The Record of Unusual Creatures

The lunar base had already noticed the fierce battle taking place around the Zenith space station. It was not due to the failure of the drone cluster’s signal jamming; it was just that the flickering lights surrounding the Zenith were visible on the lunar base. With a slightly better optical device, one could clearly see that a group of unknown war machines had surrounded the space station in the higher orbit.

It was hard to miss. There was a new war, at least in the eyes of the people in the lunar base.

The moment the drone cluster disabled the Zenith’s communication network, the lunar base had issued the highest security alert. Thousands of optical observatories and radar antennas started to turn in the direction of the Zenith. The residents of the moon tried to figure out what was going on, but apart from optical observations, there was only noise in the other means of communication, including all the secret and emergency channels. The radar had returned with completely distorted signals.

Without the convenience of communication network and radar observations, the Executors on the moon were left with only physical observation to monitor the battlefield’s situation in the distance. Their artificial intelligence, which was the epitome of advanced technology, felt as if they had reverted to ancient times. They had to use the most primitive means to collect intelligence and formulate strategies. Just as recorded in the Great Think Tank, humans in the Middle Ages relied on flag-waving, fire and smoke, as well as eye signals to transmit messages. That was what the Executors were doing right then, and such a situation had thrown the orderly lunar base society into chaos.

However, the Cortex Prime had quickly restored order on the moon. Following its instructions, fighters began to scramble into space, and rapid response gunships, which were rarely used nowadays, roared away from the spaceport. They learned from the optical observations that a group of mysterious enemies had sieged the Zenith. The enemies were extremely agile, and the cumbersome battleships and heavy gunships would probably be powerless against these enemies, leaving only the rapid-fire cannons the effective defense against those strange enemies. So, most of the spacecraft lifting off the lunar base were of such fast response units.

The more important reason was that there were not many large warships at the Executors’ disposal. During the war with the planet devourer, heavy space bombers were redundant and phased out a dozen centuries ago.

The reinforcement units leaving the moon surface had caught the attention of Hao Ren.

The cleverly disguised attack craft, which Lily named it Trojan Horse, was approaching the moon following the scheduled flight path. It did not come into contact with the reinforcement units lifting off from the moon, but a battered spacecraft would stand out like a sore thumb in the sea of other spaceships. At first, Hao Ren was worried about whether the appearance of the Trojan Horse would blow its cover. But soon, he realized that his fear was unfounded.

The spacecraft successfully passed through every checkpoint even though it did not even have a real pilot.

In the cockpit, the MDT was the one in the pilot seat. It projected a lifelike holographic image of the original pilot to dupe the facial recognition camera at the checkpoint. The screen in front of the pilot flashed with the conversation record between the lunar base security system and the onboard computer.

“XX Tower calling Flight Unit XXXX to submit ID code.”

“Flight Unit XXXX has submitted the ID code. Request for access.”

“Flight Unit XXXX, please state your purpose of visit.”

“Flight Unit XXXX suffers damage during the space battle. The Zenith is under siege. Request to land on lunar base for repair.”

“XX Tower relays its instructions; the Cortex Prime has listed information about the Zenith as a high priority. Please upload your battle record.”

“Flight Unit XXXX acknowledged. Battle record is being uploaded.”

On the one hand, there was the shipboard computer that the autonomous robots had modified, and on the other, it was the lunar base customs security AI. The two low intelligent AIs were essentially chatbots that talked with each other.

Hao Ren had expected that this runaway spacecraft from the Zenith would arouse the suspicion of the Cortex Prime on the lunar base. He had thus made up a battle record beforehand in the onboard computer, and now, it came in handy.

At last, the Trojan Horse passed all the space checkpoints. It descended slowly toward a group of domes. One of the domes had accepted the request for landing and opened up its hemispherical roof, which was wide enough for the fighter to enter. Inside the opening were a large number of robotic equipment.

It was the automated spacecraft maintenance facility that the Executors built.

“I can’t believe that it is so easy,” Hao Ren said to N-6 as the spacecraft slowly descended inside the dome. “Everything runs automatically, and it is not even a highly intelligent system. Had you people stationed some more advanced AI, such as a bionic robot like you, and asked more complicated questions, we would not have made it in so easily.”

“But that will greatly reduce efficiency and shorten the lifespan of our logic circuit.” N-6 shook her head. “The automated system could do the job more efficiently and faster when it comes to processing a large amount of data during large unit deployment. The automated ID recognition system was foolproof until people like you all came with more advanced technology. Again, it would be useless to upgrade the automated ID recognition system when you all could hack it so easily.”

The logical thinking of N-6 was still so no-nonsense and straightforward. She did not even feel embarrassed for their technological inferiority but merely stating the facts, which instead had made Hao Ren feel a little embarrassed.

“If not necessary, we still hope to have a conversation with your survivor civilization.” Hao Ren rubbed his nose. “But we are out of options.”

Just then, Lily saw the monitor in the compartment. “Mr. Landlord, we are floating up. Something is coming.”

The maintenance system of the dome had taken over the control of the spacecraft when the spacecraft was inside. And the MDT did not resist lest it triggered the alarms. Hao Ren took a peek at the outside situation. A set of robotic arms grabbed the Executor attack craft and brought it to a metal platform, where a large number of servos with a small robotic arm attached rose from below. Each robotic arm had an eye blinking in red moving around the battered spacecraft to examine the degree of damage before formulating a repair plan. If this examination continued, they would soon found out the anomalies of the spaceship.

But Hao Ren already had a plan for this. While the robotic arms were at work on the platform, the entrance of the spacecraft slid opened a small gap, and a blue light flashed out from the inside. The happened so fast that the nearest robotic arm had managed to tilt its head slightly with eyes flashing a couple of times, and then determined that it was just a lens flare.

Meanwhile, the MDT had quietly sneaked up to the repair dock. With the prior intelligence given by N-4, the MDT had quickly found the hexagonal metal equipment mounted on the wall, which was the control center of the repair bay and connected to all other automation systems of the entire complex.

When the MDT attached itself to the surface of the metal device, a large number of data and patterns began to show up on the display of the metal device. The MDT had installed a virus into the system. One after another, the threads on the screen turned red, and an error message popped up. But soon, they returned to green again, which meant normal.

Or at least, it looked normal.

“The virus has taken over the system.” The MDT reported. “It is infecting other systems. You all can come out now.”

The belly of the Trojan Horse flipped open. Hao Ren brought his team jumped out of the spacecraft and swaggered past the robotic arms, which seemed to have not noticed the foreign elements.

Lily curiously poked a robotic arm with her claws, and the robot just moved to the side, sluggishly with no other reactions.

“Stop poking around. These things are not responsive.” Hao Ren smacked Lily’s head so that she could control her curiosity. “The MDT has planted a virus into the systems of the maintenance center. Now they are convinced that they are performing a complicated repair task smoothly.”

“The virus will not provide cover for long enough time,” N-6 reminded. “The prescribed protocol requires the pilot of the spacecraft to report to the nearest barrack and execute the combat data extraction procedure within one hour. We only have an hour, after which the Executors and the Cortex Prime will find out the problem here.”

Hao Ren nodded. “That is a long time. We just need to leave this place.”

The virus had infected all systems in the maintenance center. Since the Executor society was entirely based on artificial intelligence and automated control systems, it was the computer that controlled the operations in the maintenance bay. Hao Ren and his team walked out openly. Aside from having to circumvent some patrolling soldiers, they did not have to worry about any surveillance equipment.