Chapter 928 The Rise of the Fleet (Fog)

After several hours of hyperspace navigation, the Giant Turtle Yantai finally left the hyperspace state in a brand new star region. With a sudden light that lit up the space, the warped space opened, and the silver-white censor's ship slowly emerged from the space door.

"Arrived at outpost nest L-B-35, automatic navigation terminated."

Nolan's voice woke Hao Ren up from the star map. He raised his head and saw that the simulation projections around the bridge were gradually opening. The external monitors projected a panoramic view of the scene outside the spacecraft to the periphery of the control platform.

He found that the spacecraft had arrived in an unfamiliar airspace surrounded by dust clouds. The space background here has a faint lavender color, perhaps some kind of thin primordial gas mass that failed to form galaxies shrouded this place, and in the distance of the space background, a series of bright gray bars with sharp outlines can be seen Belt, that's where new stars are brewing. In front of the Giant Turtle Yantai's sailing direction, he saw the foothold built here by the drone swarm.

There is a huge and weird metal fortress floating in space. It looks like a persimmon with several protrusions. It is a nearly circular structure with a radius of several kilometers, a central depression and bulges around it. This huge fortress is gray-white and dark-black in color, with a large amount of metal and rocks stacked together, making it look like the remains of some weird civilization. A large number of flashing lights can be seen on the edge of the fortress. There are many pipe-like things protruding from the most densely lit areas. Some busy drones are coming in and out of those pipe openings, like busy worker bees.

In the sunken area in the center of this huge fortress, you can see several huge antenna-like structures. They are placed in a protective net of self-defense artillery, and are patrolled and guarded by combat drones. Although this All the firepower is "civilian grade," but they still look majestic.

This is the nest built by the drone swarm. It does not conform to human aesthetics. It looks like a huge ant nest made of metal and stones. The machines just built this thing based on the principle of convenience and ease of use. But they don't know how to decorate their homes. This fortress is considered a larger one among the nests of the drone swarm. It would have taken a long time for a group of outpost drones to build a base of this size, but the L-B-35 sequence fleet was lucky enough to find a piece of land. An asteroid of suitable size and hardness, so they hollowed out the celestial body and built their own breeding factories and various facilities inside.

The Giant Turtle Rock Platform slowly flew towards a large platform on the edge of the weird fortress, while Nolan's voice continued to broadcast on the bridge: "Automatically navigated to the drone nest, and the welcome and guidance signals have been recognized. Enter. During the port entry process, the main thrusters are stopped and the auxiliary thrusters are running - do I have to report these things to you in such a stupid tone every time?"

"Don't interrupt anything else when reporting the status of the spacecraft," Hao Ren glanced at the small Nolan projection floating on the navigation map, "Shall we follow the instructions?"

Nolan curled her lips and waved her hands, using her first-person perspective to watch the Giant Turtle Yantai slowly approach the strange fortress that looked like an ant nest. A large number of drones - including the original L-B-35 fleet and the ones that had just arrived from The drones from several nearby nodes came to support - flying around her, like a swarm of insects guarding the nest. Nolan's tone couldn't help but be a little weird: "I think this place is scary, especially the nest in front, like an insect nest."

Lily also complained about this: "How come I didn't know that the place where these drones gather is so gloomy before?"

In fact, most of Hao Ren's attention was attracted by the weird drone nest: this was the first time he had seen the nest.

Although he was the one who initially released the mother aircraft of these drones and gave them expansion and reconnaissance instructions, he has only ever encountered those fleet formations wandering out in the universe, or simply communicated directly with the consciousness of the fleets on the communicator. Ichiban, he has never come to see what these drone breeding factories look like like today.

The fleet had expanded until today, and he had only seen the first built nest node with his own eyes. To be honest, the appearance of this lair was indeed a bit different from what he expected.

He thought this thing should be more like a coffin. After all, the technological items issued by the Xiling God Department were basically coffin-shaped.

The Giant Turtle Yantai slowly stopped on the platform under the guidance of the guidance signal, and a set of mechanical devices floated up from under the platform to hold the spacecraft firmly. Hao Ren and his party then left the ship and entered the depths of the lair through a conduit.

In order to welcome the "fleet commander", the nest adjusted itself after receiving the order from its superiors to visit. It built a temporary inner atmosphere and constant temperature system so that Hao Ren and the others could be more comfortable when walking inside. There are two round small drones coming out of the core of the nest to greet their masters. They are two "wanderer probes". These small drones do not move in outer space, but are specially set up in nests or outposts. The place conducts internal inspections and mechanical maintenance, just like the autonomous machines in the Giant Turtle Rock Platform.

