Chapter 983: Unknown Spaceship

The Mars Data Receiving Station, you can tell its function just by the name.

This is a ground data receiving station built by Base No. 2 within South America, specifically used to receive intelligence sent from the Mars Base on Mars.

Because of the changes in Mars' orbital trajectory, under normal circumstances, the Mars Base does not transmit intelligence to Earth on a fixed schedule.

The Mars Base only transmits a portion of its data back to Earth at irregular intervals when Mars moves into a near-Earth orbit, meaning when the distance to Earth is less than 100 million kilometers.

This data generally introduces the construction successes, scientific research progress, and so on, from the Mars Base over the past period.

In order to prevent this data from being easily intercepted by Earth, they generally use encrypted Cybertronian Script, specifically Elder Script, for transmission.

Although all the Decepticon Commanders in the conference room are not professional scientific researchers, their Cores still possess powerful computational capabilities.

Frenzy spoke up first: "I remember that Mars shouldn't be in a near-Earth orbit right now, right?"

"Correct! According to Mars' orbital speed around the Sun, it should currently be over 300 million kilometers away from Earth," Thunder also said in a deep voice.

Conducting long-distance data transmission in the universe not only wastes energy the further the distance is, but there is also a certain probability of data loss.

Especially when transmitting between star systems within a galaxy, the massive energy fields brought about by celestial movements will swallow up a large amount of energy radiation.

Therefore, unless it is an emergency, the Mars side will not easily take the initiative to transmit information to Earth when not in a near-Earth range.

"Decode!"

With an ominous premonition in his heart, Sun Cheng immediately issued the order.

"Understood, please wait a moment!"

The Central Main Control Intelligence—Huan—began to decode the encrypted information transmitted back from Mars, and the conference room suddenly fell into a dead silence.

No one was in the mood to watch the battle situation in Africa anymore, where the Tombwind Squad was surrounding and killing two Decepticon clone Warriors.

Not long after, Huan had already cracked the encrypted information transmitted back from the Mars Base.

"Commander, the encrypted information is a video recording. Do you wish to project this information?"

"Proceed!"

Soon, the projector displayed a video in the conference room.

In the starry sky, a small silver-gray dot appeared in the lens, moving from far to near.

"A spaceship?!"

An exclamation from a certain Commander rang out in the conference room, and the azure light in Sun Cheng's eyes suddenly brightened a few degrees when he saw the silver-gray dot clearly.

"Commander, this is information captured by a camouflage satellite we deployed in the Asteroid Belt."

At the same time, the voice of a certain Decepticon began to play from the video.

"According to the information captured by the camouflage satellite, this spaceship is very large. A conservative estimate is that it is at least two orders of magnitude larger than our Explorer-class spaceship, and the tonnage is very likely over two to three million tons."

"The spaceship flew in from outside the Solar System and did not perform any orbital changes during its transit."

"We have performed a series of calculations on its trajectory and concluded that there is an 87% probability that the spaceship's destination is Earth!"

"Currently, the Mars Base has entered a state of alert, but we have also noted that given the spaceship's speed and Mars' orbit around the Sun, unless the spaceship temporarily adjusts its flight path, it will likely not approach Mars!"

"The above is the report; please be on alert, Commander and everyone on Earth!"

The video ended quickly!

After all, it was a video transmitted from Mars; every bit of length added would consume more energy.

After the video ended, the conference room fell into a dead silence.

Everyone looked at Sun Cheng in silence, waiting for him to make a decision.

And Sun Cheng was indeed thinking.

"You all share your thoughts first..." he spoke up first.

Thunder noticed that many gazes had fallen on him; he thought for a moment before taking the initiative to say: "This unknown spaceship should not belong to the Autobot faction. According to known data in the Base's database, after the Civil War ended, the Autobots fled to the satellites and the universe. It is impossible for them to have recovered in just over a hundred years, let alone build a spaceship of this scale."

"And I noticed that there are more than a dozen suspected weapon emplacements on this spaceship... It is rumored that the spaceships built by the Autobots are mainly transport ships, equipped with only a small amount of defensive weapons; it is rare for them to have such obvious offensive weapons..."

"Hmm!"

Sun Cheng nodded; he also felt that what Thunder said made sense.

"Could it be the fleet led by Shockwave? Wasn't it said that Shockwave would arrive in the Solar System soon?" a Commander asked.

Sun Cheng only thought for a moment before shaking his head and rejecting this theory.

"It cannot be Shockwave's fleet..."

"Although the Decepticon Legion suffered heavy losses in the Civil War, they ultimately won the war against the Autobots and took control of the planet Cybertron. Although Cybertron's resources are now exhausted, even a rotten ship has three pounds of nails..."

"And when the Civil War ended, the Decepticon Legion still held a fleet of considerable scale!"

"If Shockwave were leading an army to Earth, it is impossible for there to be only this one spaceship."

"Then could it be the legendary Fortress-class spaceship of the Decepticon Legion—the Nemesis?" Frenzy suddenly interjected.

The Nemesis is a spaceship owned by the Decepticon Legion, or perhaps it is more appropriate to describe it as a space battleship or a war fortress.

During the Cybertronian Civil War, the Autobot faction once built a spaceship and named it the Ark.

Although strictly speaking, the Ark was not a spaceship with particularly powerful weapon systems; its prototype was actually a cargo ship from the era of the Cybertronian Elder Council.

But the appearance of the Ark at that time still caused quite a bit of trouble for the Decepticon Legion on the Civil War battlefield.

In order to offset the disadvantages brought by the Ark, at Megatron's request, Shockwave personally served as the designer and supervised the construction of the Nemesis spaceship.

That was a powerful spaceship over four thousand meters long and two thousand meters high. Although its transport capacity was far inferior to the Ark, it was equipped with terrifying weapon systems at the repeated insistence of the war maniac Megatron.

During the Civil War, the Nemesis, under Megatron's personal command, once bypassed defenses to launch surprise attacks and destroy many of the Autobots' cities and fortresses.

It could utilize space-distortion travel technology to achieve cross-regional travel similar to a Space Bridge, though the distance was far inferior to a Space Bridge, it had the advantage of being more flexible.

However, in the later stages of the Civil War, as the energy of both warring factions was depleted, both the Ark and the Nemesis, these two energy-guzzling giants, gradually disappeared from the battlefield.

But the legends they created still circulate among the Decepticon Legion and the Autobot faction.