Chapter 98: The Disgruntled Cat
All six vanguard teams had suffered some degrees of injuries, and excluding the teams of Dias and Lu Suo, another lieutenant commander, the other four teams all suffered different degrees of casualties.
After returning to the starship, Cary was sent to the medbay to receive treatment. Dias followed Shawton to the main starship, whereas Cillin and his team hung around each other.
“Thank goodness you’re there, Cillin, or we would have lost someone from our team.” Xiao Shang smiled at Cillin with both fatigue and gladness on his face.
At the time, Cillin hadn’t left for long before Shawton showed up on an aircraft with his men, so the remaining few red-and-black alien beasts gave up on the fight before swiftly escaping.
Cillin waved his hands, “Is everyone okay?”
“We’ve all had our wounds treated. Those who’re more seriously wounded are still at the medbay, but no one’s life is in danger.”
“Where’s Beaver?”
“He’s at his personal workshop. He’s processing the information that was brought back to the ship.”
A copy of the data was already uploaded to every personnel in the technical analysis team on the Sixth Squadron’s main starship. But Beaver was curious about it, and he just had to analyse the data himself.
Cillin arrived at Beaver’s workshop and knocked on his door. Beaver normally disliked people disturbing him while he was working, and his doorbell was set to silent mode. So Cillin had no choice but to knock on his door.
Beaver finally opened the door after he knocked on it for a very long time. His eyes were completely bloodshot. It would appear that the data analysis wasn’t progressing well.
“What is it?” Beaver said weakly. He exhausted too much energy trying to analyse a mountain of data in a short time, and now his mind was still in a chaotic jumble. He just couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something.
“I’d like to borrow your analyser to analyse a sound frequency.” Cillin did not walk into Beaver’s workshop. It was Beaver’s private land, and Dias aside, no one had ever entered inside, not even the Sixth Squad’s commander, Shawton himself.
“Sound frequency? What sound frequency?” The data Dias’ group had gathered also included some sound frequencies, although they were all the horny skinned beasts’ and red-and-black alien beasts’.
“The birds’ sound frequency.”
Beaver’s eyes flashed, “Go sit at the room next door for a minute. I’ll analyse it right away.”
Nodding, Cillin walked and sat in the small room next to Beaver’s workshop.
“Ceh, look at him being oh-so-mysterious, keeping us cold outside.” The gray cat followed Cillin inside and jumped onto the table, requesting Cillin to pour it a cup of fruit juice. After licking it twice with a fussy look, it raised its head and said secretively, “Do you want me to eavesdrop next door and see which data he’s processing?”
“Eavesdrop? You can hear the data he’s processing?” Cillin said in surprise.
The gray cat’s head shot up to the air in a pompous manner, “Of course! All machines let out a specific sound, and all the data they process are ‘spoken’ through a specific language. It’s just that you guys don’t know about it, and can only see the calculation results and some parts of the process on a monitor.”
“Doesn’t that mean that if someone invents a machine that can receive and translate this type of ‘machine language’, they can eavesdrop wherever they go?”
Hearing Cillin’s words, the gray cat cast him a glance of disdain, “Ignoring the fact that whether those shitty low level machines can ‘hear’ them is a question in itself, even if they could, it’s highly unlikely they could understand them. For instance, do you understand the native languages of those borderline planets?”
“So you mean that a different machine will speak a different language. But why can you understand them then?” He agreed with the gray cat’s statement. Cillin knew that it was difficult to understand this ‘machine language’, or GAL would’ve invented an eavesdropping machine like this a long time ago. Cillin also had another question in mind: Beaver’s workshop had pretty good soundproofing, so how exactly was the gray cat able to ‘hear’ them? Could it be that this machine language wasn’t a kind of sound wave?
“I don’t know, I only know that they are speaking, and that I can understand them. Uh-huh, this is the power of the miracle life of the universe!”
Cillin rubbed his chin, and just when the gray cat was complacent enough to float on air he caught one of its ears and changed the subject abruptly, “You’re hiding something from us, aren’t you?”
“W... what? I didn’t hide nothing!” Suddenly, the gray cat’s proud feelings were completely blown away by Cillin’s words.
“Trying to cover things up only makes it worse. The second your ears twitch I know exactly what you’re thinking in your head.”
