Age of Cosmic Exploration

The conversation between Norton and Austin wasn’t leaked to the public, but they both knew this kind of thing couldn’t be hidden from the public forever. There was precedent in the mysterious virus incident. The whole Noah One practically stopped for one whole month. No one was interested in leaving the Noah One and all the surveillance systems, the management system, and the internal defence system were down. It was an every man for themselves type of situation.

The situation only changed after the mysterious virus was confirmed to be over. Therefore, it was pointless to hide these things from the public.

"The key is still energy," Norton said in conclusion. "The air is still breathable since the issue lies within the microorganisms. Therefore, we only need high temperature to sterilize the air, water, and food whenever we bring them in from outside. This shouldn’t be too difficult. After all, it is not our responsibility to terraform the whole planet, since we’re just the first dispatch. However, maintaining high temperature needs energy, mining needs energy, even maintaining the oxygen supply in spacesuits needs energy, but the Noah One’s energy storage is already dangerously low. We’ve lost too much radioactive minerals, and the remaining can’t last us for long. We have to get more radioactive ores before the ones we have run out!"

Of course, that was a further goal. The most expedient goal was to increase the Noah One’s food and water supply, especially water supply since it was the thing the Noah One needed the most at the moment.

"... From the echo locator, 200 plus meters beneath the Noah One and about 3 kilometers east is an underground stream. It is quite sizeable and should be enough to support the Noah One’s water usage, but the issue remains, how do we draw water from there?"

In the operation meeting room, Norton was sitting the table with all the military officials from the Noah One. Different from the Hope, which was far away, there were no signs of scientists in the room. There were only military personnel and a handful of technicians.

Norton addressed the officer beside him, "Major Fujii, please describe the details of this operation to us."

An Asian military officer stood up and gave a salute before moving to the podium. He said, "As everyone must know by now, the Noah One’s fresh water supply can only last the ship for another 3 days, so within these 3 days, we have to locate ourselves a fresh water source. This operation is provided by our comrades from the strategy unit. The first difficulty is the distance of the water source. Even though 3 kilometers might sound short on paper, we are talking about underground here. The issue of geological complication aside, the source is about 200 plus meters beneath us vertically. Therefore, this 3 kilometer distance is more complicated than it seems.

"Next will be those shadow creatures. Ever since the planning phase began for this operation, we gained for ourselves about 10 carcasses of these shadow creatures and 2 were captured alive. After the scientists’ autopsy and experiments, these are the results they came up with. Please take a look at this..."

Soon, the lights in the room darkened and pictures were shown on the wall.

Fujii continued, "This is a type of warm-blooded exoskeletal organism. Yes, they might look like insectoids, but they are actually warm-blooded mammals, and they have incredibly high intelligence. For example, they are capable of crafting basic tools. We even managed to locate roughly polished skeletal decorations and sharpened rocks in their lairs. Rudimentary assessment put their intelligence at the same level as prehistoric men.

"These intelligent creatures are our second difficulty. A word of warning: according to our current data, there are at least one thousand of these creatures in the Noah One’s close vicinity... Other than that, their shells contain an aseismatic structure. This is an evolution that surprised all the scientists. Regardless, this means that the creatures’ shells are capable of blocking our bullets. Seven or eight bullets need to hit around the same spot, but the shell can be shattered. However, before that happens, these shadow creatures, utilizing their speed and numbers, will have torn through our ranks. Therefore, the comments given by the strategy unit about these creatures are... extremely dangerous, especially in tight spaces!"

Each person present was one of the Noah One’s military officers, but due to the mysterious super virus earlier, most of them hadn’t come into contact with these shadow creatures before. However, the detailed explanation from Major Fujii, especially about their speed, strength, and the durability of their shells, made chills run down everyone’s spine.

These shadow creatures could evade bullets using their natural speed alone, and their bodies could withstand at least 10 bullets. Their arms were strong enough to be able to pull apart a normal tank, and there were at least several thousand of them populating the whole planet. In fact, these creatures were even stronger than the aliens seen in the movie "Alien vs Predator." Other than the lack of corrosive bodily fluids, these shadow creatures were scarier and stronger!

"...Therefore, Operation Water is not as simple as many here would like to think. In fact, it can be called an impossible mission. It is not hard to envision losing one’s life over water, so I advise everyone to be on high alert. We are no longer on Earth. Even facing wild animals, we humans no longer have the absolute upper hand!" Major Fujii turned increasingly serious until at the end, he was almost growling.

"Alright, with the details and difficulties out of the way, we’re going to go into the actual procedures of Operation Water..."

The operation was split into three parts. The first was to use the Noah One’s military power to demolish all the aliens within a 3 kilometer radius of the Noah One. To quote the strategy unit, even if it was just a fly, they had to demolish it. That was given this planet had flies.

The second part would be to link a rubber hose of about 5,000 meters long from the Noah One to the water source. Of course, even though the Noah One had many supplies, it didn’t have a 5,000-meter-long rubber hose. Furthermore, there wouldn’t be such a long, uninterrupted one on the Noah One. Even if there was, the water pressure wouldn’t be high enough to transport the water from several meters up to the Noah One.

Therefore, part two was more complicated. 3 to 5 hydro pumps had to be built between the Noah One and the water source. The pumps would be used to increase pressure to allow the water to flow from the source to the Noah One. This process would require the contributions of many technicians. These technicians were not soldiers, and every single one of them was an elite specially picked from Earth, so the loss of one would be a big blow to the Noah One. This was why they had to go through part one before starting part two.

The first part was scheduled to take two to three days to complete, while the second part would need half a month. In the meantime, the water needed by the Noah One would be hauled back daily by soldiers from the water source using altered cars. A transport mission like this required a safe route, so there couldn’t be hidden danger.

The third part would be a long term plan. A rubber hose wasn’t that reliable long term. Temporarily, it was impossible for the Noah One to float, or at least that was impossible in the next ten years, so human beings were expected to spend at least another ten years underground. This water hose would eventually have to be upgraded to be metallic, but this operation would take time, at least one or two years before it reached fruition.

"...Part one of Operation Water will officially begin at 3 PM this afternoon. A total of 6 large units of about 9,000 soldiers will be involved. The Blue Berets will be the leaders, guiding the Special Forces to hunt down the middle to large size creatures, while the rest will do a blanket search and hunt."

After Major Fujii finished, Norton added a few inspirational words. Then the members from the strategy unit gave the officers their in-depth mission details, like which unit would be responsible for which part, which unit would be responsible for support, which unit would be carrying the weapon supplies and the like.

Just as the soldiers from Noah One was ready to start Operation Water, within the spaceship, a group of geologists was in deep discussion about something.

"The geological stratigram is already out... But how come they look so weird to me? I wonder if I’m wondering this... But have you guys noticed the location of the mantle layer?" A scientist said out loud as he studied the picture on screen.

The scientists around him shared his confusion. The stratigram before them was too weird. Theoretically speaking, a planet’s earth layer from the outside to inside should be arranged as such: the crust, the mantle, and the core. The crust was like the tough egg shell, the mantle was comprised of liquid lava, and the core was the center. The crust formed the planet’s continental shelf and tectonic plates; they were like a layer floating above the lava layer and their movements were the source of earthquakes. However, this planet had a weird construction...

On the stratigram, there was no mantle layer. In that case, there was no continental shelf or tectonic plates, the whole earth crust seemed like it was screwed into place.

In other words, the underground layer of this planet was incredibly stable. There would be no earthquakes or the likes. If we follow this train of thought, one could expect a huge civilization under this planet’s surface if there was such an evolution, since the underground was a lot more stable than the surface...