bdsm-fiction Chapter 145 Aquitron Day 3
Chapter 145 Aquitron Day 3
On the third day, Aquitron's arrangements became increasingly detailed and reasonable.
The Ark and Retribution spacecraft still need to be investigated for launch anomalies, and access to the deep-sea observation array and energy port should be gradually granted. To improve verification efficiency, Aquitron suggested that personnel from both sides be grouped according to their areas of expertise.
Optimus Prime was invited to the core area of the history museum, and police cars entered the document verification room.
Bumblebee, Hot Rod, and Sideswipe were taken to the Education Records section, while Alita and Arcee went to the War Remnants Archives.
The Autobots who remained on the Ark were responsible for the ship's maintenance and security.
On the other side of the Retribution, Megatron is still deep inside the Energy Harbor, Soundwave has been invited into the Signal Verification Room, and Starscream is in the Airspace Data Area.
Knocked-down items and roadblocks are taken to the maintenance and damage statistics area.
-
Optimus Prime entered the core area of the history museum alone.
The curator walked ahead, his pace slow, deliberately giving him time to observe.
The history museum is located on the lower level of the main city, with dark gray walls embedded with recording chips. As you pass through each passage, the chips light up automatically, revealing glimpses of different civilizations.
Mechanical planets, gaseous mega-cities, ancient fleets sunk in seas of liquid metal, and many civilizations whose names are now lost to time.
"Record failed here," the curator said.
Optimus Prime looked at him.
The curator continued, "Successful civilizations often don't need repeated warnings; it's the failed civilizations that leave behind more lessons for future generations to learn."
"What do you want to show?"
The curator stopped in front of a tall door: "A failure that concerns you."
The door opened, and a huge phantom appeared in the center of the main hall.
It has a multifaceted structure, is ancient and solemn, and its facial contours slowly change between light and shadow.
Optimus Prime froze, while the Curator stood to the side, speaking in a low, deliberate tone: "The Quintessons."
The illusory figure lowered its gaze.
"Son of Cybertron," one of the voices rang out, "you have finally arrived."
Optimus Prime remained firm: "You know us very well."
"We have been observing Cybertron for a long time."
"What?"
"Pay attention." Another voice, gentler, said, "A civilization torn apart by war always deserves attention."
The light curtain revealed early Cybertronian cities, chaotic, crude, and with unstable energy distribution. Then, outsiders arrived, bringing engineering plans, institutional models, trade agreements, production zones, and even early records of shapeshifting abilities.
The image was cleaned up.
"I don't think that can be called help," Optimus Prime said.
"We acknowledge that our methods are not perfect," Quintesson said. "Ancient civilizations often judge later generations by their own experience. That is arrogance, and it is also a mistake."
Their answers were too quick and sounded too much like apologies, making it difficult for Optimus Prime to judge.
"But what did Cybertron's subsequent path prove?" another voice added, "The Old Council, class divisions, civil war, the departure of the AllSpark, and the planet's near death."
Images of modern warfare appeared on the light screen.
Ironforge burned, Charon fell, and the Ark departed Cybertron.
Optimus Prime felt an increasing heaviness in his chest.
"We can't change the past," the Quintesson said, "but we can help you understand it."
"You've been carrying this burden for far too long."
"You want to find the source of fire, end the war, and lead your comrades to survive."
"But a leader should not rely on himself alone."
Optimus Prime looked at those images and suddenly felt very tired.
The curator then added, "If the Quintessons have made mistakes in the past, then they also know better how to prevent Cybertron from repeating those mistakes."
Optimus Prime didn't believe it, but he couldn't completely refuse.
The clues to the AllSpark are still in their hands, and Cybertron is indeed still bleeding.
Besides, he really didn't know how to make all the machines survive.
-
In the data verification room, Aquitron granted the police cars an unusually high level of authority.
He was given access to ancient Cybertronian images, records of contact with interstellar civilizations, institutional models left by the Quintessons, waveforms similar to the AllSpark, and even some of the underlying computational logs for review.
The police car disassembled each document, compared them, reassembled them, and then traced their origins in reverse.
Much of the content is incomplete, but that's precisely why it feels natural.
Ancient materials are inherently incomplete, transcriptional records contain errors, and interstellar languages are prone to ambiguity.
The more he investigated, the harder it became to make a judgment.
An Aquitron data clerk stood quietly by, ready to assist at any time.
The police car asked, "Why is the war footage missing?"
The data clerk replied, "This copy comes from the Quintessons' internal civilization records. They tend to preserve the achievements of their system rather than the details of their conflicts."
"In other words, they filtered out content that was unfavorable to them."
"That's one way to understand it."
The other party even admitted it. Aquitron always took the initiative to admit, back down, and apologize.
The foundation of any lie is always the truth used to deceive people.
The words suddenly popped into the police car's processor, and his hand stopped on the console.
Whose statement is that?
A tidal wave of buzzing interrupted his thoughts, and the data clerk then asked, "Do you need to pause?"
"unnecessary."
