Can Ci Pin - - - Chapter 65

Chapter 65 – Annihilated

Captain Turan, the head of the Ninth Squadron, gasped a breath of cold air and thought: “Oh my god, what was that ancient proverb about beautiful damsels always living a short life, what kind of misfortune do I have?”

She wanted to flee the site, but the sound of her boots stepping on the floor already gave her presence away. Lin Jingheng commanded her: “You stay where you are!”

Turan frantically stood back up straight, and then turned her face towards the wall quietly after deciding it was more appropriate to pretend she didn’t exist.

Lu Bixing carefully let go of Lin Jingheng’s wrist and adjusted his cuffs while casually ignoring the murderous intent emitting from the man before him.

If Lu Bixing was going to act playful and flirtatious like he normally did, perhaps Lin Jingheng could actually find an excuse to punch him.

But the young man stood straight, with bright eyes looking deeply into his own–too brightly and too innocently, almost like a child’s….perhaps all scientists had this same kind of light in their eyes when they saw the fruit of their labor after all of their research. Lu Bixing was also standing a little too close; Lin Jingheng could almost feel the energy radiating off of him and breathed in his warm scent..

Lin Jingheng felt a shot of cold air stuck in his throat. He remained silent for a few seconds before taking half a step back away from this intimidating enthusiasm, and responded as calmly and as patiently as he could: “Thank you, but I can’t accept it. I don’t think your father would be happy about you getting too close to me, so don’t waste your efforts here.”

For a second, Turan wondered if the man behind her was really her boss and almost wanted to scan his DNA.

Lu Bixing blinked innocently and didn’t mind the honest rejection. Perhaps he had already spent too much time cooking his soup for all his students; he still had an endless supply of lines that could be compiled into books for reading in the bathroom: “Liking a flower doesn’t mean you have to see it bloom; liking a person doesn’t mean you need to have your feelings returned. The process of pursuing love and beauty isn’t a waste of effort. This is a very wonderful process, don’t you think?”

Of course Lin Jingheng didn’t think that, and was completely speechless at this comment. After filling up his kindness and patience quota for the day, he took off the pretentious facade and returned to his normal asshole-self: “You sure are bored and have nothing to do, now get out of here!”

Lin didn’t pull out a gun so it couldn’t really be considered a furious response. It was as if a lion carefully gave Lu Bixing a little push with its paws, making him feel feel oddly loved. With a heart full of affection, Lu Bixing strolled towards the exit as he gleefully greeted Turan: “Good morning Captain, love your haircut. If you need mech maintenance or anything, just let me know anytime.”

Turan stared at his disappearing silhouette as if she was sending off a brave soldier.

Lin Jingheng felt as if his wrist had just been burnt by hot steel, the heat from it lingering all around. All his worries from before got awkwardly jumbled up in this mess of emotions that Lu Bixing had just dumped on him; he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but at the same time he also felt some unexplainable emotion inside of him.

He poured himself a glass of cold water and waved for Turan to come over.

Turan didn’t want to make her boss wait and carried out his earlier order quickly; she only wiped off her makeup and cut the long hair she’d let grow for a few years to her ears. Only the two fringes of the side were left untouched and rested on her chest in an attempt to smuggle its way past the commander’s inspection.

Lin Jingheng gave her a quick glance and concluded that the look had no aesthetic value; she looked like a longhorn beetle that had gotten a little perm on its whiskers.

“So tell me, how’s the Union right now?” He asked.

“Commander,” Turan erased her playful demeanor and stood up straight as she heard this question. “There is no Interstellar Union anymore.”

Her tone was calm, but the words were like dynamite that dropped into the ears of the listener.

Turan asked: “Where should I start?”

Lin Jingheng paused for a moment before he answered: “The Silver Fortress.”

Turan lifted her gaze up a little and spoke in a neutral tone uncharacteristic of her chatter-box personality: “At the end of June of this year…last year, at midnight, without any warnings, the central power system of the Silver Fortress completely collapsed. The defense system was down and could not be rebooted; thousands of uncharted heavy mechs invaded the artificial atmosphere without notice and began firing at the station. The Silver Fortress suffered great damage.”

The Silver Fortress, home to countless elites built up by hundreds of generations of Black Orchid graduates; the fortress that Lin Jingheng protected and managed for decades…

Turan corrected herself: “No, I should say that it was pretty much annihilated.”

