The Record of Unusual Creature

“Survivors?” Hao Ren gave the MDT a shocked look after hearing its sudden announcement.

The MDT floated aside the control console as it let out a blue light on across the console’s electrical cables and accompanying equipments with a motion similar to breathing. Using this method, it finally had managed to extract and read the unresolved data within the warped equipment. “I’ve managed to connect to the ship’s navigational core, and got an idea how does this fleet actually navigates. It needs a living person to direct it.”

Hao Ren looked at the MDT, motioning it to continue.

The MDT opened a holographic projection and the upper portion was the fleet of thirteen ellipsoid great arks and all along each of the arks were a series of complicated radial waves. “These, are the repeating signals we detected earlier. And based on the information we have, the ark’s operators are all dead and the ships are using an autonomous command system, so these signals are mechanical. Based on their navigational mode, these ships do not have a flagship, they rely on a network that links all the navigational cores together to create a unified, simulated navigation programme. I think the designers had anticipated each and every ship was susceptible to destruction and had decided to hand over the navigational powers to a network-activated psionic mainframe. So as long as the fleet is within a certain size, it could continue sailing on without worrying about losing their flagship.

Hao Ren waved his hand. “What’s the keypoint? The key point?”

“The key point is, the psionic mainframe is not installed in any of the ships. For such a long journey the mainframe core of the ships are not necessarily reliable as well, so the navigation system is not controlled by a single unified module. Rather it monitors the fleet’s movements and basing on certain perimeters to determine whether its navigational orders is to be executed.” The MDT bobbed about. “The priority order was that ‘life still remains’. This was what I found at the deepest cache of the datavault.”

The ark of every civilisation had different operational methods, and this time around this ark would only function if there is life onboard. Their thrusters are still in operation, so unless something went wrong with the fleet’s navigational programme, that can only mean one thing:

“There’s someone alive onboard…” Hao Ren muttered before frowning hard. “They did not respond to Nolan’s hails though…”

“Could be due to system damage, or not understanding Nolan’s language, or they could be scared shitless and think that we are in league with the guardians.” The MDT retracted its ray projector. “Of course there is a possiblity that there are so few survivors that no one knows how to operate a radar. Since there’s no response, we’ll have to check ship by ship.”

“Just pray that the ships design are the same….” Hao Rem mumbled to himself before activating the communicator to Nolan. “Nolan, you’ve heard us. Get the engineering droids ready. Cut open every ship’s hull and launch the life-searcher probes in. Scan every nook and cranny of the ship, until the lowest deck. Also, keep repeating the radio comms request, if someone is able to respond to us, we won’t need to blow a hole in their ceilings.”

“I think a few holes in a hundred meter long behemoth like this won’t cause a structural disintegration.” the MDT bobbed about as it quipped. “Unless you accidentally puncture like life support valves, or reactors.”

Hao Ren sighed deeply. “You’re sure the optimist about my luck after being with me for two good years.”

The MDT was stunned for a moment before hailing the Petrachelys. “Nolan, get the droids to be EXTRA careful. Do a triple scan…. no quad-scan before they sink their drills in!”

The group left the central control tower and looked upon the facade of the entire massive faclities. The core reactior has been reactivated and the once-dim light grids flickered back to life. But as most of the city’s primary facilities had already been stripped, the control tower was just like a bodiless giant that has ceased to be functional. The tower simply just spun about in vacuum without a sound, as if it was a man-made star shining upon the desolated sanctuary. Hao Ren looked at the frozen ruins and realised that there’s no longer anything to look for here. Before departing with the rest back to the Petrachelys, he left a few droids to study the structure of the place.

The Petrachelys soon broke away from the ark ship named the ‘Terra Firma’, before a few silver dots approached the ship. They were box-shaped and have a few razor-sharp engineering arms. These were the summoned droids. The droids flew towards the dormant arks before sparks start eminating from all of the arks’ hull.

The droids had started cutting through the silent ships to inject the life-searcher probes into them.

“I’ve decided on what should I do with the Petrachelys’ first upgrade.” Hao Ren said as he stood on the bridge, knocking against the control console before him. “I need a few high-power life-sensing radars, or a newer probe hive module. The current equipment onboard is really not enough now, most basic models cannot detect anything if there’s a slap of metal a few kilometeres thick, or an energy field. Not to mention most of the time, what I’m probing is those weird things the Goddess of Creation had made.”

“Pardon me, pardner.” The MDT purposefully took a serious tone. “Based on your records, your life-searcher probes will rarely be of use.”

“….It’s not like I want to blow things up everywhere I go!”

There were thirteen ark ships in total, and each were at least a hundred kilometeres long. All of them had hulls which thickness ran in the kilometers, with complicated low-level pipings and corridors and a spherical-shaped city protected by a massive armored shell. These things were long abandoned, and the fragile internal balance within the ship was maintained by millions of worn out gas chambers and gas piping system. These brought countless of problems to the droid’s work but things still went on as planned. A few hours later, data from the probes starting streaming back to the Petrachelys.

Hao Ren stood by the control console, and the more important images were separated by Nolan to the main projection. Hao Ren saw the situation inside the other twelve arks, some had merely scratched the surface, but some had already managed to reach the core.

The actual state of the arks differed, while they were structurally similar, each had their own kind of damage. On one of the arks, Hao Ren saw a frozen city similar to the Terra Firma, while another’s internals were a massive gaping hole. The city proper had already been taken apart and turned into spare parts for another ship, and mostlikely that other ship had since broken off from the fleet.”

“It goes from bad to worse…There’s no life signs yet, but there’s all sorts of wreckage inside.” Nolan spoke. “Their hull is still intact but the internal decks are a mess. The ships have been relying on each other, and cannabilising each other for the past thousand of years to survive. They probably had hundreds of these when the voyage started, but only thirteen remains…. To me, they look like floating corpses, mere empty husks.”

“You have became more sensitive after becoming a ship.” Hao Ren smiled. “Any response to your hails?”

“No, nothing on any channels. But I’m sure that my signals have already reached the internals of the ships.” Nolan smiled as she nodded. “The droids that are the furthest away from the core had already breached the ship’s wiring panels. If there’s still no response under these circumstances, then there’s really no one left.”

Hao Ren did not say a word and only turned back to look at the holographic projection. A small probe inside the six ship’s sphere city broke through from the top of the dome. A desolated city appeared under the probe’s lense, and the data received was negative.

Hao Ren had started wondering if there were no survivors within the arks, or if the navigational programme had some error and had continued trudging on even if all life onbard had been extinguished. Just as the idea was about to form, a message suddenly popped up on the projection.

“Life signals detected!” Nolan and the MDT exclaimed at the same time.