Yu Lian couldn't help turning to look at the twin girls. This time, he was genuinely a little surprised.
In his memory, those triangular things shaped like flattened arrows, along with their round, spherical mother ships, were New Continent monsters known as "automated mining machines." Of course, they wouldn't become widely known until twenty or thirty years later.
They were called "mining machines," but they certainly weren't simple civilian equipment. They were extremely fast, highly maneuverable, and capable of jumping. Moreover, whether it was the heavy-ion impactors used to break up planetary rock or the lasers used to cut minerals, both could be deadly when fired at a warship's armor.
It was hard for anyone to accept that these things were mining equipment. But the truth was, in the previous timeline, when explorers discovered these ancient automated machines, they really had been diligently working in an uninhabited star system littered with broken asteroids, like a swarm of tireless bees.
It wasn't until the explorers carelessly moved too close that they finally disturbed them.
Scientists later concluded that these automated mining machines were relics left behind by the Enlighteners. Besides mining, they also protected mineral deposits and refining equipment. They were ancient creations from who knew how many years ago, yet after their creators had vanished from the universe... or perhaps ascended beyond the mortal plane, they still dutifully carried out work protocols established untold billions of years earlier.
On the whole, these mining drones were relatively harmless. As long as you didn't get close to their work area, you could even pass through the same star system without triggering their alert mechanisms.
But there had also been cases of them going berserk. For reasons unknown, they would sometimes act as if they'd taken too much combat stimulant and attack every