Lin Jingheng always thought he had just been using the Silver Fortress as a pawn, and nobody besides the Silver Ten were what he would consider allies. Yet at this revelation, he could still feel his blood begin to boil.

“How did this happen?” Lin Jingheng lowered his voice, “Are the network securities dead? What about the patrol team? Are they all blind?”

“The Fortress’s energy system was hacked through internal systems. Someone inserted a chip into Zhanlu’s mech body – because nobody could start him up, the regular checkups were scheduled for once every two months with high authorities; nobody caught the chip in time. As for the patrol team…many left the Silver Fortress ever since Commander Lee took over. He was

just a flower vase with no real power to stop people from leaving, so he replaced many of the existing members with humanoids. It just so happened that the patrols were also a team of humanoids that day, and they were all hacked as well.”

Lin Jingheng grasped the entire complicated political situation with just these few lines.

The Military Council of the IU owned the property rights to both mechs and the AIs that made up the cores of the mechs, but humanoids–despite simply being a less complex and mass-producible version of AIs–became an exclusive trademarked property of the Eden Committee after they discovered its profitability.

Just how much profit and production output could be obtained by replacing human soldiers with humanoids? Just how many people’s interest would be affected by this? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the profit would be an astronomical figure. The former General Lee had nothing to put on the table, what other way was he able to buy himself a position in the Silver Fortress? And why did he immediately push for building a humanoid military unit the moment he secured his position?

Clearly, this was the result of the political tug-of-war between the Military Council and the Eden Committee. But to both side’s surprise, this political game ended up digging an irreversible hole in the status quo.

Lin Jingheng asked: “This is just your theory, where’s your proof?”

“No, it’s not my guess. Commander Lee said this himself.”

“Lee is still alive?” Lin Jingheng was a little surprised that he still had the guts to stay around.

“The little stove that Commander Lee’s personal fleet used as their energy source was a separate system from the Silver Fortress, so they managed to escape. Lee and a few of his personal guards were the only ones that made it out of the Silver Fortress alive.” Turan shrugged, “But they didn’t get to live long. They were assassinated while they were on their way to the City of Angels.”

Lin Jingheng scrunched up his eyebrows: “Was it you or the Tenth Squadron?”

The Tenth Squadron was also a commando squad like the Ninth, but specialized more in assassination and ambushes; they were a full team of highly-trained galactic assassins.

“It was me.” Turan admitted without hesitation. Her gaze met the commander’s sternly and unmoved like a murderous longhorn beetle.

“We’ve shared meals with the Silver Fortress, shared the same training grounds, and trained those fresh graduates of the academy together. If we add up the total distance we’ve patrolled around the Fortress, we could circle around the entire First Galaxy more than once. I don’t think this is right, Commander. The reason why the Silver Fortress collapsed was because of this bastard Ares Lee; 10,000 soldiers lost their lives because of his mistake, and he still wanted to escape to the City of Angels to save his own ass so that he could live peacefully for the rest of his life…No fucking way! If you want to punish me for my actions, I will take responsibility.”

Yet Lin Jingheng only waved it off and didn’t further question this small incident. “So what’s the current status of the government?”

“The government is alright, just kind of spineless.” Turan let out a breath and relaxed a little. “Before the communications got cut off, I’d heard that the IU gave up Wolto and escaped to the City of Angels and set up a temporary headquarters of command there. The First Galaxy still had quite a few military fortresses around, so they still have soldiers on hand. In addition, the Military Council’s main production warehouse was already on the City of Angels, so they’re well-equipped. Old man Woolf is currently in charge, so there aren’t many issues, the pirates still have a long way to go before they’ll be able to take them down. All residents in the First Galaxy that had connections to military groups and politicians all fled over to the City of Angels…Pirate fleet ‘Glory Troops’ made their way into the First Galaxy through the Silver Fortress and made it their homebase.”

“What about the other civilians?”

“Residents of the First Galaxy? Not bad. They’re all mostly respectable people, so even if the Glory Troops want to build their own government, they’ll still have to play by the rules and win support the proper way. The only thing is that aviation control is strict, but as long as you’re not randomly flying around through the terminals you’ll most likely be fine, and the quality of living is ensured.” Turan laid her hands out casually, “But ever since the communication networks collapsed, the entire Eden system also fell apart…I don’t know if the Committee had their hands in this in fear that people would side with the pirates or something, but despite having basic living conditions met, the death count rose steadily after Eden crashed. I’ve heard that many places began organizing their own patrol teams to prevent suicide.”

