Vol 2 Chapter 8: Atonement: Red Earth (6)

As we get closer and closer to the red earth, the atmosphere among the inhumans is also becoming tense. Apparently some of the nine people who met with the priest that day had leaked the content of the video, causing a commotion. A female Beta was originally dragged into this mission abruptly. After listening to the story about "that thing", the whole person was on the verge of collapse, and she shrank in the corner every day and didn't know what she was talking about. Others were so anxious that they didn't know what to do. Beta and Alpha obviously decided to seek religious consolation. Zhenri Li gathered around Chen Zeng to listen to his sermon.
Ethan saw an old man about seventy years old who was always writing, and he didn't know where he got a refill and kept writing on the toilet paper. Ethan saw that he was writing very laboriously. Due to the increase in age and the lack of proper treatment, his eyes were already presbyopic. When writing, he could only stretch his arms and write a few words to read from a distance. , And then continue to write. Once Ethan saw him sitting alone on the ground crying, very sad, so he quietly asked Samuel what was going on. Samuel said that it was the letters he wrote to his daughter on toilet paper. Used it as toilet paper.
Samuel said that there is actually nothing to cry. The forbidden city does not allow non-human communication with citizens, and his daughters who believe in him will never be seen.
Suddenly, Ethan felt sour and simmered in his heart. The old man's hair was gray and his figure was a little rickety. He didn't know how many years he had been in the forbidden city. Looking at the tattoos on his arms, he might have been a tough person like Samuel when he was young, but now he is as sad as a child. So he asked the old man what his daughter's name was, and said he could write letters for him. The next day he lay on the cardboard box, writing lines of letters on the crumpled toilet paper. The letter didn't write any farewell words. It just talked about some trivial matters in the old man's own life and reminded his daughter to have a happy life.
After finishing writing, the old man happily collected the suicide note that would never be mailed, and thanked Ethan for a long time. When Ethan returned to Samuel, he was laughed at for a long time by the latter, saying that his sympathy was more Omega than Omega. Ethan also didn't bother to explain to him that the old man reminded him of his father, and rebuked you that this was sexism, but at the end he couldn't help but ask, "He is so old, hasn't he been released?"
"When he was young, he was involved in gangs and made no major mistakes, but there are also a lot of trivial things that provoke troubles. He is not willing to accumulate points by reporting other people’s unethical behaviors, and finally reduce his moral value. Come in when he’s gone. People like him who are not capable of anything, generally won’t use him for atonement tasks with high scores, so the points will naturally not go up. Now he is getting older and has more and more physical problems, in order to reduce It is estimated that the forbidden city's expenses added him to this atonement. To put it bluntly, it is to send him to death."
Ethan heard a chill in his heart. One hundred points, even a lifetime is not enough...
After the spacecraft entered the orbit of the Red Earth, the elevator connecting the cargo floor was finally opened again. Non-people squeezed in the elevator in batches like dumplings all the way up. Some people who were extremely scared kept crying, and I was upset when they heard it. Their captain of the guard was waiting for them on the first floor of the manned cabin of the spacecraft. Sure enough, as Tanisel said, they will be sent to the Red Earth as an advance force. The mother ship, the Magic Flute, will give them instructions and guidance. They searched for the Earthlings and Eve people who had lost contact on the Red Earth.
The surface temperature of the red earth is slightly higher than that of the earth, and the air pressure is also slightly higher, but the air quality is good, so there is no need to wear a space suit. They provided everyone with basic food, water, and some wild survival supplies. Non-people filed into the circular exploration equipment area to change clothes. The advanced nano-material suit can prevent poisonous insects on the planet from being bitten. It has a certain thermal insulation function and can also turn on the camouflage stealth function. The clothes can reflect the nearby scene and make people temporarily" Stealth". Ethan changed into that set of neat stand-up collar clothes, and found that it was more elastic than expected, and it looked more stylish. Since there will be a period of space flight from the mother ship landing on the Red Earth, everyone still put on spacesuits and helmets outside, and gathered in the small spacecraft launch bays that were so scary and wide to wait for boarding.
