The Bizarre Adventure of Tartaros Fleet

"Quinn, have you felt anything unusual recently? For example, you can hear strange sounds, you can move objects without your hands, your spatial perception suddenly becomes very clear, and your forehead glows? It doesn't matter if it's a flash or an electric arc. ?”

When the external investigation lacks clues, the psyker's own reaction can also reveal a considerable amount of information.

When asked such a strange topic suddenly, Quinn's eyebrows moved up and down, showing a thoughtful expression:

"..." After a while, she honestly replied, "Yes."

"When?"

"When the battle in the ring was over and returned to the star from the 04 ring." The Spartans recalled those sleepless nights and the moment when they suddenly woke up "When I slept at night, I occasionally had some strange dreams... , I am standing on the top of a large-scale building complex, the number of stars in the sky is abnormal, there is a creature that has been talking about 'imprisonment', 'eternity' and 'revenge', but it is consistent with what it said The same fragments were on the verge of disappearing. At that time, I was very disturbed, and even felt that the starlight above my head was hostile, as if I was being stared at. And..."

The Fire Demon and the clerk wrote furiously, with excitement on their faces, while Oregana and Dark Rock looked at each other in blank dismay.

"What else?"

"Whenever that thing seemed to see me, there would be a voice shouting—[Destroy those planets with Star Road! All!]" Quinn shrugged, "Then the dream disappeared, basically every time That's all."

Oregana's face was so ugly that she seemed to have eaten a piece of bitter melon.Quinn's words contain a huge amount of information. Those who don't know about the Forerunner and the Flood will be confused at best, but anyone who knows these things will definitely not feel that' That was just a dream'.

Everyone is well aware that biological evolution in the Halo world is not a normal state, because in the ancient past, this universe was once plagued by the Flood.In that large-scale war, the forerunner used the belt to wipe out all the flood demons, the biological planet, himself and other intelligent creatures, and even advanced creatures were wiped out in one wave.

With the activation of the belt array, all creatures in the galaxy that were not protected by the Ark and the shield world were all killed, and then the ships on the Ark sent the species that were indexed by the Forerunners back to their respective planets, and everyone started climbing the technology tree again.And before the Forerunner fought the Flood, the ancient humans also fought the Flood——

In that even more ancient past, ancient humans discovered several self-piloted starships crashed on some colonized and derelict planets near the edge of the galaxy, containing tens of thousands of glass barrels containing dry powder.After rigorous testing and research by ancient humans, these relatively simple short-chain organic molecule powders were considered harmless, but had some neurological effects on lower organisms.Therefore, this group of guys didn't care about the common-sense rules of [you can't stuff things you picked up in your mouth], and fed these unknown alien powders to ancient humans and San Sim (yes, it's the stars). A very popular pet Pheru in the world.

This feeding caused a big problem. These powders were quietly changing the genetic code of Pheru. After several centuries, these Pheru began to mutate, violent and cannibalistic. Many of them were euthanized or exiled into the wild.The ancient humans and San Sims who raised Pheru also contracted various diseases. The spiritual influence made them eat the sick Pheru, and the discarded parts also accelerated the spread of strange diseases.

The infected and the uninfected began to kill each other, and the infected ancient humans and prophets spread the disease to other galaxies, fueling the outbreak of the Zerg.The Zerg continued to erode various life forms and available resources, and formed a battle group, and the war between the ancient humans and the Flood in the brood began.

And it was at that time that ancient humans had previously discovered the 'Apostle' stored in a cabin in a galaxy near the edge of the Milky Way.This oracle is not an artificial intelligence like the Ultimate Spark or the Prejudice Monk, but an ancient and powerful xenomorph.It claims to be the "last surviving pioneer", and the three words of imprisonment, eternity, and revenge are the state and obsession of that alien creature, that is, the "primordial" (or called the ancient corpse brain beast).It controls the AI ​​biased monk of the forerunner to let it raise the flag against the forerunner, and at the same time use the flood to attack the forerunner, setting off a terrible war that severely damaged the forerunner.

The Starway is something else - it's one of the most common forms of Precursor relics, and in the last few decades of the Forerunner-Flood war, the Flood possessed enough wisdom and power under the manipulation of the Primordial Come to wake up the star roads and use them as weapons.Astral roads are incredibly powerful when used as weapons. They will wrap around the celestial body, causing the celestial body to shatter and shrink, which has dealt a huge blow to the Forerunners.After the halo was launched, all the star system in the entire galaxy were completely destroyed.

