Volume 12: Yaguna Kotor Chapter 568: Plane Crash Site
"As for logistics work...that's fine." Ke Lan nodded . According to the original plan, the front-line supply base for exploring Yagunakotor was set up in the core power room of the battleship.
The teleportation array in the core power room connects various areas on the battleship. It can be said to be the transportation hub inside Yagunakotor. The thinking of the civilization that built this ancient battleship seems to be completely different from that of humans. In large human vehicles, the core power structure has always been the top priority. Not only is it placed in the safest corner of the vehicle, but ordinary crew members are not allowed to enter, let alone get close to it.
The design concept of Yaguna Kotor is exactly the opposite. Anyone on the ship who wants to go to any area must pass through the core power room. This is like the designer of the Ark directly built the main reactor of the Ark at the intersection with the heaviest traffic in the most prosperous neighborhood.
As if he was afraid that others didn't know that this was the most important place on the entire ship.
But then again, Ke Lan still knows nothing about the civilization that built Yagunakotor. The only thing that is certain is that their technological level is much stronger than the Alpha civilization on this planet.
If this is a swarm civilization, then this design style seems to be explainable - all the "worker bees" are controlled by the "queen bee" anyway, they are just extensions of the "queen bee"'s body and mind, and do not have independent self-awareness. For a swarm civilization, this battleship layout is the best choice.
For humans, the only two threats to the core power room are the mutated lava leeches in the crystal pit and the high-intensity radiation released when the crystal array is activated. However, the former has been crushed into pieces when the battleship is restarted, and the latter only appears briefly when the crystal array is activated. As for the maintenance phase, no radiation will overflow from the crystal pit.
"I'll transfer the Pioneer's personnel back to the Ark right now, and leave the daily training to you!" Having said that, Zofia immediately wanted to stand up from the bed, but she only got halfway through the movement and sat back down with a cry of pain.
"Uh...was I that rough just now?" Ke Lan scratched his head and asked.
The eldest lady's face flushed, but her eyes stared at him relentlessly, and she nodded vigorously: "Like a wild beast."
"…Do you want some medicine or something?"
"The medicine box is under the wardrobe, in the second drawer from the left." Sofia bit her lip and said, "I can't get there..."
"Oh." Ke Lan quickly stood up and walked towards the closet.
After completing the indescribable process of applying the medicine, Ke Lan carried Zofia to the table. He originally wanted to put the young lady in his arms on the chair, but on second thought, he sat down first and let Zofia sit on his lap.
"Don't move." After warning Ke Lan, Zofia stretched out her hands and quickly typed on the keyboard. The crew of the Pioneer ranged from the captain and the first mate to the most basic mechanic like Bartlett. There were a total of two or three hundred people. The transfer of these two or three hundred people could not be completed directly with a single order...
Changes in personnel files, various working periods, vacation adjustments, salary and benefits settlement, subsequent placement plans and the drafting of new contracts, all these tasks must be done - ever since the last spy incident, Zofia has chosen to do many things herself, which has instantly increased the workload on her shoulders several times, and she has to work until very late every day before she can rest.
Seeing that Sofia had entered a state of serious work, Ke Lan did not want to disturb her anymore, so she put one hand gently around her slender waist, picked up her mobile phone with the other hand, and opened the news page of the browser.
Just as Ke Lan had expected, after the blockade of the entire ship was over, the authorities always had to give a "relatively reasonable" explanation...but this time the authorities did not blame it on infectious diseases or something like that. Instead, they announced to the public that due to the research institute's work errors, a highly dangerous indigenous creature broke through the containment device. The creature has now been killed and its body has been properly disposed of.
Although this statement would cause dissatisfaction among some people at first, after all, bringing dangerous indigenous creatures onto the Ark was an extremely irresponsible thing to do to people's lives and safety, and scolding and complaints were inevitable... Ke Lan scrolled to the bottom of the announcement page to the comment area, and sure enough, less than ten minutes after the announcement was released, the fearless guys below were already "rushing the tower".
"These people are really brave..." Although most of those guys who rushed into the tower used "floating IP addresses", this crude means of hiding was so simple that even Ke Lan could lock onto the original IP addresses of those people through the traceability program he wrote, not to mention the official network security personnel, and even find out the chip serial number of the machine he used to send the comments.
The reason why the Undead Crew chose this excuse is probably because they took into account that the impact of the entire ship blockade was too great. Explanations such as infectious diseases obviously could not hold up, so they might as well put the blame directly on the research institute - after all, the "meme incident" was originally caused by people from the research institute, so it was not unfair to them.
After closing this announcement, the second piece of news was "Ye Group announced that the rematch of this mecha competition will be postponed indefinitely."
"Oh? Even the rematch is cancelled?" Ke Lan muttered to herself. From the perspective of the official statement, an indefinite delay is basically equivalent to canceling the game. They just said this to save face.
Ke Lan didn't even need to call to ask, she knew that the cancellation of the rematch must be related to this accident - even the research institute was almost wiped out by the "meme", so the development of the virtual immersion system and new mecha would naturally come to a standstill.
With the capabilities of the Ye Group, it would be difficult to develop a new machine every year without the support of the equipment department of the research institute. Even the iterative update of squeezing toothpaste would be difficult to achieve... Ke Lan felt that if they did not gain anything from the exploration of Yaguna Kotor, not to mention that this rematch would be postponed indefinitely, even whether the next mecha competition could be held as scheduled would be an unknown.
After all, without the release of new models of mecha skeletons, the huge expenses of the competition would be difficult to recover through ticket sales. A competition in which all the players were old models would be meaningless to the Ye Group, no matter how exciting it was.
