Chapter 1542: The Ground Operation Force

It surprised Hao Ren. He remembered that he had been talking to Nolan about it just now⁠—that they had been on the planet for six days and the survivors had not even come down to look at it, and he thought it was quite wrong.

Well, here they come, at last, six days late, with an armed force.

“How many people are there?” Vivian frowned and asked Nolan.

“There were only 18 of them, carrying a variety of light and heavy weapons and detection equipment. Their transport plane stopped in the forest and did not move, apparently setting up a makeshift camp. This appears to be a well-trained reconnaissance unit with a clear purpose.”

Hao Ren raised his eyebrows and asked, “Sure they’re coming for us?”

“Yes.” Nolan nodded. But just now they tried to scan me with their radar and I scan them back, I think I destroyed their radar.

N-6 looked at the humans in front of her, feeling confused. This time she could not understand what they were saying because Hao Ren had shut down the translation plugin during internal discussions. At last, she could not resist her curiosity and asked, “What happened?”

“Oh, I want to confirm with you.” Hao Ren looked at N-6. “Have you sent that signal?”

Although he felt that, even though N-6 had just sent the recovery signal, the survivors of the rebels could not react so quickly, so Hao Ren wanted to confirm the situation.

The robot girl shook her head and. “I haven’t had time to…”

“Then it seems to be a coincidence,” said Y’zaks in a muffled voice. “There’s a team of armed men approaching from the outside, presumably from the same place as you.”

“Troops from the Zenith?” N-6’s eyes widened in surprise. “How can there be a ground force…”

Hao Ren was surprised to see the robot girl’s reaction. “Is the ground force strange?”

“The Zenith rarely sends any ground forces to the home planet because ground forces have little role in the battle against the planet’s devourer.” N-6 shook her head. “I don’t have enough information to analyze which echelon they come from. I need to engage with them.”

Hao Ren was waiting for this. “Of course, only you can fix this thing. Come with us. We’ll take you to the exit.”

In the dense forest, N-4, acting as a temporary commander, led her newly assembled and unfamiliar men cautiously forward. She clutched her electromagnetic assault rifle, but the power of the weapon did not give her any more security at the moment. It was the consensus of all executors that landing on the home planet, where the ground was so dangerous, was almost like giving up half the chance of survival. And now, she felt it more deeply.

Especially after the team’s radar equipment was destroyed by a pulse of unknown energy, the danger in the area soared.

“Left side, safe.”

“Right, safe.”

“Communication with the base is normal.”

“That thing is still a kilometer away.”

The team members exchanged information quickly over close range radios, all of them keeping their voices low. Even though their sensors did not sense any real enemy, there was still a heavy pressure on them kept them on their toes.

N-4 bit her lip. This move, too close to a human, suggested that she was an ‘elite organism’ far older than her peers in military service. Longer military life and more combat work had allowed her to download more humanizing data packs from the ‘big think tank’, which allowed her to think more like a human, with more advanced emotions and ambiguity processing capabilities. It was these attributes that led her⁠—and her improvised team⁠—to participate in the operation.

And it ended up this way.

Wasn’t it… a little regret?

The voice of a team member reminded N-4, “Captain, we’re close.”

N-4 nodded. Although she was slightly distracted just now, the logic circuit of the executor was not affected by such a degree of mind-wandering. The part of the circuit she used to carry out the task was still faithfully executing various field instructions, so she was aware of the presence of the target before the team sounded the alarm. She motioned the team to hide in the nearby bushes, and then looked over the sparse plants to the giant object not far away.

It lay still in the middle of the forest. The shock waves created by the fall ‘cleared’ a large area of the forest directly into a huge crater, with the trees along the edge of the crater swaying, and only a large amount of charred rock and carbonized tree trunks visible inside the crater. The heat in the impact crater had long since subsided. The only evidence of a spaceship crash here was the ship lying dormant at the bottom of the crater.

