Alien Relic Hunter

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Alpha Star is in low-Earth orbit, fifteen kilometers away from the "Sick Village" of the South 16th District Space Station.

The Greek airship drifted quietly in the shadow of Alpha Star. It had entered an orbit parallel to the space station. With the help of Alpha Star's gravity and its own inertia, it maintained a constant relative distance from the space station.

This is also part of the plan - the transport ship of the Mineral Mining Alliance only comes every two or three months. You can take their ship when you come, but there is no need when you leave. That's why Ke Lan arranged for Greece The number is on standby around the space station so that it can pick them up at any time.

To this end, a lot of new equipment and crew have been added to the Hellenic, and a team of "Marines" have even been arranged. If an accident occurs, these Marines can even directly drive the landing craft and forcefully break into the space station to rescue them. rescued.

"Captain, I seem to see something at the tail end of the space station." A crew member responsible for observation reported.

"What is it?"

"The distance is too far...and it's still on the dark side, so I can't see clearly..." the crew member replied, "but I feel like something is not right."

"Start the No. 2 and No. 4 stern thrusters, leave the current orbit, target coordinates B1F4, G5A0, move forward one." The captain did not hesitate and immediately ordered - the observer on the Greece has more than fifteen years of professional experience He had work experience and had served in the Second Fleet. Since he said something was wrong, it was probably correct.

Out of trust in the observer's ability, the Hellenic slowly drifted away from the orbit and approached the space station.

Although the Greek is a luxury spaceship, it is still a civilian ship. It does not have military-grade surveillance equipment. At the previous distance, it was completely impossible to use a conventional natural light camera to see clearly the dark side of the space station. impossible things.

Only this experienced observer was able to catch any abnormalities based on the blurred light and shadow outline after the image was enlarged. As for the others on the airship, they found nothing.

Two of the six thruster nozzles at the tail of the Hellenic ejected soft blue flames, pushing the airship around little by little to the other side of the space station... But the distance between the Hellenic and the space station shortened to insufficient At ten kilometers, the observer suddenly exclaimed!

Before anyone else could ask him the reason for his exclamation, the image that was enlarged to the main screen shocked everyone on the bridge!

Although the enlarged image is full of mosaics and jagged edges, at least the general appearance of the outside of the space station can be clearly seen - at the tail of the space station, that is, on the outer wall of the space station directly connected to Area F, there is actually a diameter of A hole of about five to six meters! And on the edge of this hole, there seems to be something crawling...

"Send out the reconnaissance plane! I need high-definition images taken at close range!" the captain made a quick decision.

The hangar door of the Greece opened, and two single-seat shuttle space planes shot out and headed straight for the space station.

"Probe 01 and Probe 02 are on their way to perform a reconnaissance mission and are expected to arrive at the scheduled location in 28 seconds." The reconnaissance aircraft pilot's voice sounded in the communication channel.

The speed of the shuttle reconnaissance planes was very fast, and the distance of several kilometers was almost instantaneous. However, just when they were about to arrive at the reconnaissance position, one of the shuttle reconnaissance planes actually crashed into a plane more than a hundred meters away as if out of control. Companions, the people on board the Greek didn't even have time to call the reconnaissance planes, and the two reconnaissance planes turned into an exploding fireball.

Everything happened so fast that the other reconnaissance plane had no time to evade, and the pilot didn't even have a chance to eject and escape. Both of them died - there was no chance of survival in an accident of this magnitude. .

"What's going on! Check the real-time status records fed back to the ship by the reconnaissance plane's flight recorder, and find out the cause of the accident!" The captain was the first to react from the shock - the two pilots of the reconnaissance plane The pilots are all retired fighter pilots from the Air Force. They can definitely be regarded as those with the best aircraft piloting skills among mankind - one has a total of 3,200 flying hours, and the other has a flying time of more than 5,000 hours. They have also served as instructors for student pilots. If measured according to the standards of mecha pilots, the two of them can definitely be regarded as ace level.

