Alien Relic Hunter

Chapter 549 Entering the Polluted Area

Ke Lan checked his equipment one last time, just as the [-]-second countdown on the head-up display also reset to zero at this time, and then reset to a new [-]-second countdown.

This is the "window time" reserved for them by the fire control system. He and Asano Akira must cross the blank area before the end of the [-]-second countdown, otherwise they will be sieved by the densely packed heavy machine guns behind them, and then covered by several rounds. Artillery strikes shattered the bones and ashes.

"go!"

Ke Lan said to Asano Akira, and walked forward with big strides.

The distance is 300 meters, and the time is 5 minutes... To use a common joke on the Internet, it is "my grandma can push a wheelchair across"-but in fact, this section of the road is not easy to walk.

The road surface left behind by the violent demolition of the block buildings is uneven, with various potholes, exposed pipeline tunnels... If you are not careful, you will step on the air and fall into the compartment.

Moreover, many supporting structures on the ground have been severely damaged—these places seem to be intact on the surface, but in fact, only the top layer of two-millimeter-thick steel plate is still there, and the supporting frame and load-bearing platform underneath are all broken. Breaking and settling, Ke Lan's own weight plus this set of power armor, as well as the weapons and ammunition he carried with him, weighed more than one ton, not to mention that the contact area of ​​his feet is not large, and the pressure on the ground is even higher. Such a thin steel plate couldn't support him no matter what.

The area directly below the West Area is not a residential area, but one of several core reactors that provide energy for the Ark. The various passages and pipelines inside are as complicated as a maze. If there is no guiding robot, it will be considered a You may not be able to get out of it with the drawings.

If it is a little more unlucky, and hits some important flammable and explosive facilities, it can even save the trouble of sending the corpse to the incinerator.

When encountering such a place, he and Asano Akira could only go around.

It wasn't until the last 45 seconds of the countdown that the two of them managed to reach the gate of the research institute headquarters.

Ke Lan took out an iron-gray hard card with no patterns, characters or patterns on the surface and inserted it into the access control gate. Suddenly, a perfectly circular hole with a diameter of about five meters appeared on the light curtain in front of it. .

According to the level of the researcher, the permissions of their ID cards are also different. The lowest level is white, which can only pass through the gate of the research institute and the access control of the department building of their own under normal conditions, and the places where the green card and blue card can go There are more than white ones. As for the purple cards held by the professors, except for a few confidential forbidden areas, they can travel unimpeded in the entire research institute headquarters.

Of course, this means that under normal circumstances, if there is an emergency—for example, as it is now, then no matter whether it is a white card or a purple card, it will directly become a "discarded card". Only the red card and Only the black cards held by the president and vice presidents of the research institute can retain their original authority.

The "iron card" in Ke Lan's hand is held by the chief of the crisis management department, and its authority is equivalent to the black card of the director of the research institute, but in addition, this card also has the ability to delete "black card" " and "red card" special permissions.

"Let's go." Ke Lan patted Asano Akira on the shoulder, and stepped across the light curtain first.

He found a communication interface post at the entrance, and inserted the communication cable he had just pulled out into the street post - because of the existence of the energy shield, no matter whether it was wired communication or laser communication, it could not pass through the shield to the outside , They have to rely on the communication interface pile and the lines buried under the ground to maintain contact with the rear headquarters, so preserving this interface pile has become the first task after entering the polluted area.

Ke Lan pulled out three folding brackets from the huge backpack, and put three automatic machine guns on the communication interface pile as the center. Except for Ke Lan and Akira Asano with identifiers, any moving things appeared here Within range of the three machine guns, they would fire without hesitation.

The ammunition chain uses [-] units of active ammunition inserted into every third round of regular piercing incendiary bombs, so even if the target of the attack is the seed of erosion, one round of long bursts is enough to send a fatal dose of active ammunition to the body. into the target's body.

There are at least [-] individuals of erosion species of various stages sealed in the underground ice storage of the research institute headquarters, and there are at least [-] "containers" frozen in ice coffins, and they are all alive... Although these erosion It is unlikely that all the seeds and containers will escape, but no one can say what accidents will happen when the entire research institute headquarters is out of control.

