A is in StarCraft, just disembarked from the Zerg Prince spaceship.

************

……

The massive Prince-class warship sailed smoothly on the route to the Federation of Humanity.

The starry sky is dazzling, and we are filled with hope.

Gao Tian was chased by the snow leopards all over the spaceship.

"Holy crap! Sister Leopard! Be gentle! My hair!"

The leopard is licking your fur. The snow leopard enthusiastically licked Gao Tian's head with its huge tongue covered in soft barbs, ruining his carefully styled hair into a messy tangle.

While dodging, Gao Tian also had to guard against the little snow leopard chasing and gnawing at his feet.

The brat is still holding a grudge, and it's not good for him to hit his mother here. Go away, go away, go away!

The little snow leopard pawed at him restlessly, making excited "awoo awoo" sounds in its throat.

I'll hit you!

"Bambo! Do something about them!" Gao Tian cried out for help to Bambo, who was preparing fresh meat for the snow leopards, while desperately trying to fend off Sister Leopard's enthusiastic hair washing.

Bambo smiled and said, "Your Highness, the Ruby Beasts just like you."

The Crown Prince sat with his legs crossed, handling encrypted communications. Occasionally, he would glance up at the Crown Princess and the snow leopard playing around, and a slight smile would appear on his lips.

"Okay, okay, you like me, right?" Gao Tian couldn't stand being licked by Sister Leopard, so he forcefully pushed away this heavyweight, then picked up the little snow leopard, threw it into the open space next to him, and ran away.

The little snow leopard immediately let out a "roar" and, with its four already well-coordinated short legs, waving its chubby little body like ocean waves, chased after it!

Seeing them run away, the snow leopard immediately growled and chased after them with elegant yet swift big-cat steps.

"Why are you chasing me?! I don't have any cough syrup!" Gao Tian was both amused and exasperated. He sped up and began chasing them in the passageway leading to the cockpit.

He ran out, then ran back.

The door to the driver's cab slid open upon sensing Gao Tian's authorization.

Gao Tian rushed in first, followed closely by the little snow leopard like a fluffy little cannonball, and the leopard sister's huge body also squeezed in nimbly.

The driver's cab contained many sophisticated instruments, and Lan, Bampo, and several duty officers were all there.

Fearing they might bump into the surrounding instruments, Gao Tian led them to circle around the blue control chair in the center of the driver's cab and the resting sofa behind it.

After circling twice, the snow leopard seemed to have finally gotten tired of playing with him. It pounced and caught up with him, knocking Gao Tian down.

"Ouch!" A snow leopard weighing four or five hundred kilograms pounced, and Gao Tian instantly lost his balance and fell flat on his face!

It's going to crush it! ...

He instinctively reached out to grab something, but only grasped at air, his entire body enveloped by Leopard Sister's thick fur: "Ugh—"

My darling, help me—

The crown prince ignored him and climbed high into the sky before finally peeking out.

The snow leopard cubs immediately surrounded Gao Tian, ​​excitedly leaping and bounding about, trying to slap Gao Tian's face with their claws, and making victorious growling sounds in their throats.

"Go away, go away, go away!" Gao Tian waved his arms to shoo it away, while trying to sit up.

Leopard Sister's weight of four or five hundred kilograms pressed down on his back, preventing him from getting up.

"Sister Leopard, you've crushed me!"

Gao Tian struggled violently.

The cricket, after much difficulty, managed to get up and braced itself against the floor beside it, preparing to stand.

Just then, he looked up and inadvertently glanced at the junction of the sofa and the metal floor, and noticed something amiss.

The sofa in the Crown Prince's cockpit has a base, which is then fixed to the floor with screws.

One of the screws looks a bit odd.

There is a small protrusion on that fixing screw.

That's strange.

It looked like a tiny, irregularly shaped burr on a screw, but Gao Tian just felt it was very strange.

The small, dark gray protrusion was almost blending into the screw, making it very inconspicuous. It was completely invisible from above; you had to lie on the ground and look at it from the side to see that the screw was slightly higher than the three screws next to it.

If he hadn't fallen at such a close angle to the screw, he would never have noticed it.

Gao Tian's heart skipped a beat.

He continued fighting the snow leopard cub without showing any emotion, carefully observing the bulge out of the corner of his eye.