Only then did Ethan know that there were two other non-humans who used to specialize in piloting the spacecraft. It seems that the non-humans selected by those people for the task were not random, but purposeful.
So why did you pick him when you came up? Is it because he has talent?
Or... want to kill him as soon as possible?
Although I don't want to admit it, Ethan still thinks the latter possibility is greater.
When boarding the ship, everyone lined up and slowly entered the hatch of a medium saucer-shaped spacecraft. From the back, everyone was wearing a helmet and couldn't tell who was who, but the man in front of him just turned his head and glanced at him when he entered the cabin door.
He seemed to see a pair of gray eyes and a few strands of blond hair that appeared from the transparent part of the helmet?
No...Ethan opened his eyes slightly...Although the priest seemed to be different from the author of the priest in his mind, his interest in the monster was a little fanatical. But it's not enough to do crazy things like sneaking into inhumans and landing quietly, right?
It must be because of being too nervous...
The spaceship carrying non-human bullets is usually shot out from the mother ship, and in a moment, the empty and cold universe galaxy suddenly unfolds before everyone's eyes through the refraction projection on the walls and ceiling of the spacecraft. The huge Hera star is already a red giant. It is burning her last heat before she died. The bright and brilliant blood pierced people's eyes. The steaming heat seemed to evaporate even the universe, like the last of the queens. Song of anger. And around it, some planets that have not been swallowed are still flying around her tirelessly, especially the one that is rapidly expanding in their vision.
From a distance, it is really a beautiful pearl. Large swaths of red and blue blend with each other, and there is a white cloud air yarn covering the entire planet. There are three moons around this planet, which means that three moons will appear at night, and the reflected light of Hera will be extremely bright at night.
The atmosphere of the Red Earth is thicker than that of the Earth. The spacecraft entering the atmosphere trembles violently, and the lights flicker in the electromagnetic storm. There was an inhuman cry of horror in the cabin. It was in this tremor that Ethan truly realized that they had really arrived, and this planet was likely to be their burial ground...No matter what that thing was, they would meet soon.
After going through the terrifying tremor of entering the atmosphere, the spacecraft successfully landed near a human settlement base in a blue cyclone. Several inhumans vomited out before getting off the spaceship, and the others were also pale by the terrifying landing. The hatch opened in the gentle voice of the mother ship’s computer Angela, and a strange, slightly fishy smell was caught in the heat wave rushing over her face.
Outside the spacecraft cabin, large swaths of red, like the endless sea of ​​manchuria, spread out in all directions. It is a red plant about forty or fifty centimeters high. The thin stems do not see leaves, and there are several branches at the top. A small fork, with a small bowl-shaped thing on it, I don't know if it is a flower or a leaf. In this way, the overwhelming red grass is mixed with a lot of blue-purple herbaceous plants about one meter high. The thick stems are covered with dark red spots, and there are many filaments extending from the main stem and floating in the air. If you need the wind, you will dance by yourself. At the end of the gently undulating land, there is a sharp mountain shadow. Above it is a firmament that gradually changes from light to dark. The clouds and ridges are transformed into purple, yellow, pink, etc., as well as some light white satellites. The shadow of the crescent moon is horizontal at one corner. In the high sky, some weird creatures with long tails and cylindrical bodies are flying, making a certain dry metal rubbing sound, echoing in the silent wild.
An exceptionally beautiful and paradoxical world.
Ethan followed Samuel and walked off the spaceship with hesitation, bathing his body in the brilliant and warm sunlight of Hera. Samuel put his hand under the helmet, took off the helmet with a click, then raised his head slightly, and took a deep breath, with a smooth expression on his face. Ethan also took off his helmet, and the broad air accompanied the breeze to blow through the tips of his hair, making the non-people who have been in the cold and windless warehouse floor for a full week to break free from the iron cage. The sense of invigoration.
The anxiety and fear in the hearts of non-people are temporarily soothed by this vast world. They took off the heavy outer space suits one after another, and carried bags full of survival essentials. About a few hundred meters away from their spacecraft, you can see a white low-rise building, which is the base left by the pioneers who disappeared before.
