Understanding The Current Situation Part - 08

"So what have you guys found?" Asked Shiro.

"We have found that there are three orbiters around Mars currently which are still active and communicating with Earth." Replied Rin to Shiro's query.

"They are The Mars Odyssey, The Mars Express and The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter." Arturia continued.

"Minerva does that match with the data recorded in our database?" Shiro looked at Minerva and asked her.

"Yes it matches with the data, The Mars Odyssey was launched by NASA in 2001 and remained operational till 2025 and The Mars Express was launched by ESA in 2003 and remained operational till 2026 and lastly The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter launched by NASA in the year 2005 and remained operational till 2029. At least that's what the data shows."

"There are no discrepancies?"

"So far everything is historically accurate except the future which hasn't happened yet."

"What else have you found?" Shiro urged Rin to continue.

"Everything seemed normal at first glance, the date and time matched with what Minerva has found so far. The other two were acting pretty normal except The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, we noticed some weird behavior in it's communication channels."

"Weird behavior? What do you mean?"

"At first it seemed like it was doing what it was supposed to do. But then we noticed something unusual."

"Something else was copying it's geological scan data and sending it somewhere else."

"So we got curious and took a deeper look."

"Wait wait! are you sure you did not leave any traces behind?" Shiro panicked a little.

"Relax Shiro we did not leave any traces behind. We just watched. We did not touch anything. We just observed and copied the codes and didn't trigger anything so we are safe I think."

"You think? What do you mean you think?" Shiro became slightly agitated by Rin's words.

"What do you expect from us? We haven't seen anything like this before also there is nothing like this in the database."

"Shiro you should listen to their explanation first." Minerva interrupted their conversation.

"I guess I reacted a bit prematurely. Sorry about that Rin."

"It's alright I shouldn't have reacted like that either. Should I continue?"

"Please do."

"So where was I... right so we took a closer look and saw something similar to a program copying all the geological data and sending it somewhere through some unknown methods. But when we took a look at the codes it was complete gibberish at least to us it seemed like that. It was like looking at strange symbols that were acting like lines of codes. Here take a look at it yourself."

As soon as Rin said it she waved her hands and a large transparent display with lines of bizarre symbols appeared in front of Shiro.

"What am I looking at? These looks like gibberish to me. Can someone explain please?"

"What you are looking at are lines of codes, at least we think it is. These things follows a set of rules and logics found commonly in coding." Arturia explained what Shiro is looking at.

"This you guys understood by only the visual data?"

"Well yeah, if you look at it closely you will see repetition and patterns in the symbols for example here and here." Rin magnified certain parts to show Shiro the similarities among them.

"Since this whole thing is behaving like a program we compared it with different programming languages and found some similarities. From there we came to the conclusion that these are codes." Arturia explained.

"But the most important part is it's not running on the orbiter's computer rather running on a completely different system linked to the orbiter's onboard system." Rin continued.

"Hmm." Shiro put his right hand under his chin and started to think. After thinking for a while he looked at Minerva and asked her. "What do you think Minerva?".

"I agree with Rin. Besides I have detected some weird energy burst toward Earth from the orbiter."

"Do you have any idea of what those are?"

"If we are to liken it to something it would be similar to data burst."

"So those are the unknown communication method Rin spoke of."

"Most likely. We need further research before we reach a conclusion."

"Is it possible that the other party already detected us?" Shiro asked worriedly.

"That is very unlikely as Rin said that program is only sending the geological data collected by the orbiter to a predetermined address. It doesn't have any form of scanning ability or the ability to use the orbiter's onboard equipment. Most probably it was done to maintain secrecy. At least that's what we think."

"You think huh sigh. You are not sure?"

"It's impossible for us to be sure as we do not know exactly what we are dealing with. We need to scan the craft completely."

"But we run the risk of exposing ourselves to the whole world even if we avoid that it is still possible that the unknown entity will detect us. Is there any way we can isolate the whole craft and prevent it from communicating with Earth."

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(A/N: I actually don't remember the whole DXD timelines who came when and who met who when. So I'll do that as I feel also I did not complete DXD so I have to reread it. So many of the things I'll write may not match with the original. Think of this universe as one of the parallel universe of the original DXD world where things happened slightly differently. Oh by the way there won't be any gender changes for popular characters like some other fanfics. Some elements or character background in this novel may come from some other fanfics just because I like them (I'll try to mention those novel if I can remember their name. Most of them were dropped. You guys can also mention them in the chat to help me.

I might start a pa*treon after reaching chapter twenty and speed up the releases. I'll have to figure out first how to set it up though. As always thanks for staying with me. Peace.)