Alien Relic Hunter

Ke Lan turned his head and glanced at the cargo box behind him. Although there was no label on the cargo box, he had already read the cargo list before boarding the transport ship... More than 90% of the goods in these boxes were They are all protein blocks made from cockroaches. In addition, there are several old water circulation treatment equipment and a batch of drugs.

This batch of drugs is also not used to treat radiation sickness. Most of them are nutritional supplements with extremely low production costs. They are used to replace some of the vitamins and minerals that cannot be obtained from protein blocks, and the rest are all Painkillers and sedatives.

These goods were raised by several different mining companies, as were the miners suffering from radiation sickness - they came from 11 mining companies under five consortiums, and these mining companies all belong to the Alpha Star Mineral Development Alliance .

The Alpha Star Mineral Development Alliance was established thirty years ago. Its main purpose is to solve the aftermath of these miners suffering from radiation sickness. Every once in a while, the companies in the alliance will collect the sick miners. Together with these supplies and materials, they were sent to the sick village. This time, it happened that the Mitsui Consortium was responsible for transporting people and materials.

The Alfa Star Mineral Development Alliance announced that out of humanitarian spirit, they established a complete sanatorium on the South Sixteenth District space station, where every unfortunately sick miner can be properly treated... Therefore, they even filmed a so-called documentary to depict the comfortable life of these sick miners in a nursing home... Of course, this documentary was not shot on the space station at all, and those so-called sick miners, They are just actors hired by the Development Alliance.

As for what the real sick village looks like, no one knows at all - even the captain of the transport ship will only stay briefly in the loading area of ​​the space station and never go deep into it.

All exploration records have been sealed and are inaccessible to those with insufficient authority. As for the media, they have all been issued a gag order and are strictly prohibited from reporting any news related to the South Sixteenth District.

The energy of the Mineral Development Alliance alone cannot achieve this level. This only shows that Ark officials have acquiesced in this matter.

After all, in a high-radiation mining area, it is difficult for a fully automatic mining robot worth millions of credits to have a working life of more than two hundred hours. Manufacturing such a robot requires a large amount of precious resources, but the minerals mined during its short working life are simply not worth its own wear and depreciation rate...

A miner who only needs to pay a few thousand credits per month can work for at least two to three months before he suffers from physical problems.

Feeding a miner does not require the consumption of energy crystals, nor does it require silicon crystal chips and precision circuit boards that are easily scrapped in a high-radiation environment. It only requires protein blocks and water, plus a bed for people to lie down and sleep on. , is enough.

For the ruling class of Ark, population is also a resource, and it is also a very cost-effective resource.

From the perspective of a mining company, not to mention efficiency, the cost of manual mining is obviously much lower than using fully automatic equipment... Moreover, they will never worry about not recruiting enough miners, with thousands of credits Although the monthly salary is not very high, it is still a great temptation for people at the bottom of society - the salary levels in factories and service industries on Ark are not even as high as those of miners. Those who have no background and capital, and no For people with certain abilities or special skills, becoming a miner may be the fastest way to make money.

Anyway, we have protective clothing and anti-radiation drugs. If we only work for a month or two and then leave, we should not be so unlucky that we will get radiation sickness... Many people have this idea when filling out the application form.

Judging from the data provided by the Mitsui Foundation, the ratio of lucky people to unlucky people is about three to one. In other words, only one person in every four people will suffer from radiation sickness...compared to the number of ruin hunters. Mortality rate, miners are already considered a low-risk occupation.

Few people who sign up to mine think about what the outcome will be like if they become one of the unlucky quarters.

The current standard treatment method for radiation sickness on Ark costs 90,000 credits for one course of treatment, which is almost equivalent to three years of their salary. And none of these miners can work in the mine for three years...

Ke Lan suddenly remembered a sentence: The probability is zero if it is not his turn, but if it is his turn, it is 100%.

And the people in this cargo hold, except for the two of them, are all poor people with a 100% chance.

A slight vibration came from around the cabin, and Ke Lan knew that the transport ship had left the port at this time and began to sail towards the sick village floating in low-Earth orbit.

The unusual movement of the transport ship caused a brief commotion among the miners, but it quickly subsided... Radiation sickness has drained their physical energy. For these people, even talking is a very strenuous task. , let alone move his position.

Many people were lying on the ground in a mess, their skinny bodies shaking with the ground of the cargo hold.

One miner began to vomit, but he had no strength to get up from the ground. The vomit that came out of his throat poured back into his trachea - his body began to twitch, his feet kicked slightly, and his face gradually began to It turned blue and purple, and his two eyes protruded from their sockets, as if they were about to roll out... After about two or three minutes, he stopped struggling, and the hands holding his throat loosened and fell to his body. both sides.

His chest stopped rising and his pupils began to dilate. He was dead.

The miners who were sitting looked at him with indifferent and dull expressions on their faces. Within two or three minutes, no one was willing to step forward to help him... They seemed to be numb to death, or maybe, I don't want to waste my energy on strangers at all.

Ke Lan did not move. This was not because he was as cold-blooded as the other miners, but because he noticed that two miners had a familiar pattern tattooed on their bodies... The last time Ke Lan saw this pattern, it was still there. A missionary who is obsessed with himself.

These two miners are members of a heretical sect!

Moreover... their status in the sect may not be ordinary!

As far as Ke Lan knew, ordinary believers of the heretical sect would not have such emblems tattooed on their bodies. At least he did not have such emblems on the bodies of the people in the Arasaka Consortium or the exiles who entered the bottomless sinkhole.