Age of Cosmic Exploration

Chapter 243: Despair and Madness

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Even though only about ten people charged into the fray, this was the moment the space merchant siege engine troop was at its weakest. The weird siege machine was scrapped, and several big-brained aliens in it were dead from brain explosion. The aliens near it were affected as well; they died trapped in their vehicles, causing the whole troop to succumb into chaos.

Ying took advantage of the chaos and charged forward. The first targets they went after were the floating motorcycles.

Under normal circumstances, these vehicles would prove to be a challenge for the troopers because they were floating and were highly mobile. Furthermore, as a siege vehicle, it was practically a given that they were equipped with electromagnetic shields that would require an extended period of focus fire from the troopers before breaking. Therefore, the only way was combat quarters combat. While the troopers were fast enough to catch up with the motorcycles, unfortunately, the space armors didn’t provide them with the ability to fly.

However, with the entire alien unit in chaos, the already lacking in discipline and morale space merchant military was practically defenseless. When they saw the Black Star Troopers charging at them, the multi-racial space merchants abandoned their posts and ran. Each issued their unique racial screams and escaped from the scene either in their own vehicles or jumped out of the vehicles and scurried away on foot.

This unique situation gave some troopers pause, but it didn’t slow Ying down; if anything, it made Ying crueler. Like Liu Bai once told Jay and Zhang Heng, Ying was the most emotionless member in the Black Star Unit…

While some troopers were standing in shock, Ying increased the speed of his space armor to the maximum and leaped into the middle of the space merchant unit. Like a bloody whirlwind, he left behind a trail of alien bodies in his wake. The sawblade was the epitome of sharpness among all 4th revolution close-range weaponry. At least, among the known 4th revolution materials, only a few of them could withstand the slashing of this weapon. The siege engine before them was not one of those.

The rest of the troopers finally came to after Ying ruthlessly decimated about 10 running aliens. They fell in behind Ying, and the place immediately became a sea of blood. This continued until Liu Bai pressed down hard on Ying’s shoulder, shouting into his ear, "F*ck! The plan is to capture them for interrogation, isn't it? What are you doing? Are you aiming to kill them all again?"

Ying wasn’t angry from the sudden accusation. He merely lifted his head to look around at the devastation he had caused. The ground was littered with alien body parts, and about 10 aliens were cowering inside their vehicles, shaking with fear. Most of the alien either had escaped or were cut down. This impressive-looking siege engine unit was taken down before they could even fire a single bullet. When they finally calmed down from their bloodlust, the troopers were enveloped by a curious suspicion.

"Stop the killing, keep a few alive for capture," Ying ordered calmly. He promptly ignored the eye-roll Ebon and Liu Bai gave him, because he was the one who had the most kills, the one that couldn’t be stopped.

Even so, the troopers didn’t let their guard down. After the war with the mother nest alien, Yao Yuan and Guang Zhen put the military through a lot of training and introduced more stringent military laws to improve overall discipline, to prevent the presence of deserters. The space troopers followed war protocol and split into pre-assigned groups without explicit orders from Ying. Some were responsible for capturing the aliens, others for checking for allies’ injuries and setting up a guarding perimeter.

Liu Bai was afraid the mind-breaker attack from before had killed the business experts, but after he gave them a rudimentary check, he realized that they had merely fainted. The group sighed in relief, and it was finally time for the interrogation.

After a simple discussion, they needed to establish communication with the aliens first. However, since Ren Tao was emotionally unstable, the candidate selected was Xiao Niao.

"I know you can understand me. We have some questions for you. Answer them truthfully and we will let you go safely. If you don't, then there will be hell to pay," Xiao Niao switched his speech frequency to match the junkyard aliens' to communicate with the space merchants.

There were about 10 captured aliens. Two of them were the big-brained aliens. They appeared to have suffered great physical injuries, as a faded, blue-blood-like liquid was oozing out of their noses, ears, and other orifices of which uses were unknown. The other alien races crowded around the two of them, as if protecting them.

