Alien Relic Hunter

At this time, above Yagunaktor.

The flashing light spot symbolizing the deep submersible on the virtual screen stopped moving after it descended to the seabed, and stayed in place for a full minute.

"What's going on?" Leighton, who was always paying attention to the movements of the deep submersible, couldn't help but frowned. "Is the deep submersible malfunctioning, or are Lao Chi and the others doing some debugging? Why have they been motionless for so long?"

Just when Layton was about to contact them to ask about the situation, the light spot that was still flashing normally suddenly went out!

"The signal of the deep submersible has disappeared! Repeat! The signal of the deep submersible has disappeared!" Not far from the console, a logistics staff member of the Hunting God Hunting Group who was responsible for coordinating communication equipment raised his head from the equipment and shouted to Layton shouted.

"What's going on? Is the equipment malfunctioning?" Layton turned around and asked urgently.

"It's not clear yet, we are investigating!" the logistics staff replied.

It takes three minutes to conduct a comprehensive troubleshooting of the entire communication equipment, but for Layton, these three minutes feel like thirty years...

"Deputy... deputy commander..." The support staff stared at the screen in confusion. The bright light reflected from the screen hit his pale face. Combined with the dark environment around him, he looked a bit scary. People, "We have checked the entire communication equipment...including hardware and software, and there is no fault."

"There is no fault? Then why did Lao Gou and the others' signal disappear?!" After waiting for such a result for a long time, Layton obviously couldn't accept it.

Compared to other "accidents", he would rather the logistics staff tell him that something went wrong here.

"Generally speaking, there are two possibilities for this happening." The logistics staff replied, "The first is that there is strong interference between the deep submersible and us, and the second is that the deep submersible actively turns off the signal. transceiver."

"No..." Zofia's voice rang from the side, "They are no longer in this sea area."

Layton was stunned for a moment, then turned to look in the direction of Zofia Soma, who was currently standing in front of the screen showing the environmental scan image, under the powerful detection equipment of Yagunaktor. With careful exploration, the details of the entire seabed and the entire underwater city are revealed in this three-dimensional image composed of monochrome lines.

"At the moment when the signal from the deep submersible disappeared, the scanned image had a situation similar to 'frame drop'. After the image returned to normal, I could no longer find the position of the deep submersible." Zoffi Ya said.

Although Yagunaktor's environmental scan is said to be real-time, its operating mechanism is actually very similar to sonar. Every time it scans, the image will be updated. The original update frequency is about fifteen times per second, but right now Just now, the screen did not update for a full two seconds. When it updated again, Zofia discovered that the deep submersible on which the hounds and the others were riding had disappeared from the screen.

"How could this happen?" Layton put his head close to the screen and searched carefully with his eyes wide open... let alone the bathyscaphe, he couldn't even find the outline of the suspected bathyscaphe wreckage.

"Deputy leader, Miss Soma, the detector has detected an abnormal undercurrent!" Another logistics staff member suddenly stood up and said.

Layton rushed to his side in three steps and looked at the screen in front of the support staff.

On the screen is a strange three-dimensional model, with closed circles of ripples like contour lines in a topographic map - except that as the screen refreshes, these ripples keep changing, and there is a direction. The ripples seemed to be pulled by some force, protruding outward for a large part of the circle.

"What's the abnormal undercurrent?" Layton asked anxiously. As a layman, he couldn't understand this kind of image at all, and he could only rely on professionals to interpret it.

"Here, here and here." The logistics staff with professional qualifications in this field clicked on several "protruding" places on the screen with his finger. "These places have abnormal undercurrents without warning. Put these After the source of the undercurrent is restored through three-dimensional modeling, and then compared and analyzed with the data in the database, it can be basically determined that a violent explosion occurred at this location, and all of these undercurrents are actually shock waves generated by the explosion."

