"No, you can't be exposed to Arasaka's sight... your target is to disarm the explosives inside the base facility, go."
Mercer issued the order: "Venus? Are you connected!?"
A somewhat blurred, indistinct figure appeared in the network, and Venus's voice became slightly noisy: "Your underground network signal is very poor... I am searching for a stable transmission channel."
"There's no time, you counter Arasaka's network from Earth for me, help me stall Arasaka's computational power... I will personally hack into the Moon Material Pusher permissions from the server."
As Mercer finished speaking, he had already started hacking.
At this moment, everyone and every unmanned device in the Moon Base that was hacked by Black Light began searching for the timed bombs buried within the base like an anthill.
These bombs are no longer networked once activated; perhaps Arasaka Saburo has a way to remotely cancel the explosion, but the management permissions for this explosion are not within the current service period.
Therefore, Black Light can only use the clumsy method of manually searching for the bombs and then using any hackable devices to hack into the bombs at close range and stop their explosion.
Mercer had a premonition that he's likely running out of time to ascend— even if he wasn't blown to bits, on this Moon, buried underground, who could he expect to dig him out?
But fortunately, he had made complete preparations long before, and if it reached the point of hopelessness for retreat, he would immediately conduct consciousness transmission and directly escape back to Earth after digitizing his consciousness.
Luckily, V was fast enough to escape before Saburo buried them.
No time to consider these trifles, Mercer focused fully on hacking the Moon Material Pusher.
Just then, V finally found the correct path through the complex corridors. When she bit her lip and reached out to pry open the last metal door blocking her, what lay ahead was a manned rocket launch center.
At this moment, the rocket's engines were roaring, and the manned cabin had already risen to the top of the rocket, dozens of meters above the ground.
All signs around indicated that the rocket was almost ready to launch into outer space.
V could see that the glass dome at the launch center had opened up, and her battle armor had entered space mode, beginning to maintain pressure balance and provide life support, indicating the ignition sequence had completed.
When the dome fully opened, quickly, silence surrounded her, even the rocket engine's roar disappeared, indicating the area had fully entered a vacuum environment, which also meant...
The rocket was officially launching.
"Don't think about escaping!"
She couldn't afford to think about Mercer's situation at this moment—she just kept running forward, leaping, as the propulsion engine on her back sent her soaring into the sky.
At this moment, the rocket was slowly leaving the ground.
Simultaneously, the enormous heat wave from the engine's flame jets caused V's flying posture to waver.
But ultimately, she managed to grab onto the rocket's external structure with a forceful grip, using both hands and feet, climbing up near the manned cabin during the rocket's ascent.
At this moment, the manned cabin's door was securely locked, but V just grasped a protrusion near the cabin door with one hand for leverage, while her other hand fiercely popped out a sharp Mantis Blade.
She stabbed the Mantis Blade into the cabin door's gap and then began prying it open with all her strength.
The process was far smoother than V anticipated, but also more dangerous. At the instant the Mantis Blade pried open the door gap, a powerful air wave burst forth, nearly blowing V away.
Fortunately, her other hand held on tightly. Under her helmet, V gritted her teeth, roared, and then forcefully pulled herself closer to the manned cabin, this time just holding onto that location, yanking and pulling with one hand.
Along with the rapid change of internal and external pressure, V felt with just a little force, the cabin door was immediately blown away by the airflow inside.
But simultaneously, a figure dashed out with the air current, directly lunging at V from the cabin.
V's view began to slow considerably, and appearing before her was a man clad in an apparently bulky spacesuit.
At this moment, the man grasped a Ribbon Short Knife, its blade reflecting cold light as it pointed straight at V's head. He executed a motion intending to send V flying away from the rocket.
V instinctively dodged sideways but realized halfway that something was off—if she chose to let go to avoid, the rocket was accelerating upwards at increasing speeds.
Once she let go, she feared her armor's thrusters alone wouldn't catch up with this rocket!
Thus, V made her decision.
Not only did she not let go, but she also charged forward vigorously, only tilting her head, praying her armor was sturdy enough, scraping her helmet against the Knife's edge while crashing her shoulder into the man lunging from the cabin.
In the dead silence of space, V could hear the sharp screech of her helmet being grazed by the Knife's blade and the dull thud as her shoulder collided with the man's body.