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The style of that spaceship was unheard of. It had heavy armor and a variety of external equipment that they had never seen before. And on the upper deck of the spaceship was a striking and bizarre painting⁠—a portrait of some alien creature. With its sharp tusks and extremely stern eyes, and its triangular ears perched on top of its head like those of the most vigilant warrior, looking like the king of the predators.

The image of the predator painted on the ship was supposed to be a totemic symbol, perhaps indicating that the spaceship came from a warlike civilization.

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

Though she had seen it before from the blurry intelligence photos, seeing it in person now made N-4 gasp in admiration. “It’s… a beautiful spaceship.”

Six days earlier, the unidentified spaceship had suddenly appeared above the planet’s atmosphere and crashed into the planet’s surface. The high-energy pulses that went off when it crashed knocked out the sensors of several satellites that were scanning the area, so much so that it was not until three days ago that the command nodes were able to confirm what the main body of the ‘crash’ was.

But even more unusual was the response of the command nodes: the ‘chief’ in the fortress had no intention of investigating the ‘crash’ at all, and even rejected all applications for remote exploration of the planet’s surface. The spaceship of unknown origin seemed to be a ‘forbidden zone’. The ‘brain’ commanded that all actions must be circumvented.

If nothing happened later, N-4 would have faithfully followed the orders from the chief, and she would not have come here at all.

“This spaceship… seems to be different from the previous intelligence,” one of them noticed something unusual and whispered.

N-4 looked closely at the spacecraft that hit the bottom of the crater, and she noticed the same problem.

The spaceship… did not look damaged at all. It was not normal.

N-4 had only a blurry image at hand as the chief blocked all information about the spaceship and called off all exploration. The image was taken by a satellite shortly after the mysterious spaceship crashed on the surface of the planet. Although the image was not very clear, one could still see the tragic appearance of the crashed spaceship.

N-4 narrowed his eyes. It felt like the spaceship in front of them was brand new. Those damages were gone, the main body of the spaceship had been completely repaired, and there was even some equipment that was not in the photo.

It’s like a different spaceship.

“Over there! Captain, look what it is!”

N-4 noticed that detail at once: she saw a twisted piece of deck fall from the stern of the ship, and then a new one squirmed out of the hull as if it was regenerating…

“This ship is alive!” cried N-4 in a short gasp. “It keeps regenerating!”

She immediately thought of the radar that was burned by an unknown energy pulse. The radar was suddenly damaged when it turned the antenna around the crash site. Now, that’s a very clear sign of hostility!

A ‘living’ spaceship, quietly lying dormant on the planet for a few days, it was now almost completely reborn, and it was clearly hostile, with combat paint (Lily’s head) on board. N-4 immediately realized that she and her team were in danger.

Retreating, however, was not a good idea⁠—considering the burned radar, N-4 knew they would have been spotted by the living spaceship.

And was classified as the enemy.

The logic circuit of N-4 worked rapidly. The best plan was to keep a few men to attract the spaceship’s attention, and others to retreat to the base and move away quickly. This plan guaranteed the highest security. The alternative was to try to establish contact with the spaceship, betting that the visitors from space could communicate. This plan was irrational and naive, but it was also an option.

But just as she was about to announce plan one, something happened on the spaceship.

She saw a hatch open on the side of the spaceship, and then a figure came out of it.

One of them whispered, “Captain, it looks like N-6.”

As N-4 looked at the direction, her logic circuit was a bit scrambled. She saw that N-6, who was supposed to have died in the last mission, was standing there. Although there was something wrong with her body, her appearance was basically the same. More importantly, she released the recognition signal of N-6.

But…

N-4 suddenly clenched her electromagnetic assault rifle. She found data that did not belong to the executors in the identification signals emitted by N-6. It was the kind of incomprehensible code that was injected by alien technologies. And she sensed a number of unusual energy fluctuations on N-6 that were stronger than even the titanium guards!

N-6 was being hijacked by aliens! N-6 had been modified by aliens! N-6 was not N-6 anymore!

“Take up arms!” N-4 quickly completed all the reasoning. “It’s just a parasite stuffed in N-6’s body! N-6 has been replaced by aliens!”

“Get ready to fight!”