NOVEL WEB Chapter 597: What Facility Is This?
Helen and Matsumoto were glaring at each other, as though waiting for the other side to make the first move.
It really looked like I was watching the climax of some love triangle drama and the two people who were fighting for the female lead's love were facing each other in a duel to the death…
The 'female lead' being the Pirate Lord of course.
But as though the nanobot figures took offense at the fact that they were trying to turn this into a drama, several of them started shooting in their direction, barraging them with a hail of bullets.
Both of them immediately leapt away and attacked those dark figures near them instead, both of them easily dealing with them like they weren't even a big deal.
In contrast, the other pirates were not having a good time as they desperately unloaded their guns at the figures but were unable to completely shut them down, resulting in a few of them losing their lives from the nanobots.
I turned to them, "Seriously, shouldn't all of us be working together to deal with these nanobot figures? Why are we still fighting each other?!"
Takehashi rolled her eyes, "You think any of us would still work together with these traitors?! Use them as meatshields! Nothing more!"
She swung her sword and slashed it at another group of those dark figures, cutting them all down with a single slash.
Even though only two or three of them melted into the puddles while the rest managed to recover themselves, the fact that more than one of them were even cut down from that single slash was already a significant feat.
Tch… Whatever… I'm only focused on making sure my crew are safe anyway so if these people want to kill each other, they can go ahead as long as my side doesn't get affected by this.
Still… Even if I say that, I don't really see any way out of this place right now without fighting everyone…
I fell back to my girls and we concentrated on shooting down the nanobot figures that were trying to swarm us.
Matsumoto and that Helen woman finally managed to shake off their attackers and clashed against each other.
I thought Helen would maintain her distance from Matsumoto but she still clashed against him at close range, using a mix of hand to hand fighting and shooting her pistols from time to time.
On the other side, Matsumoto was also engaging her with his energy blade, all of his swings aimed at her vitals so neither of them were holding back.
I could already tell from how they were fighting and parrying each other's attacks that they most likely have sparred together before.
And the person they were fighting for was busy cutting down those nanobot figures to even pay attention to them.
"Tera… I'm running out of ammo soon," Amber informed me as she slammed a new mag into her pistol. "Should I start burning stuff?"
I paused to consider it for a moment before shaking my head, "Hold off on it for now… Right now they're mostly focused on the pirates so we might still be able to slip out."
Ries turned to me, "Boss? Since these things are machines… Why don't you try hacking them?"
That's… A good point. Can't believe I didn't think of that.
"Cover me!" I cried out, bringing up my Codex.
The girls surrounded me to cover me while I tried to search for any machines that I could connect to hack.
I was hoping that I might see a single result that was like the main controller for all of these nanobot figures but what I got was an entire list of results which I assume was each individual nanobot that I could hack.
There was definitely no way that I could hack each and every single one of them just to stop them… There must be a-- Wait a minute…
There was one particular result on my search list that was just named 'Main Console'.
Oh! Could that be the thing that is controlling all of the nanobots? If I can hack into it, I might be able to turn everything off!
I immediately tried to hack into it and it was the usual hacking process so I gained access to the machine pretty quickly.
When a new screen popped up, I had a moment to blink at it since I wasn't expecting just a giant button on the screen saying 'Open'.
Open? Open what?
Ah fuck it! Let's just press it and worry about it later!
I pushed my finger on it and there was a moment where nothing happened before the lights around the room suddenly switched on.
Everyone in the room paused and those dark figures also stopped moving for a moment which made me think that I had actually deactivated them.
But then I noticed that they were still moving their heads around in obvious confusion which meant they weren't deactivated yet.
I was wondering if what I did was just to turn the lights on when the entire hall started rumbling.
The circular indentations that were in the ground then started to rise up and even the one that I had been standing on earlier also started rising up from the ground.
All of us were just gaping up at the things rising up which were revealed to be some kind of cylindrical containers that were holding the same coloured liquid as the earlier hall that we had been in earlier.
I guess this was where the pipes were directing the liquid to as well.
As I was wondering what the liquid was even for, I realised that those cylindrical containers had something else suspended inside them.
"What… What is this?" I muttered, even as the containers still continued to rise up from the ground.
Each of these things that were rising up from the ground was a metal frame that had several of these containers filled with liquid in them. All of them were arranged on top of each other with tubes running to each of them that were also filled with the liquid.
And in each of these cylinders… Contained a human being in them.
The Pirate Lord was also looking around before she pointed at a specific container, "Is that… Nelson?"
All of us turned to see a naked man floating in the middle of the container with several tubes and wires connected to various parts of his body.
It took me a moment to realise that the person in the container was the first pirate in our group that had fallen to the androids. I guess now we know where his body was taken to…
But looking at the number of containers around the hall… There must be thousands of them all around the room!
There could not have been that many casualties from both our and Helen's side to result in this many people being stuffed in these containers.
Does that mean there's people in these containers that were formerly residents of this station and were currently being kept inside them?
As far as I can see, none of them even seem to be decomposing so I assume the liquid in those containers must be preventing that from happening to those bodies.
Wait… Now that the lights were turned on… I can see a few of those nanobot figures dragging away some corpses that had fallen during the fight. Don't tell me all this while they had just been abducting people away to shove them into these containers?!
What is this place?!
As though the appearance of these containers activated some kind of command, all of those nanobot figures started to retreat, their figures disappearing into the other side of the hall behind the containers.
And yes, they also dragged the corpses with them.
That could only mean there was another doorway or something there so we'll have to take a look at that later.
But first… We had another problem…
The pirates on Helen's and Takehashi's sides were glaring at each other with their fingers still on their weapons, clearly still intent on killing each other.
I couldn't help but yell out at them, "Seriously?! Are none of you even able to see what's going on here?! They're using the corpses for something! They obviously set this up so that we can kill each other and they'll just take our bodies to dump them in here! This whole thing was a trap!"
Takehashi turned away from me to glare at the traitors, "Perhaps… But we already know the Pirate Hoard is here. Once we clear out the rogue AI and claim this place, the treasure would also be ours for the taking."
Helen also glared back at her, "Ha! As expected of a Merc to be trying to weasel their way out! You think we didn't come here with the preparation to kill all of you? This place is ours now and we will not allow any witnesses! Least of all this tyrant bitch that has been tormenting us for far too long! Today… One side will die and it's going to be yours! Bring them out!!"
The sounds of something heavy stomping towards us could be heard from behind the pirates and they parted to reveal several pirates wearing Power Armour slowly moving into view.
Those guys must have been dealing with the nanobots that were attacking them from behind but they're bringing them in front to deal with us now.
Well shit… We don't exactly have any anti-armour weapons now, do we?