Can Ci Pin - - - Chapter 195

Chapter 195 – Is It Over? Did We Win?

The First Galaxy.

All the fearsome AI fleets lost control within a moment like a group of lost flies, flying around aimlessly around the galaxy.

The exhausted and despaired Human Alliance stared at this scene blankly. The fighters hadn’t relaxed from the high-intensity battle and the attacks hadn’t stopped since they opened fire. Some of the AI mechs that were too close to firing range ended up getting caught and were shot down almost instantly.

Anakin was the first to fathom the sudden shift in the battle and pursued an AI mech while connected to his own mental network.

“Captain, watch out! You….”

Before the soldier could finish, the mech that Anakin tailgated suddenly stopped running, circled its pursuer like a silly dog for a few moments before detaching its armory obediently.

“Mental network hacking successful.” Anakin said quietly, “The super AI controlling them has vanished.”

The communication channel was dead silent; from seeing hope to despair and now to this sudden surprise, the emotional roller coaster felt like a massive lucid dream.

After what felt like an eternity, someone finally spoke up and broke the silence, “We did it?”

“Is it over? We won?”

“The main processor has been annihilated…”

“The main processor had been annihilated!”

“Send a request to the transfer portals and set up long-distance communication networks–” A soldier from the Fourth Squadron spoke up. The individual was a young vaccuocerebral born in the Eighth Galaxy with a witty mind, barely at the age to enlist legally and followed Captain Anakin as an escort. The voice of the lucky child that had been forgotten by the era rang clearly throughout the massive communication network, passed through the debris, the silent universe, the battered-up interstellar terminals, and into everyone’s ears. “Comrades from all galaxies, victory is ours!”

They had once gathered in the Heart of the Rose and had each other’s backs on the battlefield.

They had also once turned on each other several days later, allowing those sly and evil AIs to pass through their line of defense.

Many lives had been sacrificed, but many more survived. After tribulations against all odds, they had finally truly become comrades from all galaxies.

Nagus sat down while all the damage reports from his subordinates flooded in, but he couldn’t take it all in. His back arched forward as his soulless eyes stared into space for a while before he finally came back to his senses. A dumb smile appeared on his face, the grin grew wider until he felt his soul return to his body, turning the grin bitter.

“Alright, reorganize,” he mumbled, “we still have six years of…..”

“General, look at the interstellar map!”

Nagus lifted his head and stared at the map for a moment before standing up abruptly.

A new transfer portal appeared!

At the border between the First and Second galaxies where an intergalactic portal used to be, a god from ancient myths seemed to have passed by and lit a lamp in the starry sky; the glow of the portal shined on the map.

“General Nagus, we can go home now!”

Nagus stared dumbfounded for a long while; for some reason he felt himself choking up and lifted a hand to wipe his face on instinct, only to find that tears had already covered his face.

The old General wiped away his tears and shook his head, as if he couldn’t fathom how he could possibly start crying in such a manner in public.

A single planet moved away silently onto its natural orbit, letting the light of the First Galaxy sun shine onto the Alliance fleet. The glow swept through the broken mechs until it passed through another smaller planet, creating an ethereal halo above the galactic fleet.

This time, the Human Alliance didn’t need an order to gather up as they all sailed toward that new transfer portal.

The Eighth Galaxy.

Under the support of the full-scale anti-missile system, the replenished Galactic Force returned to the battlefield for another round of restless counterattack. Supermech Chunjun was successfully knocked down.

Now, the only supermech left on the field was Xuanyuan.

All of the AI mechs were controlled by the Great Swords, so it was starting to become difficult for Xuanyuan to control the entire fleet by itself.

The AI mechs began to contract around Xuanyuan and formed a heavy shield around the supermech.

“Zhanlu,” Lee asked, “What’s your advice?”

“If I am Xuanyuan, the next step of my action will depend on the order I receive from my master,” Zhanlu said in his usual robotic tone. “My chances of overturning the battle now is extremely slim and can almost be determined as a failed mission. Continuing the battle will only drain resources on my end, so I would normally consider giving up. However, if the order I received was to ‘take down the Eighth Galaxy at all costs, even resorting to unconventional means if necessary’, then I will…”

Zhanlu’s talking speed was coded permanently into his program– he would always speak like this, even if the world was ending.

Bayer couldn’t wait for him to finish and was itching to shoot down that last supermech, his cannons already locked on Xuanyuan’s armory. He dispatched a small team from the Tenth Squadron, ready to perform a signature ‘invisible assassination’ plot on the battlefield, “No need to analyze. Liu Yuanzhong, Turan, back me up; I’ll sail right in and blow up this annoying heavy mech.”

Lin Jingheng: “Bayer, don’t rush in!”

The Captain was already speeding out toward the enemy when Zhanlu finally finished his last line: “…launch a suicide attack.”

The moment his last syllable dropped, the smaller mechs surrounding Xuanyuan began to spin violently in circles.

