Volume 8: A Trip to the Sick Village Chapter 392 Boarding the Ship
With the friendly force identification module, the space shuttle approached the "Greece" spaceship without being attacked at all.
The hangar door of the "Greece" was open, which saved the trouble of invading the electronic lock. Under Layton's control, the space shuttle parked directly inside the hangar.
"Prepare to connect to the hangar's control system and close the hangar door. Ivan and I will be in charge of the oxygen supply device." Ke Lan said to Leighton, then stood up from his seat and waved to Ivan.
Although Chiron's subordinates are quite powerful, the equipment they wear can only be described as "simple". Even the servant of God wearing the "Bronze Hammer" has lost more than 90% of its original functions in the power armor on his body. The only ones who can move in a vacuum environment are Ke Lan and the other four who are wearing space suits or new armor.
But just as Ke Lan walked towards the airlock, Ze Luo followed her. She reached out and grabbed the belt around Ke Lan's waist that was used to carry magazines. Although she didn't say anything, the expression on her face made her meaning clear: she wanted to go with Ke Lan.
Ke Lan knew that Ze Luo had the ability to survive in space, but the abilities she had demonstrated now were already outrageous. If she was able to move freely in a space environment, even Ke Lan wouldn't know how to explain the origins of this "monster" to her teammates.
"You'd better stay. We don't have any extra space suits for you." Ke Lan said, "I'll be back soon. It will only take five minutes."
Although still looking reluctant, Ze Luo finally let go of her hand.
"Alas... I don't know if I have gotten myself into big trouble." Ke Lan sighed inwardly. Ze Luo's actual mental age is equivalent to that of a human child who has just become sensible. If he had always been obedient, it would be fine. But if he reached the rebellious period one day, then things would probably be beyond Ke Lan's control.
"I can't beat them, and I can't escape either. I can only take it one step at a time..."
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The anti-intrusion system inside the "Greece" had been triggered once, and the circuits of all equipment in the hangar had been cut off. It was now in complete darkness, with only a few safety warning lights using independent power supplies still emitting dark red light.
Ke Lan fumbled around under the shuttle's engine for a while, opened a flap, and pulled out a cable from it. If he wanted to restart the equipment in the hangar, the only way except going to the bridge was "physical invasion."
Ivan stood guard with his weapon in hand, while Ke Lan dragged the cable towards the control console in the corner of the hangar. He took out a dagger, first used the protrusion at the end of the handle to unscrew the screws on the inspection cover, then inserted the tip of the knife into the gap and pried up the entire inspection cover.
"Leighton, get ready." Ke Lan said in the communication channel, and then plugged the cable in his hand into a spare socket inside the console.
"Writing the virus program into the airship's main control system, it is expected to take thirteen minutes." Layton's voice came from the headset. Ke Lan raised his head and glanced at the dark console display. He said, "First, hack into the hangar's control module and close the door."
"I know."
As soon as Layton finished speaking, the hangar door behind the space shuttle slowly closed, and a dull fan sound rang out at the top of the hangar. Oxygen-containing air was being continuously pressed into the hangar by the blower.
"Can you turn on the lights?" Ke Lan looked around . "It's too dark here. I can't see anything clearly. It's too easy to be attacked."
"It doesn't seem to work..." Layton said with some embarrassment, "The circuit of the lighting system seems to have failed. I see that the lights in the hangar are all on, but it just won't light up..."
"Forget it, just turn on all the external searchlights of the space shuttle." Ke Lan said.
With a "swish", several thick beams of light shot out from the space shuttle in an instant, illuminating most of the hangar as if it were daytime. At this time, Ke Lan discovered that there were large stains of blood on the floor and walls of the hangar.
Due to the extremely low temperature in the universe, the bloodstains have turned into ice, but precisely because of this, the bloodstains have retained their original appearance very well. With the help of these splashed bloodstains, Ke Lan quickly restored the battle that had taken place in the hangar not long ago.
