Chapter 4038

Shiler Andael Rodriguez piloted his spacecraft around to the market side, and indeed found the mother ship directly above the central tower of the market. It bore the same paint scheme of the Interstellar Safety Committee emblem, but beside it were docked several strangely styled spacecraft, clearly not standard issue.

By rights, the police had already gone down, so who would come to visit the mother ship?

But at this critical moment, there was no time for Shiler to think too much. His own spacecraft could be identified by the mother ship, and he himself held official credentials as an Interstellar Safety Committee agent, so he would not be attacked by the defense system, allowing him to smoothly fly his ship into the mother ship.

As soon as he entered, he noticed something was off. This ship was not empty; on the contrary, it was quite lively, as if a party had just ended. The air carried a scent similar to alcohol, possibly different in composition, but Shiler merely sniffed it and already felt a bit dizzy.

"These aliens actually take mind-altering drugs as snacks." Shiler sighed. He could roughly guess what was happening aboard this mother ship.

He did not first go to the cockpit, but instead went to the control center and checked the information of the visiting spacecraft. As expected, the several strangely shaped spacecraft he had seen outside all belonged to the black market boss Torlos.

Furthermore, searching ahead, Shiler found the information of private spacecraft belonging to over a dozen high-ranking officials of the Interstellar Alliance. That is to say, those aboard this mother ship were not only police, but at least over a dozen high-ranking officials of the Interstellar Alliance, some possibly accompanied by their families.

After copying this information, Shiler then found a scene of utter chaos in a banquet hall downstairs. Although not exactly like a human banquet hall, from the slime covering the floor and some very peculiar odors, he could roughly guess what they had been doing here earlier.

Shiler continued searching downward, and finally in the cargo hold of the mother ship's lowest level, he found a large number of octopuses.

Not an adjective, but real octopuses. Setting aside that each of these octopuses is over twenty meters long, aside from size, they are not greatly different from human octopuses. They were soaked in water tanks, currently in a somewhat dazed state.

As soon as Shiler stepped inside, he heard a voice say to him: "Human?! How could a human come here?!"

"Who are you?"

"I am a member of the Amikas tribe. Torlos sold us to those officials. They……they……"

"Alright, you don't need to say more." Shiler indicated he did not want to hear the details of the octopuses' suffering. He said, "I heard Torlos is also an octopus; why would he harm his own kind?"

"We are not octopuses, we……well, you are human, you decide. We and Torlos cannot be considered the same species; accurately speaking, we are two subspecies of a common ancestor, and we have a blood feud. Recently, their tribe launched a raiding campaign in our gathering area, and we are his captives……"

"Since you are captives, what else is there to say?"

"No, our two planets both joined the Interstellar Alliance, so we must abide by the Interstellar Alliance's laws of war and prisoner exchange regulations; we cannot arbitrarily kill or abuse prisoners. But he falsely claimed we died in battle, intending to sell us to the officials……"

Shiler also found it hard to imagine what the officials wanted these octopuses for, but thinking of Constantine, he could only say, the orientation of intelligent life is free; someone just likes octopuses, and there's nothing you can do about it.

"Alright, I can think of a way to rescue you, but I also have business here. As long as you are willing to cooperate with me, we can mutually benefit."

"You have standard equipment; are you disguised as a police officer to get in? You're not planning to assassinate these officials, are you?"

"Not at all." Shiler began circling the water tank, saying, "What I want to do is none of your business; first tell me what you can do."

"The Amikas tribe possesses innate psychic abilities. However, when Torlos captured us, he put psychic inhibitors on us. Merely because my body is smaller, the collar he put on me was the wrong model, so I can talk to you. As long as you help us remove these collars, we can use our psychic abilities to attack those officials; even if we cannot kill them, we can at least render them unconscious. Torlos is only one, and he is no match for us."

"But how can I guarantee you won't attack me?"

"By Amik God above, you are human; why would we attack you? We still want to live well!"

Shiler thought for a moment and felt their words made sense. Weak humans are trapped on the surface unable to leave, but anyone who can roam the universe is an unspeakable existence, let alone someone who can directly infiltrate the mother ship—any alien seeing them would detour.

Shiler stepped onto a crate, peered into the water tank, and then said: "How am I to remove your collars? Can you survive out of water?"

"We are not octopuses!" that voice shouted, "He put us in water because this water contains a drug that weakens us. You just smash the water tank, and we can fly out."

Shiler first looked left and right, saw no cameras, then recalled the earlier commotion on the ship, felt the ship's soundproofing should be decent, and directly fired his laser gun to smash the water tank. Sure enough, these octopuses became like jellyfish, beginning to fly wildly in the air.

"We are not jellyfish either……" that voice said helplessly, "Although we indeed evolved from the ocean, we have long since left the realm of lower aquatic life."

"Cephalopods are not lower aquatic life." Shiler said, then grabbed a tentacle of an octopus and pulled it down, using his laser dagger to cut the collar strung between their head and feet.

"Mom!! Humans!!! Don't kill me!!!" another scream rang in his mind.

Shiler ignored him, went to grab another octopus. After much effort, he finally removed the collars from all over a dozen large octopuses.

"Thank you so much!" the initial voice said, "You saved our lives; we will report to our emperor, and later when we come to Cygnus, we will treat you to drinks."