The original base was indeed destroyed in the war. The forerunners used a decay technique on it to seal off the space-time environment around the original base, and then launched the "Made in Heaven" in the blocked area, killing all the people in that area in a short time. Fast-forward tens of billions of years, and finally the seemingly indestructible primordial, that is, the ancient ghoul, died out in the entropy collapse.At the end of the war, the forerunner's super war AI offensive paranoid took advantage of the bias monk's energy shift at the final critical moment and the negligence of the absolute superiority of troops, and successfully won the opportunity to start the halo comeback with a disparity of 5:2183 combat power. In this way, the universe ushered in peace for tens of thousands of years.

Looking at it now, what was left over from that time still exists today... The probability that the primordium is still alive, or its consciousness is still alive, is very low, but the mere reverberation is enough to make people raise their vigilance.After that, it was necessary to equip Quinn with some small things to protect her sleep quality and mental safety.

At the same time, Oregana is sure that the anomalies in this world must be related to what happened at that time.It's not that the human beings in this world can't grow psychic organs, but on the contrary, they have a very complete body structure, but it's all 'stuffed back' and tightly sealed.In my memory, the ancient humans were defeated in the war with the forerunners, and then the forerunners degenerated the genes of humans and San Sims, and returned to the primitive era before the technological civilization to re-climb the line. If someone has done a large-scale' Packet', then the possibility of doing it at that time is the greatest...

So what is the reason?Considering that Quinn saw fragments of consciousness or psionic echoes that might be 'primordials' in his dream, it is very likely that the ancient corpse brain beast and the flood demon are psionic units with considerable strength - after all, they are really integrated into them A pioneer who has walked the world in many forms, flesh and blood, or immortality, a cycle of evolution, death, rebirth, and exploration.

This may indicate that the existence of a large number of psykers and the Flood may cause some unpredictable things to happen... and the first contact between the subspace and this world probably happened at that time...

"..."

Liu Lizi looked at the silent Oregana, and shouted loudly in the mind communication——

【Boss!You have that 'bad, you shouldn't be in this muddy water' expression on your face! 】

【We didn't!This is the 'lucky we're here' expression! 】

Seeing the serious expression of the person next to her, Quinn felt that the atmosphere was getting heavier, and she asked uneasily:

"Isn't that just a dream?"

Dark Rock replied:

"If the psyker has the same strange dream continuously, it means that it is definitely not a simple dream. It is because the protection of the spirit is reduced during sleep, which makes you be able to peek into the subspace at a closer distance. What you observed at that time The message will come in the form of a dream." He exhorted "Don't forget what you dreamed, don't try to understand or dig deeper, remember this."

Quinn didn't know the concept of psionic power and subspace yet, but he only remembered that the hell divers he saw after switching bodies would use strange powers to attack demons. He instinctively felt that this was a very dangerous thing, and those dreams also It made her want to stay away from those things as much as possible, so she replied without hesitation:

"understood."

At this point in time, everyone also doesn’t have time to dig deep into these things, and they don’t even know where to start digging—Sinful Spark has no idea about this. After being unable to connect to the Zhiyu, Guilty Spark lost the past stored in it There is a large amount of memory data, and there is only one index directory for looking up data, which is useless now.

The investigation of the No. 04 halo and the search for the shield world are still ongoing. As the investigation of the forerunner ruins gradually deepens, useful information may be dug out later... But it is not easy, the forerunners are all fucking giant structures Mad Demon, even with the assistance of Guilty Spark, the investigation of the 04 ring will still take a lot of time, not to mention the other rings, the shield world, the ark and other amazing things after that.

While feeling helpless, Oregana said to Ruriko next to her——

[When the environment stabilizes, shall we also shoot giant structures like this?As long as you use your full strength, you can create at least ten rings in a century...]

[...Don't do this, the spectacle will harm the country, just create a meaning and forget it. 】

[Then build a star ring community? 】

[There is still a difference between dreams and delusions. 】

This leopard's mouth is getting more and more poisonous, obviously it wasn't like this when I first picked it up... (scratches ears)

"I'll take care of it a little bit, so that at least you can sleep peacefully for a while."

Saying so, Dark Rock raised his stick, and tapped Quinn's head lightly with the pigeon's beak on it.Accompanied by the blue twilight, Quinn felt as if something had been dispelled, and his ears suddenly became quiet—this feeling was very strange, as if he had just entered the interior of the battleship from a battlefield full of noise The quiet lounge is the same, but from start to finish, the inside of the bridge of the Very Leopard is just as quiet, only the slight hum of instruments and equipment.

I have been listening to it but didn't realize that the thing I couldn't hear just now is what they called the 'message in the subspace'?

