Book 4 Chapter 59: Counterattack (Part 3)
According to the setting of the Terminator movie, the so-called Skynet headquarters did not exist in a real sense, because it was a program that could exist on any computer. In spite of this, it could also be said that there was still a fundamental difference between Skynet in small and large systems. The Skynet program in the head of a robot was Skynet, and the Skynet system in the mainframe computer was also Skynet, but the two could not be compared. The former was the seed, and the latter was the fully grown tree.
In addition, the headquarters was not a headquarters. It should have been called a base. Skynet’s distribution bases around the world, each of which could be called “the headquarters”, could play an overall role. This was also the most terrifying quality of Skynet – being everywhere.
The adventurers were heading for a Skynet base near Los Angeles.
Funnily enough, this base was in the San Gabriel Mountains, where they had appeared near the air carrier.
When the adventurers fled the mothership, no one would have thought that they would even come back here again, that they would come back to this dangerous mountain and do a counter-attack against this huge and terrible Terminator base.
Off-road vehicles bumped on the mountain roads, and the rugged mountain road shook people’s bones.
“Shen Yi!” Jin Gang shouted.
“Yep?”
“You said if we let Marcus find the door, couldn’t we just quietly slip into Skynet as it did in the original story?”
In the original story of Terminator Salvation, John Connor was able to enter the Skynet headquarters because of Marcus’s presence. It was he who entered Skynet as a Terminator and opened a gap in the Skynet defense system, which enabled John Connor to infiltrate.
Therefore, Jin Gang could not help but think that since the mission world was not completely out of touch with the original plot, wouldn’t the significance of Marcus’s existence be limited to guidance?
Shen Yi immediately shook his head. “You should never put too much faith in Bloody City. It is neither kind nor generous. For it, the rules of the game are the only meaning! In this battle, the game rules specify that we need to enter Skynet headquarters, and in this case, do not expect to use Marcus to solve the problem. The significance of Marcus’s existence can be to increase the trouble for us, or it can be to guide the plot, but it cannot be to help us cross the border. Otherwise, he will not be a troubling task, but a helper. If we want to do it, Bloody City will definitely give us a penalty. Dare to bet with me? If we let Marcus help us find the door, maybe he will be smashed by it in the next moment, and we will fail the quest because of his death.”
Upon hearing this reply, Hong Lang complained, holding a gun and sitting in the car, “Our strength is falling because of the in-fighting and the casualties of the previous period, and the troubles we face are getting bigger and bigger. To be honest, I have no confidence about whether can we resist the fourth round of pursuit or not. Now we have to go back to Skynet headquarters. We are like a group of rabbits being chased by an eagle that refuses to think about how to escape; we think about how to get into the eagle’s nest instead… I haven’t thought hard about it, but I have a feeling it’s bad.”
“Are you scared?” Shen Yi asked.
“No, just feel that there is no need to take risks. Maybe I should have advised you to give up.”
“No need?” Shen Yi asked with a smile. “What do you think is meaningful in Bloody City? Being alive? No, in Bloody City, being powerful is meaningful. Anyway, I’m not going to accept Bloody City deducting our rewards by half after I’ve worked hard like that.”
For Shen Yi, the second stage of the Hidden Quest of Bloody City was more of a threat than a choice. This was like work: the boss wanted you to work overtime. If you didn’t work overtime, not only would you not get overtime pay, but half of your normal salary would be taken too.
No normal person could accept this kind of thing.
Sadly, the boss of them was Bloody City. It did not give you an opportunity to appeal. You did not have a trade union. That kind of backing couldn’t be relied upon, and you could only endure exploitation. Fortunately, when the boss proposed harsh conditions, it often meant that the current overtime pay was not low.
At that time, Jin Gang inserted a sentence: “I guess you will accept, even without that penalty.”
Shen Yi immediately said, “But all of you probably wouldn’t accept it. As a result, when I want to choose to accept it, I must consider your emotions and may be forced to refuse. From this perspective, the city actually helped me. It is helping us to unify our opinions, and it will not cause internal discord.”
