Chapter 9

Vlad gears up in a radiation suit and took one of the landing ships to investigate one of the ruins.

Once landed Vlad orders the drones to scout around and secure the area before heading out.

Vlad then steps out of the lander and saw an Alien city of some sort as the various buildings are falling apart and crumbling away under the harsh radioactive winds and acid rains that plague the planet.

Vlad then enters the city and scanned the structures.

Hmmm..... this place is quite new... only a few hundred years old...

Vlad wonders the streets all the while examining the alien structures and layout of the city, wondering what was the building philosophy the aliens had when they built the place.

Is it stability? Long-lasting? Ease of maintenance? Or cost?

The structures the aliens left behind window to glimpse at how the alien thinks.

Vlad then continues on scanning all the while thinking what happened to this place and how it ended up like this?

Vlad then enters a building that seems to be preserved much better than those around and began scanning the various pieces of technology that remains intact.

Hmm... quite primitive...

Vlad thought as he examines a device with a bunch of wiring. Vlad

Possibly a pre-space age civilization.

Having known a thing or two about technology the bulky design along with the huge numbers of wirings suggests that the technology level of the aliens is highly likely to be a pre-circuit board which is around the early 20th century.

Some people may know this but the past computers were quite large with some being as large as a classroom, but what most people didn't know is that 90% of that is just wiring.

Shocking isn't it? So when circuit boards were invented computers drastically reduces in size.

Vlad speculates as he further scans other pieces of technology around which further supports his idea.

Vlad then stumbles into a room

'Jackpot!' Vlad thought as he stumbles upon what would seem to be the skeletal remains of what used to be the inhabitants of this city.

Vlad then quickly orders the drones floating around him to quickly secure the specimen as he explores the area some more.

After exploring a few more buildings Vlad eventually found more alien skeletal remains.

To which Vlad orders the drones to secure the remains and bring it back to the ship to be analyzed.

Suffice to say the analysis didn't take long and before long the alien gene has already been mapped and sequenced.

Now Vlad is staring at a 3D holographic reconstruction of what the alien is supposed to look like.

Ugly looking creatures aren't they?

Vlad thought as he stares at the rodent looking creature displayed before him. (For reference lookup Skaven from Warhammer)

Vlad then reads the analysis reports taking note of anything of interest and it seems that the cause of death from most of them is due to high levels of radiation and a few from starvation.

Looking at 3D reconstruction Vlad decided to name the species "Rattus Erectus" which means Upright Rat but Vlad decided to call it Ratman for short.

Vlad frowns as thinks up all possible causes ranging from a global nuclear war to alien invasion to solar radiation.

Vlad thought about it as he continues sifting through the buildings, he eventually found a seeming functional computer terminal of some sort that is still in top condition.

It's probably due to the fact that it's located deep inside the complex that is able to be preserved in such an intact state.

Suffice to say Vlad was very excited when he found it as he wondered what manner of secrets it might hold.

Suffice to say he naturally want to bring it back to the ship to be analyzed but there's just one problem.

That being that the device is the size of a classroom, which gave rise to the same problem as taking a ship out of a bottle.

Not wanting to disassemble what he most likely could put back together Vlad had little choice but to just transport the entire room back into his ship!

It's naturally much more complicated than that as the room would need to be reinforced as they would need to destroy the building that houses it, then it would need to be prep and loaded into a large container to be sent back to the ship.

So... a few days later

After some painstaking effort Vlad finally got the bulky device into his ship and now being analyzed carefully.

Using delicate but powerful scanners Vlad is able to an internal view of the device and is able to get a general understanding of how the device works.

Having a general understanding of how the device works Vlad then inserted nanomachines to the device to be interfaced with the device and gain access to the memory backs without turning it on.

The nanomachines would occasionally probe the device with micro-electrical currents to figure out which part does what and so on.

Of course, this could all be done by machines automatically but Vlad decided to personally oversee it to ensure no fuck ups.

Vlad would be more at ease if he was the one personally fucking it up then some soulless machines.

(It's kinda like when the manager yells at you for the fuck ups but all of a sudden doesn't say anything when she fucks up on the SAME god damn thing you did!)

Now that is not saying the machines themselves are totally incompetent as they're more capable of the things they're programmed for.

And here lies the problem, keyword being "they're programmed for".

Usually, exploratory vessels or research facilities have more human crew usually taking up dozens of people at a time, compared to a battleship despite the large size yet it's only crewed by a single individual.

Now carriers might be a different story as certain large factions have players as squadron leaders of wings drone fighters, there are also fully automated drone fighter wings. Each has it's own advantages and disadvantages but that's kinda off-topic.

So to sum it up machines can't do what they haven't done before or been programmed to... at least not without human supervision.

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