Age of Cosmic Exploration

The progress of the Defense Unit was smooth. With the Black Star Troopers and the Black Dragons leading the frontline, mankind was practically unstoppable.

However, it has to be said that the space merchants’ mother ship was simply too big, so much so that seizing it with only 1,000 plus soldiers was preposterous. 24 hours after infiltrating the mother ship, the main unit commanded by Guang Zhen had gathered about 30,000 alien captives. It was the limit, as 200 plus people looking after 30,000 captives was too much.

Under these circumstances, Guang Zhen’s sharp instinct was singing in alarm. Therefore, he immediately ordered the 4 exploratory units to stop and wait for new orders and provisions.

Now, we shall turn to describe the situation within the mother ship.

The internal part of the mother ship looked old, but the designs were all complicated, reflecting the technological level of the 4th revolution. For example, the surface of the mother ship was broken by Prototype 003 Space Combat Jets into holes, and even though the mother ship had lost its main power source, quarantine walls were dropped to prevent the air inside the mother ship from being drawn out into space.

The air within the mother ship was not compatible for human consumption either because it had a substance that was poisonous to the human body. Therefore, whether it was the Defense Unit soldiers or Black Star Troopers, they required an external supply of air, food and water, and a good homeostatic system within their space suits.

When mankind entered the 4th revolution, there was a new technology to aid with supply provisions in space. It was something like a mobile isolated capsule. It could fit 10 people at once, when inside they could eat, rest, sleep, and recharge the energy and air in their spacesuits. Currently, the Hope had about 30 of them in stock. In the case of 1,000 Defense Unit soldiers and several hundred Troopers, it could only satisfy one-third of their necessities, but it was still better than none.

Furthermore, they were in the middle of a war, so they couldn’t have all the soldiers rest at the same time. At least half of the military force had to be ready to guard the captives. So one-third was fine since the military could use the capsules in rotation.

Using Bo Li’s alien robot, the capsules on the Hope were slowly transported to the Prototype 003 Combat Jets that waited outside the Hope before being carried to the bridgehead on the space merchants’ mother ship. With Black Star Troopers as manual labor, the capsules were transported to the lieutenants of the four exploratory units. In the next 24 hours, the soldiers finally had the chance to enjoy a hot meal, and some went down for a nap. Of course, two-thirds of the military was still on active duty.

This was preparation for a long, drawn out battle.

Of course, not all units received this arrangement, because the unit personally led by Yao Yuan was searching the mother ship for Liu Bai’s group. Using his Anima power, he brought along 30 Black Star Troopers to try to reconnect with these straggling heroes.

Liu Bai’s group, by that time, had reached their limits.

It was not because of enemy soldiers, because when Ying blew up the reactors and caused the massive blackout on the mother ship, the enemy military had practically disbanded. The space merchant troops started deserting when they came across the six of them. The thing that really pushed them to the limit was the fact that their space armors were running dangerously low on juice.

The Black Star Space Armor had within it a large storage of energy, but since it had within it the oxygen circulatory system, creator’s particle isolator, and many other body enhancement systems, its power consumption rate was enormous as well. After all, the six of them had survived plenty of battles, and those exhausted plenty of their energy supply. If they didn’t recharge in the next 2 to 3 hours, these 6 would die from asphyxiation from the shutdown of the oxygen circulatory system.

However, by then Yao Yuan had reached them with his Anima power and had informed them that the larger army was infiltrating the mother ship. Therefore, Yao Yuan requested them to stop moving, to preserve the energy that they had while waiting for Yao Yuan to reach them.

The six followed his orders and stayed put. With nothing else to do, they started chatting.

"...So Ying is dead," Liu Bai observed with a sigh.

The other 5, who were trading interesting stories about things that happened on the Hope, were silenced when Liu Bai said this sentence.

Ebon parted his lips to add, "I thought that guy would be the one among us to live the longest. I still remember during a mission back on Earth where we were tasked to assassinate a Xinjiang split-support. The target was in a heavily guarded area. Other than the main entrance, the rest of the place was laid with landmines, and since this was overseas, we couldn’t send in our troops. Ying volunteered to enter the area with a single sniper rifle. A few days later, the news came out that the target had been eliminated, and Ying hadn’t suffered a single injury on his body. And to think a person who was capable of achieving miracles like that has truly left us..."