Wen Rou’s brow wrinkled. “So if something similar happens later, and there is no corresponding threat?”
Wen Rou’s meaning was that she knew Shen Yi was truly an adventurer. He never cared about risk, but the problem was that his teammates did not always want to face those powerful and terrible dangers.
Today, team #641 also had to take a risk because of the threat of the city. However, in the absence of such threats, internal conflicts may have become more prominent.
It is never easy to have a completely uniform team in all aspects. In addition to being able to share happiness with others, it is difficult to share the same issues with others, and a high degree of unity is also needed in thinking. In the face of the issue of adventure, Shen Yi and his teammates obviously had too many differences; in fact, he was different from most of the city’s adventurers.
Under such circumstances, if every quest was approached by persisting in selecting the highest difficulty, taking risks, and pursuing high interests and gains, there would inevitably be great differences.
If this did not happen in the long run, it could lead to a break.
Wen Rou was an attentive girl. She could not plan like Shen Yi. She was not as good as Jin Gang in understanding intentions, but she was good at organizing relationships. She knew how to maintain the team’s operations as best as possible. Her worries could not be said but to be a very real possibility.
At this moment, the question she asked Shen Yi was, in fact, a reminder.
After Shen Yi heard this, he first hesitated a little, and then he seriously thought for a moment.
Then he smiled and said, “I understand. When I make a risky decision later, I will carefully consider the opinion of everyone. I cannot value my life, but I should respect the interests of the entire team.”
He suddenly reached out and gently squeezed Wen Rou’s hand. “I am always accustomed to thinking about the enemy or the target, and not used to consider myself. This makes me inadvertently commit some mistakes while doing things. Later, you must remind me more!”
Hong Lang immediately said, “Is this a disguised hint? Oh, baby, I can’t live without you!” He yelled with an exaggerated expression and hugs.
Wen Rou gave him a punch and knocked his head for 3 points of damage. “Shut your mouth, Hong Lang!”
Shen Yi laughed and said, “Forget it. Maybe one day, I will openly propose to Wen Rou. You tell me, how would you build a large-scale wedding in Bloody City?”
“Oh oh! It’s a good idea!” Everyone made a happy hum.
“Maybe you can receive a lot of red envelopes!” Jin Gang called.
Hong Lang asked, “What kind of red envelope?”
Jin Gang replied, “What about BP?”
“That’s a good idea. The question is, how do you pack BP? Let the city make banknotes from BP?”
“Damn, electronic data is a bit difficult to create romance with!”
“Then fold it into equipment. I don’t mind what it is.”
“It’s not your red envelope. What do you care about?”
“Yeah, if you say it, if they are married, then we have to give a red envelope too.”
“And it can’t be small!”
“If you still don’t get married, cohabitation is more appropriate.”
Everyone jokingly talked to each other.
Wen Rou’s face turned red in laughter.
Were Shen Yi’s words a joke? Or were they a sincere statement?
She did not know.
But at this moment, they no longer felt the danger of the future.
Warmth and laughter are always the best way to dilute a sense of danger.
———————————
Four hours later.
Standing on a cliff in the mountains of San Gabriel, they could see the vast steel buildings in the canyon in the distance, stretching for thousands of kilometers. Even in the distance, they could hear the clear roar of the machine.
The architectural works from the machine, with neatness, symmetry, and no architectural aesthetics, look like a soy rot, but the defensive system was complete and rigorous.
The entire Skynet base was like a large military base. At its outermost periphery, were tall Harvesters standing every 100 meters. There were also small Terminators standing on the wall. The sky was filled with flying drones.
A large air carrier traversed above the base, dropped some large iron cages containing humans and then left to continue its mission of finding and catching humans.
Shen Yi held the far-infrared telescope and watched the base. After a while, he lowered the telescope and said, “There are about 50 Harvesters, 400 Terminators on the perimeter guard, and 40 drones to take charge of the air support. In addition, there are some T-800s in the defenses.