"The people in the hangar... all seemed to have been killed by melee attacks... The enemy moved very quickly and with great strength..." Ke Lan analyzed the bloodstains one by one, "This one has a lot of bleeding, and it has sprayed so far, so the artery must have been cut off, beheaded or limbs severed... And they must have been attacked in an instant, and the weapon used to kill was very sharp, so it only stayed on the victim's body for a very short time, otherwise the blood would have changed direction during the spraying process..."
Ke Lan subconsciously thought of the sword in Asano Akira's arms, but the problem was that they already knew what kind of enemy they were going to face, but the traces of battle before them did not match the expected enemy at all.
"There is no body..." Ivan whispered, "Ke Lan..."
"Yeah, I know what you mean... resurrection, possession, etc. are all routine operations, nothing to be surprised about." Ke Lan nodded, "Before in the East 9th District, Zi Yan was able to move after his head was chopped off. Controlling several corpses should not be difficult for that thing."
"But we need to be aware that those corpses might be armed." Layton interrupted in the communication channel, "The Greek's arsenal is enough to arm a reinforced company of troops."
"How many crew members are there on the Greece?" Ivan looked at Ke Lan and asked.
"If we don't count the marines on the armed landing craft, the crew should be around eighty people, half of whom are staff hired by 'Snapdragon International' under the Ye Group." Ke Lan said.
Xiaolong International is a PMC company controlled by the Yeh Group. PMC is the abbreviation of "Private Military Contractor". Many people equate PMC with mercenaries, but in fact, the business scope of PMC is much larger than that of pure mercenaries. In terms of professionalism, PMC employees are far better than those gray mercenaries who are between legal and illegal.
Because of the special nature of this mission, Ke Lan hired a large number of people from Xiaolong International. In addition to the "Marine" team responsible for combat, most of the more than 80 people on the ship are logistics personnel - for Ke Lan and his team, this is the only good news among a lot of bad news.
Most of the Marines were killed in the explosion of the armed landing craft, and their bodies were still floating in the cold and dark space. Even if the bodies of these logistics personnel were controlled by the puppet individual, the combat effectiveness they could exert would definitely not be as good as those of professional fighters.
"But I don't think they would use guns." Ivan shook his head and said, "Just from the bloodstains, we can tell that the battles in the hangar were mostly close combat. Also, apart from the corpses, I didn't see any traces of bullet casings or bullet holes..."
"Close combat? Knife fighting?" asked Layton. He had not yet gotten off the space shuttle and could only see some vague outlines of the traces described by Ke Lan and Ivan on the monitor.
"It shouldn't be a knife." Ke Lan denied Layton's words, "The only two melee weapons in the arsenal are the combat dagger and the multi-functional engineer shovel, but neither the dagger nor the engineer shovel can cause such a wound."
"Judging from the bloodstains, the weapon that could have created these marks must have been a sword like the one in Asano Akira's hand, or a melee weapon with a wider blade, a longer blade, and greater convenience for exerting force." Ivan continued, taking over Ke Lan's words.
"I thought of two weapons." Ke Lan said.
Layton: "Which two?"
"The ancient Chinese saber and the European two-handed sword." Ke Lan replied, "Only these heavy weapons will not be hindered when they are swung to cut the human body."
"...I've only seen these two weapons in literature. If you want to kill people, the chainsword is definitely better." Layton said.
"But the chainsaw sword doesn't cut people in half, it saws them in half. The traces of blood will form a fan, not a long, thin straight line." Ke Lan said, "Okay, the oxygen concentration in the hangar has reached the standard, so we can let those guys down."
But at this moment, a black shadow quickly flashed past the blind spot of the searchlight. Ke Lan quickly raised his gun and fired a burst of bullets.
