At the critical moment, Fu Luo abruptly switched the autopilot to manual control. The extended control stick nearly poked her in the eye as a high-energy shell, carrying an inaudible howl, pounced towards her.

Fu Luo almost had the illusion that she was piloting a ground mech, surrounded by security forces.

She yanked the control stick with all her might, causing the reconnaissance ship to displace nearly twenty kilometers in an instant. The ship's thrusters emitted a "clack clack" sound of being overloaded, protesting the pilot's roughness.

She barely dodged the high-energy cannon's attack range.

But before Fu Luo could catch her breath, the second red beam warning came.

Is this the consequence of being a paparazzi and trying to sneak a shot of them? Fu Luo thought wryly as she began another frantic, life-or-death escape.

Fu Luo didn't know that at this time, an Earth reconnaissance ship had already been captured, the pilot killed on the spot. The humans of the other star system immediately discovered that what they wanted most - the curvature drive in the reconnaissance ship - had been unloaded in advance.

This made the commander of the other star system decisively change the capture order to shoot to kill.

Fu Luo had run into the muzzle.

The manual system of the ground mech was actually partially modeled after small warships, but due to the diverse forms of ground mechs, it was undoubtedly much more complex. Small warships, however, were Fu Luo's forte.

Back then, in order to pass the small ship practical exam, she practically lived in the simulation self-study room for over a month, day and night, honing a set of skills so polished they could be performed on stage. Only then did she get a perfect score in the small warship control course - ending the nightmare of the instructor who hadn't given a perfect score in five years.

In her teacher's words, student Fu Luo's small ship operation was so solid that she basically reached the level of being able to join the circus to jump through fire hoops.

There were no fire hoops, but the solid foundation saved her life on the front line.

Fu Luo no longer had the luxury to consider oxygen consumption. With the stealth reconnaissance ship's size of less than five meters, let alone being hit, even if a high-energy cannon grazed it, she could prepare to meet the martyrs of our army.

This was a battle of humans against cockroaches - wherever the slipper landed, the cockroach definitely had no way out. It could only make itself run a little faster.

The sky was filled with high-energy blasts, weaving a fiery red net that enveloped her.

Fu Luo knew that under such firepower, it was only a matter of time before she was shot down. The size of the stealth reconnaissance ship limited the amount of energy it could carry. Attrition could also exhaust her to death.

She nearly pulled the control stick out of shape. The reconnaissance ship completed a 360-degree flip in space, continuously dodging three high-energy cannons. During the flip, Fu Luo was strapped tightly in the cockpit by the seat belt. She stretched out her legs, hooked the tips of her toes into the space walking thruster, and used the momentum of another flip to put them on.

Then she took out an oxygen capsule and held it in her mouth.

After doing all this, Fu Luo picked a direction and charged towards it.

During the advance, the rear of the reconnaissance ship shook violently, the alarm system screamed, and a series of error reports - from oxygen leak warnings to thruster malfunctions - sounded like it was about to self-destruct.

Fu Luo ignored them all.

The oxygen content in the cabin was decreasing bit by bit. The reconnaissance ship, with half its tail broken off, rushed toward the thruster of a large ship not far away on a determined trajectory.

The oxygen content in the cabin dropped to the critical value for the human body. Fu Luo smashed the organic glass cover on the control panel with her fist, rudely pulled out the recording chip, and tucked it into her hidden chest pocket. Then, using her teeth to bite open the oxygen capsule, she forcibly pried open the reconnaissance ship's hatch and activated the space-walking thruster under her feet.

Damn it, I hate space walking the most. This bare body, what's the difference from a turtle without a shell?

The oxygen capsule, which could maintain twenty minutes of oxygen supply and resist a certain degree of cosmic radiation, formed an invisible protective film around her. The space thruster pushed her out of the open hatch. At a very close distance, Fu Luo steeled herself and hugged a high-energy cannon barrel protruding from the enemy warship.

Her streak of bad luck had finally broken—this high-energy cannon barrel had not yet participated in the battle; otherwise, she would have been roasted by the residual heat.