It was a tiny device, barely visible on the surface, about the size of a grain of rice, with no markings except for a small black dot on the side.

It is cleverly attached to a fixing screw on the base bracket, almost the same color as the screw, and completely invisible from a normal viewing angle.

All his playful thoughts vanished instantly, a current surged up his spine, and with a hiss, Gao Tian's hair stood on end.

His years of experience in counter-surveillance at military academy told him that it was very likely a miniature pinhole camera.

Its location is ingenious, taking advantage of the structure of the sofa base and the blind spots of common viewpoints in the cockpit, making it very discreet, and the installation method is also very professional.

Who installed it here to monitor the Crown Prince? When?

Orion? Or a royalist?

What is their target? To monitor us, Little Butterfly? Or are they about to carry out an assassination mission?

Countless thoughts flashed through my mind like lightning.

Gao Tian felt a chill run down his spine, but he maintained the same playful smile as when he was frolicking with the snow leopard, as if he hadn't noticed anything. He then naturally got up and sat on the sofa.

He pretended to casually step on the base, blocking the camera with the sole of his foot, and sent a message to the Crown Prince:

There seems to be a hidden camera under the sofa.

The Crown Prince saw this message.

He remained expressionless, casually scanning everyone in the cockpit.

Several officers on duty were watching the instruments, while Bambo was preparing to feed the snow leopard meat.

Gao Tian was still fighting with the two snow leopards, but deep in his eyes was a cold sharpness.

The Crown Prince raised his hand and pressed a red button next to him, sealing off the entire Crown Prince Ship!

The warship AI directly contacts the Crown Prince and obtains the highest-level command: to completely block and scan the warship.

The cleanup protocol has been initiated.

[The entire ship has entered Level 1 silent monitoring status.]

[Target: Cockpit area. Investigate all abnormal signal sources and signs of physical intrusion. Identify all personnel who have had contact with the cockpit rest area and their activity patterns.]

[Executors: Shipborne AI Xiaozhi and its direct monitoring team.]

Keep communication silent.

……

The interior of the Prince ship seemed unchanged; the engines continued to run smoothly, and the lights remained constant.

However, the core programs of the shipborne AI are already running at high speed.

Countless streams of energy burned fiercely, and multiple invisible data streams began scanning every corner of the ship, especially the cockpit area.

Meanwhile, the monitoring team has quietly dispersed to various areas of the ship through hidden passageways to stand by.

Soon, the screening results from AI Xiaozhi came out.

In an abandoned equipment room on the third floor below the cockpit, extremely weak residual pulse signals encrypted with multiple frequency hopping were detected.

The signal source is located in a fixed position, but the device is in deep sleep mode.

The signal characteristics partially match those of several known advanced spy devices.

There really was an undercover agent on the Prince ship.

This isn't difficult to investigate. There aren't many people who could access the sofa in the bridge of the Prince-class destroyer and quietly install a camera on it.

Xiaozhi performs high-speed cross-comparison of all personnel files, access records, and activity trajectories on the ship.

The focus is on screening all personnel who have entered the cockpit.

And all personnel with equipment maintenance privileges.

Soon, a name was highlighted – Mechanic.

Lan's eyes instantly turned cold.

He even remembered this mechanic.

The mechanic was not a newcomer, but a veteran who had served on the Prince for over eight years.

From the moment he received the ship from the Prince Shipyard, completed its construction, finalized the tests, and began its first sea trial, he was responsible for the core propulsion system and environmental maintenance on board.

He was highly skilled, taciturn, and diligent in his work. He never made any major mistakes and was recognized as a good person on the ship.

Who would doubt such an honest and hardworking old colleague?

"Target locked: Mechanic. Location: Lower D section, engine room. Arrest him, seize all his personal belongings and work area, and cut off any possibility of external communication." Lan issued the order directly to the surveillance team via an encrypted channel.

The inspection team acted with lightning speed.

While the mechanic was recording reactor parameters in the engine room without his knowledge, several prosecutors appeared silently behind him.

He was subdued in an instant before he could even react. His personal computer, toolbox, and locker keys were confiscated immediately.

The camera under the Crown Princess's feet was also removed.

The interrogation was not conducted in the driver's cab.