But this time it suddenly lost control, it was precisely the reconnaissance plane flown by the pilot with 5,000 hours of flying time...

"Report, until 0.45 seconds before the two planes collided, the automatic recording equipment on the reconnaissance plane was still sending us status information, but judging from this information, neither reconnaissance plane had any malfunction."

"This is impossible..." The captain clutched the edge of the command platform tightly, "This is absolutely impossible!"

There was no malfunction in the aircraft itself, which meant that the accident was likely caused by the pilot's human error, but the captain did not believe that the pilot would make such a low-level mistake.

There are neither meteorite fragments nor space junk in this airspace, and there are no strong gravitational fields or electromagnetic interference around it. This kind of place is usually an excellent place for novice pilots to do flight training. A veteran instructor with 5,000 hours of flight experience actually overturned his car in the same place as the training ground. Who would believe it?

During the mission, pilots are absolutely prohibited from drinking alcohol or taking drugs that may affect their sensory organs, and neither of them is driving while fatigued... This kind of mistake should never happen!

"Captain...there is something, I wonder if you have noticed..." A crew member standing at the bottom of the command platform turned around with a strange look on his face, as if he had seen something very strange. The same thing.

"What's the matter? Tell me."

"It's too quiet. Just before the accident, the communication channel was too quiet." The crew member said, "From the 5 seconds before Probe 01 lost control, to the time the aircraft lost control, and then to the collision with Probe 02... there was nothing in the communication channel. Any sound comes.”

"This is unreasonable." He continued, "Even if the driver did not have time to report the situation, he should not remain silent in this situation... He, he didn't even utter a exclamation or shout."

"It's really unreasonable." The captain said solemnly, his face turned livid - he had also seen the pilot's resume. During his service, the pilot also encountered several dangers of nearly crashing the aircraft and causing death. But he saved the day every time. A person like this has a very strong psychological quality. When encountering an unexpected situation, he will never be so frightened that he cannot even say a word.

"Should Probe 03 be dispatched?" someone asked. There were only three reconnaissance aircraft on board the Greece. Now two have been damaged, leaving only the last one.

"No." The captain rejected the proposal. "Send the Greece directly aboard and recover the black boxes of Probe 01 and Probe 02 to find out the cause of the accident."

Hearing the captain's order, the pilot who was already sitting in the cockpit of the No. 3 aircraft quietly breathed a sigh of relief - compared to the two seniors who had just died, his flight time was less than 1,000 hours, regardless of Both the operation and emergency response capabilities are far inferior to those of the pilots of Probe 01 and Probe 02.

"Damn...what the hell is going on?" The pilot jumped out of the cockpit, walked next to the logistics personnel, and looked up with them at the screen hanging on the top of the hangar.

At this time, the explosion and burning had ended. The wreckage of the two reconnaissance planes was floating in the empty universe. The severely deformed metal parts were covered with traces of collisions and burns. A broken vector thruster slowly swept across the surveillance screen. However, the heat-resistant nozzle made of high-strength alloy has now completely exploded into a blooming chrysanthemum shape.

The Grecian approached cautiously.

The main surveillance screen on the bridge has been divided into two parts - one part is looking for the "black box" on the reconnaissance aircraft in the accident area, and at the same time searching for the two pilots whose survival chances are infinitely close to zero, and the other part is locking on more and more people. The nearby "South 16th District" space station.

As the clarity of the picture continued to improve, the people on board the Hellenic finally saw the details of the breach, and bursts of low shouts suddenly sounded in the bridge.

"What...what is this?!"

It was indeed a large hole broken in the outer wall of the space station, and the edge of the large hole was covered with a large amount of carrion-like dark red fungus carpet, with countless slender tentacles extending from the fungus carpet, like a desert Like shrubs, they gather together in clusters and move gently in a completely windless environment.

The front ends of these tentacles formed several petals, and from time to time white spore-like objects were released from them. These "spores" would quickly generate new tentacles after contacting the bacterial blanket, and the area of ​​the bacterial blanket was also constantly changing. Expanding further away.

