[Sorry for yesterday mistake, I put chapter 174 and 175 together, and then also 175 which made it look repeated]
Commander White wasn't at the YoRHa Bunker, but that didn't mean YoRHa was unwilling to welcome him.
When Kain had first arrived in this world, she had still been at the Bunker.
But by the time he was about to head there, she had already left in advance for the androids' central base.
Because once he arrived at the orbital Bunker, there was no way the other high-ranking android authorities wouldn't find out.
And once they did, they would definitely try to make contact with him - or outright poach him. That could easily create friction with the YoRHa Bunker, so she had gone ahead first to stabilize the situation.
After spending a day at the Bunker, he would also depart for the androids' central base and make more formal contact there.
At the moment, he was reading through some of the intelligence on Machine Lifeforms that 6O had provided.
Out of the corner of his eye, he also glanced at a figure who looked distinctly restrained within the YoRHa Bunker. She was neither a YoRHa android nor one of the more advanced android models, but the leader of the ground resistance forces that had been fighting the Machine Lifeforms on Earth for ages - Anemone.
She had come to the YoRHa Bunker on the same flight as him.
She also knew some of the truth about the YoRHa forces, but rather than rejecting them or refusing to see them as fellow androids, she felt a strange sense of shared misery with them.
Because the ground resistance had long since grown dissatisfied with the higher-ups in the sky, those same superiors who did nothing but issue orders and send them charging into battle without regard for whether they lived or died.
Sometimes they were even forced to cooperate with experiments, and many of their comrades had died for the sake of those secrets.
The worst part was that they were told nothing. Not even a little. It made those deaths feel unbearably futile, humiliatingly meaningless.
In that sense, weren't the resistance forces on the ground just like the YoRHa forces - tools to be sacrificed at any time?
At present, Anemone was extremely tense, mainly because the information Kain was reading concerned a faction of Machine Lifeforms led by the individual known as Pascal.
"Anemone, do you think they're enemies?"
Faced with that sudden question, Anemone's entire body went rigid.
Her answer would affect the fate of those Machine Lifeforms, so she had to think carefully before speaking.
Under normal circumstances, Machine Lifeforms were the enemy. There should have been no hesitation.
And yet, after fighting them on the surface for so many years, she had become one of the people who truly believed the Machine Lifeforms had changed.
A peaceful faction had emerged among them. They no longer wanted war. They only wanted to live in peace.
And over the years, Anemone had received quite a bit of help from Pascal.
"I... I don't think so."
As she answered, Anemone gripped her pants so tightly with both hands that the fabric was nearly torn.
With that reply, she might be treated as an enemy herself, or branded a traitor and cast out.
But she truly did not believe the village Pascal had built, or the villagers living there, were enemies.
They genuinely yearned for peace, and they were obsessed with human history to a degree no less intense than the androids themselves.
Their fondness for humanity was obvious to the naked eye.
Every part of the village they had built was filled with traces of imitation, all modeled after humans.
At times, she had even entertained the absurd thought that she and Pascal were actually the same kind of being.
The only difference was the shell on the outside.
And Kain had also shared a piece of intelligence with her: the Machine Lifeforms really were imitating humanity and evolving toward a human form.
That was why they were currently investigating the Machine Lifeforms called Adam and Eve. Those two were mechanical lifeforms with human bodies.
And honestly, those names alone took some nerve.
Of course, according to Kain, those two humanoid Machine Lifeforms were warped.
Their interest in humanity was malicious. They wanted to dissect humans, study everything, conduct every kind of experiment on them, and see just how "playable" humans were.
If humanoid Machine Lifeforms like that truly existed, then they absolutely had to be exterminated. Those were deranged machines, lunatics.
They were nothing like Pascal. The Pascal and the villagers she knew would never harbor such cruel thoughts.
"Mm."
"Ah?"
Anemone blinked in surprise. Was that little "mm" his way of agreeing with her?
"Do you know? Before humanity was capable of creating androids like you, the robots they made were very similar to them."
"Are you saying we and they are the same kind?"
The moment Anemone said it, she regretted it. She shouldn't have blurted out something so sharp.
"What do you think? If they also possess emotions, if they have the same feelings you do - feelings that belong to a species called human - and if the way they live is also steeped in the flavor of humanity, then other than outward appearance, what real difference is there between them and you?"
That question made Anemone fall silent in thought.
But at the same time, the tension in her heart eased by more than half. From the looks of it, Kain was willing to accept Pascal's village.
"Lord Kain, do you think this Machine faction could become an ally?"
That was 6O speaking.
After learning that the YoRHa black boxes were connected to the Machine Lifeforms, even 6O's view of them had shifted somewhat.
And if the Machine Lifeforms Anemone had been in contact with were to become allies, 6O wasn't all that resistant to the idea.
Of course, the bad Machine Lifeforms definitely couldn't be left alone.
"They can become allies, but you still need to be careful."
"They might betray us?"
Were their loyalties unstable?
If that were the case, then 6O would not support an alliance.
"I don't think their convictions are weak. What I do think is that they're vulnerable to being infiltrated by hostile Machine Lifeforms and going berserk as a result. Since they're the same kind to begin with, intrusion is much easier. If possible, I'd recommend installing defensive software for them."
In fact, if their resistance to intrusion could be improved, then the war against the Machine Lifeforms would become much easier to end.
That was Kain's suggestion.
And as for installing defensive systems, the hard drive he had brought this time really did contain technology related to defending against hacking intrusions.
It wouldn't just be used on the pacifist Machine Lifeforms. A2's side would naturally need antivirus software installed as well, since they too could be targeted by viruses released by the machines and have their defenses breached.
That covered the software side of defense. There was also the hardware side.
It was basically like Magneto wearing a helmet that could block telepathic attacks.
Hm?
A transmission had come in from Tessa's side. They were preparing for another transfer of supplies.
That was because he had just unlocked another 1,000G of storage space, along with 1,000G of free transfer capacity. In other words, he could now trade matter with a total volume of one thousand cubic meters.
And after this, Kain would continue traveling to other new worlds.
By using the shared transfer bandwidth of the storage space, items could be sent back and forth between worlds.
That way, resources and products from different worlds could circulate rapidly, technologies could be integrated with each other, products could be cross-analyzed, and scientific development could be accelerated.
To that end, he really did have the idea of having A2's world construct thirty-one heavy warships of a dedicated type.
Of course, with only the technology currently being provided, any battle moons they produced would be nowhere near comparable to the Orks'.
So later on, he would look for even more starship-related technologies and bring them into this world.
There was an old saying: bite off more than you can chew. Naturally, he couldn't have A2's world trying to build every kind of warship under the sun.
They should specialize in one branch.
Just like in the twenty-first century, where there were many types of naval warships: destroyers, frigates, cruisers, supply ships, electronic warfare vessels, submarines, aircraft carriers, and so on.
Each category had its own dedicated research bases and shipyards. No single institute could study this type of warship, that type of warship, and every other type at the same time. Everything had to be subdivided, otherwise chaos would come far too easily.
As the saying went, every field has its specialists.
So if A2's world was going to research and manufacture warships, then its main responsibility should be the development and construction of mothership-class vessels.
(End of Chapter)
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