Ethan walked around among inhumans who were taking off their helmets, with a trace of hesitation. When almost all non-humans had taken off their helmets, only one person had just taken off his spacesuit and had not taken off his helmet.
Ethan stared at him closely, and Samuel saw his abnormality and followed his gaze to the man.
"What are you looking at?"
Ethan pressed his mouth tightly without speaking, and after a while he walked straight towards the man who was facing away from him. Just when he was a few steps away from the man, the other party finally took off his helmet and turned around. A pure blonde hair shining in the red sunlight, his delicate face, like a puppet, smiled when he saw him again.
Ethan's eyes widened and pointed at him with a finger, "You... really are you!"
His voice attracted the attention of other people, and then there was an uproar. No one thought that an Eve would appear in their team.
Samuel rushed over, frowning, "Why are you here? Are you crazy?!"
Tanisel threw the helmet to the ground casually, and stooped down inadvertently to continue to organize his luggage, "I changed my mind. I decided to come and see the God of Entropy myself."
At this moment, there was a sharp electric current in everyone's ears. All communication between the mother ship and them was carried out through the microwave signal transmitter that they plugged in their ears, and everything they saw would be collected from the camera hole in their neck collar and passed back to the mother ship. At this moment, the scene of Tanisel being in the inhumane must have been sent back to the mother ship. After a while, a desperate man said something loudly in Eve language. It was probably the commander of Eve’s army. . Those Eve soldiers discovered that their army priests went to the Red Earth to explore in private, and there must be tens of thousands of grass and mud horses running by in their hearts. At the moment, what I said is probably not good.
I saw that Tanisel took the headset out of his ears as if it was noisy, and lightly replied an Eve word to the microphone connected to the headset, and then even put the headset in his pocket. Ethan and the others heard what Commander Eve on the other end of the headset was still roaring, but they obviously couldn't get it to the ears of the mad priest. After a while, the shouting finally stopped, and replaced with the voice of a rather majestic earthling, who seemed to be their security chief.
"The incident happened suddenly. This mission content was added to protect the priest of Tanithel. After the mission was successful, the reward points were increased to twelve points. Now everyone is ready to enter the No. 18 Pioneer Base to search for anything suspicious. clue."
Pioneer Base No. 18 is about one kilometer away from them. Passing through the dense red grassland and a small piece of woodland composed of that weird blue-purple plant, the temporary buildings of the base are clearly identifiable. If you get closer, you can see that the nano-plastic buildings have been abandoned for a while. The white color seen in the distance has fallen on a layer of rust-colored dust, and some buildings have even climbed up some twisted red capillaries. Alien plants with general blood vessels.
The semicircular main building door is locked, and the pupil recognition camera can be seen even after dusting the surface of the code disc. At this time, the mother ship issued an order for Otto to unlock, saying it was in his backpack. Otto rummaged and found out a folding computer about the size of his palm, and a pair of strangely colored glasses. Otto blew his whistle, put on his glasses, unfolded the computer so that it floated in the air, then stood upside down in front of the cipher plate. Probably because the base is stationed on an alien planet, there is no danger of being invaded, so this human identification code lock is not difficult to open as expected. Ten minutes later, I suddenly heard a rumbling machine starting sound from underground.
Obviously some systems in the base began to operate after detecting that the door lock was opened, and the tightly sealed door quickly rose up, and a gentle and gentle female voice said, "Welcome back."
Ethan followed everyone into the clear and white corridor. There is not much dust in the sealed environment even after a few years. The smooth frosted board reveals a soft light color, giving people an extremely clean, even somewhat unhuman texture. Samus walked in the front, Tanisel followed close behind, and the others, including Ethan, followed behind. The short corridor ended in front of a cabin door, and the light female voice sounded again, "I am Gina, the main computer of the Pioneer Unit, please verify your identity."
Samuel said, "We are sent by the Earth Alliance. You will know when you contact the Earth Alliance."