"Next time there is such an experiment, it should be done in the wilderness." Ke Lan complained while twisting the screw, "Even if there is an accident, at least the situation will be easy to clean up."

"There will be no next time." Schroeder's voice came from the earphones.

"Do you believe it? Anyway, I don't believe it... I dare say, those bastards in the countermeasure team, there should be many people who are thinking about me now, right?"

"I can guarantee that from now on, the Institute will strictly prohibit any projects related to you..."

"Don't fart, the crew will have issued this ban a long time ago. If they can abide by it, I don't need to come here to wipe their butts. You are right." Ke Lan directly responded to Schroeder's words.

After tightening the last screw, Ke Lan tapped the bracket with a wrench, and there was a crisp sound.

"What's the sound? Is it gunshots? Have you encountered an enemy?" Schroeder immediately asked nervously—in order to prevent the "meme" from being transmitted to the rear headquarters, Ke Lan and Asano Akira transmitted the communication back in real time through cables There are only two kinds of information, sound and coordinates.As for things like images, they need to be manually screened by Ke Lan, and those parts with "memes" are mosaiced with processing software before being sent back to the rear.

"I didn't encounter an enemy, I was just checking whether the machine gun bracket is firm." Ke Lan said, and turned on the sensor of the automatic machine gun, and a few faint red lasers shot out from the muzzle of the gun, and they shot out in a fan-shaped pattern regularly. Swipe back and forth within the range.

"To be honest, I don't think these three automatic machine guns can stop those monsters that come out of the underground freezer."

"The original plan was to arrange a team of self-disciplined robots to follow you into the polluted area, but the goal of the self-disciplined robots is too obvious, and they are more likely to be attacked by monsters..."

"You're saying that... as if the three machine guns that are more than one meter long and turning back and forth are not conspicuous..." Ke Lan made a remark casually, and then started to walk forward.

Akira Asano held the scabbard with one hand and the handle with the other, and followed closely behind him.

"Uh...that's because..."

Schroeder obviously wanted to say something, but Ke Lan immediately interrupted him mercilessly: "We are about to start moving forward, please keep silent so as not to cause disturbance."

Although both of their power armors are equipped with a large number of detection equipment, the one Ke Lan trusts the most is Akira Asano's ears.

Akira Asano's sense of hearing is not a pure sense of hearing—his main organ for receiving sound is not his ears, but the "thought tentacles" spreading out in all directions centered on him.

We all know that sound is a wave.For a normal human being, only when the sound wave is collected by the pinna along the medium of air, and then transmitted along the external auditory canal to the tympanic membrane, the tympanic membrane and the auditory ossicles amplify the vibration of the sound wave, and then through a series of complex transformation processes, Convert this vibration into nerve electrical signal and transmit it to the auditory center——at this time, human beings can be regarded as "hearing" the sound.

As for Akira Asano, before the sound waves touched his body, they had already been captured by those "thought tentacles". Therefore, what he could "hear" was naturally more and clearer than ordinary people. .

……

After walking less than 100 meters, a scene like hell appeared in front of Ke Lan's eyes:

Hundreds of staff members of the research institute collapsed at the intersection of the street. The iconic white coats on their bodies were covered with dark red blood, and the buildings beside them were covered with dense bullet holes...

Before Ke Lan got close, he smelled a strong smell of blood. Even the breathing mask with its own filtering function could not completely eradicate the smell of blood in the air... The further you walked, the more corpses in your field of vision. He could even clearly feel the stickiness from the soles of his feet every time he took a step—only a few hours had passed since these people were killed, and the flowing blood hadn't completely coagulated yet. A two-centimeter-thick, sticky "slurry layer" was formed on the ground.

"I have arrived at the first interface. There are at least [-] human corpses here, most of which are concentrated at the intersection." Ke Lan squatted down and reported to the rear headquarters while looking at the nearby corpses. "These bodies were all killed by firearms, and I saw no signs of 'meme' infection in them."

