Chapter 108: Fall of a Brilliance
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Mu initiated the exploration first. As he entered, he saw the mess inside the main control room - the light was dim and sometimes flashed while shards of something were everywhere on the ground; the apparatuses beeped weakly as they occasionally crackled with sparks. There was nobody inside the room and patches of dried blood coated the ground.
Old Pang might be old and had seen enough horror like this yet his heart skipped a beat, thinking of how destructive nano waves could be. While Ye Chong dodged the beams safely when the 3 mechs fired their ultimate weapon at their greatest fear, the beams eventually resulted in several consecutive explosions in the warship. The aftermath was the quake and the shockwave which inevitably murdered all these staff who were unprotected and unarmed. They all died; brutally.
Mu did not bother with the emotional moments as he proceeded connecting the processor of the warship and booted the self-inspection program on the ship.
Ye Chong, Old Pang and his partner decided to perform a search in the room for survivors.
While they were flipping through the remnants, Ye Chong’s eyes discerned something flailing in one of the piles. He zoomed in the visual on his screen and found out it was someone within the fragments. And the person looked familiar… Who was this again…
Gu Shaoze? Isn’t this Gu Shaoze? Ye Chong was shocked! What the heck he was doing here?
He was a genius, a young talented man, whom Ye Chong admired. Gu Shaoze held a certain standard of brilliance in mechs which utterly exceeded the expected expertise for a man of his age. And without a doubt, Ye Chong learned a lot from him. Most importantly, he was truly young, so young that his future could be bright, brighter than ever!
What happened to that blonde bodyguard he had?
Ye Chong raised the gate of his cabin and hopped off from Yu Di, which frightened Old Pang as he peeked at the side. He was not expecting a mere man like Ye Chong to jump directly from a mech this tall… And remained intact? He had lost count the number of times his eyes nearly popped out for the day.
It’s him! Old Pang finally understood what had been going on, as he had a clear look of the pilot in this strange mech! It was the one who left him a deep impression. He was as good as before! Then what about the pilot inside that crippled mech? Old Pang was intrigued, very intrigued.
Since the main control room was an independent cubicle from the outside, the oxygen supply system was not severely damaged. What a luck especially after such a wreck outside!
Ye Chong quickly ran to Gu Shaoze to have a closer look. There were tons of specks sitting right beneath his body and a large splash of oddly-odored liquid. A bit of inference ran in Ye Chong’s head. He speculated that Gu Shaoze injected some sort of sleep-inducing chemical and was confined in a preserving device, which was why the nano waves did not kill him immediately. It looked like the members of FMPA were still concerned about talents! The device might have protected Gu Shaoze from the immediate fatality yet the quake shattered it completely in the end.
Carefully Ye Chong lifted Gu Shaoze. He did not look alright. There was blood at corner of his lips. His face was drained and there were scratches on his body.
Somehow Gu Shaoze felt heaved by someone as his eyes quivered, attempting to open his eyes. "Ow…" He mumbled, his eyes opened, "Ye…Ch…?" He was surprised to see Ye Chong. He grew agitated and his face turned reddish as blood surged through his body rapidly. "Ech! Ugh!" He coughed and spat out quite some blood. Ye Chong was startled as apparently his inner organs were injured!
Ye Chong who originated from the have-everything-but-nothing Trash Planet knew well by heart that such injury would be a hassle to cure. He was not sure how advanced the medical facilities the outside world would be but he could be sure that it was impossible to find an appropriate cure at a place like this! Sighed Ye Chong in his heart.
Gu Shaoze’s lips trembled, as if trying to utter something. Ye Chong hurriedly moved his ears by his lips.
"My…My left arm…" Gu Shaoze’s weak voice rang a clear order, "Cut it open… Password… Number 2…"
?!
Ye Chong stared at Gu Shaoze in disturbance. His sight turned frail, his body was shuddering uncontrollably, yet his expression was calm, as if he had no more regret in this world. Forced a smile, he looked into his eyes, before Ye Chong could say something, his eyes zoomed out and coughed the last splash of blood on Ye Chong. He collapsed and stopped moving, like a puppet cut off the strings.
Ye Chong understood what had happened. Gu Shaoze was dead!
Biting his teeth, he drew the dagger from his waist. What an irony it was when the dagger was a gift from the person before him and he had to use it to fulfill the last wish of the dead. The sharp edge of the dagger sliced Gu Shaoze’s left arm open effortlessly. Blood overflowed on the floor beneath and Ye Chong dug through the fleshes without hesitation, looking for something as blood streamed through his fingers with the tender remaining.
Old Pang and Ka Sang could no longer compute the situation.
They witnessed the whole scene of Ye Chong committing murder on a murdered. Their faces were paler than a paper.
A moment later, Ye Chong felt something hard within the flesh. He pulled it out gently. It was dipped in blood and covered in bit of fleshes. It was quite difficult to identify what it was. Ye Chong wiped everything off the piece.