"No need for that; I hope you can help me knock unconscious everyone aboard this mother ship who breathes, and ensure that within the next hour, no matter what they hear, they will not wake."

"Rest assured, although our abilities are not comparable to Professor X's, we are more than enough to deal with these people."

"Do you know Professor X?"

"Of course, we were the first to tune into his channel, often chatting with him. I heard you've been fighting lately; if you need our help, just say the word."

"I appreciate the goodwill; when will it be ready?"

The octopuses collectively fell silent for a few seconds, then said: "Alright, they are already down, and will remain unconscious for at least several hours. You have ample time to do what you need to do; we'll leave first."

Shiler nodded. The octopuses quickly flew out of the cargo hold. Shiler followed behind them, but seeing their fearless stride, he knew there was definitely no one awake aboard the ship.

After the octopuses left, Shiler immediately activated the mother ship's communication system. Since the entire planet is now blockaded, internal communications cannot be sent out; otherwise, Arkham Batman would not have arrived so late—he must have spent considerable effort finding them.

But aboard the mother ship, there is no such worry, because the mother ship itself is part of the blockade, and of course it would not block its own communication system.

Shiler immediately connected to the communication of Apokolips, then said: "The opposing side has sent many people; if your reinforcements consist only of Batman, then you must cooperate with me, or we have no chance of victory."

"Reinforcements are not just him; there are also Supermen. But the opposing side seems to have anticipated our support, and mutants ambushed Superman en route; they are now engaged in battle and temporarily unable to disengage."

"Have the mutants still taken action?"

"Yes, but for now it's only some young mutants: Polaris, Quicksilver, Iceman, Human Torch, etc. Magneto and his group have not yet acted, but if they want to keep all the Supermen there, they will eventually have to mobilize."

"Alright, that's beyond my control. Now I need you to hack into the mother ship's control system, at least to be able to operate its weapons."

"What do you want to do?"

"Fire a shot at the ground."

In the lower mine tunnels, Arkham Batman and Constantine sat in the Batmobile, while the Batmobile, in a posture of reckless charging, continually rammed into the airborne Iron Man and the leaping Fantastic Four.

Constantine occasionally stuck his head out of the vehicle to shoot, but since the incoming foes were not particularly afraid of laser weapons, the results were limited.

Arkham Batman suddenly stomped the accelerator, sending an Iron Man flying toward him into a crash; only a "bang" was heard, and the Iron Man's armor sparked everywhere. Just that one hit, the alarm inside the armor blared nonstop—from chest plate to leg plate, nothing was intact, and its durability hit rock bottom instantly.

"Damn," Iron Man cursed, "what the hell is this vehicle?! My armor can't even withstand a collision with a car?!"

Mr. Fantastic quickly stretched his arm to pull him back. The next second, the Batmobile executed a 180-degree turn and charged toward him again; if this hit landed squarely, it would likely disintegrate directly.

Currently, those on the field have no solution against this recklessly charging Batmobile, because besides being able to fly, having a body shield, capable of short-range teleportation, and equipped with onboard weapons, it also has a driver with exceptional driving skills. Whether it's the flames from Pyro's discharge, or the Stone Man's strikes, or Mr. Fantastic's interception, none can stop this mud-hauling truck.

However, they also discovered that this vehicle seems to be powered by magical energy; since it is energy, it will inevitably run out one day. They intensified their attacks on this vehicle; even if they cannot break the shield, they must drain its energy, so that when the energy is depleted, an ordinary metal vehicle will surely not withstand their encirclement.

Mr. Fantastic continually used his infinitely elastic body to create speed bumps, stretching himself straight to block in front of the vehicle, like a carrier's arresting cable, but he dared not directly block it, because previously one had already been snapped; instead, he chose to interfere with the wheels, hindering its turning or cornering.

Pyro handled long-range attacks, Invisible Woman assisted the Stone Man in firing; they used Mr. Fantastic's body like a slingshot, launching the Stone Man directly as a projectile onto the Batmobile to strike the shield. Iron Man and the mechs alternately dodged the Batmobile's ramming and fired hand cannons. Spider-Man was responsible for reminding them to dodge.

For a moment, everyone cooperated quite well; the Batmobile's shield durability dropped rapidly, and Constantine could not help but feel anxious.

"We can't keep dragging this out with them; how did you get in here?"

"They were transmitted in." Arkham Batman replied calmly.

"Then you can't transmit out?"

"Will they give us a chance to transmit?"

Constantine also fell silent. Most transmissions require a wind-up, and with this attack density, transmission is easily interrupted.

But actually, that's not the case. Arkham Batman could leave if he wanted to—even if he couldn't transmit out, activating the phasing state and flying straight out would work. His only reason for not leaving is that he wants to keep all the enemies here.

The other side is stalling for time, and so is he. He believes that when Shiler decided to leave first, he already had a plan to bury the opposing side entirely here.

"Batman," came Shiler's slightly distorted voice over the communicator, "turn your shield to maximum and stay put, don't move."

The Batmobile braked instantly, the shield light blazing, so bright it was almost impossible to keep one's eyes open. At the same time, all the Spider-Men's spider-senses rang deafeningly.

Oom—

After the sharp humming sound, only a hollow tens of kilometers wide remained at the target point locked onto by the mothership's main gun, followed by successive flares of an intensely concentrated white light.