Age of Cosmic Exploration

"I’ve said, no matter the price, I need one of those shadow creatures, alive or dead, big or small, complete or in parts. I need one of them!"

A major was yelling near the training camp. In front of him stood about one hundred soldiers in blue berets. No matter how hard the major yelled, the soldiers maintained similar expressions, one of calmness. It was a serenity that went deep into their bones; even death wouldn’t be able to shake them. These people were different from normal soldiers. If one had to make a differentiation... these people were similar to the Black Star Unit in the aspect of spirit.

The major yelled for a little more before taking a deep breath and concluding severely, "18 deaths, 6 soldiers and 12 scientists... 12 scientists are dead! But only 6 soldiers died? Are you telling me our soldiers are all cowards that only know how to run? This is such humiliation!"

The major strode back and forth in front of these people as he berated them. "Blue Berets are the best agents chosen from all over the world. You are the pride of human military, supermen in times of war and battle. Even though those shadow creatures are aliens like the ones we see in movies, you should have crushed them like Rambo or the Terminator... Now, bring your best weapons and form battle units among yourselves. Move out now to kill all the aliens surrounding the Noah One, then bring back on an alien’s body. I only need one... Dismissed."

The hundreds of Blue Beret soldiers were expressionless, but it was not from cold-bloodedness like that of killing machines or robots described in movies or novels, it was a deep-rooted confidence in combat. After all, those that were handpicked to join the Eden’s Blue Berets were not those flight risks that would go berserk during times of emergency.

Therefore, these hundreds of Blue Beret soldiers, other than being expertly trained, had ties anchoring them to the Noah One, be it ties of comrades, families, lovers, or children. Only over a hundred soldiers from tens of thousands of soldiers were picked to join the Blue Berets. Other than capability, one other important criteria was spiritual anchorage... In other words, the Blue Berets had people they cared about on the Noah One. They could be maintenance workers, normal civilians, or, if they were dying, the government would freeze their bodies and bring them onto Noah One.

Therefore, on the Noah One, other than soldiers, workers, and scientists, there were 20,000 normal civilians and 2,000 frozen, dying individuals. However, since they were of no direct importance to Noah One, from the beginning, Earth’s government didn’t release their information. Therefore, the Noah One had more than 30,000 people in the beginning. About 50,000 people were in it before the warp... Due to the accident during warp, now the Noah One only had around 40,000 people.

Since the Blue Berets were already given orders, they didn’t have much to hear. They studied the shadow creatures on video and ascertained that these organisms were indeed fast, at least as fast as a panther. They also seemed to have night vision and their shells was a chitin-like hard shell, causing the bullets to bounce off them. If shot from the front with rifles, they would need more than 10 shots before the bullets would really do any damage.

However, the Blue Berets knew no fear. After an emergency meeting among the scientists, they found out that heavy artillery like sniper rifles, high speed machineguns, or Desert Eagles could still kill these shadow creatures easily.

They had such a loss earlier because they were ambushed. With a plan in place, a landslide victory was to be expected. The Blue Berets were that trustworthy.

This point was clear to the Blue Berets and the major who gave the order. They were sitting on a certain victory. However, just as the Blue Berets prepared to move out from the training ground, twenty of them collapsed to the ground without warning and stopped moving completely.

When that happened, the remaining soldiers immediately spread out to create a perimeter. The medic soldiers started examining the twenty fainted Blue Berets...

"Their breathing is normal, but they are all down with a fever. There are no signs of unknown viruses affecting their blood. However, some of these people have started to show signs of organ collapse. The older the soldier, the faster the decline. When I came to see you, there were already two deaths..."

Norton looked at the people gathered before him with great tiredness in his eyes. They were all in spacesuits... Yes, wearing spacesuits in the Noah One was rather weird, but Norton couldn’t care about decorum anymore. He immediately asked the leader, "Professor Peter, all I need to know is whether this illness is transferable. If it is, through what kind of method can it spread? And how fatal is it?"

Professor Peter, who was also in a spacesuit, was a 50-year-old elderly man. He replied, "Captain, I also can’t get clear-cut answers to your questions... Sadly, there are too many things that we don’t know about this illness. We don’t even know what caused it. As I’ve mentioned, we cannot find anything virus-like in the patients’ blood streams. The tests that we’ve conducted came back with the normal profile of the bacteria back on Earth, so this doesn’t look like an alien infection, but..."

"But..." Norton frowned when he heard this one word. It was the single word that he was most afraid of then because this "but" could spell doom for more than 40,000 people on the Noah One...

"But none of us know what kind of form alien viruses could take." Peter sighed. "Perhaps they are similar to Earth’s microorganisms, or they might be a completely different entity. To put it simply... Perhaps an inconspicuous trace substance, like non-living metal particles or even dust, could be the virus on this planet. No one dares to say that such things don’t exist in the cosmos. Therefore, we had to quarantine the ship even before getting your orders."

The Noah One was under a completely militaristic ruling. The captain, Norton Maxier, had complete authority. Before the Noah One settled itself and a colony base was set up and filled up with at least 500,000 people, this kind of militaristic ruling would persist.

Earlier, after the first batch of 20 Blue Berets fainted, 200 plus people followed. The Noah One only had 40,000 people, so the news of mass fainting of 200 plus people couldn’t be suppressed. This created a hysteria among the public because this sudden fainting told everyone on board that... a super virus had infected the Noah One!

The first person to interact with these patients was the Noah One’s public health doctor, Professor Peter. Initially, they had no idea so many people had fainted, they thought it was only the 20 Blue Berets. However, following the increasing number of patients, they realized something had gone awry. Before Norton was notified, they issued a quarantine order. Other than the 200 plus people that were sequestered away, even those people that had constant contact with these 200 plus people were quarantined.

However, this would involve too many people, especially all the soldiers at the training grounds, because the Blue Berets fainted when there was a large amount of soldiers prepping for the next combat with the shadow creatures. The number of quarantined people immediately burst to over 5,000, and at least 3,000 were soldiers...

This was also why Peter came to see Norton. As they spoke, there were still at least 2,000 soldiers that refused to enter quarantine.

Norton looked at Peter and the experts behind him silently. He saw the determination in their eyes, and after a long time, Norton pushed the communicator button on his desk and spoke into it, "Order the first and second platoons to get into the training ground in their spacesuits... Bring along weapons and anti-riot shields as well as loud speakers. Ask those insubordinate people if they want to infect their own families and friends. Just ask them that..."

After that, Norton closed the communicator and turned to look at the people in front of him. Suddenly, he asked, "Professor Peter, answer me this truthfully. If this is really a super virus infection caused by alien bacteria... Can we fight it?"

Peter was shocked, and his face considerably paled. He sighed after giving it much thought. "...Pray that God blesses us. That is the only thing we can do."