The so-called mecha competition is actually just to create momentum for the new product launch conference. Businessmen are profit-driven, so it is understandable that they delay or even cancel the competition for this reason.
Just when Ke Lan was about to check out other news, her mailbox prompted that a new email had been received - there would be no prompt for ordinary spam emails, only emails marked as "important contacts" by Ke Lan would enjoy this treatment.
Ke Lan opened the email and saw that the sender was the intelligence dealer he had been working with before. Although he rarely bought intelligence from the dealer after Ke Lan's identity was exposed, the dealer would provide him with some "gossip" from time to time, and most of this information was of interest to Ke Lan.
In terms of user service, this thing is at least much better than those stupid "AI big data push".
The first line of text in the email immediately made Ke Lan's body tense up, so much so that Sofia, who was sitting on his lap, noticed something was wrong and turned her head to look at him.
"Dr. Renee from the research institute defected."
Renee? Defect?
What is going on?
"What's wrong?" Zofia asked softly.
"Leni ran away." Ke Lan held the phone screen in front of Sofia.
"Doctor… Renee? Who is she?"
"It was Dr. Renee from the research institute who sent someone to monitor you. She was originally the head of the resident group of the Zero Fleet Research Institute... But instead of studying this ancient battleship, she started studying my body, and even implicated you."
"What she wants... is this?" Zofia lowered her head slightly and pressed lightly on her lower abdomen with a few onion-like fingers. "But if she wants to clone your body, she shouldn't have to use reproductive cells. She should be able to extract complete genes from ordinary tissue cells, right?"
"Who knows what she wants to do..." Ke Lan said, "If this crazy woman really succeeds, I'm afraid this incident will become even bigger."
"Then why did she run away? If this is all she did, given her graduate school background, she shouldn't be punished too harshly, right?"
"I don't know either... I don't even know what the definition of 'defection' is. Could it be that she has joined a heretical sect?" Ke Lan muttered, lightly swiping her thumb across the screen.
There is no text below, but a video. Judging from the perspective of the video, it should be a screenshot from the onboard surveillance camera of the "New Dawn", the second flagship of the Zero Fleet. Moreover, it is a video edited from multiple cameras, which can almost show the entire conflict process clearly.
The video ended when Dr. Renee and another "surviving" researcher boarded the transport plane. Seeing this, Ke Lan couldn't help but wonder - could she have escaped?
There are so many warships of all sizes in Fleet Zero, it’s impossible that they can’t even catch up with a transport plane, right?
Even if they were tasked with guarding the "Aguna Tor" and could not act rashly, they could still shoot down the transport plane with a few shots, right? With what these researchers had done, even if they used the main gun to blow Renee and the plane into pieces, the fleet would not have to bear any responsibility afterwards.
Not only do they not have to take responsibility, they can even turn around and put the blame on the institute... However, given the institute's current state, it would be bad enough even if they are not blamed. According to the way the Ark officials have always handled things, it is estimated that this matter should be characterized as Dr. Renee's personal behavior.
Fleet Zero’s counterattack was a legitimate one, while the research institute’s headquarters was considered an “uninformed party” outside the incident.
But the problem is that the intelligence dealer said "defection"... not "killing".
Ke Lan really wanted to reply to an email immediately to ask him what was going on, but after thinking about it for a while, he called the person in charge of Fleet Zero - the commander whose status was second only to Ke Lan, but who held the real command of the fleet.
After the sixteenth beep, the call was finally connected, but the person who answered the phone was not the commander of Fleet Zero himself, but his secretary, an icy beauty with a poker face all day long.
If Ke Lan remembered correctly, the secretary with the rank of captain seemed to be named "Sofia", which was only one letter different from Zofia. (Note: Sofia is Sofia, and Zofia is Zofia)
However, according to the soldiers below, Sophia is not as difficult to get along with as she looks. The reason why she always has a sullen face seems to be that she was injured during her early service and damaged her facial nerves. Even after undergoing reconstructive surgery, she still left with sequelae similar to facial paralysis.
Of course, these are just rumors. Ke Lan only stayed on the "New Dawn" for a few days in total, and all the words he spoke to this secretary did not exceed twenty sentences in total.
"Is the commander not here?" Ke Lan asked - logically speaking, Fleet Zero didn't have any missions right now, and the fleet commander shouldn't be so busy that he doesn't even have time to answer a phone call.
"The commander is not on board now," Sophia replied.
"Okay, is he going to deal with the defection of Dr. Renee at the Institute?"
"You already know?" Sophia's tone was a little surprised, but she quickly regained her composure, "Yes, he did go to deal with it."
"Could it be that Renee really escaped from under the noses of so many warships?" Ke Lan asked again.
"The transport plane that Dr. Renee was on did not escape, but was shot down by our side. However..."
"Just what?"
"After our troops found the wreckage of the transport plane, they only found the body of one of the researchers, not Dr. Renee's body."
"That means...she's not dead yet, right?"
"She is currently classified as MIA (missing in action), but we found bloodstains of Dr. Renee at the crash site. She was seriously injured and had lost a lot of blood. According to the doctor accompanying the team, if she cannot be treated, she will not survive for more than 24 hours."
"Have you searched the surrounding area?"
"Searching."
"Have you found any trace of a third person besides the two of them? Either a human or an indigenous creature." Ke Lan immediately realized the problem - if Dr. Renee was seriously injured and dying, then it would be impossible for her to leave the crash site on her own, so there must be a third party involved.
She was either carried away by a wild beast, or someone took her away before the fleet.