The police car lowered its head to continue the verification, but the words from before disappeared.
-
The education record area was brighter than Bumblebee had imagined.
The walls are adorned with educational images from ancient Cybertron, showing how young civilizations learned engineering, established energy distribution systems, and organized production.
As soon as Hot Rod entered, he whispered, "This place looks like a classroom."
Hengpao frowned: "I hate going to class."
Bumblebee glanced at him: "You have a lot of things you hate."
The educator, Aquitron, who was in charge of receiving them, smiled slightly.
"These records don't need your acceptance, just your viewing."
The three cameras were brought to the immersive recording table.
The bumblebee instinctively became alert: "What is this?"
"A history playback system," the instructor said. "It doesn't access your core memories; it only projects them externally."
The police car had checked the equipment beforehand, and the records indeed showed no core intrusion permissions.
Hengpao breathed a sigh of relief: "So you can leave after you've finished watching?"
"certainly."
Hot Rod was already standing on it: "See? What problems could there be?"
The platform lights up, surrounded by images.
They saw Cybertron, the Old Council, war, and Optimus Prime standing on the bridge of the Ark, shutting down a section of AllSpark trajectory data.
The bumblebee suddenly looked up: "Wait, what's that?"
The video continued playing, showing Optimus Prime setting the data to the highest level of access before saying to the other machines, "We don't have any new leads yet."
Hot Rod frowned: "This is fake, isn't it?"
The instructor stood outside the platform: "This is a scene reconstruction pieced together by Aquitron based on multiple records. You can judge for yourselves."
Hengpao sneered, "That kind of talk sounds unreliable."
But the next video clip immediately follows.
Optimus Prime's leadership module illuminated, and he refused entry to several Autobots into the decision-making room. In the scene, police cars and Alita were excluded, and Bumblebee could even be heard asking from outside the door, "Why can't you tell us?"
This wasn't his memory, but the sounds, gestures, and details of the Ark corridor in the video were all too real.
He couldn't tell for a moment.
"That's not right," said Bumblebee.
Hot Rod's expression grew increasingly grim: "What if it's true?"
Bumblebee looked at him in surprise: "Hot Rod?"
"I'm not saying I believe it," Hot Rod stared at the image. "But what if he really is hiding something?"
Sideswipe said irritably, "Optimus Prime wouldn't do that."
How did you know?
"Because he's Optimus Prime!"
"Does this count as evidence?"
Sideswipe is stuck, Bumblebee tries to argue, but the image changes again.
They saw a small alien mine collapse during the exchange of fire between two warships, non-Cybertronian life escape through the war-affected shipping lanes, and the Ark and Retribution's artillery fire piercing through the Nameless Star Belt.
Images are not necessarily entirely fake.
The instructor whispered from the side, "Sometimes leaders, in the name of peace, take war to even more distant places."
Bumblebee raised its head: "Shut up."
The instructor bowed quietly and said, "I'm sorry."
He stepped back half a step, but he had already done what he needed to do.
-
The war archives hall only had Alita and Arcee; there was no guide.
This place preserves a large number of war records.
The city evacuation failed, the medical zone was hit by artillery fire, the nascent seed stabilization capsule was transferred, the transport line was broken, and ordinary aircraft were forced to join the battle.
Some came from Cybertron, some from other civilizations, all mixed together like a wound with no end in sight.
Alita stands in front of the first image wall.
The footage shows a city losing power after a high-altitude strike, its protective shield shattering, and residents evacuating through underground tunnels. The rescue team was two cycles too late, and many aircraft failed to emerge.
Every hesitation leads to death, and every boundary still fails to prevent loss.
She should be angry, and she was indeed angry.
But that anger wasn't channeled into action; instead, it piled up layer by layer, turning into a deeper sense of powerlessness.
She knew that even if she were more ruthless, she couldn't save all the chances.
Even if she kills Megatron, the war will not immediately revert to peace.
Even if she sees all Decepticons as enemies, she will become something else she hates.
She stood there, feeling that every choice she had made was terrible.
Arcee walked to the other side.
What she saw was a stack of records of her partners' deaths.
One name after another, one moment after another too late to arrive.
The video doesn't directly show the baffle, but each segment acts like a baffle.
One step too slow, one close call.
If only we had been faster then, hadn't been tied down, or hadn't turned our backs to the battlefield.
Suddenly finding it unbearable, Arcee whispered, "That's enough."
The video continues to play.
Alita turned to look at her.
Several screens separated the two machines, and neither of them spoke first.
-
In the Ark's designated area, Flyover is checking the launch system for the third time in the thruster control cabin.
"It still doesn't work," he said. "It's either broken or won't start."
The detective stood aside recording the port area patrol route: "The local signal field will jump once every once in a while."
Iron Skin leaned against the hatch: "I told you we should have aimed the cannons at their main city."
Tianhuo looked at the outer sky and said slowly, "That will only make us more like what they want to describe us as."
Flying over the mountain, it disassembled the control panel, and stopped with a "Hey!"