His Delicacy made him quickly see all the arrangements here. It seemed that Skynet’s precautionary measures for the safety of the base far exceeded the description in the movie.
This was not surprising at all.
The T-800 originally appeared in the later stages of the movie, where the third round of killing occurred. Now, even the appearance of a T-1000 was not impossible.
“Very good.” Hong Lang muttered, “One-tenth of the troops here is enough to make us flee like a mouse.”
Shen Yi was surprised. “Hong Lang, you actually used the phrase ‘flee like a mouse’.”
Everyone laughed together.
“What to do next?” Jin Gang asked Shen.
Shen Yi thought to answer: “Considering the base’s defensive power, we can’t use force to assault the base. It is worth noting that the city’s mission instructions are to enter the Skynet defense base and destroy the command center. In other words, the city does not restrict us from using any method to enter. As long as we can go in and destroy the command center, the mission will be completed. So, the best thing to do is to sneak in quietly.”
Wen Rou frowned. “Infiltrate this kind of thing? That’s easier said than done. We don’t have the skills to sneak in.”
Shen Yi shook his head. “Not everything requires a skill to complete. The traditional method is sometimes more reliable than the special ability. This is a base, and a base will have a defense loophole. As long as we can find defense loopholes, we can enter it.”
“The problem is that we don’t know the specific defense measures of the base, and how can we find its defense loophole??”
The corner of Shen Yi’s mouth slightly tilted up. “If there is no defensive loophole, we’ll create one. The tactics are very old, but they are practical.”
Wen Rou and the others looked at each other.
“What do you mean……”
Shen Yi replied, “The order of the city is just destroying the Skynet command center. There is not much difference between one person destroying it and everyone destroying it together. Let me sneak into the base to complete this task. What you have to do is take the initiative and move away from the base.”
Wen Rou protested, “You know how dangerous it is to let you go in alone.”
Shen Yi stroked her face. “There is one thing you reminded me of. I have the power to risk myself, but I do not have the power to let my partner jump with me into the flaming pit… Rest assured, I know how to take care of myself.”
Book 4 Chapter 59: Counterattack (Part 3)
According to the setting of the Terminator movie, the so-called Skynet headquarters did not exist in a real sense, because it was a program that could exist on any computer. In spite of this, it could also be said that there was still a fundamental difference between Skynet in small and large systems. The Skynet program in the head of a robot was Skynet, and the Skynet system in the mainframe computer was also Skynet, but the two could not be compared. The former was the seed, and the latter was the fully grown tree.
In addition, the headquarters was not a headquarters. It should have been called a base. Skynet’s distribution bases around the world, each of which could be called “the headquarters”, could play an overall role. This was also the most terrifying quality of Skynet – being everywhere.
The adventurers were heading for a Skynet base near Los Angeles.
Funnily enough, this base was in the San Gabriel Mountains, where they had appeared near the air carrier.
When the adventurers fled the mothership, no one would have thought that they would even come back here again, that they would come back to this dangerous mountain and do a counter-attack against this huge and terrible Terminator base.
Off-road vehicles bumped on the mountain roads, and the rugged mountain road shook people’s bones.
“Shen Yi!” Jin Gang shouted.
“Yep?”
“You said if we let Marcus find the door, couldn’t we just quietly slip into Skynet as it did in the original story?”
In the original story of Terminator Salvation, John Connor was able to enter the Skynet headquarters because of Marcus’s presence. It was he who entered Skynet as a Terminator and opened a gap in the Skynet defense system, which enabled John Connor to infiltrate.
Therefore, Jin Gang could not help but think that since the mission world was not completely out of touch with the original plot, wouldn’t the significance of Marcus’s existence be limited to guidance?
Shen Yi immediately shook his head. “You should never put too much faith in Bloody City. It is neither kind nor generous. For it, the rules of the game are the only meaning! In this battle, the game rules specify that we need to enter Skynet headquarters, and in this case, do not expect to use Marcus to solve the problem. The significance of Marcus’s existence can be to increase the trouble for us, or it can be to guide the plot, but it cannot be to help us cross the border. Otherwise, he will not be a troubling task, but a helper. If we want to do it, Bloody City will definitely give us a penalty. Dare to bet with me? If we let Marcus help us find the door, maybe he will be smashed by it in the next moment, and we will fail the quest because of his death.”