This made her feel a lot easier physically.

After doing all this, Oregana said to her:

"Get ready, there will be simulation training in the afternoon." The various secrets left over from the ancient times are very troublesome, but the battle that is about to take place in front of us is also not easy. "You must be familiar with our fighting methods and communication frequency. ONI has temporarily handed you over to us , you will fight with us in the next battle."

"Excuse me, what is the mission?"

"Jump into the Star Alliance fleet to challenge [-] warships, then rush into the battle fortress to kill all the people inside, and then detonate the power furnace. The ONI people should have told your companions, right?"

"I will do my best!"

The concepts of psionic energy and subspace are still incomprehensible to Quinn, but fighting the Star Alliance is his old profession.

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Deep within the City of Charity, a large number of first-class Sangheili troops guard the sanctuary of the High Priest.They wear crimson armor, with orange-yellow and black-edged decorative armor on their helmets and limbs. Each of them holds a heavy and gorgeous holy guard spear in their hands. They have only one task, which is to protect the senior prophet.This is also an honor that the Sangheili are proud of.

Under the protection of these 'Forbidden Army', the sanctuary is like a quiet island.The walls, floors, and ceilings of the interior are decorated with shards of glass taken from countless worlds that had been conquered by the Covenant and melted into glass.There is a wide viewing platform on the wall, and the outside is a man-made natural landscape of considerable scale, where there are grasslands, bushes and even rivers. Looking from the inside to the outside, it seems that this is not inside the city of fraternity, but on a certain planet. Same as the surface.

In the center of the room, on a throne a meter above the floor, sat the Prophet of Regret, one of the Covenant's holiest.His body was almost completely covered by a cloak, and his thin claw-like hands protruded from the sleeves, looking weak and lifeless.

His hand touched the back of the chair—that was the signal to open the door.The door of the Sanctuary groaned and parted, and light flooded in.Two San Sims who walked with their feet instead of chairs came in from outside. They were dressed in plain gray robes. Although their backs were still arched, their walking steps were surprisingly strong.Behind the San Sim was followed by two Jiralhanis. They put the box they were carrying on the ground of the sanctuary, saluted and walked backwards out of the door.

"The guards step back first."

The fifty Sangheili guards in the room straightened up, bowed, and filed out of the great room.There was bewilderment on their faces, and such ignorance and incomprehension are always useful and good things to a prophet.

The door closed again.

Only the two strong San'Shim and the Prophet of Sorrow are left in the sanctuary.Only then did the Prophet of Sorrow speak:

"Good news, isn't it, Priest?"

Decades ago, the envoys judged human beings as the successors of the forerunners, which had an impact on the legitimacy of the pilgrimage, and thus triggered this war that could not be seen for decades.But even so, the road of pilgrimage still has to go on, because this is the foundation of the Star Alliance, and it must not be questioned.What happened afterwards caused the three senior prophets to think differently.

Even if the envoy said so, the relics of the forerunners are not very intelligent.According to the previous method, the Star Alliance can still make good use of the creations of the forerunners, whether it is the guardian of the temple or the key ship of the forerunners, and can tame the angels through worms-the angels are just machines made by the forerunners, they are indeed smart and powerful. Has the authority of many things, but it is not uncontrollable.

As long as the halo can be controlled and activated, the great prophecy of the pilgrims can be realized, and the Star Alliance can completely rely on the method of controlling the oracle, which can be said to be deviant, to continue the pilgrimage.They still believe in the forerunners, even though the envoys have denied their own legitimacy, but this does not stop them from thinking and acting in the hope of being extraordinary.

This kind of strong emotion and obsession has even surpassed madness.Even the best theologians of mankind may find it difficult to analyze the crazy thinking of the three prophets.

A San Sim looked at the solemn Prophet of Sorrow, and said in a decent manner:

"It won't be easy, Prophet of Regret. Although the navigators show no divine indications, our hopes are bearing fruit."

The Navigator was discovered by Covenant explorers in the remains of the subterranean caverns of the human colony Meridian a year or two ago after its fall.It looked like a metal ball the size of a head, with grooves and lines all over it.Right now the navigator is encased in a massive, force-field-protected alloy case that's worth the protection.

The priest reached out and touched the ball, and with a buzzing sound, the ball glowed.A wide star map was suddenly projected, filling the entire space of the sanctuary and illuminating it brightly.Squinting his eyes, the Prophet of Regret looked up at the cluster of images and made out among them the rings—not one, but seven.

There was an expression of both surprise and joy on his face:

"Is that the sacred ring?"

