Age of Cosmic Exploration

Chapter 317: Explosion and Betrayal

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

The Noah One consisted of elites chosen from multiple countries on Earth, be it the soldiers, the few handful of managers, the scientists, and technicians. This was observable from the modernized base that they managed to build in just one year and a few months. The base might've been small, but it had all the necessary amenities, like schools, entertainment centers, industrial factories, and military barracks. It was a real alien colonization base, and based on this alone, these people on the Noah One were indeed the best of the best.

However, none of these elites discovered that the defense outposts were being destroyed one by one by the floating octopuses… Destroyed was a rather harsh word because the soldiers there were still chatting and joking among themselves or were seriously watching their surroundings. However, their spacesuits were open and the octopuses were happily feasting on their brains.

However, humanity was known as humanity because we know how to think, rationalize, imagine, and solve problems. Therefore, when the Noah One’s higher officers found out about these octopuses, they started to come up with ways to deal with them.

First, these octopuses seemed to know some kind of hypnosis. Although there were few clues on the actual theory on the hypnosis, it could be through colors, vibrations in the air, or something else. In essence, mankind seemed to have a problem noticing these octopuses, and they would be influenced to open their spacesuits and allow the octopuses to eat their brains.

However, these octopuses had to be some kind of physical creatures, because they could be seen through the video on the spacesuits, and as such, they weren’t some kind of ghosts.

In other words, they could be detected and recorded by light or other types of surveillance. This meant that they had to be close to hypnotize human beings. Therefore, when the elite soldiers were taken over by the octopuses, the surveillance devices posted at the posts recorded everything, and the video was immediately sent back to the Noah One.

The surveillance unit on the Noah One that saw these videos were stunned by the horror… A horror that was no longer possible to be described with words. The soldiers who were standing guard, on patrol, or just chatting amongst themselves had their scalps removed and the octopuses were sucking on their brains. However, the soldiers didn’t seem to notice anything out of place. It was a veritable hellscape.

In just a minute, this news was passed on to the higher officials on the Noah One. Immediately, Norton ordered everyone to return to the Noah One and activated the defensive measures that had been deployed around the Noah One.

These defensive measures were the laser security system brought from Earth. It could detect anything that wandered too close and used lasers to zap them. With Norton’s orders, the defensive measures surrounding the Noah One were all activated, and the long distance surveillance zeroed in on the school of octopuses heading their way.

"There are about one thousand of them floating 3 to 5 meters above ground. They are moving slowly and look like Earth’s mini octopus. We have no clue about their defensive capability or whether they can be taken down by lasers," an adjutant beside Norton said.

This was the Noah One’s central command. Norton was sitting in the captain’s seat, and around him were all the majors. They knew about the existence of the octopuses. However, the remaining soldiers were shocked and shaking from the scenery from hell.

The officers didn’t have time to deal with the soldiers’ shock, because when they saw the octopus for the first time, they too didn’t fare so well. The incongruence of having an octopus alien sucking out one’s brain while one continued to live life like usual was horrifying. Furthermore, the most important thing now wasn’t to lecture the soldiers but to make sure physical methods could be used to destroy these alien octopuses!

The octopuses were slow, but their leading group had already passed through the defense outposts easily and was not far away from the Noah One. They surged towards the Noah One, and the leading octopus was only 200 plus meters from the spaceship. Suddenly, several flashes of light appeared and circular burn marks like coins appeared on the surface of the octopuses. They convulsed for several seconds before falling to the ground. While they fluttered to the ground, several flashes of light occurred again and the few leading octopuses were shot into beehives.

This lasted only for 3 to 4 seconds. When everyone saw the octopuses’ deaths on screen, they cheered in unison. There was still an underlying fear, but it had lowered significantly compared to before. Since the octopuses could be killed with physical methods, then it showed that the octopuses had corporeal forms, and in that case, humanity would have ways to deal with them.

However, the cheering didn’t last long, because after the leading layer of octopuses fell, the rest slowly swam back out of the range of the lasers in the shortest amount of time. Simultaneously, there was an observable ripple around the octopuses, like ripples that one could see tearing through the air during extremely hot weather.

"…They have intelligence. They’re communicating, and it seems like their intelligence is extremely high, since they managed to retreat out of the laser’s range at first notice," Austin observed with a drawn face.

There were no smiles in the room. If the octopuses were just creatures hungering for human brains out of animalistic instinct, then mankind would have a way to deal with them. This was not Earth, and the enemies weren’t human beings. They could use bio weapons or weapons of mass destruction to deal with them, and wiping them out was only a matter of time.

However, if these creatures had high intelligence, then this would be a lot more complicated… After their first assault was discovered by humanity and stopped, would they use ambushes in the future? Would they hide in the dark and ambush human beings that stepped out of the Noah One? In that case, wouldn’t they all die trapped inside the Noah One?

Furthermore… intelligence meant the possibility of civilization, so just how intelligent were these octopuses? Did they have their own civilization?

In conclusion, there were too many problems surfacing following the discovery that the octopuses had intelligence. No one knew how much damage the alien octopuses could wreck on humanity, but rudimentary predictions put that as very high…

Looking at the screen and the pool of octopuses that slowly gathered beyond the safety line, Norton ordered, "Send out the Blue Beret snipers, have them snipe down as many aliens as they can without leaving the spaceship… Wait, make them wait for now, and prepare the ground-targeted missiles. This group of disgusting aliens, they really think human beings are so easily bullied? Don’t look down on us, you bunch of disgusting creatures!"

Over the next minute, the group of octopuses gathering outside of the Noah One slowly increased in size, so much so that even the normal civilians knew what was happening. Everyone gathered by the windows to look outside. Since the underground tunnels were already fitted with artificial lighting, the space of 200 to 300 meters beyond the Noah One was observable via the naked eye.

Several minutes later, several missiles landed at the spot where the octopuses congregated. If not for the fact that they were worried the underground tunnels would collapse, they would have fired hundreds missiles to squash all the aliens.

Even though there were only several missiles, their power was still strong enough to tear open several craters among the octopuses. This first wave of bombing wiped out around 60 percent of the octopuses. After all, no matter how scary they were when they feasted on human brains they were only the size of footballs and their physical bodies were fragile. If the fire kept burning, they would curl up and die. Several waves of bombs later, less than 100 octopuses remained.

However, these octopuses reacted very quickly. After the mass bombing, the living octopuses didn’t stay there anymore, they turned to swim back into the darkness. In just the blink of an eye, there was no trace of living octopus left, other than their bodies that covered the floor.

The people in central command sighed in relief when Norton frowned and yelled, "Where are the Blue Beret snipers? Why didn’t they shoot down the octopuses that were escaping? Ask them immediately!"

Before the order left central command, the people around the Blue Beret snipers were all dead, including the members themselves, the technicians, and support that were attached to the unit, the nearby soldiers. They were all killed in… internal conflict…

At the same time, of the people who gathered by the window to watch the octopuses, at least several hundred of them started attacking their surroundings indiscriminately, and the Noah One suffered the death of several hundred people in just minutes…

Translator's Thoughts

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