Hao Ren walked in the pipeline corridor under the leadership of the rogue explorer. Originally inspecting the lair was just a casual move, but he didn't expect that he would see such interesting things here. The interior of the drone lair is as weird as its exterior, with no human aesthetic features. The machines only built wide tubular channels and reinforced brackets as needed, so the metal and original asteroid rocks were left unmodified. They were entangled together, making the inside of the fortress look like the digestive system of some giant steel monster.

The lights are brightly lit here, and the busy fleet of machines shuttles through various holes and ducts, creating a busy scene.

Lily looked at this scene and muttered: "It feels like the villain's base."

Before Hao Ren could say anything, a rigid voice suddenly came from all around: "It just happens to be similar, ma'am."

Lily said "Wow" as she saw a huge, shapeless face emerging in mid-air in front of her. The face was projected with light blue light, surrounded by countless small streams of light that were constantly flowing. It turned out that everyone had unknowingly arrived at a larger nest chamber, where several main pipes intersected to form a large oval-shaped space. Many mechanical devices were running quietly in this chamber. These machines They all have Xiling characteristics, but because they are placed in such a place that looks like an insect nest, everything looks a little weird.

"Hey, fleet," Hao Ren greeted this face. Although he also felt that the atmosphere in this lair was weird, he had consulted all the relevant information in the censor's manual before releasing the drone, and also followed it later. Many colleagues have asked about the aircraft fleet, so he seemed very calm because he knew that this thing is like this, "By the way, this is the first time I have seen your 'nest'."

"The fleet expresses its honor." The huge face trembled, and a constantly changing smile appeared, but the voice was still rigid, "I did not expect that the commander would suddenly enter the nest in person, so I built the ecological environment in a hurry. I hope The environment is quite comfortable.”

"Well, it's pretty good," Hao Ren scratched his hair, "I just thought about it, but I didn't expect it would cause you so much trouble."

"The fleet does not consider this 'trouble,'" the big blue face said stiffly, "This is within my capabilities, so it is a regular load."

"Okay, let's not talk about this." Hao Ren knew that the fleet's thinking was relatively rigid, so he directly brought up the topic, "Is there any update on the lens traces that were tracked before?"

"Less than twelve hours have passed since those traces were first discovered, and no reconnaissance plane has yet returned more information. The search scope is being expanded, and it is expected that further discoveries will not be made until twenty-four hours at the earliest."

"Well, it's as I thought, it's not that easy," Hao Ren rubbed his chin and muttered, but he was not impatient because after seeing the drone's lair, he suddenly discovered that there were also many things here that could make him happy. Spending time by yourself, it seems that you won't be bored while waiting for news at this "pioneering outpost", "Then wait, it just so happens that I finally have the opportunity to understand the work of the drone group. By the way, you just mentioned' It just happens to be similar'? Do you know what Lily is talking about?"

A large number of holographic projections immediately appeared around the chamber. On those projections were various film and television clips - from humans or other alien races, movies, TV series, animations, games, and simple video clips, depicting Various stories of drone swarms rebelling or intelligent robots going berserk. Some of them are clearly fantasy, but others are quite disturbing: they look a bit like realistic documentaries.

Everyone looked at these short films that were suddenly displayed, and none of them knew what to say. However, except for Lily, who was nervous, the others seemed very calm: because these guys don't watch science fiction movies at all, Yzaks even I don’t even know what AI is running amok...

The corner of Hao Ren's mouth twitched: "So you can still collect these... By the way, don't you feel weird looking at these things?"

"I can connect to the Imperial Data Network. It is my personal hobby to collect these cultural works. They embody interesting parts of the thinking process of basic native races, and some embody 'civilized forms'," the cluster consciousness replied solemnly, "The plot of the mutiny of the drone swarm and the loss of control caused by the continuous development of AI is very interesting and worthy of discussion. It looks like serious documentary literature, but it also has an imaginary romantic part. It is a hot topic on our forum."

Hao Ren was stunned for a while as he listened. The last words of the fleet consciousness made him stunned: "Your... forum? What forum is yours?"

He suddenly discovered that even though he read a lot of manuals and asked a lot of questions from colleagues, he still knew very little about the drone empire he had created.

This increasingly powerful AI has become more and more like a living person.