"It's not just the ring of holy relics, Prophet of Sorrow, it also tells us this—" The priest switched the screen and played a new pattern "The last residence of the forerunner, to create the location of the ring of holy relics— ark."

It was a huge artificial celestial body in the shape of a flower petal, almost ten times the diameter of the Earth.Just the thumbnail image already has a majestic and compelling momentum.

The Prophet of Sorrow was dizzy at this, and he said excitedly:

"God! This is so glorious and beautiful!" The High Prophet looked at the Priest eagerly, as if about to burn a big hole in his face. "The stories are all true! Where did God hide this treasure? "

The priest understood the mood of the Prophet of Sorrow, and when he successfully cracked it, he even bowed and prayed to the great image for a long time without hesitation:

"Its location is at the edge of the galaxy, accessible only through a handful of portals. One of the navigators mentions the portal here. The Forerunners called it 'Ed Terrani.'"

"Our mission is very clear, we must get there immediately." The Prophet of Sorrow patted the armrest, and said firmly, "We must deploy all the warships in our hands to reach that planet as soon as possible. Get excited, brother, your hard work will let us Successfully launched the common sacred exploration of the Star Alliance."

"Do you want to notify the other senior prophets?"

"The most important thing now is speed! Let the Sacred Dedication Fleet attack!"

"But the Sacred Dedication Fleet only has fifteen ships, so there might be some shortage..."

"Priest, it's clearly written on the star map. Ed Terene is far away from any of the current combat areas, and there will not be a particularly great danger there." The Prophet of Sorrow lowered his voice, "We are pursuing speed, and it is too late Waiting for the fleet to build up and all the red tape."

Seeing that he couldn't beat the senior prophet, the priest could only bow down and salute:

"Yes!"

"After the preparations are complete, set off immediately." The Prophet of Sorrow moved his chair, "I will also go together, and I want to witness all this myself!"

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In another sanctuary a few hours later, the irritability in the words of the Prophet of Truth could not be concealed at all.He anxiously asked the senior priest half kneeling on the ground:

"How is the mission?"

"There was no evidence of a leading prophet in the City of Fraternity. We searched everywhere..."

Guide the Prophet, the San'Shim who apparently already knows everything, who is now the biggest ticking time bomb in the entire Covenant.The port is now closed, and any ship sailing will be subject to strict inspections. He must have no way to escape the city of fraternity. He must find this heretic as soon as possible, and then execute him to protect the safety of the Star Alliance.

However, even though the secret forces did their best to search, they still haven't found the guiding prophet who should not be able to survive alone—this is a common problem of most San Simians.He must have gained the help of a small group of opportunists in the lower districts by using those heresy remarks, which is not a reassuring thing...

The Prophet of Truth sighed, and said to the high priest in armor in a stern manner:

"Keep looking. Any recent heresy must be executed immediately—quickly, secretly."

"learn by heart."

The steady and reliable voice of the senior priest reassured the Prophet of Truth a little, and he asked another topic:

"How's the troop assembly going?"

Recently, the reconnaissance troops of both sides have been dispatched frequently, and there have been seven large and small battles. In one of the battles, a Sangheili commander imitated the high mobility tactics used by the enemy in the Battle of Reach, and directly rammed the enemy ship after approaching the enemy ship through a mobile jump. , relying on the direct impact to make everyone on the opponent's entire ship instantly lose their combat effectiveness-human ships are not equipped with a good enough inertial control system, even if the hull structure barely maintains it does not fall apart, the crew on it also suddenly Under the acceleration, it bears a huge G force.

It's much more exciting than driving a car into a wall at high speed.The Covenant warship was also severely damaged in the violent impact. The bottom deck was exploded—the Grunt’s methane supply system leaked during the impact—and it was thrown off directly. Seventy percent of the ship’s personnel, including the commander, were massive Personnel were injured or killed.But then, they also got what the Covenant hadn't had in decades.

A database that hadn't had time to be deleted at all... The technician flew to the wall more than ten meters away before pressing his finger down.

And there happened to be a navigation map in it, which clearly marked the coordinates of the human home planet.

Humanity is already very weak, even if they are supported by reinforcements, but the battle of Reach also shows that the opposite side is not invincible.You must know that when the battle broke out on Zhiyuan Star, the entire fleet did not have a coordinated command at all, and each small fleet was in a state of fighting independently, and the order was only one [attack]. A large number of fortress guns and hundreds of warships on the opposite side were fired, and after being commanded—even if it was just a not-so-famous fleet commander commanding a fleet that was almost dispersed and demoralized, it still gave the opponent's pursuit fleet a head-on attack. Bash, and successfully retreat.