Reincarnated as an Energy with a System

Chapter 2070: Battlefield

The cadets were given suits for the outdoor portion of the visit and led on a slow walk through the ruins, with the guide stopping at several points along the way to tell them more about the people who had lived there.

She told them about the families who had raised children inside those domes, about the mining crews who had worked shifts beneath the surface, and about the last group of residents who had stayed behind to shut down the life support systems one section at a time before boarding the final ship out.

Halfway through the visit, the cadets were given their test.

The questions appeared on their helmets as they stood in the middle of the colony’s central plaza, and this time, they were considerably more involved than the one at the transfer hub.

The test covered environmental hazards and life support failures, asking about the signs of an impending system breakdown, the order in which critical systems should be prioritized during a failure, and how long a person could survive under various conditions if the air began to run out.

Ning finished it quickly.

To his mild surprise, so did Jason.

When the results were displayed afterward, Jason’s score was among the highest in the class, and several cadets looked at him with open surprise. Jason himself seemed almost embarrassed by it, but Ning understood the reason well enough.

The colony’s systems were old technology, and old technology was the one subject Jason seemed to know better than anyone.

That became even more obvious during the rest of the visit. Jason kept stopping in front of rusted machinery half buried in the dust, crouching beside old air recyclers and broken pump housings and the exposed remains of power junctions, looking at each one with the same complete absorption Ning had seen in their dorm room.

More than once, he fell several steps behind the group without noticing, until Lorna finally had to turn around and call his name.

"Cadet, you can admire the equipment from closer to the rest of us."

Jason flushed and hurried back, though he had stopped again within a few minutes.

As they walked, Jason began talking to Ning about the machines they passed. He explained what each of them had been used for, how they would have worked when the colony was still alive, and what had probably gone wrong with them toward the end.

He spoke quickly, with more energy than Ning had ever heard in his voice, pointing out corroded seals and cracked casings and outdated designs that had been replaced in later colonies.

Ning listened and noticed how much more Jason talked when old technology was in front of him.

For a young man who usually struggled to fill a pause in conversation, Jason had barely stopped speaking since they arrived, and for once, he did not seem to be searching for what to say next.

On the third morning, the transport craft carried them farther than it had on either of the previous days, flying for several hours across a wide stretch of Jalun’s surface before descending toward a vast, open plain bordered by low hills.

The guide did not speak much during the flight. When she finally stood at the front of the cabin as they began their descent, her voice was quieter than it had been at the transfer hub or the colony.

"This is the site of the first Mekharan incursion into this system," she said. "What you’re about to see has been left almost exactly as it was on the day the battle ended."

The craft landed inside a small pressurized shelter at the edge of the plain, and once the cadets had changed into their suits, they were led out through an airlock and onto the battlefield.

The wreckage stretched across the plain in every direction.

Human Mechas lay where they had fallen, some of them almost intact, others broken into scattered pieces across dozens of meters of red ground.

Among them lay the remains of Mekharans, their bodies twisted and torn open, their structure looking strangely similar to the human machines beside them, as though the two sides had been fighting their own reflections.

Larger shapes rose further out on the plain, the shattered hulls of ships that had come down during the fighting, half buried in the dust.

Jalun’s thin atmosphere had no strong weather to wear any of it away.

There were no storms, no rain, and only the faintest of winds, so the wreckage had remained almost exactly as it had been left, with the scorch marks of weapon fire still visible on the metal and the deep furrows of crashed machines still carved into the ground behind them.

The mood among the cadets was somber.

Nobody joked or laughed the way they had at the transfer hub or during the dodgeball game. With the rumor of a captured Federation planet still fresh in everyone’s mind, the battlefield did not feel like a piece of history so much as a reminder of something that could happen again, perhaps very soon.

They walked through the wreckage slowly, following the guide along a marked path that wound between the fallen machines.

"The Mekharans didn’t arrive here as an invading fleet," the guide explained, stopping beside the remains of a large ship whose hull had split open along its length. "At least, not one that anyone recognized. They came disguised as cargo vessels, flying the same routes and broadcasting the same kinds of signals that ordinary freight ships used at the time."

She rested one gloved hand against the edge of the broken hull.

"This was one of them. It came into the system alongside a dozen genuine cargo ships and was given clearance to approach Jalun like any other. Nobody suspected anything until it was already close enough to land. By the time the garrison realized what it was, there were Mekharans on the ground."

Several of the cadets looked up at the ship with new unease.