Chapter 66

Fu Luo heard the sound of reinforcements about to set off in her ears, with one command after another, so solemn that it was a bit like launching a satellite, making it very grand.

With Yang Ning's departure, she suddenly felt a bit at a loss, feeling like a radish planted in the wrong hole.

The reflective instruments mirrored her young face, the contours vague, but in fact no longer childish.

It's just that she herself was still very worried.

Wang Yansheng hadn't seen Fu Luo for a long time, and so many things had happened in between that he couldn't help but sigh. So he chatted with her a bit more.

"I heard that Yang Ning lost his temper at you all in the meeting room just now?" Wang Yansheng said.

"Mm..." Fu Luo subconsciously responded, then suddenly came to her senses, "No, how did you know?"

Wang Yansheng smiled quite inscrutably.

Fu Luo felt a chill down her spine, realizing that even at this time, eyes were everywhere.

So was Yang Ning really angry just now, or... just acting?

Fu Luo's mind turned and she understood a little - the three departments of the space fortress had developed to this scale as a result of nearly two hundred years after the war. There was fresh blood, of course, but also deep-rooted relationships. People in the Second Department might have parents or siblings in the Third Department, and vice versa. Where there are people, there are relationships. To be united as one, everyone would have to be orphans without parents.

Even if they were orphans, we'd have to be wary of who the confidants and close friends behind those orphans were.

Perhaps in Yang Ning's position, every move had to be made with care.

Fu Luo reached out and pinched the space between her eyebrows, "I really can't get used to these things."

"Well, that's normal," Wang Yansheng said to her through the big screen, "When I was your age, I was also annoyed by these things. I felt that this society was too sick. If everyone spent all day scheming, would there be any time left to do proper work?"

These words resonated deeply with Fu Luo.

"Oh my," Wang Yansheng sighed slowly, "I was young then. I could stay up all night and be full of energy the next day. Two big bowls of rice for one meal couldn't fill my stomach. It was really good... but also foolish. I thought I was the only sober one among the drunken crowd, aloof and proud of myself. Guess what happened later?"

Fu Luo blinked.

"Later I found out that nine out of ten young people had pretty much the same thoughts as me." Wang Yansheng leisurely poured himself a cup of tea, "Simple-minded, full of passion."

"Right, there's no way around disliking this kind of thing, you always have to adapt." Fu Luo spread her hands, "This is part of the job, and a rather difficult part. Even if you don't like it, you still have to grit your teeth and do it. Don't you agree?"

Wang Yansheng raised his eyebrows, almost looking at Fu Luo with new eyes.

After a while, he pointed to his temple, "You girls mature a few years faster than boys in this department... Well, that's good."

He paused, "We've been preparing for things on the ground for a long time. You don't need to worry too much. Without extremely special circumstances, nothing unexpected will happen. Just watch."

"It's just that I..." Fu Luo thought for a moment, then held up her index finger and thumb to measure, pinching them, "I'm just a little shrimp this long, about to be caught up in the once-every-few-years Indian Ocean tsunami. As soon as I see 'the sea is all water', my liver starts to tremble a bit."

Wang Yansheng: "Where's your ambition? Haven't you heard of 'the vast sea flows'..."

Fu Luo was a little embarrassed, "Don't tease me, Teacher Wang. I'm no hero. At most, I'm a hero's sidekick."

Wang Yansheng teased her, "An A-level, being a colonel's sidekick?"

Fu Luo laughed. Her eyes were as clean as black stones soaked in spring water, so clear that with a light touch, a handful of scattered light would spread into them.

Fu Luo said, "Where are there so many heroes? Never mind heroes, in the future, how many people will be remembered by everyone for thousands of years, all over the world? You see, in ancient TV dramas nowadays, they often say 'leave it to future generations to judge', trying to look impressive. But what will future generations judge? They can't even be bothered to give you a like - and there are people like me who are rather uncultured. After the history exam, I return everything to the teacher. I can't even say the order of the presidents of the Republic correctly. Everything else is a complete mystery to me. You say I'm an A-level soldier, but what do I amount to? Calling myself a sidekick is already quite thick-skinned."

Wang Yansheng fell silent. A moment later, he stopped smiling, looking extremely serious under his graying hair.

"You're right." After a long time, he said, "Sidekick... being a sidekick is actually quite good too."

At this moment, Fu Luo suddenly heard another voice in the communicator in her ear.

"Fu Luo," Yang Ning said. As if anticipating her expression, he added, "It's okay, just listen to what I say. Just a few words."

Fu Luo thought she was being subtle, but when her eyes focused, the perceptive Wang Yansheng could tell that someone was speaking in her built-in communicator.

Wang Yansheng knew that Yang Ning hadn't said it in front of him just now, meaning he didn't want him to hear it. He was also quite tactful and obediently shut his mouth.

"First, if Wang Yansheng asks you to kill someone, don't listen to him. Let him find someone to do it himself if he's capable. Second, Wang Yansheng will definitely want you to find a way to temporarily cut off communication between the fortress and the ground. Do as he says, but keep an eye out and leave yourself a private line, no matter how unstable. Understand? Check from both sides to see what happened on the ground. Don't trust your teacher too much. Third, he has people in the General Staff Office. At this point, he has to show some sincerity. You just go directly to him for people, take them out and order them around as you please. Don't stand on ceremony. Fourth..."