Upon hearing this reply, Hong Lang complained, holding a gun and sitting in the car, “Our strength is falling because of the in-fighting and the casualties of the previous period, and the troubles we face are getting bigger and bigger. To be honest, I have no confidence about whether can we resist the fourth round of pursuit or not. Now we have to go back to Skynet headquarters. We are like a group of rabbits being chased by an eagle that refuses to think about how to escape; we think about how to get into the eagle’s nest instead… I haven’t thought hard about it, but I have a feeling it’s bad.”
“Are you scared?” Shen Yi asked.
“No, just feel that there is no need to take risks. Maybe I should have advised you to give up.”
“No need?” Shen Yi asked with a smile. “What do you think is meaningful in Bloody City? Being alive? No, in Bloody City, being powerful is meaningful. Anyway, I’m not going to accept Bloody City deducting our rewards by half after I’ve worked hard like that.”
For Shen Yi, the second stage of the Hidden Quest of Bloody City was more of a threat than a choice. This was like work: the boss wanted you to work overtime. If you didn’t work overtime, not only would you not get overtime pay, but half of your normal salary would be taken too.
No normal person could accept this kind of thing.
Sadly, the boss of them was Bloody City. It did not give you an opportunity to appeal. You did not have a trade union. That kind of backing couldn’t be relied upon, and you could only endure exploitation. Fortunately, when the boss proposed harsh conditions, it often meant that the current overtime pay was not low.
At that time, Jin Gang inserted a sentence: “I guess you will accept, even without that penalty.”
Shen Yi immediately said, “But all of you probably wouldn’t accept it. As a result, when I want to choose to accept it, I must consider your emotions and may be forced to refuse. From this perspective, the city actually helped me. It is helping us to unify our opinions, and it will not cause internal discord.”
Wen Rou’s brow wrinkled. “So if something similar happens later, and there is no corresponding threat?”
Wen Rou’s meaning was that she knew Shen Yi was truly an adventurer. He never cared about risk, but the problem was that his teammates did not always want to face those powerful and terrible dangers.
Today, team #641 also had to take a risk because of the threat of the city. However, in the absence of such threats, internal conflicts may have become more prominent.
It is never easy to have a completely uniform team in all aspects. In addition to being able to share happiness with others, it is difficult to share the same issues with others, and a high degree of unity is also needed in thinking. In the face of the issue of adventure, Shen Yi and his teammates obviously had too many differences; in fact, he was different from most of the city’s adventurers.
Under such circumstances, if every quest was approached by persisting in selecting the highest difficulty, taking risks, and pursuing high interests and gains, there would inevitably be great differences.
If this did not happen in the long run, it could lead to a break.
Wen Rou was an attentive girl. She could not plan like Shen Yi. She was not as good as Jin Gang in understanding intentions, but she was good at organizing relationships. She knew how to maintain the team’s operations as best as possible. Her worries could not be said but to be a very real possibility.
At this moment, the question she asked Shen Yi was, in fact, a reminder.
After Shen Yi heard this, he first hesitated a little, and then he seriously thought for a moment.
Then he smiled and said, “I understand. When I make a risky decision later, I will carefully consider the opinion of everyone. I cannot value my life, but I should respect the interests of the entire team.”
He suddenly reached out and gently squeezed Wen Rou’s hand. “I am always accustomed to thinking about the enemy or the target, and not used to consider myself. This makes me inadvertently commit some mistakes while doing things. Later, you must remind me more!”
Hong Lang immediately said, “Is this a disguised hint? Oh, baby, I can’t live without you!” He yelled with an exaggerated expression and hugs.
Wen Rou gave him a punch and knocked his head for 3 points of damage. “Shut your mouth, Hong Lang!”
