Data exchange between machine bodies was highly efficient.
Hewie Three's core processing unit flickered with an eerie light. After accepting the grim fact that the Federation had fallen, it sank into a long silence.
Clearly, it was cross-checking and calculating, trying to find any information that might be false.
But faced with the wealth of footage and data Iax provided, Hewie Three had no choice but to accept the truth.
It sounded somewhat exaggerated, but that was indeed what had happened.
For a ship that had once carried the Federation's hopes for scientific research, the news was nothing short of catastrophic.
Trapped in folded space and unable to escape, Hewie Three had been forced to enter suspended animation. In that region where even the passage of time could not be perceived, it had slept for seventeen millennia.
Meanwhile, Iax directed the Heart of the Forge to deploy large numbers of Adaptive Cores into the city.
Hewie Three told Iax that it had not been an empty ship from the start.
Besides the machine bodies carried in its cargo holds, Hewie Three had entered the Warp with 170 human researchers aboard.
The plants in the Biological Cultivation Pods were food crops grown by one of those researchers back then.
At first, everything had gone according to plan. They deployed the machine bodies in the city, then hovered above it, waiting for the researchers to remotely operate those machines, complete the final experiments and tests, and organize and store the data to bring back.
But then something unexpected had happened.
The equipment responsible for separating Warp energy had suddenly gone out of control.
This enormous device was installed beneath the entire city. It drew the tides of the Warp directly into the city and separated them.
Warp energy itself was extremely complex.