Although the location of the explosion cannot be precise to a single point, the circled "source area" is not far from the location where the submersible signal disappears... As for the violent explosion, Layton immediately thought of the submersible. Equipped with torpedoes using "concentrated crystals"!

These torpedoes were equipped by him and Chi Hanfeng themselves.

"It's a torpedo! They used a torpedo underwater!" Leighton made a fist with his left hand and smashed it hard into the palm of his right hand, making a crisp sound. "They must have encountered a battle below. It caused the signal to disappear! No, I have to support them!"

With that said, Leighton strode towards the equipment warehouse, but before he took a few steps, Zofia stopped him.

"Leiton, there is no equipment on Yagunaktor that can handle the water pressure at this depth. You can't get out at all!"

"If I don't have equipment, can't I make it myself?" Leighton said without looking back. "There are plenty of materials, parts and processing equipment here... I don't believe that a living person can be choked to death by shit!"

"Are you planning to...build a temporary submersible?"

"Otherwise?" Leighton switched the communicator in his hand to full-channel mode and said loudly, "All people in the engineering department, immediately put down the work at hand, bring your tools, and gather in Hangar No. 1! Now, Immediately, immediately...I repeat, all the people from the engineering department must gather in Hangar No. 1. This is the highest priority order!"

Layton's sonorous voice echoed through the loudspeaker throughout the core power room, and people wearing yellow or blue overalls poured out of various buildings and ran in the same direction.

The Engineering Department of the Hunting God Hunting Group was established at Layton's strong request as an independent department separate from the Logistics Department and even on the same level as the former. The most important task of the Engineering Department is to be responsible for the research and development and transformation of equipment for the frontline members of the Hunting Group. , as large as aircraft missiles, as small as belt buckles, all the equipment worn by Ke Lan and others were made by the Engineering Department. Since the budget is quite sufficient, the engineering department has never included "cost-effectiveness" into consideration. All products are basically pursuing the ultimate performance and quality, even those top equipment brands that have been famous for a long time. Its privately customized series are not qualified to compete with the products of the Hunting God Hunting Group Engineering Department.

After all, those big brands have to consider revenue and losses when doing business, but the engineering department of the Hunting God Hunting Group does not need... a professional team of hundreds of people, plus a budget investment hundreds of times that of mass-produced equipment. , what is made just to serve a few people, naturally cannot be compared with ordinary customized equipment.

In addition to the two department chiefs, Leiton and Chi Hanfeng, they also "borrowed" many top experts and skilled workers in the industry from the Ye Group and the Soma Group... The engineering department of the Hunting God Hunting Group, in In just a few months, it has evolved from a little-known small workshop to an industry standard surpasser... Except for aircraft carriers and battleships, there is almost nothing that this engineering department cannot build.

"Everyone in the engineering department, listen up, we are in big trouble." Layton explained to others through the walkie-talkie as he walked, "Just now, the deep submersible 'King Squid' lost contact with us. , judging from the direction of the water flow, at least one 'Tusk IV' torpedo was detonated underwater before the signal message from the deep submersible.

"You all should also know that Yagunaktor is currently at a depth of three thousand meters below the level of the Central Sea. The water pressure at this depth is enough to crush us into a piece of paper... I need you to use your hands now. Use all the materials and tools I can find to build a deep submersible that can withstand the water pressure at this depth... No, a deep submersible alone is not enough. What I need is a highly mobile weapon that can fight underwater. !

"Six hours, I can only give you six hours. Whether it is design, assembly or debugging, it must be completed within these six hours! Do you understand?"

Upon hearing that the time limit was only six hours, the members of the engineering department who were rushing to Hangar No. 1 suddenly started talking in low voices——

"Is the deputy commander crazy? Six hours... is not even enough to draw a complete design drawing. How can we build a submersible that can be put into use? Unless we copy the drawings of existing deep submersibles... But the problem is that the inner shell of that thing is formed at one time using special forging equipment. There is no such equipment on the Yaguna Kotor!" A man wearing yellow overalls stained with oil had a helmet buckled on his head. The middle-aged man in the same color helmet said.

