Chapter 647
Surrender, Capture
Chapter 647 Surrender, Capture
Large and small firefights raged through the key passages of the asteroid fortress. Explosions shook the "megalithic fortress" floating in space, and heat waves swept through the intricate passages and corridors. More and more clone soldiers rushed from the nearby garrison facilities and were continuously thrown into the fortress, struggling against the "invaders" who had already occupied the core area of the fortress for the battle over the already ravaged airlocks and halls.
What should have been an operation to "reclaim the homeland" has turned into an exceptionally difficult away siege. Old Joe was even momentarily disoriented, feeling as if the fortress had joined the invaders in opposing him, and that he and his clone army were the "invaders."
In that split second, another steel shell lost contact with the main consciousness. A clone army was wiped out in the passage leading to the reaction core. They encountered a huge, silver-white nine-tailed fox demon. The terrifying creature smashed through countless layers of thick partitions and rammed its head all the way from the upper connecting hall into the connecting passage of the reaction core. The light firepower carried by the soldiers could not penetrate her "protective force field" at all. Then, they were all wiped out in the blazing sea of fire that swept through the passage.
In the images transmitted back by the battlefield situation analysis system, the red patches representing the occupied areas have covered almost two-thirds of the area and are still expanding.
After yet another squad was wiped out, some of the clone soldiers and squad commanders suddenly realized that the fortress itself seemed to have truly become their "enemy".
"The sentry guns are firing at us! Repeat, we are under attack from the base's defensive fire!"
"The gate is locked—we're trapped on the second connecting bridge! The access control system has automatically reset... The ground is sinking! The metal is melting!"
"Life support system in Zone B12 is offline! Gas leak! Gas leak! Toxic gas is entering the ventilation ducts, we can't get out—"
Several units, led by clone officers, deep inside the base sent back unsettling calls. The base's remaining sensors continued to transmit inexplicable malfunction signals through broken and intermittent communication links. The monitored "blackout" area spread to the outer layer of the fortress. Despite the clone warriors' fearless courage, even they began to realize that the whole situation had completely spiraled out of control.
Those "invaders" who occupied the core area were merely stalling for time. What was truly terrifying was the change taking place within the entire fortress—this massive space facility was gradually transforming into some kind of living entity, and this entity… was clearly hostile, not friendly.
A black dot tactical squad is trapped on the first connecting bridge inside an airlock. The flashes of particle rifle fire illuminate the passage, and the shockwaves of exploding plasma grenades create waves of heat. However, their enemies are the surrounding walls, the ground, and the roof.
Two soldiers were swallowed by the suddenly softened ground, their feet engulfed, and in the blink of an eye, half of their bodies were buried in the ground. The walls around them seemed to turn into "living metal," beginning to reorganize and deform as they flowed downwards. The nearby clone warriors fired futilely at the walls and roof, but their weak firepower only created small ripples on the walls—the "mutation" of the passage itself continued to push outwards with unstoppable momentum.
The squad commander retreated to the vicinity of the airlock, staring intently at everything unfolding before him through the protective visor of his power armor.
He seemed to see the advancing "line"—the boundary line was just a dozen meters away in the corridor, and on the other side of the line was that "living thing," which was growing inside the base, inch by inch transforming the cold metal outside into its warm and eerie flesh and blood. In less than two minutes, the line would advance to his feet, then cross the gate behind him, and devour the last layer of protection outside the base.
The squad commander activated the communication device: "Sir, the airlock is about to fall. We are almost wiped out. Requesting a retreat. Repeat, airlock fallen. Requesting a retreat."
The activation zone advanced to a few meters away, and the last clone soldiers retreated to both sides of the gate. They raised their guns but did not know where to fire. Above them, the sentry cannons on both sides of the airlock slowly lowered their barrels from the ceiling. Their bases seemed to tremble spasmodically before slowly rotating and aiming.
"Sir, sir, did you receive that? Requesting a retreat!"
Only a series of crackling noises came through the communicator; no one responded to the squad commander's call.
But suddenly, the communicator's indicator light lit up again, the signal encryption was brutally broken, and a female voice came through the commander's helmet—
"This is Luo, Senior Project Manager of the Group, identification code SPO-1055. Former Special Commissioner Joe is suspected of serious dereliction of duty, espionage, and huge losses, and has automatically lost jurisdiction over this facility. This is a notification to the remaining soldiers in the fortress—lay down your weapons immediately, raise your hands to the nearest monitoring device to surrender. Timely surrender will be considered as loyalty to the Group. Repeat, surrender immediately to prove your loyalty!"
……
Inside the main hall of the core area, the blood stored in the diffusion device had been exhausted. Yu Sheng was sitting next to the diffusion device, with a hole poked in his arm by Luna. He had taken a tube, attached one end to his body and the other end to the filling port of the blood storage tank, and was sitting there like a human blood bag.