If the “barbarians” of the Eighth Galaxy were to hear of this, they would think this was a complete joke.

How can anyone think of ending their lives when they’re financially stable and even have space pirates attempting to appease to them? Even the most luxurious standard of living in the Eighth Galaxy was only comparable to the current state of the First Galaxy.

Even Beijing-β, the once-most-flourishing planet of the Eighth Galaxy couldn’t provide adequate temperature control for its residents. In the long and tortuous three-years of winter, people would wander the streets like stray animals; freezing to death or dying from starvation was not uncommon. Even on their deathbeds, the poor souls of the Eighth Galaxy would have never known of the extravagant lifestyles that exist outside of their galaxy.

But Lin Jingheng knew this wasn’t because the First Galaxy was just being melodramatic.

The entire civilization of the IU was built on the system of Eden, and aside from the Eighth Galaxy, every person was born under the protection of Eden like a carefully nurtured plant inside a personalized greenhouse. When the greenhouse broke down, these indoor plants that had never felt the harsh winds and weather conditions of the outside world would be suddenly thrown out into the wild without any support. Sometimes, these conditions would be harsh enough to end lives.

“Only the First Galaxy is somewhat stable, I can’t say for the others. Commander, you know that the other galaxies don’t have military sovereignty so their only line of defense is the central militia stationed in each galaxy. The main key to their mech docks was in the Silver Fortress, but nobody expected anything to happen to the Silver Fortress.” Turan paused and let out an almost unnoticeable small sigh. “Those annoying pirates were still causing trouble everywhere, and the Silver Fortress cannot be contacted, so the central militia in a lot of places panicked. Modern war isn’t like how it was in the ancient times where we could still make a comeback if we missed our chances–if you can’t bring out your mech, you can’t even expect the anti missile systems to protect you from the rain of gunshots and beams from those crazy pirates. Getting blown to ashes would even be considered lucky.”

Lin Jingheng slowly strolled over to the window. Through the glass, he could see the armed forces of this little space station lining up down below. These people didn’t even bother to head back home and rest up before celebrating their survival, instead deciding to hang around the mech dock gathering up like some shady cult ritual. Lin Jingheng felt something choking up in his throat; Turan’s words were like a violent storm of bloodshed that almost filled the air inside the main control room.

“Even among the pirates, there were multiple factions; the Glory Troops that took over the First Galaxy are ones that want to walk down the dynastic path. See, that means they have to win support from the civilians, which is completely different than those crazy bastards in the AUS. That’s why the Glory Troops made a statement very soon after they took over the First Galaxy and said that they would completely cut ties with the rest of the pirates, and went even so far as to label all the others as illegal terrorist organizations.” Turan explained, “Then all these foreign pirates that followed and previously took the Glory Troops as some sort of leader for their unofficial alliance went wild. Since their leader one-sidedly severed their alliance, it’s like these pirates wanted vengeance or something and became more aggressive and violent than before. They became less picky about their prey and killed whoever they wanted.”

“Since you left, we’ve been tracking the Sixth and Seventh Galaxies’ moves. My team and I have been doing ‘deliveries’ between the Sixth and Seventh Galaxies.” A shady name like Turan’s ‘deliveries’ was of course just a facade that the squadron worked under. “Our last order was a perfectly timed jackpot prize from the remains of the Sixth Galaxy’s central militia. They didn’t have mechs, so they dragged a portion of non-military personnel to form a civilian armed forces to find some underground connections to help smuggle a few old mechs from the Seventh Galaxy over. But when we arrived with the order, our client was already gone.”

Lin Jingheng lifted his gaze up at her.

“The secret station they were hiding in disappeared from the map–it got blown into pieces, so I guess the mechs are mine now. The pirates that took over the Sixth Galaxy thought the people over there were too rowdy, so they completely locked down the air terminals and transportation system on the capital planet. From the central executive buildings, they started playing a game of massacre with hundreds of heavy tanks on the ground.” Turan continued, “I felt bad just taking our client’s mechs, so I took the boys and blew up the pirate stations and bases on the capital planet and used up quite a bit of missiles. Then after we escaped outside of Union territory, we had to rely on some shady connections to replenish our energy and ammo……otherwise we wouldn’t have been so late today. Sorry commander, it was my fault for acting on my own.”

