Shute said nothing about Xilin's silence. Xilin hadn't said much since the operation began. Shute just thought the kid was too quiet. Young people ought to be lively and cheerful.
"Xilin, don't worry about those for now. Once we've dealt with the black rats, specialists will come in while we repair the base. We need to head to the Waste Disposal Plant at the other end. That's their lair." Shute checked the time as he spoke.
"Wait... All right!" Xilin switched on the instrument and entered a string of commands.
"What's this?" one of the squad members asked. The writing on the instrument had been worn away by the black rats and was no longer legible.
"This should be some kind of instrument for analyzing genes," another squad member said.
"Yeah, this is one of the more advanced analyzers in the Star Alliance." Xilin took a small syringe from his waist pouch and dripped its contents into a groove on the instrument. He then pushed the groove into its slot and entered another string of formulas.
"See? I told you to read more. Then you'd know a thing or two when you ran into some piece of equipment. Otherwise, people would call you illiterate."
"Please. I'm a soldier. All I need to do is fight. Why would I need an education?"
A few squad members laughed and chatted.
But Shute didn't laugh. Xilin's reaction gave him a bad feeling. Huoding had told him long ago that Xilin was exceptionally talented and did research at the Seven Luminaries Research Department. Now it seemed the kid really did know his stuff. He'd repaired the instrument in less than five minutes, and he'd handled it like a pro. But hadn't Xilin just dripped black rat blood onto it? When had he collected that?
"How's it going?" Shute leaned over to ask. He couldn't make heads or tails of the complicated information on the screen.
Sure enough, being uneducated was scary. Still, just as his subordinate had said, all soldiers needed to do was fight. Their brains had limited memory, and too much information would overwhelm their CPU.
Xilin didn't answer Shute's question directly. Instead, he said, "Captain, could you help me out? Collect some of the black rats' blood left in the lab. As fresh as possible." Some of the blood had been left behind when the black rats fought among themselves or were injured by the lab's Defense System. As long as it hadn't come into contact with any chemicals, it shouldn't have changed much.
"Sure." Shute took the bag of small tubes Xilin handed him. Each tube contained a sterile cotton swab. He hadn't expected the kid to bring even something like this along when they'd prepared their equipment aboard the battleship.
Before long, the nine of them had collected twenty-eight blood samples.
Xilin found a few solutions in the lab and treated the samples. Then he put all twenty-eight into the analyzer at once. As he watched the stream of data on the screen, he sighed. "Wait here. I'm going to collect another sample. I hope I can find one."
"Hey, what's that kid up to?" one squad member complained.
"I've got a bad feeling," another muttered.
Xilin inspected a hole, took a few pictures, then jumped inside.
"Hey, you!" The squad member who'd followed him was so startled his hair nearly stood on end. That was a rat hole. They could barely move their arms and legs inside, let alone raise a gun. If a black rat suddenly came charging up from below, they'd be as good as dead. The life-sign detector hadn't picked up anything, but there were too many sources of interference at a research base like this. Instruments malfunctioned all the time.
The hole was pitch-black, and the people above couldn't see what Xilin was doing. He took off his glove and pressed his bare hand against the wall. The viruses carried by the black rats had little effect on him. As soon as he touched the wall, his mind began rapidly analyzing the information sensed by his fingers. The DNA analysis of the traces of hair, flakes of skin, saliva, and other minute residues left on the wall yielded data similar to what the analyzer had shown.
His fingers moved along the wall, then suddenly paused at a certain spot. Xilin put his glove back on, took a swab from one of the small tubes, and rubbed the area. He also used a carving knife to scrape off a layer.
When Xilin climbed out of the hole, Shute and the others finally breathed a sigh of relief. That kid was something else...
After Xilin tested the sample he'd collected in the hole and compared it with the more than twenty samples from earlier, another stream of data appeared on the screen.
"Just as I thought." Xilin pointed at the data on the screen and explained to everyone. "This compares the sample I just collected in the hole with the more than twenty samples you collected. The data here is based on an analysis of their genetic material. I won't go into the rest. The bottom line is, we've been fooled."...
Shute frowned. "Explain."
"I'll just tell you one thing." Xilin pointed to a line of data. "The red and white muscle fibers in the black rats we hunted were more than five times weaker than those in the one that dug the tunnel. That means the rat that dug it was far stronger than the ones we encountered, in both speed and endurance. And this is only a partial analysis."
"So the one that dug the tunnel was a different, stronger kind of black rat?" Shute asked.
"Yes. The black rats we shot couldn't even claw through the reinforced protective layer beneath this part of the base! I checked the holes. The claw marks are clean and sharp—they could tear through steel plates. If the rats we encountered had tried, they might not have managed to dig through even in a month. But how long had it taken to dig through the base?"
The squad members fell silent.
He was right. How long had it been since the base was breached? Just a few hours!
"Where are those stronger black rats? At the Waste Disposal Plant?"
"No. If my guess is right, their real 'elite' force is beneath the base's central district!"
Shute was shocked. "How could that be? They weren't—"
He'd been about to say that the black rats couldn't dig through the underground protective layer beneath the central district. But then he realized they might have been wrong from the very beginning. It wasn't that the rats couldn't dig through. If they had black rats that powerful, then no matter how sturdy the ground beneath the central district was, it couldn't hold out for long.
"What are they trying to do?" one squad member couldn't help asking.
"Get revenge. They want revenge." Xilin looked toward the central district. The base's most important researchers were there.
The rats they had shot were merely the black rats' advance force. Their true elite had yet to show itself. Xilin even suspected the black rat the Research Base had captured had been deliberately allowed to fall into their hands by the Black Rat Leader. That one wasn't elite either; compared with the one that dug the tunnel, it wasn't even in the same league.
The Waste Disposal Plant had once been their nest, because it had water and food. But now it was nothing more than a decoy, meant to make the task force waste more ammunition and time.
A feint to draw the enemy's attention while striking elsewhere—they'd used that tactic well. There were far, far more intelligent species in this world than people imagined.
"If you'd figured it out already, why didn't you say anything?!" one squad member demanded angrily.
"Say what? I had no proof. Would you have believed me?" As a student, Xilin knew that neither the military personnel nor the base researchers would believe him. So he'd rather find evidence himself before speaking. Xilin didn't consider himself a softhearted person, and he wasn't about to waste his breath on people who wouldn't listen. What did he care if they lived or died?
If Mo Heng knew what Xilin was thinking, he'd probably be angry enough to give him a good beating.
Before you continue