Super Mothership
The third man scratched his head.
“Boss, could this be some kind of pre-battle etiquette? Like shaking hands before a fight?”
“This… doesn’t really look like it.”
“By the way, does the boss allow his subordinates to recruit their own subordinates?”
“Uh…”
On the other side, Goldtooth completely lost his temper once again.
“Damn it! Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?! Where are those technicians? Drag them out here—this time I’m shooting ten of them!”
His voice was filled with both rage and fear.
He had no idea why even his trump cards had been so easily “won over” by the enemy. And recalling how his chief technician had “betrayed” him earlier, Goldtooth grew even more uneasy.
Could it be that these Destroyers were also part of a trap they had set up in advance?
Hey, hey! I’m just a small-time pirate ranked outside the top 100 on the Shattered Star List—what kind of deep grudge is worth spending this much to deal with me?
This is overkill, okay?!
Obviously, the misunderstanding had only grown even bigger…
“B-Boss, they’re charging this way!” one of his underlings stammered at that moment.
Goldtooth looked at the surveillance screen in fear. Sure enough, the intruders had passed straight by the motionless Destroyers and were speeding directly toward him. At this rate, they would reach him in just a few minutes.
“Quick! Close the gate!” Goldtooth barked.
Boom! The room’s metal blast door slammed shut, and blue energy shimmered faintly along the patterns on its surface.
This super gate was a high-end custom job Goldtooth had paid a fortune for on the black market. Using internal energy circuits, it could generate a distorted force field with astonishing defensive power.
Forcibly breaking in—even with large-scale engineering machinery—would take a considerable amount of time.
He then quickly pressed a hidden button beneath the nearby desk. With a whoosh, a secret passage opened in the wall not far away.
A cunning rabbit has three burrows—leaving oneself an escape route at all times was basic practice for a pirate.
He just hadn’t expected to be forced into such a humiliating retreat by only a few armored units.
Still, as long as he could get his battleship out, even if it caused some damage to the base, he swore he would blast those intruders into scrap!
“Let’s go!” Goldtooth waved his hand and led two underlings toward the secret passage.
But just then, an abrupt voice suddenly rang out.
“Leaving? Heh heh! I’m afraid you’re not going anywhere…”
Goldtooth: “??!!”
The three of them looked in horror toward the source of the voice, and a ghostlike black figure slowly materialized out of thin air before their eyes.
“That’s impossible! When did you—?!” Goldtooth felt his soul nearly leave his body.
There were clearly only three infiltrators—where did this fourth one come from?!
“Heh! I knew you’d try to run. That one was fake, you know!” Ermao chuckled, seemingly seeing through Goldtooth’s confusion.
“Illusion… clone!” Goldtooth realized, gritting his teeth as he spat out the words.
At the same time, one of the three figures on the surveillance feed suddenly vanished.
Bang! Bang! Heavy pounding sounded from outside the sealed gate.
“Hey, Mr. Pirate! Your delivery’s here—open up already!” the third man’s booming voice echoed from outside.
Ignoring Goldtooth and his men, Ermao calmly walked over to the control console. A silver data cable wriggled out from between his fingers like a snake and plugged straight into a data port.
During this entire process, Goldtooth and the others didn’t dare move a muscle.
After all, they had just witnessed the terrifying combat power of these monsters. A single punch could kill them outright with the shockwave alone; when they moved, their afterimages were barely even visible.
In front of such killing machines, even wearing power armor offered no sense of safety—let alone entertaining any thought of resistance.
Beep! Beep!
Not long after, the compromised terminal emitted two sounds, and the massive gate slowly rose again with a deep rumble.
“So we finally meet, Mr. Pirate. Your welcoming ceremony is a bit… grand, isn’t it?”
The leader and his companion walked in, then warmly greeted Goldtooth.
“Boss, I’ve hit the limit of my mental power. I’ll leave the rest to you.”
Seeing that the target was already under control, Ermao calmly spoke over the internal channel, then directly cut off the consciousness link.
To block the surrounding detection systems and sneak in before Goldtooth escaped to seize control of the target, he had been forced to use a mental invisibility skill with enormous energy consumption. In reality, he was already at the end of his rope.
The other two couldn’t help but break into a cold sweat as well. They hadn’t expected the energy drain of this remote operation to be so severe—one step slower and the mission would have failed.
Goldtooth, of course, had no idea that the intruder blocking his escape route had already “gone offline.” Very straightforwardly, he tossed aside his weapon, wearing an expression of complete surrender.
“Alright, I admit defeat this time. But I have one question—are you people humans, or robots?”
At first, he had assumed they were merely highly intelligent machines. But after facing them up close, that belief had begun to waver.
At the very least… ordinary robots wouldn’t greet him using sarcasm.
He didn’t immediately consider the possibility of intelligent life forms, because the Wolf Empire hadn’t seen anything like that for nearly a thousand years—ever since that world-shaking war against the Machine Race…
“Human or robot? Heh. That’s not important,” the leader said with a chuckle, clearly not interested in explaining the dialectical relationship between humans and mechanical insect avatars to a pirate boss.
“What is important is that you immediately order your men to stop all irrational behavior and release the hostages. Otherwise, I can’t guarantee that some of the parts on your body won’t suddenly leave you in the next second,” the leader said calmly.
“I—” Goldtooth was about to speak, but just then—
BOOM!
A thunderous explosion erupted, and the entire base lurched violently.
Everyone instinctively turned to the surveillance feed. On the screen, a docked space battleship had completely exploded. The shockwave hurled countless shards of metal across a wide area, nearly destroying half the dock, while equipment and personnel suffered catastrophic losses.
Even five or six nearby warships were affected, their hulls pitted and scarred, tilting at awkward angles.
In the confined, low-gravity environment, the battle on the “Ghost” mech’s side inevitably spilled over to ships that hadn’t managed to depart in time, triggering an astonishing chain of destruction.
“I think… you should probably have your people stop their irrational behavior first…” Goldtooth said weakly.
Seeing his painstakingly built lair now shrouded in smoke and flames, Goldtooth felt his heart bleed.
Just who had he offended? This was a disaster out of nowhere!
With the enemy holding the knife and himself the fish on the chopping block, he had no choice. For the sake of his own life, Goldtooth could only follow their demands and order his subordinates to abandon all resistance.
As for threatening them with hostages… recalling Nie Yun’s earlier “what joy is there in life” death-defying resolve, he couldn’t even muster the courage to try.
If the hostages had even a bit of status, if the enemy had even the slightest concern, they wouldn’t have chosen such a merciless frontal assault, would they?
With no bargaining chips left, it was even more impossible to demand preferential treatment as a captive.
Still, since they hadn’t killed him immediately, there was room to negotiate. The base could be rebuilt—but once his life was gone, everything would truly be over.
Fighting to mutual destruction… pirates didn’t have that level of ideological commitment.
And so, half an hour later, Nie Yun was already sitting openly in the seat that had once belonged to Goldtooth…
“Greetings, Boss!”
Watching the mithril knights respectfully salute Nie Yun, Goldtooth stared with bulging eyes, his face a mix of utter confusion and utter constipation.
Holy shit! Th-this guy actually is—
When it finally dawned on him, his tiger-like eyes filled with tears, and a mournful cry echoed in his heart.
This treacherous universe… really isn’t a place where honest people can survive anymore, is it…?
TL Note- Honest people can't survive the pirate job...
Next
Comments
Post a Comment