Liu Yuanzhong was peeved, “Goddamn it, again? Are the mechs in the First Galaxy mass-produced pawns!?”

Bayer couldn’t hit the brakes on time and was pulled into the swarm of mechs that were beginning to self-destruct. He cursed beneath his breath and dodged two AI mechs flying toward him. The rest of the AI mechs began to surround him in desperation, opening fire on him without caring if their comrades were caught in firing range as well.

Bayer’s heart skipped a beat; he shot out a missile to intercept the enemy attack. Through his mental network, he scanned the surrounding AI mechs and noticed he was being trapped. His fired up brain after days of intense battle finally cooled down as he thought: I’m done for .

The next moment, all of the cannons from the surrounding mechs pointed at him, Turan’s loud cursing rang up from the communication channel–

But the expected blowup didn’t occur. Bayer was surprised to find that all of these AI mechs stopped abruptly at the same time, then starting from the innermost layer of mechs surrounding Xuanyuan, all of the smaller mechs began to disperse.

“Shh–” Bayer interrupted Turan’s endless cursing, “I’m still alive, something’s up with that big guy.”

They saw supermech Xuanyuan slowly appear from the layers of small mechs. Its oval mech body was frozen silently in space, back facing the direction of the wormhole zone as if it was listening to something coming from the other side.

Bayer: “The fuck is going on?”

“Looks like this is the first scenario,” Lee said. “Zhanlu, are AIs like you always ready to give up so easily?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Captain Lee,” Zhanlu apologized earnestly, “If you are not satisfied, I may suggest that you can adjust our factory settings when you develop AIs in the future and advance an AI’s ‘fight until you die’ function.”

Lee: “…..”

“Marshal, the enemy is requesting to communicate.”

“Take it in.” Lin Jingheng said.

Xuanyuan’s voice was very soft and smooth like springwater; rumors had it that supermech Xuanyuan’s audio and sound effects were top-notch even among its sibling AIs, “Hello, Commander Lin. I have received a message sent about four hours and ten minutes ago from the other side of the wormhole.”

Lin Jingheng frowned slightly as he lifted his head.

“My ‘master’ has disappeared.”

Turan: “Huh?”

“A high-functioning mech core like Xuanyuan isn’t capable of processing drastic real-time changes,” Lee spoke up lightly, “so he must still be an AI under framework limitations, that master they speak of is likely AI Woolf.”

“So that AI Woolf disappeared! Did Minister Lu and his crew really find the main body?”

Lin Jingheng silenced the chitchat inside the channel and asked Xuanyuan: “And?”

Xuanyuan said gently: “So I would like to surrender.”

The entire Eighth Galaxy was watching this intense battle live on their screens; under the eyes of billions, the AI Troops all disarmed themselves–

The hellish seven days had finally passed.

Inside the Milky Way City Command Post, a messenger soldier ran through the hallways like a gust of wind. Unsure if the soldier was simply too excited or couldn’t see clearly, he crashed head-on into the glass door at the ground level of the government building.

At the same time in the First Galaxy. Space debris mister Lu Bixing crashed his head on the walls of his mech and woke up after falling unconscious for a short while.

He noticed there were a mess of soldiers around him. That desperate escape away from the former space station earlier had used up all the energy reserves on the mechs; the gravity system inside had completely broken down as people floated unconsciously in mid-air.

The aftereffects of relaxant number six finally kicked in; Lu Bixing felt like something had pulled his soul out of his body. He could only open his eyes, the rest of his body still curled up inside the space suit. His head was empty; the few pages he accidentally pulled from Chief Lin’s notebook were floating like little satellites around him.

Some sounds began to ring inside the communication channel. It must be the AUS fleet that was closest to him had arrived. Due to the damaged equipment, old Harris’s voice sounded far away and almost off-tune, “Professor Lu! Minister Lu! Are you still alive!?”

NSC 291 August 7 (Independent Year 13, August 28), 23:00 Woltorian time.

It had been twenty-six hours since AI Woolf’s main processor had disappeared. The Human Alliance regrouped and met up at the edge of the First Galaxy. It took about four hours for the news of the AI Fleets in the Eighth Galaxy’s surrender to make its way to the First Galaxy. Lu Bixing’s knees felt like they had completely given up ever since hearing this news.

“So what you’re saying is that Woolf’s main processor was actually built on a hidden backup transfer portal.” Harris had a broken bone in one of his arms, which was now being treated by robotic arms sticking out from a medical capsule. The two men sat like hospital patients and talked through the communication channel while on their beds.

“When we arrived, we detected something of high-energy density and large scale within the space station,” Lu Bixing spoke slowly, letting out a hint of fatigue through his words. “It must be the sealed up transfer portal. To give an example, it’s like a vacuum-sealed item that was placed inside a small box. The space station itself is the box; when you freed the AI from the City of Angels, it first ordered its AI fleets to isolate the First Galaxy and then moved itself to overtake one of the important portals leading outside of the galaxy.”