The unmanned reconnaissance ship then flew past under her feet due to inertia. Fu Luo suddenly lowered her head, trying to curl up as much as possible behind the huge warship's tail. Less than fifty meters away from her, the reconnaissance ship collided with one of the giant warship's thrusters at high speed and exploded instantly.

Deadly debris flew everywhere, hitting the warship's tail wing that shielded Fu Luo countless times. With her ears pressed against it, Fu Luo only felt a deafening clang.

There were only four capsules in a box of oxygen capsules. Fu Luo's character was cautious and didn't do things on a whim. She decided that before reaching a desperate situation, she should always keep one as a spare. So there were only three left, one hour.

She needed to find a way to contact her own people within an hour and send the chip back.

A large warship - just an ordinary class, not even a giant ship - was incomparable to the large aircraft carrier on the ground. Its radius was at least one kilometer. Fu Luo felt that she had really become a "ping pong ball on the sports field".

She patiently counted down the remaining time of the first oxygen capsule, hiding behind the tail wing, opening the telescope, and observing the thruster that the unmanned reconnaissance ship had hit.

Three minutes later, a small maintenance ship flew out.

Immediately after, two humans from the other star system space-walked out and began to repair the thruster malfunction.

Fu Luo lowered her body, turned her thruster to the smallest amplitude, and under the cover of the huge warship, she crept over and quietly waited for the opportunity.

She was extremely patient and did not act rashly. Soon, the first twenty minutes passed, and Fu Luo bit open the second oxygen capsule.

At this moment, the opportunity came. A maintenance person happened to return to the maintenance ship to get tools. When he walked out of the hatch again, he was stunned to find a black muzzle pointed at him.

One shot to kill, right in the head. At close range, the helmet of the spacesuit was shattered. The other party's shocked expression didn't even fully unfold.

Thanks to the universe where sound cannot propagate normally, Fu Luo's assassination was almost silent. However, this was the first time she had killed someone face-to-face in her life. Fu Luo's hands couldn't help but start to tremble, and for a few seconds, her brain even showed symptoms of hypoxia, almost going blank.

Just then, the green light on the communicator by the corpse's ear lit up, as if someone was talking to that person through the intercom. Fu Luo couldn't hear it, but the flickering, fragmented glow brought her back to her senses. Fu Luo immediately walked over and quickly stripped the spacesuit off the corpse's body, putting it on herself as fast as possible.

Only then did she discover that the communicators of the other staff system's people were not voice communicators, but "light signal communicators".

The so-called "light signal communication" is an information technology originating from the 21st century. It transmits information through a special kind of light. After the receiver demodulates the information carried by the light, it can directly transmit it to the visual nerve endings, just like the communicator Wang Yansheng gave her.

This communication technology also exists in the Earth military, but it is not common. Earthlings are still used to speaking. Light signals are mostly used in electronic products. When Fu Luo took Wang Ergou to the arcade when she was young, the large electronic games there basically relied on light signals to achieve human-computer interaction.

Taking care of her short-sighted little brother was not a pleasant experience. At that time, Fu Luo was just being patient. Now, she could only try to recall the operations when playing video games back then. After trying two or three times, she finally succeeded in connecting the light signal communicator to herself.

"What are you dawdling for?" This was the first message she received via light signal, from the other staff system's repairman.

She didn't respond. The fingers in her gloves fiercely pinched the palm of her hand, still not daring to look at the face of her first victim.

At this time, the second oxygen capsule could only last for eight minutes. Fu Luo knew that since the helmet of that unlucky guy had been shattered along with his head just now, she urgently needed to get another helmet with an oxygen supply function.

"Fu Luo," the young girl gave herself a final mental pep talk at the door of the enemy repair ship, "when you were fighting people with low-altitude mechas on the ground, you even killed your own people. Don't be so hypocritical."

At this time, another urging message came from the light signal communicator. Fu Luo ignored it. She installed a space-walking thruster on the corpse, turned it to maximum power, and sent the body flying into the darkness. Then she hid behind the repair ship, waiting for the right moment.