Lin Jingheng didn’t catch the little excuse she gave, and went silent for a few moments before asking with a difficult expression: “Are all the central militia this useless?”

“No.” Turan hesitated a little and shook her head, “There were some that reacted promptly, they were all ex-subordinates of Commander Lu Xin. I’m not sure where or how, but they all managed to obtain the key from the Silver Fortress.”

Lin Jingheng didn’t need to hear the next line to understand the picture: the system of the main control key was extremely complicated. The only way to have been able to get past the system to obtain the key was to have enough time to decode it, meaning that it must have been a secret plan created very early on. Yet whether it was a part of an elaborate conspiracy plot or something else, nobody could tell.

The two looked at each other in silence for a long while.

Turan then broke the silence and asked: “Commander, you got anything to eat?”

Lin Jingheng gave her a look.

Turan explained: “I haven’t stepped on land for over half a year, and we were low on supplies. I’ve lived off nutrition syringes for the past while and I can feel my stomach contracting. I rushed here to give you the report and didn’t even have a chance to take a sip of water.”

Lin Jingheng pointed at the food cabinet near the door of the control room.

The students often came here for classes, so the cabinet was always filled with food and snacks. Turan cheered happily as she randomly grabbed some bread to munch on.

“Supplies are already looking tight outside?”

“Don’t mention it,” Turan choked a little from eating too fast, and slapped her chest a few times. “Those foreign pirates got too used to being poor, so they steal everything. They steal while they go out and preach their shady cult. Now that Eden’s down, the entire Union’s credit and trust is also down, so nobody has money anymore. People don’t even know what to trade items for on the market, and nutrition syringes are almost becoming the new coins across the galaxies. I almost can’t believe I’m still alive to see you, commander.”

Lin Jingheng nodded slightly in acknowledgement: “Did you contact anyone else?”

“Nope,” Turan shook her head, “It’s complete chaos out there with everyone fighting for territory. I’ve had people monitoring the transfer portals ever since I got your order to wait for your long-distance. The astral maps of territories outside of the Union were too complicated. We’re not familiar with the routes, and all the major terminals are taken over by pirates everywhere. We couldn’t obtain a reliable map of all the underground terminals so we didn’t want to risk it.”

Lin Jingheng opened his mouth as if he had more questions: “Li…”

Turan wiped off the cream at the edge of her mouth: “Hm?”

“Nothing.” Lin Jingheng lightly tapped his fingers together as he realized there was no point in asking the other question he’d been keeping in his heart. The First Lady of the Secretary-General would be in the City of Angels with guards surrounding her. She wouldn’t go out and show her face without any reason. In addition, Turan might not have heard anything either, so he swallowed his question back down. “Take your time. I’ll give you all 24 hours to regroup and do what you need to do, then gather up. I need to clean up the surrounding pirates and make a temporary base in the Eighth Galaxy.”

Lu Bixing was piloting a small mech for repair and maintenance, currently resting by the mech dock. He took a peek inside the heavy mech the Ninth Squadron brought over and discovered that it really was a bunch of old models from the last century. While it looked powerful on the outside, the inside was almost like a history museum that made Lu Bixing think he could almost smell preservatives.

It was almost hard to imagine that the Ninth Squadron had really defeated the Prince of Cayley with these large pieces of rusty metal.

After this battle, the family feud among the armed forces finally made a truce with each other. Saturday, Foucault, and Weasel were gathered up peacefully discussing something.

The artificial sun began leaning westward, dragging a trail of light throughout the streets of the station. The peace of the evening almost made the deadly battle feel like a lucid dream.

The Ninth Squadron took the opportunity to walk around the station with clear intentions on learning more about it. Meanwhile, Turan had her eyes glued on the multimedia screen that was currently playing an ancient romance movie.

Across the mech dock, Ms. Plump dragged a group of people, each holding pots and plates full of food. The smell of freshly cooked food spread throughout the dry and boring air of the mech dock, and a child jumped from the crowd to rip down the calendar from last year.

After placing the food and drinks down, they placed a circle of candles on the floor outside the door to the dock.

Saturday stood up; his head still felt wobbly from exhaustion, and walked over as he pulled out a small stack of notes and placed them under each candle. Each little piece of paper he placed had a name of someone that was no longer with them.