Solemnity weighed down on everyone’s hearts. Regardless of how each of them viewed Ying’s personality, he was an undeniable hero; not a personal hero, but a hero to the entire human race. If not for his contribution, they might not even have gotten through the defenses set up by the space merchants, much less had the chance to counter-engineer the plasmatic bottles. He died a heroic death. At that moment, they had nothing but respect and reverence for this human hero.

Breaking the silence, Liu Bai suddenly turned to the last Survivor. "By the way, soldier, which Black Star platoon are you from and what’s your name?"

The trooper quickly tried to stand up right and give a salute, but due to thirst and starvation, he could only manage a half salute. "Reporting, Sir. I am from the 6th platoon, and my name is Ran Zhu Yi."

"Ran? The surname of one of the Chinese ancient kings? Interesting," Ebon, who was sitting beside him, commented.

Zhu Yi answered immediately, "Yes, it is that character, Ran. Zhu from bamboo [Zhu Zi] and Yi from loyalty [Yi Qi], Ran Zhu Yi."

Liu Bai commented, "No need to be so cautious, we’re combat buddies now. In this war, the Black Star Troopers probably suffered the loss of at least one or two platoons. We’re not even sure how many of us we’ve lost on the Hope..." Liu Bai sighed. "Black Star Troopers are comprised of all Homo Evolutis, but we still have no clue how to increase the number of Homo Evolutis. After the great losses suffered in this war, who knows how long this Black Star Troopers unit as a whole will be able to survive for."

Xiao Niao piped up, "Speaking of which, the understanding behind the trigger for the birth of Homo Evolutis is still iffy. Thus far, there have been two times when there was a large scale awakening of Homo Evolutis. The first was right after we left Earth, and the second was when we arrived at the New Planet. I initially thought leaving the New Planet would instigate another awakening, but obviously I was wrong. Looks like my understanding of Homo Evolutis triggers is wrong..."

To everyone’s surprise, Ren Tao retorted weakly, "That might not be true, because there might be things that happened without us noticing..." As he was talking, there was hollow ringing voice coming from within his space armor. Under everyone’s curious gazes, a snow-white baby Black Dragon peeped out of Ren Tao’s helmet. It was the little creature that was responsible for the earlier ringing sound.

"The little thing must be hungry. Hopefully, he can hold on and not chew on my body." Ren Tao saw the creature and started laughing.

Right then, intrigue crossed Xiao Niao’s eyes. He questioned, "By the way, Ren Tao, I’ve been meaning to ask you, but the situation before didn’t allow it. Where did this baby Black Dragon come from? Why would you bring this baby dragon with you when we were told we are going on a negotiation meeting with the space merchants? Did you predict they would turn on us? No, impossible, because even so, you wouldn’t have thought to bring along this baby dragon. There is no logical connection between the two!"

This reminded everyone else of this curiosity. Indeed, this baby dragon had pretty much saved the whole of humanity. If he hadn’t bitten away the metallic hands, their unit wouldn’t have escaped capture, and the series of events after that wouldn’t have happened. The key to their victory was actually this baby dragon!

Ren Tao shrugged. "That is why I said there might be things that happened without us noticing. Xiao Niao, what is your opinion on the concept of time, or to be more precise, what do you think about fortune-telling?"

Xiao Niao was startled by this sudden question. He thought about it and answered, "Fortune-telling is an enterprise that requires a lot of information collection and using that information to come up with the most logical extrapolation..."

"No, that’s not what I meant. I mean seeing into the future or knowing what will happen in the future, like the concept of chaos theory. To borrow a simple analogy, there are one thousand pebbles in a box, and each of them has a number written on it. The numbers are not repetitious, and you have to pull one out of the box. Can you use mathematical theories to predict the number written on the pebble you pull out?"

Xiao Niao hesitated before answering, "Impossible, there simply too many variables to be able to come up with a logical conclusion..."

Ren Tao chuckled and pointed at the baby dragon by the side of his head, saying, "Well, someone did...

"That is why I said, we might have encountered a new change that we didn’t even realize!"