"These people should be the victims who appeared after the first batch of autonomous robots entered the polluted area one and a half hours after the incident..." Schroeder said in a heavy tone, "Because the autonomous robots cannot recognize 'memes', The AI ​​automatically mistook the 'eyeball', which is highly similar to the 'meme', as the target of attack... These people should have been accidentally killed by autonomous robots."

"Each of these people can be regarded as a valuable asset of the research institute?" Ke Lan said, "For the scholars on the ark, being able to enter the research institute is almost the ultimate goal of this life... This thing is just like the old It’s like the Ivy League of the Era. Anyone who takes it outside is a great person. As a result, a group of human robots killed hundreds of them like chickens at this intersection. The crew should be very distressed. Bar?"

"Actually..." Schroeder hesitated for a moment, but continued, "Even if they were not killed by autonomous robots, it would be difficult for them to survive. At that time, the entire polluted area had been closed. According to regulations, it was impossible to release This group of people came out, they stayed inside, and there was only one ending in the end..."

"Infected." Lin Qiming's voice cut in.

"Yes, according to the meaning of the Undead Crew Association, it should have defaulted to the status of zero survivors in the polluted area." Schroeder continued, "Even if you encounter survivors who ask you for help, you can ignore them, please be sure Make the main task the first priority."

"Will you die?" Ke Lan asked supplementarily.

"……Correct."

"Absolutely enough... Even if this incident can be successfully concluded, the research institute will probably be seriously injured..."

"Actually, I've already lost my vitality." Schroeder sighed. "Originally, the research institute was staffing up. Excluding security, miscellaneous personnel, and engineering departments, there were a total of 440 nine people..."

"what about now?"

"The only thing left now is the 'Temporary Countermeasure Team'..."

Ke Lan was stunned for a moment. He also went to the countermeasure team to look at it before. Including those "students" who were not qualified to discuss and could only watch from the sidelines, the entire countermeasure team had less than a hundred people... ...Although Ke Lan has never had a good impression of these lunatics, he has to admit that Ark's current level of technology is entirely due to these lunatics.

In the 50 years since landing on Alpha Star, the progress of human science and technology is enough to equal the 500 years on Earth, or even more—although a large part of these developments come from the technology left over from Alpha civilization, but if Without this group of people who analyzed, transformed and applied the technology of the Alpha civilization, it would be very difficult for human beings to gain a foothold on this planet.

The loss of high-end talents is far more deplorable than the loss of property... These talents cannot be measured by numbers, or even so. Each of them is a combination of genius and hard work, one in a million, rare No matter how many resources you have, you won't be able to cultivate such an expert... But now, this group of people died in the blink of an eye, leaving less than [-]% of them.

Ke Lan felt that if he had been sitting in the position of the Undead Crew, he would probably faint from anger now.

"After the inspection, there are a total of [-] corpses at the intersection, and none of them were infected." Ke Lan put away the previous teasing tone and said seriously.

"receive."

"I'm going to move on, later—" Ke Lan had just stepped over a corpse lying face down on the ground, and then suddenly backed away.

"what happened?"

"There was a particular body found ... he wasn't shot."

"Has he been infected with the 'meme'?" Schroeder asked.

"No."

"Sync images."

"Well." Ke Lan nodded, and entered a series of instructions on the control terminal, and a red warning frame immediately lit up on the edge of his helmet display-this indicated that everything he saw now, It was transmitted back to the command post in real time.

If I see the "meme" carrier now, I guess the entire crisis management department will be dismissed... Ke Lan thought to himself, and locked his perspective on the corpse on the ground.

To be precise, it was on the "two" corpses.

This corpse was amputated in half by some kind of sharp object, and the fracture was very smooth... And those autonomous robots that entered the polluted area were not equipped with such weapons.

[After 29:[-] on PS[-], the last monthly ticket double event of this year will start, and the monthly tickets you keep can be cast away later... Although I am afraid that this month will not reach a thousand chapters, but I still want to shout: ask for a monthly ticket , please support~~~~]

(End of this chapter)