"You're wrong. What the deputy commander wants is not a deep submersible that can be put into use, but an underwater mecha that can be put into combat... This thing, in normal times, I would be interested in just discussing the feasibility of the plan. I think it will take several months, six hours... Tsk..." Another person tied his work clothes jacket around his waist, only wore a vest on his upper body, with two bare arms exposed, and he was carrying a heavy box in his hand. The strong man with mechanical tools responded.

"No matter what thing is built by then, I won't drive it even if it kills me." The middle-aged man shook his head with a pale face, "Just thinking about myself being pressed into a fleshy membrane by the water pressure The sight made me feel like the food I had eaten not long ago was churning in my stomach, as if it would come back at any moment."

"Then you'd better hold back and stop vomiting... I heard from the people in the logistics department that there doesn't seem to be much food left... I guess it's for this reason that the deputy commander is so anxious." The strong man lowered his voice. said.

Although the food shortage is no longer a secret, he still has some scruples about discussing such a disturbing topic in public.

"Then we can't sail Yagunaktor away from this place?" The middle-aged man pushed his glasses to the middle of the bridge of his nose, "Even...even if we are being chased by the Ark fleet, there is no need for us to escape. Come to the bottom of Zhonghai?”

"You ask me, who should I ask... Forget it, let's not talk about this, let's think about what to do later... Build a highly maneuverable deep submersible capable of combat in six hours... If it can succeed If so, I guess both your and my names will go down in history.”

…

…

Members of the engineering department wearing blue and yellow uniforms quickly gathered in Hangar 1. There were a total of 174 people, of which 35 were members of the R\u0026D team and the other 139 were from various departments. Skilled workers in the workshop.

They are said to be "skilled workers", but those who can be selected into the engineering department, even if they are just a "little worker" responsible for tightening screws, can take out an engineer qualification certificate in their pocket.

"I just told you about the mission objectives on the way, so I won't waste time here. If there are no objections, let's get started!" After saying this, Leiton jumped directly to the computer beside him and opened the drawing software. , loading the design drawings of the deep submersible that Hound and the others drove away.

More than a hundred people looked at each other, but no one stood up - to say that they must have objections, not only some, but many, but they also knew in their hearts that even if they really put these If the objection is raised, Deputy Captain Layton will definitely not listen.

Rather than wasting this time and energy, it is better to seize every minute and every second to complete this "impossible task"...

Layton looked at the drawings of the deep submersible on the screen and frowned - of course he also knew that designing an underwater vehicle out of thin air was not something that could be accomplished overnight. According to his idea, they would drive away with a hound. Based on that deep submersible, we copied, further modified and strengthened it.

But after he roughly read the design drawings, he realized that his idea was actually a bit naive.

At least one-third of the parts of this deep submersible cannot be processed on Yagunaktor, and the deep submersible can withstand water pressure at a depth of three thousand meters. This third A component plays a vital role.

For example, the one-piece forged inner shell cannot be replaced by other processing methods - if it is processed by splicing, whether it is riveting or welding, under heavy pressure, the joints will inevitably Cracking occurs...

[P.S. Explanation on the position of Deputy Leader of Layton - In the Hunting God Hunting Group, except for Ke Lan who is the leader, all the early core members hold the position of deputy leader, so the entire hunting group has a total of There are five deputy captains (Hound, Layton, Ivan, Akira Asano and Zhuoligetu. As for Zofia Soma, she is regarded as the "senior shareholder" of the hunting group and has the same status and authority as the deputy captains. However, because Zofia Soma has no official position in the hunting group, ordinary members of the hunting group generally call her 'Miss Soma'. Of course, some people call her 'the leader's wife' in private). 】

[P.P.S. Thanks to book friend 20210307203332725 for the 100 starting coins. 】