"Didn't I hear someone say before that you should be careful about explanations that seem too reasonable?"
The detective looked up: "Who?"
Flying Over the Mountain thought for a moment and said, "I don't know."
Tin Man clicked his tongue in annoyance: "You guys are all starting to be daytime drowsy."
-
Outside the Retribution ship, 97 stood among a row of ordinary Decepticon soldiers.
Her purple wings folded, and her silver-gray visor concealed her expression. The low-frequency melody of the port's public address system continued to play.
She listened, her eyes looking somewhat bewildered.
She seemed to have forgotten something—a machine that would recognize her.
Jiuqi looked down at his modified arm, his eyes glazed over.
But who is that machine?
An order came from the front of the column. 97 looked up and turned around along with the other soldiers.
That fleeting moment vanished just like that.
-
The sound waves remained silent in the signal verification chamber.
Aquitron has released some of the underlying space field data. The data is massive, clean, and complex, enough to keep any analysis system busy for a long time.
Sound waves are not affected by polite language, but data will consume memory resources.
He stripped away the signal field and found that there was indeed a natural model of ship incapacitation, as well as periodic resonance of the observation array and some very subtle and difficult-to-define interference.
A line appeared on the sound wave display screen.
Search term: vector.
[Delay: 0.7 seconds.]
The line had barely appeared when it was immediately diluted by a large amount of noise data around it.
An Aquitron technician asked, "Should we reduce the data traffic?"
The sound wave did not respond; instead, it extracted the delayed recording and stored it separately.
Immediately afterwards, the entire signal verification room entered a new data playback phase.
More waveforms are coming, flooding the sealed records into the deep sea of data.
-
As he looked at the data in the maintenance and wear statistics area, his face grew increasingly grim.
Arquitron showed the battle damage curves of the Decepticons and Autobots in recent years.
Damage to the mech, consumption of outer armor repairs, waste of medical resources, and the adverse effects of war on the individual's aesthetics and lifespan.
"Who added the last item?" Knockdown asked coldly.
The receptionist replied, "This is an auxiliary classification generated based on your medical and maintenance preferences."
The roadblock glanced at Knockdown, who remained expressionless and decided to ignore it.
He then saw a video showing machines worn beyond recognition by the war.
In a fleeting moment, he remembered the Crystal City Medical Tower; he seemed to have said something to her.
Knock down and stop.
she?
The roadblock was also looking at another recording.
Old footage of the gladiatorial arena: chaos, noise, bloody cheers, and who once stood there, tearing away the facade of respectability.
The roadblock frowned.
The receptionist asked gently, "Would you like to pause?"
Knocked down and looking up, the roadblock immediately said, "Let's go."
-
The host showed Red Spider very precisely what he was showing him.
The Nemesis Air Force structure, the Tracker formation flaws, and Megatron's high-risk orders during numerous pursuit missions.
There was also an alternative route that Starscream himself proposed, but Megatron ignored.
"Megatron was a powerful warrior," the host said, "but a warrior isn't always the best commander."
Red Spider chuckled: "If he hears that, you might be dismantled and turned into decorations for the Energy Harbor."
"Perhaps," the host said, "but the conclusion still holds true."
Red Spider looked at those routes and heard these words from other people's mouths; it felt really different.
"You want me to betray him?"
"We do not interfere in Decepticon internal affairs."
"You have already interfered."
The receptionist bowed his head meekly: "Then I take back what I just said."
Red Spider looked at him and suddenly found it a little funny.
He should have been wary, but the documents were laid out there, too tempting to resist.
Megatron is not irreplaceable; he can do better.
This idea was compiled into a complete data report and handed to him.
-
Before the end of the third day, all areas of Aquitron were gradually closed.
Inside the Ark, the Autobots were talking far less than the day before.
Bumblebee wanted to talk to Hot Rod about the Educational Records area again, but Hot Rod only said, "I need to think about it."
Hengpao was so annoyed that he didn't even have the interest to argue.
After Alita returned, she went straight into the tactics room and remained alone for a long time before coming out again.
Instead of returning to the rest area, Arcee went alone to the observation window on the side of the Ark.
The police car uploaded a large amount of verification data, but left an incomplete sentence in the notes.
The data has been filtered through narrative, but it lacks...
Meanwhile, trouble was brewing on the other side of the Retribution ship.
After Starscream returned to the ship, it was quieter than usual.
The tour ended prematurely due to the knockdown and roadblocks, without explanation.
Megatron remained deep within the Energy Harbor for longer than expected.
The sound waves sealed a very short retrieval delay record and did not report it to the public channel.
When 97 finished his patrol and returned to his formation, he found a small fragment he had picked up from the ground in the port area.
She didn't know why she picked it up; she just felt that the color resembled something she had forgotten.
-
Deep within the main city, the curator looked at the result on the light wall: the third day marker has been generated.
[Separation of contact: Complete.]
Trust: A crack has appeared.
Loyalty: Causes a shift.
[Vector-based association retrieval: persistent lag.]
The voice from the shadows said, "Let them see the 'truth'."