All the bullets hit the air, splashing a series of sparks on the metal floor, but in the instant just now, Ke Lan had already captured the true face of the black shadow - it was a logistics personnel wearing a blue and orange uniform, or in other words, a monster parasitic in the body of the logistics personnel...
A large number of black hard spikes emerged from the man's back and shoulders. The largest of these spikes was nearly one meter long and as thick as a fist, while the smallest was about the size of a chopstick. There were also many torn, blood-stained strips of cloth hanging on the top of the spikes...
"Black spikes..." Ke Lan subconsciously associated this thing with the black liquid in the iron virgin, and the texture of these spikes was indeed very similar to solidified asphalt.
Under the dense spikes, the monster's skin was covered with a thick layer of black blood scabs, and its forearms and palms were transformed into a pair of foldable sickle-shaped limbs. At the first glance at the pair of sickles, Ke Lan could be sure that the bloodstains were caused by this thing. Under the huge shear force, cutting off human limbs was as easy as cutting paper.
"Be careful, it's heading towards your three o'clock position!" Ivan shouted. He wanted to use the searchlight on his power armor to lock onto the monster's position, but he could not keep up with its speed at all.
"Don't think of it as a PMC logistics staff... Apart from the tattered shell outside, that thing has nothing to do with humans." Ke Lan shouted, "Ivan and I failed to intercept that thing. It is approaching the space shuttle at a very fast speed-"
"Leave it to me!" Marshall's voice came from a distance. Ke Lan turned around and saw that he was the first to jump out of the hatch of the space shuttle, then suddenly accelerated in mid-air and fell to the ground. He raised his hand and just strangled the monster's neck.
"Too weak, not even challenging." Marshall said with little interest, "You decide whether to kill him or not."
"Don't kill it yet!" Before Ke Lan could say anything, Ivan walked over quickly. "We may encounter monsters like this again. Let me study this sample. Maybe I can find their weaknesses."
"What's the value of studying such a weak monster?" Marshall said this, but he still used his materialized thoughts to restrict the monster's movements and brought it in front of Ivan.
But just as Ivan took out the dissecting tools, the imprisoned monster suddenly exploded like a bomb, and the spikes on its body shot out in all directions. Marshall only had time to block the spikes that were shot at Ivan and himself, while on the other side, an experimental subject who had just come down from the space shuttle was directly pierced into a hedgehog by dozens of spikes.
The experimental subject's vitality was very tenacious. Although many of its vital organs were pierced, it did not die immediately. It continued to struggle on the ground, and a large amount of blood overflowed from the squeezed and deformed wounds.
"There's no hope..." Ivan walked forward and checked the subject's injuries, then shook his head at Ke Lan and Marshall. "His heart, lungs and spleen are all punctured, and he's losing a lot of blood. Unless we send him to the medical cabin within five minutes, otherwise..."
"This damn thing, I have already imprisoned it, but those spikes can actually penetrate my mind barrier. Could it be that this guy has also participated in that experiment?" Marshall looked at the broken body at his feet with some annoyance. As soon as he noticed the abnormality, he set up three barriers made of mind power around the monster. But after the monster exploded, those spikes penetrated these three barriers almost without any hindrance. If Marshall had not added more than a dozen barriers in front of him, he would have been hit.
He clearly felt that on those spikes, there were fluctuations very similar to his mental power. These things neutralized the barrier he set up - just like before in the space station, Asano Akira attached his mental power to the blade to cut open the invisible big hand he condensed.
"Is there more than one telekinesis experimental base?" Marshall said to himself suspiciously.
"It may not be due to the person himself. I think this ability should come from the thing that turned him into this appearance." Ke Lan said.
"This is impossible. I've never heard of anyone being able to impart their thoughts to other people, not even a perfect individual." Marshall shook his head.
"What about attaching to dead objects?" Ke Lan asked tentatively, "Like Asano Akira, wasn't his mind attached to that sword?... This person is already dead, and the corpse has no thoughts of its own. It should also be considered an object, right?"
