Age of Cosmic Exploration

The alien battleship’s mainframe had been so completely destroyed that even after 4 whole months of scouring the junkyard, they couldn’t find a relatively intact piece. Regardless, by pooling together the many pieces that they did find, the Hope had gotten much valuable information, like space knowledge, from them.

A single piece, though, proved to be an isolated case. It had grown a nascent AI and couldn’t be cracked using conventional method. There was suggestion of using forceful hacking, but that was quickly shot down for fear of damaging the information locked within.

Therefore, to procure this information, a task force had been set up to unlock it. It wasn’t until the Hope’s own mainframe had been updated with supermagnetic chips that the piece could be cracked.

After the news reached Yao Yuan, he immediately called for important personnel, like the Black Star Unit, Zhang Heng, Ren Tao, Xiao Niao, Bo Li, Ivan, and the like, to gather at a secret conference room. When he arrived, about 100 people were already there, waiting for Yao Yuan to arrive before the start button was pressed.

"Let’s begin."

Yao Yuan was eager for the information inside the piece. He only got more excited when he was told it was a video, because they might be able to see how space wars were fought.

With some buttons pushed, a 3D image was projected in the middle of the room.

Even though this technology hadn’t seen public use, the military and scientists were already familiar with supermagnetic 3D imaging technology because it had already been used in their studies and research.

The image showed a giant battleship fleet flying through space. The size of the fleet was bigger than any of them could have imagined! The main battleship alone was more than several thousand kilometers wide and at least 1,000 kilometers tall! It was much bigger than the replica simulated by the Hope’s central mainframe!

Around the battleship were thousands upon thousands of warships, some bigger than the Hope itself, the smallest among them only 1/5 the Hope’s size. If Earth was going to end by being invaded by alien, this was how mankind imagined the invaders would look like.

Suddenly, several kilometers ahead of the fleet appeared a warped, concentrated cloud of darkness... It was like the space had become liquefied and started swirling, the ripples sending splashes of... space into space. The moment the warships at the forefront touched the ripples, they exploded.

And then the video got cut off and the room was plummeted into darkness. Nobody spoke, but everyone knew the creator’s particle had been unleashed, and that had affected the video recording.

After a while, the video came back online, but the camera angle had changed. This new section of the video was shot from a 1st person angle, and from the multiple screens and sonar readings shown, it would appear that the video was taped in the battleship’s surveillance room.

In front of them was a silver streamline spaceship. It was hard to tell what the spaceship was made of, but its surface kept on rippling like mercury. Instead of solid metal, it had the appearance of liquid silver. Because of that, it gave the impression that it was constantly changing its shape.

The spaceship was not big, it was only several thousand meters wide and tall.

A small, armless jet flew towards the silver spaceship obviously an attempt at brokering peace. The silver spaceship gave no visible response, but in a layer of 10 kilometers around it, one could see ions colliding into one another with the naked eye. This was the result of both creator’s particles coming into contact with one another.

Right then, the silver spaceship opened to release a wiggling, metallic blob. The blob had a diameter of only 10 meters, probably something to intercept the armless jet... but wait!

Surprising everyone, the blob coalesced into a 4 eyed, winged humanoid robot with 2 arms and 2 legs!

In the next second, the robot leaped through at least about 100 giant warships, and in his trail was a series of explosions.

"No, it didn’t warp. It’s a wormhole technology, far lesser than space warp, not even to the level of space gate..."

Bo Li offered in a whisper, reading the question on Yao Yuan’s face.

Yao Yuan nodded in thanks.

What happened next could only be described as a massacre!

A total massacre!

The robot evaded deftly around all the weapons leveled at it. The robots, including those spidery robots that were such a headache for Yao Yuan, turned against their creators the moment they were within 5 kilometers of the robot.

The electromagnetic shield was useless against the robot; it phased through it like it was nothing. Without even revealing its weapons, it basically shot through the lines of warships like they were marks at target practice, which, in a way, they were. In just 50 seconds, other than the main battleship, everything else floated about in shambles!

Then the robot flew into the battleship and exited several seconds later. Behind him was a trail of aliens.

The alien looked like an amalgamation between shellfish and human. They had basic features like mouths and eyes, but their eyes were as bulgy as a fly’s and were 5 times the size of humans’. Half of their bodies were occupied by an overgrown brain, and around their bodies was a shell-like exoskeleton. Other than the pair of hands and legs, their upper body also showed an extension of multiple tentacles.

The aliens appeared to be lassoed by an invisible rope, and this rope also helped protect them from direct exposure to vacuum space. Tied by the lasso, the aliens formed a long string as they were swallowed by the silver spaceship. The whole eerie procession took about half an hour to complete.

"There are at least 200,000,000 of them... How could they possibly fit in that spaceship? A space folding technology?" Bo Li asked.

No one answered. They were still stunned by what they had just witnessed. This was an alien fleet that could demolish Earth in a day, but they had just been destroyed by a robot blob... It was... After the trail of aliens were completely consumed by the spaceship, the robot showed itself again. Melting into a silvery band, it sailed around the damaged fleet in an incredible speed and brought out another trail of aliens, but this time, the aliens were all dead. This continued for another stretch of time until it appeared once more. It lifted a finger and aimed it at the alien battleship. Several seconds later, a ray of silvery light shot towards it.

Even though the silvery, ionic ray was extremely thin, the moment it hit the battleship, the ship shattered into pieces, the bigger pieces among them disintegrating into nothingness... Shattering was not the perfect description because it was more like the ray made its center disappear, and without the central anchor, everything else drifted away on their own.

After completing its task, the robot returned to the silver spaceship. Then, a wormhole appeared to swallow the spaceship... The video ended to a room of silence. Everyone held different expressions, but be it shock, disappointment or alarm, there was an undercurrent of fear.

"Is that the end?" Yao Yuan rubbed his eyes before standing up to ask the technician.

After checking, the technician replied, "That’s the end of the reel."

Yao Yuan nodded before turning around to face the room. "This video will be accepted as one of the Hope’s grade 1 classified subjects. I’m sure everyone is familiar with this clauses, so I won’t repeat them here. I only have one question to ask...

"Would the Hope have enough time to warp away if we were attacked by this liquid spaceship?"

Yao Yuan sat down to wait patiently as the scientists started their calculations. After some time, a researcher stood up. "I’m sorry, Captain, but the time taken by the spaceship to fully appear from the wormhole was less than 5 seconds. If the creator’s particles device is not activated within these 5 seconds, we’ll be taken down by long-ranged artillery in less than 2 seconds. With the device activated, there would be an interval of about 10 seconds before the robot is deployed, but since the Hope is only a singular ship, we would be an obvious target, so there wouldn’t even be time for us to warp..."

"Is that so? We wouldn’t even be able to run?"

Yao Yuan collected himself and ordered, "I request all units to return to the Hope. The junkyard exploration operation will be ending in the next 3 days...

" In 3 days, the Hope will initiate space warp!"