The second oxygen capsule's time began to count down, quickly approaching one minute - Fu Luo gritted her teeth. Half of her life-saving resources had already been used up. She really didn't want to use the third one.

Fortunately, at this time, the other repair crew member of the enemy army finally couldn't wait any longer. He gave up sending light signals and flew back slowly. He caught a glimpse of the corner of the spacesuit that Fu Luo deliberately exposed behind the cabin door, and seemed even more dissatisfied. Through the low-power telescope, Fu Luo could already see his expression.

Closer, five meters, three meters, two meters, one meter!

Fu Luo suddenly turned on the propeller and pounced out from behind the door, colliding with the enemy repair crew member with unerring accuracy.

She grabbed the other party's collar and pressed the gun against his chest, blasting the heart of this other staff system's human with one shot. Fearing he wasn't completely dead and might send a distress signal, Fu Luo immediately turned the muzzle and shattered the enemy's throat between his collarbones, pointing the weapon upward so as not to damage the helmet.

The second repairman was finally dead.

The second oxygen capsule was approaching the zero countdown.

Fu Luo didn't dare to delay for a second. She immediately dragged the corpse and quickly adjusted the angle of her propeller, floating back to the repair ship at the fastest speed. She opened the oxygen helmet on the corpse's body, wiped off the blood stains, and put it on her own head. The first breath of fresh oxygen entered her lungs.

Fu Luo finally recovered from the extremely tense state, feeling a little numb all over.

After calming down for a moment, she took out and activated her multi-tool wrench.

This wrench was very powerful, almost the smartest thing on Fu Luo's body. It had the functions of photographing, recording and deciphering light signals and most forms of information transmission mastered by humans. It could also cut metal to a certain extent, shield some things, and even had a disposable anesthetic needle.

And the most useful function was that it could record other people's iris and fingerprint information.

Fu Luo scanned the wrench over the corpse's hands and eyes, connected the wrench to the 3D printing system inside the repair ship, and a thin fingerprint glove and a pair of invisible contact lenses were temporarily made. She put on the lenses and fitted the glove onto her left hand. It was completely transparent and almost invisible without touching it.

At this time, Fu Luo found that the repairman was wearing a monocle on his right eye. The first person's head was blown up, so the glasses were also gone, but this one was perfectly preserved.

Although she didn't know what it was for, Fu Luo still carefully took off the glasses and put them on her own face.

Then, she disposed of the second corpse and tried to control the repair ship - fortunately, the other staff system's humans had something in common with Earth humans in terms of inheritance, so the symbols on the various control keys were easy for Fu Luo to guess. As long as she wasn't chased around like just now, Fu Luo thought she should be able to deal with it.

The only problem was that the repair ship was a small work vessel after all, usually only operating around large ships to perform maintenance tasks. This meant that its control accuracy was very high, but it was impossible to charge at high speeds. Fu Luo tried it, and the top speed of the repair ship was probably only around 80 miles per hour - if there was no traffic jam on the Second Ring Road in the air, this speed couldn't even enter the fast lane.

If she really came up with the idea of driving such a thing back to the Earth Space Fortress, it was basically equivalent to crossing the Pacific Ocean in a primitive man-made dugout canoe with a wooden paddle - she could consider spending a few years in the vast universe.

Fu Luo carefully cut off all connections between the repair ship and her galaxy's headquarters. She then gathered a few boxes of oxygen capsules. In this world where "the bold die from overextending, and the timid die from starvation," full of reckless chaos, she made an audacious decision - she would pilot the repair ship back into the enemy battleship.

"One cannot catch a tiger cub without entering the tiger's den." Fu Luo patted the replenished oxygen capsules. So she decided to go and capture an enemy reconnaissance ship or a small battleship.

Author's Note: "A ping pong ball in a sports field" is a physics analogy. In an atom, the size of the nucleus compared to the atom is like a ping pong ball in a sports field.