"Is this... is this an indigenous creature from Alpha Planet? Is it the legendary bloodthirsty carpet?!" A crew member said to himself in horror, "But... how can the bloodthirsty carpet be in space? Survive?!"

"It...it's still growing! At this rate, within a few days, this thing will wrap up the entire space station!" Another calm crew member turned to the captain and asked, "Captain , what are we going to do now?”

"Immediately contact Mr. Ke Lan's companions and ask them to abandon the mission and evacuate the space station - at the same time, prepare the landing craft No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 and the Marines to get people out at any cost." The captain paused, "Then, find a way to contact Ark and report the situation here."

"Understood!" Although the correspondent's voice was still a little trembling, under the influence of muscle memory, his fingers on the keyboard were still flexible and he quickly entered the activation password of the secret communication channel into the verification box.

But the next second, his movements froze.

"Ship, Captain! Strong signal interference has been detected. We can't contact the people in the space station, and we can't send messages to the ground!"

"Signal interference?" After hearing these four words, the captain immediately turned his attention to the carpet attached to the outer wall of the space station. "Could it be that these creatures interfered with the communication?"

"Continue to approach, we must first ensure the safety of Mr. Ke Lan and others!" the captain ordered, "We will have the landing craft forcefully break into the loading area later... Tell the Marines that after entering the space station, I will give them the freedom to fire. Their first task is to find Mr. Ke Lan and bring them out. Anyone who blocks them can be shot... As for the accountability afterwards, I will bear it!"

But as soon as the captain finished speaking, a new situation appeared again——

I saw a few "flower clusters" composed of tentacles separated from the fungus carpet. The ends of the tentacles continuously sprayed out a large number of spores. With this reaction force, these "flower clusters" quickly moved towards The Greek airship flew over.

"Captain, do you want to fire?"

"No, you can't fire. If you fire at this distance, the naval gun will shoot through these things and hit the space station directly -" the captain shouted, "Carry out evasive actions immediately, all the main thrusters of No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 will be fired." Start, adjust the right directional control jet to 75% power, full left rudder, and avoid the course of these things."

"Yes! The main thrusters of No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 are all activated! The power of the right directional control jet is 75%!" The helmsman repeated the captain's order while crazily pushing the control rudder to one side - the entire The hull of the Greek ship began to move horizontally quickly, abruptly drawing a huge "C"-shaped trajectory on the originally straight channel.

There were a total of five tentacle groups "launched" from the fungus carpet. The evasive action of the Greek ship directly detoured from the route of these five tentacle groups... However, before the Greek ship could readjust its posture, these five tentacle groups All the tentacle groups turned around halfway and chased after them like gangrene attached to their bones.

"Is this thing so maneuverable?" Looking at the approaching tentacles, the captain frowned tightly. He thought for a moment, then waved his hand suddenly and shouted: "Let No. 1 and No. 2 The landing craft set off directly and broke into the space station to perform its original mission. Landing craft No. 3 was changed to an escort mission!"

These landing craft were originally prepared to break into the space station, and naturally they also had some weapons on them. Although they are light weapons for air ships, if they are used to hit people, they are standard heavy weapons.

Things like twenty-five millimeter cannons, honeycomb rocket launchers, diffusion mines and the like cannot damage heavily armored airships, but they are more than enough to kill living targets.

If you use the weapons on the landing craft to attack these tentacle groups, you don't have to worry about accidentally damaging the space station not far away.

"Let Probe 03 also be dispatched to be responsible for cleaning up the fish that slipped through the net." The captain ordered again. The reconnaissance aircraft is also equipped with self-defense weapons-two high-power cluster laser cannons, which can not only be used for combat, but also To crush the meteorites and space junk floating on the route, it is even more powerful than the cannon on the landing craft.

[P.S. Thanks to book friend 20200116171303761 for the 200 starting coins. 】