Arrival

As the battleship flew onward, Huoding began briefing everyone on the mission. A three-dimensional image of a planet filled the enormous screen, showing the base distribution.

"Six months ago, the Bio-chemical Base discovered that one of the mice that had failed an experiment and been declared dead had gone missing. A hole had been torn through the sealed cabin, but despite an extensive search, no clues turned up. Twenty days ago, something unusual happened at the Waste Disposal Plant on the other side of the planet. Three workers disappeared. All that remained at the scene were bloodstained scraps of work uniforms and claw marks on several instruments. Similar incidents kept occurring around the plant after that. Ten days ago, the base sent out a patrol squad to investigate. Half a day later, the life signals of the entire squad disappeared one after another. They couldn't reach anyone by communications."

Huoding switched the image to a black rat that measured half a meter from nose to rump, then continued, "The patrol teams were dispatched in force afterward. Three days ago, they found the cause of the crisis: black rats like this one."

From Huoding's briefing, everyone understood that the black rats were extremely resilient. At the base, confirming that an animal had died during an experiment was a strict process with a time requirement: it had to show no signs of life for twenty-four hours before it could be declared dead. The animals were also sealed at ultra-low temperatures while being transported to the waste plant. Under normal circumstances, even a live mouse would freeze to death at minus eighty degrees. They also checked for signs of life again to make sure. Yet the experimental mouse had bitten through its sealed cabin and escaped. That showed how powerful these mutated rats were.

The black rat that had escaped had been subjected to trials with an enhancement potion. It mutated during the subsequent UV sterilization and ultra-low-temperature transport. After escaping the base, it endured the planet's magnetic force and radiation, mutating again into the creature it was now.

"After suffering heavy casualties, the base's patrol teams finally brought back a live black rat that hadn't reached adulthood. The Antibody Serum you were injected with was provided by the base. But these black rats mutate quickly. We don't know how effective the serum will be by the time you need it, so I want to make one thing clear now: don't assume you're safe just because you've been injected with Antibody Serum!" Huoding said gravely.

After the briefing, Huoding split the five thousand personnel into ten teams. The five trainees were assigned to five different teams. Pride and Knight's teams were led by Gerard and Huoding, respectively. The heads of the Security Team and Training Department were personally taking charge of them; they wouldn't trust anyone else with the job.

Xilin was assigned to the Seventh Team.

Everyone organized their equipment. An hour later, they would assemble by team.

The five trainees' equipment was piled together. As they sorted through it, they chatted about their thoughts on the mission.

Hard, one of the two who had passed the preliminary selection, was outgoing and quickly struck up a conversation with Knight.

"Tell me this: if only one experimental mouse escaped, how did it turn into a full-scale rat infestation?" Hard asked.

Huoding had brought up the question too, but nobody had an answer yet. For now, everyone could only guess.

"It found a female rat outside," said Saqi, the last of the five. Saqi wasn't as forthright as Hard, but he was easygoing enough. He and Hard had been friends since childhood, and his father served in the army in one of the star zones in the Trade Ten Star Zone.

"Bullshit. There aren't any living things outside the base. The magnetic field is too strong, and there's radiation. Even if there were any creatures, they'd have been cleared out when the base was built," Knight said as he put on his Combat Suit.

"Sounds like our target will be a real pain," Saqi remarked.

"Hmph. If you're afraid of dying, don't go!" Pride sneered.

Saqi didn't take it to heart. They'd all spent plenty of time in the Training Department and knew what this young master was like.

"What do you think, Xilin?" Knight asked.

Xilin adjusted the tools on his waist pack. Magnetic fields were unstable on many asteroids, making Subspace Containers and the like unusable. In the end, they had to carry everything themselves.

"What do I think? Nothing in particular. But I do have a suggestion."

"Oh? Let's hear it," Knight said curiously.

"Don't think about how many mutated black rats you can kill. Think about how you'll get out of there in one piece."

Before Xilin had finished speaking, Pride scoffed. "Coward."

"Fine, I'm a coward. I don't want to become shit for a bunch of black, mutated freaks. Just like those workers at the Waste Disposal Plant. In the end, all that was left of them were a few bloodstained scraps of cloth. The rats even dragged their bones off to feed their young..."...

"Stop trying to scare people!" Pride shouted.

Xilin's words had to be admitted: they sent a chill down everyone's spine.

"Heh, we just have to kill them. We've got guns, after all." Saqi raised his gun.

"No. I just think things could be much worse than we imagine. The black rats might attack in greater numbers than they did during our preliminary selection test. And they're intelligent; they don't just act according to a set program. They have teeth that can bite through a laboratory's sealed cabin and sharp claws. Their saliva contains toxins, and their bodies carry animal viruses," Xilin said seriously.

Xilin wasn't exaggerating. His conclusions came from analysis. He had even factored in the asteroid's radiation levels and several other parameters to calculate the black rats' mutation rate. But looking at the personnel on this mission, as long as the drugs in the warheads remained effective and they wiped out the mutated rats thoroughly enough, they should be able to handle it.

The guns were different, and the bullets were larger and heavier than training rounds, with a slightly slower speed, because each one had been specially made to contain medicine. When a bullet hit a mutated black rat, it would explode, spreading the medicine through its body and killing it quickly and thoroughly. The medicine would also affect nearby mutated rats, reducing their mobility.

Pride still looked disdainful, but he had taken Xilin's advice to heart. Who wanted to risk their own life? He certainly didn't want to become shit for those black freaks.

After the battleship reached the asteroid, it docked with the Space Station. Huoding and Gerard took a few people with them to learn more about the situation, while the rest waited aboard.

Before long, Huoding and Gerard returned, their expressions grim. They explained the new information they'd just received.

An hour ago, the black rats had breached the base from underground. Only the ground beneath the base's central section was sturdy enough to hold them back. It would take them some time to break through that layer of protection, but there wasn't much time to spare. The rats had chewed through much of the base's Flight Equipment and Communication Equipment. Several hundred researchers were trapped in the central area, more than a dozen of them seriously injured, with toxins in their bodies. None of the Antibody Serum they'd been given had worked. The Central Laboratory was preparing a suitable serum, but nobody wanted to imagine how many other unknown toxins there might be. The base's outer areas had already fallen.

"Teams One through Eight will handle the 'cleanup,' starting around the base's central area. Team Nine will protect the engineers as they repair the base's Defense System. Team Ten will help the trapped researchers escape. Medical Reserve..." Huoding rapidly issued one order after another. He only assigned each team its task; he trusted the soldiers under his command to decide how to organize themselves.

Huoding would have preferred to assign Knight and Pride to the last two teams, but he knew that if he did, those two would probably refuse to listen.

The Seventh Team, where Xilin was assigned, was divided by its captain into five squads of one hundred people each. Each squad was then split into ten groups, which would advance as units.

The ten teams moved out. The first eight went ahead, and eight Armed Transport Aircraft landed around the base's central area from eight different directions.