The mechanics were secretly transferred to the deepest, highest-security isolation room on the ship.

The Crown Prince personally participated in the interrogation, while the Crown Princess observed from behind a one-way mirror.

The mechanic remained silent at first, his eyes as still as a deep well.

The kind of undercover agent he is is the most difficult to deal with. This means he is mentally strong, or even has faith, and will never reveal secrets because of coercion, bribery, or simple intimidation.

But when Lan directly took out his computer communication records, the mechanic's tense body relaxed a little.

He knew he had been exposed.

With the assistance of the AI, the Prince's technical team conducted in-depth data mining and recovery on his optical brain, recovering a series of shattered and overwritten encrypted communication fragments from the data layer.

The time span of these fragments is alarming, with the earliest record dating back eleven years to when the Prince-class destroyer had just begun construction.

The sender used extremely complex anonymous gateways and relays, while the receiver had only one alias:

——"Your Highness".

Looking at these surveillance fragments that spanned his entire adolescence and adulthood, and the thought that they had all been sent to Orion, the Crown Prince felt nauseous. His gaze towards the mechanic was as cold as ice.

"I installed it," the mechanic said hoarsely. "I did it casually a few years ago when I was doing routine maintenance on the sofa's hydraulic lifting system."

"Just a convenient thing?" The Crown Prince's face was expressionless, and his voice was devoid of emotion. "Orian abandoned you all, and you've been infiltrating for him for nearly thirty years. How convenient."

The mechanic was silent for a few seconds before slowly saying, "I owe Your Highness a life. Many years ago, on the edge of the Empire, my mining ship was attacked by the pirate leader Andas, and he happened to be passing by and saved me. He didn't need me to do anything, he just said to keep an eye on this ship and on you."

"Keep an eye on them," the Crown Prince scoffed. "Keep an eye on them, shall we?"

The mechanic paused for a moment, then said, "Second Prince... has always been very concerned about you."

This expression of "concern" seems incredibly ironic at this moment.

What's even more disgusting is that he seems to be serious.

Blue brows furrowed, looking like he was about to vomit.

The mechanic had been Orion's eyes and ears for many years.

The fact that he always called him Second Prince Orion indicates that in his father's time, the mechanics were already Orion's subordinates.

When Orion rebelled against the Empire, he didn't take many of his men with him, and the Mechanic was probably one of those who were left behind.

The second prince back then wasn't as monstrous as he is now (or perhaps he was suppressed by his father and dared not show it). He had a lot of charisma and many loyal followers who were extremely devoted to him.

Although Orion may have seemingly abandoned the throne and become a space pirate all these years, he has never actually let up on his surveillance of the capital. He has had spies on the Crown Prince's side since the Crown Prince was a child.

That was close.

If the mechanic isn't caught, Orion will be fully aware of all their subsequent actions.

This mechanic seems to have been brainwashed; he can't distinguish right from wrong and only knows about the Second Prince.

Ugh, that's disgusting.

This is the mechanic; I don't know if there are any others.

That piece of trash Orion has been monitoring him since he was a child.

Concerned, huh! He probably cares whether his dad is dead or not!

After all, once the Crown Prince dies, Orion will be the rightful first and only heir to the Skyllway royal family.

At this point, he can deal with the royalists, kill the insect king, and immediately succeed the insect queen.

The Crown Prince is so grown up now. It would have been easier to take action against him when he was a child, but at that time, the Parliament and the Xiongbao Society controlled the Empire and wielded immense power. Orion didn't have enough to sway them, so even if he killed the Crown Prince, he wouldn't gain anything.

Now that the Crown Prince has risen to power, the Xiongbao Society and the Parliament have declined, and the Royalists are increasingly unable to contend with the Crown Prince's faction. They urgently need the support of external forces, which are relatively easy to subdue. This is how Orion found an entry point and started to stir things up.

Killing the Crown Prince at this point would be the most profitable. However, once Lan has grown up and has his own army, Orion can no longer easily make a move.

The Crown Prince was so disgusted that he gritted his teeth.

That Orion is such a nuisance.

It's okay, let him run wild, we'll kill him when we get back.

Faced with absolute power, all schemes and tricks are nothing but paper tigers.

he—tui!