Old Pang and Ka Sang realized what Ye Chong was doing at last - he was retrieving something from the body, though that was still weird as hell, considering how the boy on the ground looked so gentle and sophisticated. They never expected that he would stuff something inside his arm. What a pain it would be and how many ounces of courage he would have needed! They stared at the dead body in fright.
They had enough of the day… especially seeing how Ye Chong just dug through the fleshes like picking vegetables from the stew. His face was indifferent - he had to be someone who had gotten use to these dead-or-alive scenarios.
Ye Chong did not have time to have a look on what he had obtained from Gu Shaoze’s body. He sank it into the pack on his waist as he knew everyone else was waiting for him.
"I had fully inspected the warship," commented Mu after seeing Ye Chong having his own business settled. "The warship was severely damaged. The energy system was unstable, which would lead to an explosion in 10 minutes. Not possible to attempt any method of prevention."
Somehow based on Mu’s comment, it seemed like things were much easier to destroy from the inside than the outside.
Old Pang was frightened by the news. An explosion in split seconds yet this guy stated it as if he was not involved in the explosion at all.
Ye Chong rolled into the cabin and asked, "What do we do now?"
"We run. This is the only probable solution after my calculation," suggested Mu calmly.
"Right, let’s go then," mumbled Ye Chong as he flew out right away.
They were welcomed by continuous beam and nano wave attacks as soon as they got out. Fortunately they expected the attack so they avoided them lastly. As predicted, right after the main forces from the corvette joined the field, they took over the place almost instantly. The mechs from Sabre were witty however as they retreated back to their mothership the moment they saw the warship stopped firing and a few mechs exited from it, though some of them did not make it and had become one of the meteorites.
There were 400 of them and 10 minutes after the debut of the main forces, only 37 of them made it back to the mothership in one piece. This was the cruelest war to the fighters back then. They were still haunted by the war in their dreams years after.
The FMPA lost badly, where 42 of their unmodified mechs returned with only 11 of them left. And they lost 1 major mech. The most fatal part was… the corvette was a secret to the public and now the cat had gotten out of the bag and had gone out of hand! Everyone in the authority would notice the existence of the warships. They might not know to whom the warship belonged but much chaos it could cause.
Without the warship, no matter how strong the Messengers were, they would never break into the Sabre, since its armor was too thick.
As everybody else had retreated back into the mothership, Ye Chong and his allies became the remaining bullseyes in the field.
They agreed something bad would happen as they ran as fast as they could. No way they could return to Sabre like the others as the mechs chased after them fiercely, not giving them a moment of breather.
A few Messengers went back into the corvette and seconds later, as if the honeycomb was alarmed, the entire flock of white mechs rushed out and went after Ye Chong and his companions. The Sabre was no longer their concern!
Probably they had realized something was stolen from Gu Shaoze. And it had to be something rather important. It stood clear to Ye Chong and his friends. Of course they would run! Which dumbo would stand there and become the honeycomb instead?
Those Messengers that entered the corvette just now must be striving to bring the warship back online. Of course it would not work! Ye Chong recalled the explosion in 10 minutes stated by Mu, he snickered.
They flew on for the next 2 hours and none of the Messengers seemed to be giving up yet. The Sabre was lost in their eyes and the 4 mechs fled like a homeless pack of wolves being chased by 4 main force giants and 6 white Messengers. Fast and furiously they ran, the energy depletion was no longer an issue. They had to turn their engines up, all the way to the maximum!
And this was the moment where the capacity of one’s mech could be clearly seen.
Mu had always been flying as fast as Ye Chong. He had tried maximizing the resources on Yu Di yet Mu leisurely stayed by his side. That engine of Mu…
While Old Pang was much slower than Yu Di, Ka Sang’s mech was the last in the queue.
And the contrast existed in the foes too. The 4 giant mechs were the leading group and the 6 Messengers spread nicely in one row.
Ye Chong and Mu began exchanging conversation.
"Where are we, Mu?" Ye Chong asked.
"Based on the galactic area map, we are probably inside the Orbits, but I do not have a detailed map of the said area!"
"Oh no," Ye Chong’s face tightened. "We are being chased by a bunch of homing beacons. We could die together at this rate!" Ye Chong did not fear the death though.
The space was known to be boundless and fearfully vast. Without performing space-warp, it would be impossible for one to reach from one point to another merely by flights. It took too long that one could actually die before hitting the destination!
Especially when no one had heard of galactic travel on a mech before! Everyone does it on a ship!
Beep!
Ye Chong turned on the multi-channel communication system, "Do any of you happen to be familiar with this place?"
"It’s the Orbits!" Old Pang quickly replied. "I have came here a few times before, although I must admit that was quite some time ago."
"What is the closest place for us to hide around here?"
"Uhhh…," Old Pang cracked his head thinking. "I do remember there was a place somewhere here…" His tone was unsure…
The fall of one brilliance on the ship, probably was not the last…
Thought Ye Chong.