Chapter 8: No Loudspeaker Iii (1/2)
Ten years later, the rocket landed on the energy planet as scheduled.
The rocket cabin began to warm up again and the girl woke up from her cryosleep and crawled out of the room.
She slammed onto the ground, her limbs trembling.
Her whole body was numb and powerless. A good twenty minutes pa.s.sed before she could get up on her feet.
With her uncoordinated limbs, she staggered toward the main cabin.
The dashboard indicated that there was oxygen outside but just to be safe, the girl brought along a filtering apparatus.
After putting on a lightweight s.p.a.cesuit, she gently pushed a b.u.t.ton.
The door opened up slowly.
A barren land filled with red rock piles entered her field of vision.
She attempted to walk out the door.
She looked around and recorded her location.
Her body had grown half a foot during that ten years and she was now five foot seven.
She had a hard time adapting.
Everything seemed normal as she explored the planet.
Like Mars, it had an uneven surface.
After walking some distance, the girl tripped.
Turning around, she noticed the corner of a sc.r.a.p iron that was buried under a lump of loess.
After half a day and much effort, she finally managed to dig out all four chunks of machinery.
Upon a closer look, she realized that these rusted chunks made up the body of a gunner.
She also found some strange limbs, most likely belonging to the extraterrestrial insects.
After some tests, she picked out the functioning components.
The girl started a.s.sembling them together in hope to model a complete gunner.
Two days went by.
Whenever she got hungry, she would return to the rocket to get some food and catch some sleep before continuing on the repairs.
She successfully reactivated the gunner on the third night.
The gunner stood up slowly but had too little charge, as reflected on the instrument in her hand.
She brought the gunner back to the rocket and by now, his battery was approaching zero.
She relied on the rocket's acc.u.mulator to charge the gunner up, intending to rely on him to cover and explore a greater distance.
On the way, she saw a lone insect.
From approximately fifteen yards away, the insect darted toward the girl.
Under her control, the gunner mercilessly fired at the insect down until the girl calmed him down.
After using up more than half of the gunner's ammunition, the girl realized that it wasn't wise to waste ammunition like that.
Three more days pa.s.sed.
After some exploration, she learned that she was in a destructed human base camp.
The facilities were considered wholesome. She managed to restore the electrical power.
However, the main monitor was already severely damaged and the b.u.t.tons were mostly not working properly.
In the storehouse, she found twenty gunners that had yet to be set up and activated.
The girl compiled their codes and organized them into teams.
She charged them up.
She brought the gunners along with her to retrieve her rocket and place it in the camp base.
There was a cabin ecology in the base camp and potatoes grew densely.
Perhaps that was a good start.
With twenty gunners, she surveyed the surroundings.
Some components of these gunners had grown rusty, which affected their movements slightly.
Whenever damaged components rendered them immobile, the girl would conduct some basic repairs.
The filtering apparatuses started to run out, leaving her with no choice but to breath the planet's oxygen.
She coughed violently upon inhaling her first breath.
Following that, she felt nothing else and decided to remove her s.p.a.cesuit.
Although her s.p.a.cesuit was lightweight, it was still burdensome.
Just like that, she traversed the battleground of the war between the gunners and extraterrestrial insects.
The girl conducted thorough inspections on every single gunner in hope of finding that particular gunner from a decade ago.
She wasn't so lucky this time.
She was attacked by a group of insects from all sides.
The densely packed insects crawled downslope, effectively surrounding her.
The girl fought them off calmly with her perfectly programmed teams.
The twenty gunners were G.o.dsent.
But problems resurfaced.
Some gunners started losing coordination.
The moment one got captured by an insect, over ten of these bugs would pounce on and destroy him.
The girl looked around and saw a small cave.
WIthout any other choice, she brought the remaining gunners inside to take cover.