He felt that if he smoked for a little longer, he would die, but if he smoked for a little longer, he would be able to get his hands on this space base—it was hard to say who would die first or who would die first, but now that the overall situation was settled, these minor details were no longer important.
Eileen was standing on "Old Joe's" head (his body had completely stopped functioning), arms crossed, muttering, "That old Deng doesn't play by the rules, he just opened fire! That's not how it's portrayed in the TV series..."
"You guys think that if such a beautiful doll suddenly falls down the corridor, a normal person would walk over and look at it curiously for a while, then pick it up and look at it for a while, and then stand there in a state of surprise and reminiscence, only to be forcibly controlled by me for thirty seconds? Who would just fire a triple shot from a dozen meters away?! I was already lying in ambush on the ventilation duct, just waiting for him to walk over and pick up the doll to look at it before I focused fire on his head, but this guy had no sportsmanship..."
"Yu Sheng, let me tell you, someone like him wouldn't be able to complete a single side quest in a game. He skips all the important clues himself..."
“You’re making it sound like everything was part of your plan,” Yu Sheng said, raising his eyelids. “Didn’t you slip and fall while climbing the ventilation duct?”
"...Even if I slipped and fell, it was all part of a trap! It was the other side that lacked sportsmanship..." Yu Sheng ignored the babbling little thing and instead glanced at Luo, who was holding the communicator: "Was that surrender-persuasion broadcast you just sent effective?"
“I’m not sure how useful it will be,” Luo shook his head, but his attitude was frank. “Let’s just consider it as doing our best to give those clone soldiers a final way out at the last moment. If someone does surrender, that will be the final blow to Old Joe, and it will be a considerable gain for us. If no one surrenders, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, this fortress will fall soon, and we won’t lose anything.”
“But the other side is a group of clone soldiers, brainwashed since childhood,” Yu Sheng clicked his tongue. “I doubt they can even understand what you’re saying.”
“I’ve had a lot of dealings with clone soldiers—I’ve commanded them, trained them, and even mass-produced them,” Lowe said slowly, arms crossed. “In my interactions with them, I discovered something.”
Yu Sheng raised his eyebrows: "Oh?"
Luo turned his head and said seriously, "I've discovered that they're human too—unless they're directly put on a brain control chip and undergo compound neural decompression surgery, they actually have emotions like joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness, and their facial expressions change even more than that expressionless guy."
Yu Sheng: "..."
Luo mistook Yu Sheng's momentary silence for suspicion and immediately emphasized anxiously, "I'm telling the truth, boss! Cloned soldiers are human too! And most standard models don't have mind control chips or neural clipping. I've discovered before that if you give your cloned soldiers leave and entertainment, they're very happy..."
Seeing Luo's anxious and serious reaction, Yu Sheng didn't say anything for a moment. After a few seconds of silence, he suddenly spoke up: "Two black dot units near the upper airlock and cargo passage have surrendered."
Luo blinked.
Yu Sheng then frowned again: "Wait, a heat source has suddenly appeared in an area on the edge of the fortress... A shuttle is about to rush out!"
Luo reacted instantly, his expression changing: "Stop it!"
……
"They're all unreliable, all traitors... I knew it all along, they're all traitors..."
An angry and hoarse voice came from the synthesizer, and the cockpit echoed with the beeping of various systems coming online. The shuttle engine was warming up, and the launch gate slowly opened. At the end of the launch channel, the vast and boundless dark space gradually appeared, along with the twinkling stars in the distance.
“AI will betray, clones will betray, trading ‘partners’ will betray, even steel and stone will betray… I was right from the beginning, they are all potential traitors… all of them!”
Pushing the joystick forward, the anti-gravity engine hummed, and the shuttle slowly detached from the docking platform, hovering in the static force field. The lights on both sides of the passage lit up one after another, and the person in the cockpit raised his head, his eyes glowing with an almost manic red light.
"Corporate Group, Secret Order... you're all trash! Inferior beings! You've offended a truly powerful figure! A truly powerful figure! I still have a chance, I still have a chance to turn things around, as long as I can get out of here..."
Old Joe opened the command panel on the main console and inserted his finger into a special groove on the panel.
"Shut down the stasis field," he said in a deep voice.
The holographic projection above the main control panel flickered a few times, and two words popped up: "Don't turn it off."
Old Joe: "...?"
He paused for a moment, then felt the shuttle suddenly sink. The stasis field on the docking platform instantly increased several times, forcefully "sucking" the entire spacecraft back onto the platform. Meanwhile, the gate at the end of the launch channel began to close rapidly, blocking the distant starlight from the thick alloy armor.
Even this secret ejection tunnel, isolated from the main system and known only to me, has betrayed me?!
"No! This shouldn't be happening!" A furious roar finally echoed in the cockpit. "This shouldn't be happening!"
However, new text soon appeared on the holographic projection of the main control panel: "That's right."
(End of this chapter)