“Nonsense... That’s not possible!” The gray cat worked hard to control its ears and keep it from moving.
“Look at you, all tensed up looking like I’ve hit the nail right on the head.”
Cillin pressed a button, and a mirror appeared on the wall. In the mirror, the gray cat looked as frozen as it was encased in ice. It was literally so stiff that it could be nothing else but suspicion incarnate.
“Stupid little guy; can’t even lie to save its own life. How dare you even claim yourself to be a cyborg who has lived over hundreds of years!”
The gray cat opened its mouth and attempted to loosen its entire body. Then, it gave up and curled itself into a ball on the table, ignoring Cillin.
Seeing the gray cat’s disgruntlement, Cillin flicked the gray cat’s exposed ear tip in amusement, “Alright, stop being embarrassed already. This is also a learning process. If you run into some maniac researchers one day, they would scoop everything out of you in seconds and dissect you in detail.”
Cillin wasn’t trying to frighten it. Some GAL researchers really were bat shit insane, and they literally could do anything at any cost or means for their own purposes. As compared to the recorded cyborgs, the gray cat was absolutely an existence that was far more unique and valuable for research, so Cillin hoped that this little guy could live on its own if the day came when no one had the ability to protect it from harm. At the least, he hoped that the gray cat would not be sold without its knowledge.
The paws covering the gray cat’s head loosened a little, but its body was still curled into a ball.
Cillin rubbed the curled gray cat roughly, “Still unhappy? You’re like a child or something.” After a pause, Cillin smiled and said, “You found a mineral resource, didn’t you?”
“Mm? How did you know that?!” The gray cat abruptly raised its head.
Cillin smiled and did not answer. He had deduced it through the various simple observations, and he wasn’t sure himself if it was true. But if the gray cat had reacted this way, then his deduction was most likely correct.
“I’ve read in some high contribution publications where certain researchers stated that a cyborg will be forced to take a carbon form in certain high energy fields. It’s because their machine form will be severely affected in that state.”
The gray cat gave it some thought before shaking its head, “I don’t know. I haven’t experienced that myself. I do feel a little uncomfortable when I was near the mineral deposit, but it was simply a matter of adapting to it. No biggie.”
“Is that so. It’s probably the white ball then.”
“Mm. Definitely.”
“Let’s forget the white ball for now. About that energy ore deposit. if I can guess it, then those experienced analysts most definitely could come to the same conclusion.”
“Ah?” The gray cat froze for a second before crying out loud, “It’s all your fault; if you haven’t called me over I could’ve mined the deposit all by myself! Now we’ve made them a profit while receiving nothing!
Cillin stretched out his hand and knocked on the cat’s head once, “What ‘them’ are you talking about! We’re in the same Hunter team, you know. If the team finds the deposit, then it will be greatly beneficial for its future development. Whose starship are you going to fly on if there are no mineral deposits? It’s not like you’re going to do anything but eat them anyway, or am I wrong?”
The gray cat pondered for a moment and thought that it was true. But it was still a little reluctant and it muttered in a small voice, “But I can use the energy ore deposit to repay my debt...”
“Alright, stop worrying about it already.” Cillin rubbed the gray cat’s head, “You saved Cary and found a mineral deposit, so that’s 100 million credits off your debt.”
“Really?!” The gray cat’s eyes lit up. It hadn’t been too long before it cleared out one fifth of its debt, had it? It would seem the day it escaped its identity as a debt slave wasn’t far away, meow.
While speaking, both Cillin and the gray cat noticed the activity in the room beside them and fell silent. Before long, Beaver walked in and said excitedly, “The analysis results are out, and I’ve figured out some of our problems as well! Cillin, let’s go find the lieutenant commander together. This is a very important clue!”
Cillin did not leave, “It’s okay, you go on ahead and report it to the lieutenant. Just announce the results when it’s time.”
“Alright then, I’ll be leaving then! You’ve done a great service this time, Cillin!” Beaver was very excited to be able to come up with greater results than the analysis team on the Sixth Squadron’s main ship.
Cillin sat back down after seeing Beaver’s departure. He already knew about the results of Beaver’s analysis long ago, and giving him the sound frequency was simply a way to tell Dias through Beaver about the data that was missing from the equation. That being said, now that he looked at it, it would seem that those beasts were not the most important thing of it all.