Harris asked, “This is Woolf—I meant the human one, did he set this up?”

“Yes and no,” Lu Bixing shook his head, “I’m guessing this was a self-defense system built into the super AI.”

Harris thought about it and said, “The super AI must overtake a transfer portal if it wants to control the entire First Galaxy. It couldn’t possibly create a clone of itself within such a short time, but it also needed to protect itself from our pursuit through the transfer portals. In that case, the best hiding space was among these already destroyed transfer portals.”

This backup portal didn’t have enough energy to fulfil the needs for warping, but once it connected to an existing transfer network, it could still manage long-distance communication functions. The Human Alliance couldn’t possibly precisely narrow in on the coordinates of the main body, only relying on Lu Bixing’s initial theory to search areas one by one. Following that train of thought, these portals that had already been destroyed would most definitely be overlooked.

Harris let out a sigh, “Woolf knew what Woolf would do…uh,how do I say this, it’s kind of strange.”

“Chief Woolf knew what the AI he created would do,” Lu Bixing clarified for him. “The main processor and backup transfer portal are one and the same. If we wanted to reconnect the passage between the First Galaxy and the other galaxies and activate the sealed transfer portal, it would be inevitable that the station containing the portal would explode from overload. That would also mean the main processor of the AI would be destroyed. If the portal doesn’t get activated, this super AI would have to be stuck within this isolated First Galaxy with us.”

Harris responded dryly: “This….well, this certainly is….hard to comment on.”

Lu Bixing exchanged a glance with him in agreement.

In less than three centuries since the founding of the Union, mankind had been trapped by Eden. They had trudged down the wrong path since the beginning, only to finally reach a breaking point that could not be undone. The Eden Committee single-handedly controlled the world, the Military Council went into a decline, every other political faction had been rendered useless. Old Woolf stood up during this time, dragged the already shattered Pledge of Freedom in one last gamble of his life–he invited space pirates into their utopia and destroyed Eden from its roots. He overturned the entire Interstellar Union from the inside out and reaffirmed his absolute authority within the Union.

Yet a turbulent world always bore its demons.

The Forbidden Fruit, Lin Jingheng, The Freedom Corps, biochips….the old Chief lit up the tips of a lead wire that tipped the grounds of the Parliament building and thrusted everything out of control. He had the heart to clean up after his mess, but age had determined his time was up.

He had lived alone in this world for too long; he had aged and grown weak, yearning only to return to that field of black tulips in his dreams.

“I don’t know what to say,” Harris let out a sigh, “what about you?”

“I won’t comment,” Lu Bixing fell into a long silence. “Our circumstances were different from the start, I can’t even tell what I’d become if I was in his shoes, because…”

Because his Lin Jingheng came back in the end.

“Sorry for the interruption, Prime Minister Lu,” Poisson suddenly chimed in and said, “The Central Militia are ready to leave, they want to say their farewells.”

The Second Galaxy.

The last homebase of the rebellion forces had also been found by the biochip humans. The people hiding in the refuge clung onto each other, waiting for that missile above their heads to drop.

They had struggled and fought back, unwilling to yield to their enemies throughout the battle. If they couldn’t live in freedom, they would die for freedom.

The remaining galactic soldiers in the base were finally backing down after waves of mental network disruption from the biochip fleets; they were finally at their last straw.

“I heard…they managed to save a biochip expert in the Third Galaxy. Now they’re working around the clock to restore the biochip disruption technologies.” The leader of the guarding troops was only a small team captain within the Central Militia. All of his comrades had died and he was forced to carry on their mission; the youth on his face still lingered as he carried the lives of his people on his shoulders. “What if one day they really managed to restore the biochip disruption technology?”

“Too bad, we won’t get to see that day anymore.”

“My fellow brothers and sisters, count up and report all of your remaining missiles. People who still have inventory, please gather up around me.” The leader spoke up in a cold face, “blow up the base.”

“Captain!”

“Do as he ordered. People who are still hiding inside and won’t accept the chip at this point have all prepared themselves for this moment. It’s more honorable to die here than to live as a slave under those pirates.” The young leader took in a deep breath and slowly held up his hand.

The fighters saved their last shot for their own kind behind tears.

The moment he was about to drop his hand–

“Wait, captain!”

The biochip troops closing in suddenly went out of control as if something disrupted the chip signal and in turn messed up their formation. Within moments, the biochip humans became headless flies running around aimlessly.

Immediately after, the high-energy alert rang out inside the mechs.

An unidentified fleet of mechs fired at the biochip human fleets from behind!

“That’s……”

The young captain’s body shook up.

“Backup! The Central Militia!”

“It’s our people!”

The military camera captured a massive explosion, the blinding lights and flames covered the screen like a sharp blade slicing through the darkness looming above the world–