!"

"Prepare for battle!"