Gina said, "Sorry, my communication system has been severely damaged, and there is no way to contact the Earth Alliance. Please state your ID verification code, otherwise the deportation process will start in five minutes."
Everyone was in an uproar, and Derek said abruptly, "It's not a death ray or something..."
Samus asked anxiously into the headset, "Do you have any verification codes?"
A sentence came from the other end of the headset, "All the verification codes are personally encrypted, and we have no way to obtain it. Derek in your team is good at dealing with artificial intelligence, let him negotiate with Gina."
Derek said directly, "It is Gina’s central task to protect the base from allowing unauthorized people to enter, and she is already a mature artificial intelligence. I cannot convince her unless I can directly enter her. The network interface changes her way of receiving information, but I guess this interface should be in the safest place in the base."
Although everyone didn't understand what he was talking about, they basically understood that he couldn't deal with this computer. There was a long sigh from the headset, "Well, you guys come out first. Give us a few minutes and we will destroy the defense system of Base 18."
"Wait." Ethan said suddenly, then raised his head and said, "KA35T792."
After a while, the closed insurance door suddenly opened silently, and Gina responded, "Identity confirmation, welcome, Mr. Eldridge."
Everyone stared at him in surprise, and Ethan smiled awkwardly, "Seven years ago, the ID verification codes of all key members of the Energy Bureau were entered into this project. In recent years, the information contact has been cut off. It is estimated that Gina has not updated about my information."
Samuel laughed, "It seems that your secretary was a big man before?"
Behind the door is a spacious irregular circular lobby with a few comfortable sofas in the center, surrounding a 3D projection table. At every corner, there are comfortable and different shapes of leisure chairs and similar projection computer desks. The white walls are actually screens that can display naked-eye three-D images when you look closely. The wall directly in front of the gate shows a portrait of President Abia, with black velvety black hair with short ears, and a pair of cold eyes on his white face, giving people a sharp beauty that is rare among women.
At first glance, except for the light on one wall, the whole hall is surprisingly clean and tidy, and it seems that it has not been destroyed. It is just that the plants are all dead, and there is some rot and deterioration on the dining table in the restaurant to be invisible at all. What kind of food turned out to be, the dark tuft in the bowl exudes a rancid smell and is covered with thick fluff.
Samuel and several others searched the entire main base separately with a dozen individuals. Ethan naturally followed Samus step by step, and the priest followed their team and looked around curiously.
They searched the entire east wing area and found a plant shed for cultivating grains and fruits and some animal shelters, but the plants had all withered and the animals had disappeared. The strange thing is that there are no traces of damage to the feeding bins. There is even a lot of feed in the food bowls, but the animals are gone. Even the breeding room marked "cockroach" was empty, with only rotten food debris left. There are still many data disks in some other archives. Ethan pulled out a few pieces of databases and quietly put them in his trouser pockets. He turned his head and saw that Priest Eve was sitting at the computer desk with great interest, looking at the documents and images floating on the desk.
Ethan leaned over, "What are you looking at?"
"It seems that they were still diligently entering data before they disappeared." Tanisel pointed to a file above. "Look, here it is said that they started to observe mammals brought from the earth a week before they disappeared. They all behaved very restlessly. The tame shepherd dog also became irritable, tried to escape several times, and bit two breeders. The corn they planted also began to wither for no reason.
Ethan looked at the document carefully, the language of the record was very brief, and it was indeed what Tanithel said. But the strange thing is that the sentence at the end seems to have not been entered. The last word seems to be "observation", but it stopped abruptly after only half of it was written.
The table top is very clean and no blood is seen. It's like when the input clerk wrote "obse", he suddenly needed to leave due to some circumstances, and was so anxious that he ran away before he could finish typing the word, and then he never came back.
Tanithel turned his head to look at Ethan, but his clear eyes sparkled with excitement, "Look, all organic things in this base have either rotted or disappeared. And they seem to be very What happened in a short period of time, they didn't even have time to pack things."
The author has something to say:
I have a hunch that this article will cool to a new height......_(:з」∠)_