Chapter 1550: Captured and Masqueraded

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

When the drones released their stored energy in the form of unwanted clutter, the EMP burst out the surface of the Zenith for the first time. Chaotic pulses choked the communication channels, overloaded the network signal between the Zenith and its fighters, as well as fried the fragile radar and antenna systems. The EMP had physically and permanently brought down the communication network. The shock wave even formed a visible discharge phenomenon: a fine, hair-like arc that erupted between the drones and swallowed up the entire Zenith space station. The electromagnetic pulses swept across the surface of the Zenith and fried all communication installations.

The EMP also immobilized a large number of Executors, which had insufficient protection against the electromagnetic attack.

Hao Ren and Nolan had carefully analyzed the data collected from N-6 to determine the electromagnetic resistant level of the logic core. They had fine-tuned the power of the EMP so that the electromagnetic pulse would only fry the external circuits of the Executors and not “kill” them by damaging their logic cores.

The communication network on the surface of the Zenith was dead. The EMP had cut off the communication between the space station and the lunar base too. The fighters and warships drifted away into deep space after they lost their power. But the drones quickly swung into action, capturing the enemy vessels using traction beams and mechanical arms to prevent them from colliding into each other.

During that short moment, Nolan quickly caught up with a Zenith fighter who was drifting away from her. She pulled the thirty-meter spacecraft back into her garage.

“Move! Move!” Hao Ren shouted as he led his team of men running to the garage. “We only have ten minutes. The EMP could only disable the space station for a short moment.”

As if it was to confirm what Hao Ren said, more fighters began to emerge as the Zenith opened its bays and raised more radars and weapons out from its surface. Some of them began to salvage their fellow spacecraft that had lost power while the remaining launched a fierce attack on the drone cluster.

Warp jump and EMP had given the drone cluster the upper hand initially, but they could not really defeat a super war fortress like the Zenith. Even if the war bastion was inferior to the drone cluster technologically, it was not defenseless. The internal shield that was resistant to various harmful ray bursts in the universe had protected the forces inside the Zenith.

Now, the second echelon of fighters had come out of the fortress and fought the invaders.

Hao Ren was not worried about the casualty rate of the drone cluster. In fact, it was a non-issue. The drone cluster was self-generating. In the face of the ferocious counterattack of the Zenith forces, the drones used their high-power shield to protect themselves while they emitted interference signals to block off the communication system of the Zenith.

Meanwhile, Hao Ren and his team could not care less about the space battle as they were preparing their “ticket” to the lunar base.

A force field was holding a heavy attack spacecraft from the Zenith in the bay while autonomous robots shuffled busily around, cutting up and taking out the unnecessary parts of the fighter to make room for more occupants. They had also swapped out some equipment. It was a hurried but orderly process, and they were halfway to completion.

The pilot of the spacecraft had been detained and shut off.

“Do not make changes to the exterior. Leave the shell in its original appearance at least,” Hao Ren said. “Remove everything in the inside that is not needed.”

An autonomous robot had cut away part of the shell of the attack spacecraft and was now installing shield and jamming devices into it. Another autonomous robot removed the navigation computer and transponder, disassembled them, modified the chips before reassembling them.

N-6 watched on. She felt that Hao Ren’s idea was whimsical at best. “Do you really think that you could evade the detection of the Cortex Prime? The recognition system of Cortex Prime is extremely advanced.”

“But our technology is unrivaled in the world.” Hao Ren said confidently. “My drone cluster has cut off the communication signal of the Zenith. Even if other fighters find out one of their companions has been captured, they have no way to alert the Cortex Prime. The lunar base will only think that we are returning for repair.”

Such as the plan—the ingenious idea of Lily and the collective effort of everyone.

Hao Ren knew that whether it was to find out more of the civilization or the First Born of this planet, the lunar base was the go-to place. But there had been a problem with the Cortex Prime. Humans were the supreme rulers of the civilization, but it was apparent that the Cortex Prime had control over the lunar base. So Hao Ren had to take the unusual path to reach the lunar base.

He was not naive to think that the Cortex Prime would lay out a red carpet to welcome him to the lunar base. He suspected whether the Cortex Prime could be reasoned with in the first place. His best bet would be to find a way to sneak in.

But it was also naïve to think that the Cortex Prime was blind. After fighting the First Born for thousands of years, the survivor society was not an ignorant civilization that knew nothing about air defense. The lunar base was more heavily guarded than the Zenith. Its complex identification system would ensure that any unauthorized flying objects approaching the moon would be destroyed. This system was mainly to defend the lunar base against the First Born’s seed cannons although the First Born had not attacked the lunar base for the past thousands of years.

The anti-air firepower of the lunar base might not pose much a threat to the Petrachelys, but Hao Ren had a more legitimate concern. The Cortex Prime might act more illogically if provoked. He had discussed with N- 4 and N-6 and confirmed the possibility. If the Cortex Prime determined that it had no way to prevent the invasion from an alien spaceship, the possibility that the Cortex Prime might decide to self-destruct or entirely wipe off the database was high.

And even if the Cortex Prime did carry out those measures, Hao Ren and his team would still have to face the relentless attack from the Executors. He would have a hard time to get close to the Cortex Prime, let alone finding out what caused the system fault in it.

To avoid such troubles, Lily had proposed to capture an Executor spacecraft and use it to infiltrate the lunar base.

At first, Hao Ren thought of using the two transport planes that N-4 and her team. Unfortunately, when N-4 tried to start using the communication system of the transport planes, he found that both transport planes had lost their authorization codes, which meant the Executor had delisted the two transport planes in the data network. Worse still, if N-4 were to fly the transport planes to return to the lunar base, the Cortex Prime might shoot them down at once.

N-4 only came to the home planet with the instruction of the Cortex Prime. But the Cortex Prime contradicted the directive that it had issued by blacklisting the N-4 team. Had it not been for N-4’s hardened steel heart, she would have committed harakiri.

As the Cortex Prime had blacklisted the N-4 team and their transport planes, Hao Ren could only bet on hacking the other Executor spacecraft. It was impossible for the Petrachelys to directly capture it because the Executor system would delist or even shoot down the aircraft concerned. What Hao Ren got would be a pile of scrap metal without the necessary authorization code.

The Zenith, frontline fortress of the Executors, was the one that activated this delisting protocol.

So, Hao Ren and his team had decided to up the ante by luring all Executor forces out of the Zenith, summoned the drone cluster to disable the communication between the Zenith and the lunar base using EMP. While all communication went silent, Hao Ren took the opportunity to kidnap and hack an Executor spacecraft, and no one would know what he had done.

Even if the Zenith computer found something was amiss, the Cortex Prime would not receive the information due to the down communication system. Instead, it would only know that some unknown enemies were attacking and surrounding the Zenith. Other than that, the Cortex Prime was virtually blind in regards to the battlefield intelligence.

Under this circumstance, a damaged Zenith spacecraft returning to base for repair was entirely natural and in line with the operating procedure of the Executors.

The Petrachelys suddenly stormed into a sea of immobilized Zenith spacecraft in the battlefield amid the chaos and communication blackout. It opened its cargo bay, and then a Zenith spacecraft emerged from the inside quietly.

The attack spacecraft had marks of damage all over. It floated silently in space for a while until it left the center of the battlefield before it fired up its engine and accelerated toward the moon.

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