"If," Yang Ning's voice paused slightly, "I mean if, when I'm not around, an unexpected emergency occurs that is beyond control, such as a failed coup on the ground, or the people of the other star system cause trouble again, or there are unexpected developments in the battle on my side, losing contact with the fortress, remember not to act rashly. Seal off the Saturn Fortress, you hear me?"

Yang Ning didn't explain the whole story. Fu Luo knew that she wasn't the type of clever person who could understand the meaning just from hearing a few words. It was normal for her to not be able to digest such a large amount of information all at once, so she could only remember it word for word.

"Hmm..." Yang Ning thought for two seconds, feeling that there seemed to be nothing else to add. "That's it. I believe Teacher Wang is a reliable person, so there shouldn't be any big surprises - anyway, I have a lot of confidence in you. You've never let me down even once."

The last sentence was originally ordinary, but Yang Ning's voice suddenly lowered, sounding like it was stuck in his chest, stuttering out with a bit of an echo. Fu Luo knew that she shouldn't let her imagination run wild, but Ye Wenlin's despicable face just involuntarily appeared in front of her eyes, his words still ringing in her ears.

She seemed to have received some kind of psychological suggestion, inexplicably sensing a hint of indescribable ambiguity from it.

A soft "click" came from the implanted communicator, and Fu Luo knew it was the fluctuation caused when the other party ended the call. She tried to bring herself back from her restlessness, thinking resentfully, "I must be crazy."

A moment later, Fu Luo felt that she couldn't have gone crazy so inexplicably, so she quickly found someone to blame: "That bastard Ye Wenlin, too damn annoying."

One hour after the rescue fleet left the thriving Saturn Fortress.

Zhang Liping from the General Staff Office changed into his on-duty space suit and walked out without saying a word.

Halfway there, an alert indicated the ship was under attack, and the alarm was transmitted to headquarters. Fu Luo immediately rushed out with the quick-response support team. When confirming the coordinates, she discovered that the communication was disconnected.

Fu Luo kept a straight face - she couldn't even tell lies smoothly, afraid of messing up the act, so she could only focus on maintaining an inscrutable, expressionless look. At this time, the communication system of Saturn Fortress had already reached a certain scale. There were two lines in it. On one hand, it could be relayed through the ground to achieve unimpeded ground-to-air communication. Not only for military use, the people in the fortress could also call their families every day to report their safety, or contact the ground to plan a coup or something.

And not long after the new year, the second on-site communication system also began to enter the experimental stage. It was not very stable yet and the range was not very wide, unable to reach as far as Earth. It could be used for air-to-air communication within a certain distance, so it had not been officially used and was only used as a backup system.

"Check for faults."

"Report, the No. 1 communication relay master station has temporarily stopped working."

"Continue troubleshooting."

"Report, the relay master station's shunt line is broken, and the signal is being interfered with by unknown energy."

Ye Wenlin raised his eyes and looked at Fu Luo thoughtfully, then smiled meaningfully, a very ethereal smile, quite the style of a new age science charlatan.

Fu Luo's eyelids twitched, wanting to slap Zhang Liping to death.

Can't you pretend the enemy attack is a bit more realistic! Can't you have some guts and blast the signal relay station with a cannon, and get another one in a couple days! If there's no money, you can always go rob some space pirates!

The new year has passed, what are you being so stingy for? The enemy comes from far away not to play with high-energy cannons and missiles, but travels thousands of miles to painstakingly cut the shunt lines?

Is this something a human could do?

An enemy this environmentally friendly must have damn well come from Copenhagen.

According to Fu Luo's original idea, she wanted to keep a low profile, and then even lower, preferably doing it flawlessly and silently, so that when everyone in the fortress closed their eyes and opened them again, they would come back to see that the earth had already changed, not being made so obvious that everyone knew what was going on.

This result was obviously not because Zhang Liping was particularly brainless and had made a mistake at work; it was definitely intentional on Wang Yansheng's part.

Fu Luo had never thought before that this elder brother, who spoke very briefly in Mandarin, was actually Wang Yansheng's pawn, and his honest and simple appearance was probably also an act. Now that she was standing here in place of Yang Ning, she inevitably discovered that she had also become a conspiracy theorist. Wang Yansheng wanted to push Yang Ning to the forefront and hide behind the scenes waiting to reap the benefits.

Ye Wenlin asked with feigned innocence, "Junior Sister, which enemy is so silly to do this?"

In an instant, Fu Luo had an epiphany.

Under the eyes of everyone, she used the emergency line - this was the core of the original "Dawn No. 2", which had a particularly limited capacity and was relatively immature. After the large-scale ground-to-air communication system was completed, it was individually preserved as an emergency backup - to contact Wang Yansheng.

Wang Yansheng had anticipated that the young and inexperienced Fu Luo would not be able to hold back and would definitely question him, so he had prepared in advance. However, he did not expect that when the communication was connected, he was actually facing a person from a reinforced squad.

The special agent leader and several unsuspecting soldiers on the ship looked at each other.

An air of awkwardness arose.

And Fu Luo, who caused all this, played her part, speaking without reservation like a real idiot, "Hey Teacher Wang, I have to hedge my bets. Did you cut the communication shunt line? If so, then never mind. If not, I have to call for reinforcements! I can't take this risk, I must ask for instructions from my superiors. Before he left, Colonel Yang said to ask for your instructions."

Wang Yansheng: "..."

Ye Wenlin: "..."