After Xiao Niao spoke his piece, a contained commotion appeared among the small group of aliens. A few weirdly-shaped ones replied with an unknown speech frequency. Naturally, none of the human beings understood it. After some time, the aliens understood the issue and they switched to the junkyard aliens’ speech frequency. Alas, Xiao Niao’s space armor computer was greatly disrupted, so he could barely understand what was being said.

Xiao Niao replied instantly, "Our computer system is all offline due to your mother ship’s disturbance. Either you stop the disturbance or use your own computers to translate into our language. F*ck, drop the charade. You already know we are the human race, and you have stumbled across the human language before! Just directly translate to the human language!"

As Xiao Niao said so, he signaled Liu Bai, who stood beside him. Liu Bai pulled a centipede-like alien out from the group roughly and cut open its stomach. Liu Bai made sure to avoid the vital organs so that the alien would struggle crazily on the floor without actually dying. This stunned the group of aliens into a shocked silence before they started screaming in each of their own languages. The language barrier didn’t stop the message of fear from being understood.

"Our time is limited, so don’t try to drag this out. At every interval of thirty seconds… I don’t know how your time is calculated, but the interval will be set at 30 seconds. If we see no progress, then we will kill one of you every 30 seconds, so don’t dally!" Xiao Niao said, with as much threat as he could muster.

After the aliens heard him, the screaming stopped. One of the snake-like aliens slithered to a floating motorcycle nearby, but it started screaming when it was half way there. It fell to the floor and started rolling around like it was in immense pain. Very soon, it went still like it had died.

This sudden development made the troopers looked around in alarm. They raised their rifles and trained them at their captives. Any sudden movements or an order from Ying and these captives would be beehives.

Right then, the two big-brained alien parted themselves from the group. With shaking bodies, they communicated in English, "We know your language. You are a life form called Homo Sapiens, carbon-based, warm-blooded, and a young space civilization. Of course we know your race… You bunch of shameless thieves!"

Ying’s group was confused by the sudden insult, but they made no move. After all, they were the victors, so a little insult from their captives was harmless. The key was finishing the mission. Xiao Niao was a little speechless from the accusation. He offered, after a few seconds, "I doubt you’ll believe me even if I say this is all a misunderstanding. To be specific, the group of humans that has tricked you is not us… The two groups might be of the same race, but they have nothing to do with us!"

A small surge of electricity appeared within the big-brained alien’s brain. It was the unknown what the purpose of it was, but after the electrical surge disappeared, the alien continued, "You can’t weasel your way out of this. How can the two of you be unrelated when you’re of the same race? We pitied you, and because you were a new space civilization, we gave you the star navigation chart to the nearest shelter for free, and you people said you were willing to use half your population and half your cosmic adaptors to trade for technologies and materials. However, you bunch of Saharian Space Maggots use an incomplete wormhole technology or a pseudo-wormhole to escape after taking the technology and materials! Do you think we space merchants are dummies? This time you masqueraded as a Level 2 civilization to try to swindle us again! You people are the worst of the space trash, the…"

Xiao Niao interrupted him, "You can scold all you want, but it is pointless. You are now a captive, and I’m telling you, it’s a misunderstanding. Regardless, we still have no clue about our mother ship’s information, and if the damage isn’t irreparable, there is still a chance for a peace treaty… Therefore, I have three demands for you. Number one, tell me what has happened to our mother ship. Number two, give me the map to this ship. Number three, tell me how to stop the disturbance to our computer systems."

The two big-brained aliens looked at one another and started cackling. After that, they swiped their fingers at the space before them and suddenly a 3D image appeared. It was showing what was happening in space. More than a thousand circular combat jets were surrounding the Hope. The video moved to show the explosion of Defender One, Two, and the Observer. Finally, the Hope itself went out with a bang…

Ren Tao split the big-brained alien into two. The Space Troopers cut the rest of the captives into mincemeat…

At that moment, there was no longer any rationality left in the troopers. The only thing that remained was madness…