Chapter 99: Exploration Operation

As debates and arguments raged on among the scientific community, the days ticked by. The Security Department detected absolutely no anomalous activity on the surveillance feeds, nor did any extraterrestrial entities emerge to trigger a nuclear strike.

This extended silence brought a collective sigh of relief to the more cautious faction of the population.

Two weeks later, the Federation’s patience finally ran out. There seemed to be no point in waiting any longer, and the first official exploration mission commenced!

On that day, the senior staff packed into the command center, staring nervously at the main monitor.

An automated rover traversed the Martian surface, making its way toward the buried UFO. It carried a payload of twelve heavily modified spider drones.

Originally designed as autonomous military kill-drones, these basketball-sized, eight-legged machines were highly agile. However, their offensive armaments and internal ammunition bays had been stripped out. In their place, engineers had installed high-capacity lithium batteries, advanced signal receivers, high-definition optical cameras, and various other sensory equipment. These modifications made them the perfect vanguard for a reconnaissance operation.

The scientific team had high hopes for this robotic squad, praying they could complete a thorough initial sweep of the alien vessel and safely trigger or disarm any lingering traps.

“…These small drones are no substitute for a human team. They’re too small, and their problem-solving algorithms can’t handle truly unpredictable variables!” Professor Hao Yu, sitting off to the side, grumbled in dissatisfaction. Even though he wasn’t the one who designed the drones, he criticized them without hesitation.

Several nearby scientists whispered among themselves, debating the robots’ technical shortcomings and calculating the overall success rate of the expedition.

Half an hour later, the automated rover finally reached the exposed hull of the UFO.

Jason looked around at the assembled scientists and military officers, his voice dropping into a serious register. “Alright, everyone knows the drill. The initial breach will be conducted solely by the drone squad. The operational objectives are divided into three main phases:”

* First: Retrieve loose alloy fragments of varying sizes and transport them back to the Noah for structural analysis.

(Note: The surveillance drones had already scoured the perimeter of the crash site but failed to find any loose debris. According to the Federation’s materials scientists, the alien hull plating likely behaved similarly to advanced bulletproof glass, shattering upon extreme impact but remaining structurally bonded together, preventing fragments from scattering. Because of this, the retrieval team had to search the interior of the ship for salvageable pieces.)

* Second: Assess the operational status of the ship’s internal automated defense grids. Whether it uses kinetic turrets, directed-energy lasers, or Gauss cannons, the drones are instructed to intentionally trigger any lingering countermeasures.

* Third: Gather raw, firsthand telemetry from the ship’s interior to determine if any extraterrestrial biological entities are still alive in the ship.

Jason paused for a moment to consider if he had missed anything. Finding nothing, he gave the final authorization.

“Initiate the operation!”

The robotic spiders scrambled out of the rover’s payload bay and skittered rapidly across the Martian dirt toward the alien wreck. Because navigating the fractured, unknown interior of an alien vessel was far too complex for basic pathfinding AI, the drones were being manually piloted by skilled engineers back on the Noah. The command center screens immediately switched to the drones’ first-person optical feeds.

This was potentially humanity’s first direct contact with an extraterrestrial environment. The drone operators were visibly sweating, their nerves stretched taut. Despite the pressure, their hands remained steady on the controls. Guiding the lead drone, an engineer located a jagged, narrow fissure in the hull and squeezed the machine through the gap.

One, two, three… all twelve spider drones infiltrated the vessel, fanning out to execute their specific sub-routines.

The optical feeds revealed a silvery-white metallic corridor. It was heavily warped, riddled with deep dents and buckled structural supports. The entire area looked ancient, decrepit, and blanketed in a thick layer of dust. Exactly as the materials team had predicted, the damaged bulkheads were violently fractured but still structurally clinging together; there were almost no loose shards of metal to be found.

As the spider drones scurried forward, their mechanical legs kicked up clouds of fine, ancient dust, causing it to swirl wildly in the dead air.

“The kinetic force of the crash was astronomical, which explains the severe structural warping,” a structural engineer noted. “Honestly, the fact that there’s a corridor left at all is incredible. If one of our old atmospheric jets crashed and sat for a few million years, it would have corroded into nothing but a stain in the dirt…”

“This alloy is insanely dense!” a mechanical engineer exclaimed. He used his drone to scrape its hardened metal claws against the deck plating. The audio feed picked up a harsh screeching sound, but the optical feed showed absolutely zero scratches left on the alien metal.

“Is this really going to work?” Austin asked, standing near the command console. “Are we actively trying to trigger the ship’s defense grids?”

Jason shook his head, picked up his coffee mug, and took a slow sip. “We can’t risk human lives on a blind breach. That’s exactly why we sent the drones in first.”

“The core issue is that we have zero intelligence on the technological tier of this vessel. They could be a few centuries ahead of us, or tens of thousands of years. We don’t know what kind of automated security they employ. The systems might have burned out during the crash millions of years ago, or they might be running on a localized, closed-loop power source that’s still active…”

“Whether it’s a thermal laser or a Gauss cannon, if a human operative trips a wire, they are dead instantly. We cannot accept that level of risk. The drones are our canaries in the coal mine.”

“To use an old analogy, this operation is like blind fishing. We don’t know if this pond is empty, or if there’s a great white shark waiting in the dark. All we can do is throw different types of bait into the water and see what bites.”

Seeing the thoughtful expressions around the room, Jason pointed at the monitor. “Those drones might look identical on the outside, but their internal loadouts are completely different.”

“Some are equipped with smoke generators and thermal cores capable of spiking to several hundred degrees Celsius. Some are rigged with flamethrowers. Others emit low-level ionizing radiation, and a few can discharge massive electrical arcs… If there’s an active security AI or hibernating crew in there, they’ll be forced to respond to the sudden environmental hazards we’re creating.”

“Think about it like this, Austin: what happens if a fire suddenly breaks out in one of the Noah’s residential sectors?”

Austin paused for a second before answering automatically. “The localized environmental sensors would trip instantly. The alarms would sound, blast doors would seal to contain the oxygen flow, and the automated suppression systems would flood the zone with fire retardant.”

“Exactly. The same logic applies here,” Jason said, taking another sip of his coffee. “Any advanced spacecraft relies on automated environmental feedback loops. A highly advanced alien vessel should theoretically possess the same basic safety triggers. Unless their ship is magically immune to basic physical realities like thermal buildup or electrical shorts, they have to have a hazard-response system. And the laws of thermodynamics are universal.”

Austin nodded, and many of the senior staff behind him murmured their agreement.

“More importantly, these passive feedback systems are usually hardwired and extremely difficult to bypass,” Jason continued. “Take the Noah’s fire suppression grid. It’s always active, running on minimal standby power. There is literally zero reason to ever turn it off.”

“If an engineer actually needed to disable a sector’s fire alarms, it’s a massive bureaucratic nightmare. It requires multi-level authorization overrides from the Security Department and Environmental Control. It’s not something a random crew member can just switch off.”

Austin blinked in realization. It was true; despite being the Director of Security, even he didn’t have the localized authority to just flick a switch and shut down the ship’s life-safety systems.

“Following that logic, this alien ship should have similar failsafes deeply embedded in its architecture, meaning they would be very difficult to permanently disable… In other words, if our drones can’t trigger a basic environmental safety response, the probability of encountering active weapon turrets drops significantly. Automated weapon grids are vastly more complex and require significantly more energy to maintain than a simple fire alarm!”

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