Shen Yi laughed and said, “Forget it. Maybe one day, I will openly propose to Wen Rou. You tell me, how would you build a large-scale wedding in Bloody City?”
“Oh oh! It’s a good idea!” Everyone made a happy hum.
“Maybe you can receive a lot of red envelopes!” Jin Gang called.
Hong Lang asked, “What kind of red envelope?”
Jin Gang replied, “What about BP?”
“That’s a good idea. The question is, how do you pack BP? Let the city make banknotes from BP?”
“Damn, electronic data is a bit difficult to create romance with!”
“Then fold it into equipment. I don’t mind what it is.”
“It’s not your red envelope. What do you care about?”
“Yeah, if you say it, if they are married, then we have to give a red envelope too.”
“And it can’t be small!”
“If you still don’t get married, cohabitation is more appropriate.”
Everyone jokingly talked to each other.
Wen Rou’s face turned red in laughter.
Were Shen Yi’s words a joke? Or were they a sincere statement?
She did not know.
But at this moment, they no longer felt the danger of the future.
Warmth and laughter are always the best way to dilute a sense of danger.
———————————
Four hours later.
Standing on a cliff in the mountains of San Gabriel, they could see the vast steel buildings in the canyon in the distance, stretching for thousands of kilometers. Even in the distance, they could hear the clear roar of the machine.
The architectural works from the machine, with neatness, symmetry, and no architectural aesthetics, look like a soy rot, but the defensive system was complete and rigorous.
The entire Skynet base was like a large military base. At its outermost periphery, were tall Harvesters standing every 100 meters. There were also small Terminators standing on the wall. The sky was filled with flying drones.
A large air carrier traversed above the base, dropped some large iron cages containing humans and then left to continue its mission of finding and catching humans.
Shen Yi held the far-infrared telescope and watched the base. After a while, he lowered the telescope and said, “There are about 50 Harvesters, 400 Terminators on the perimeter guard, and 40 drones to take charge of the air support. In addition, there are some T-800s in the defenses.
His Delicacy made him quickly see all the arrangements here. It seemed that Skynet’s precautionary measures for the safety of the base far exceeded the description in the movie.
This was not surprising at all.
The T-800 originally appeared in the later stages of the movie, where the third round of killing occurred. Now, even the appearance of a T-1000 was not impossible.
“Very good.” Hong Lang muttered, “One-tenth of the troops here is enough to make us flee like a mouse.”
Shen Yi was surprised. “Hong Lang, you actually used the phrase ‘flee like a mouse’.”
Everyone laughed together.
“What to do next?” Jin Gang asked Shen.
Shen Yi thought to answer: “Considering the base’s defensive power, we can’t use force to assault the base. It is worth noting that the city’s mission instructions are to enter the Skynet defense base and destroy the command center. In other words, the city does not restrict us from using any method to enter. As long as we can go in and destroy the command center, the mission will be completed. So, the best thing to do is to sneak in quietly.”
Wen Rou frowned. “Infiltrate this kind of thing? That’s easier said than done. We don’t have the skills to sneak in.”
Shen Yi shook his head. “Not everything requires a skill to complete. The traditional method is sometimes more reliable than the special ability. This is a base, and a base will have a defense loophole. As long as we can find defense loopholes, we can enter it.”
“The problem is that we don’t know the specific defense measures of the base, and how can we find its defense loophole??”
The corner of Shen Yi’s mouth slightly tilted up. “If there is no defensive loophole, we’ll create one. The tactics are very old, but they are practical.”
Wen Rou and the others looked at each other.
“What do you mean……”
Shen Yi replied, “The order of the city is just destroying the Skynet command center. There is not much difference between one person destroying it and everyone destroying it together. Let me sneak into the base to complete this task. What you have to do is take the initiative and move away from the base.”
Wen Rou protested, “You know how dangerous it is to let you go in alone.”
Shen Yi stroked her face. “There is one thing you reminded me of. I have the power to risk myself, but I do not have the power to let my partner jump with me into the flaming pit… Rest assured, I know how to take care of myself.”
