The drone swarm of the space fortress ultimately failed to stop our assault team, which was guarded by three super bodyguards. Its heavy missiles and swarm escorts could block an Eternal-class Mother Ship and a tidal wave of escort fleets, but they couldn’t stop an elite infiltration team. This is probably the so-called "large but not precise"—I know this phrase seems a bit off, but that’s basically what it ans.
There are seven surviving assault ships. The other ships that ca along were destroyed during the initial drone interception. I hope the soldiers on them successfully completed their soul uploads, which should not be a problem: the assault soldiers we brought this ti are all equipped with the "On" system, boasting a nearly one hundred percent battlefield survival rate.
The remaining seven assault ships sped along the armor belt fissure of the space fortress. On both sides of us is an armor layer towering like two mountain ranges: As a space facility with a diater reaching tens of kiloters, even a section of its shell can be regarded as a mountain. The fortress’s drone swarm hasn’t been fully cleared, and large quantities of drones are patrolling several kiloters away, searching for intruders. Flashes from explosions continuously emanate from behind us. However, the assault team has shaken off those annoying ones. Now, it’s Pandora and Visca using the floating cannon groups to engage in a dogfight with those drones. The two little girls seem a bit excited, but anyway, they’ve completed the task quite well.
I called the one ter two sisters through the spiritual connection. Visca’s cheerful voice rings out first: "Brother, brother! Look how lively it is over here! They’re exploding just like fireworks, and I spelled out my na with the explosions!"
...Even when playing gas, this ghostly and violent loli is so energetic.
"Stop playing and quickly break away, let’s get inside the fortress," I said while watching the towering armor layers swiftly sweep past. I commanded the two overly enthusiastic and violent shorties to return. "Pandora, why are you silent?"
Pandora’s voice delayed for a few seconds before coming through: "...Spelling my own na."
Visca’s devilish laughter echoes in the spiritual connection: "Ahahaha~~~ Sister is a fool! You have to detonate them simultaneously to form letters; continuous bombing won’t work!"
I shouted with my forehead dripping cold sweat in the spiritual connection: "You two, get back here imdiately!"
Two seconds later, Pandora and Visca chased up from behind; explosions were still ongoing behind them. Obviously, these little ones left their floating cannons behind to distract and mislead those drones. Of course, I’d rather believe they just hadn’t had enough explosions...
"Brother, are we going to blast a hole here to get in?" Visca asked excitedly, looking at the armor fissure beneath. She hadn’t finished speaking before pulling out her precious lump cannon. "This seems like a weak spot? But there’s recharge armor below; I wonder if one shot will open it."
This girl aid while speaking, and Pandora beside her mirrored her actions: These two little girls have really high action power when it cos to explosions.
I was also curious about how to penetrate this barricaded giant, then Vincent’s voice rang in my mind: "Your Majesty, the space fortress entrance is ahead—don’t let the General fire, or it’ll prematurely activate the internal defense system."
I quickly instructed Pandora and Visca to put away their precious lump cannons, looking forward. Indeed, the armor fissure bell was nearly at its end: not far ahead, a building like a sentry tower blocked the fissure’s end.
All assault ships imdiately decelerated, and the soldiers deployed from them transmitted out. Vega and her scorpion soldiers floated ssily in the air, every scorpion soldier’s chanical limbs flailing in all directions. Finally, the chopper lady murmured with frustration in the public channel: "Sure enough, it’s a model without external gravity, and all these legs are useless."
Scorpion soldiers possess the ability to fight normally in zero-gravity environnts, but it seems their personalities don’t particularly favor it.
"Have the assault ships circle around to the back of the fortress and self-destruct to create the impression of a failed collision," I looked at the several scarred ships. "Pandora Visca, let your floating cannons continue causing chaos outside; don’t retract them."
After those assault ships switched to autopilot and left, we quickly approached the "entrance" of the space fortress. Indeed, there was an automatic alert device here: outside the sentry tower gate were two rows of sensors, and on the tower’s exterior walls, there were many guard towers. I estimated these sensors would scan any unit without an identification code, even a rock flying by would be showered by the sentry tower’s guard towers.
But Vincent already had a plan. Instead of having the soldiers charge head-on, he led the team to an unidentified facility resembling a signal transmission tower, about a hundred ters away from the sentry tower, and swiftly removed a protective panel from its base.
After the protective panel fell, it revealed a crystalline structure inside. At its center was a basic control crystal board. Vincent contemplated, then decisively yanked the panel off just when I thought he was about to input a decryption code...
"Solder this place together," Vincent said as he connected the three crystal lines below the panel. Imdiately, the energy flow in this circuit changed. "This can temporarily take the alert device offline for thirty seconds... hurry up!"
Everyone imdiately got up and bolted for the entrance a hundred ters away. Sure enough, the scanners and guard towers here stopped moving. However, the entrance gate’s power chanism also shut down, but this wasn’t an issue. Vega went up with a few chops and sliced the entire gate off: The armored scorpion’s ship-slicing blade is used for breaching physical barriers, and even recharge armor can’t withstand their slashes, let alone such a fragile door in front of us.
Behind the door was a vertical shaft, and we, a large group of people, rushed inside. As everyone entered the shaft, the temporarily offline alert device recovered and triggered an alarm. Layers of isolation armor quickly closed behind us—but we’d already made it through.
"Just in ti before the alarm triggered..." Vincent glanced up at the entrance now completely sealed off. "This blockade zone is a major hassle, featuring high-energy barriers that unleash powerful ghost energy shocks when attacked. The effective range can cover the entire entrance. If the barrier is forcefully breached, even one layer, this entrance would be directly lted and sealed off, forcing us to enter from another more troubleso passage."
I noticed artificial gravity and atmospheric conditions erging at the shaft’s bottom: this environnt feels more comfortable.
Actually, Xyrin Apostles don’t need an atmospheric environnt themselves. For them, "breathing" is an optional "recreational activity," but because the ancestors left so fragnted "Mother Star mories" when creating the original body, the Xyrin Apostles retained the habit of breathing. Even Fallen Apostles can’t escape this ancestry-based Mother Star mory, which is why their facilities also mimic the Mother Star environnt: artificial gravity, atmosphere, and a certain temperature.
"According to plan, split into groups of twenty and act separately," I looked at the multiple paths in front of and swiftly instructed, "No specific targets, your task is to create chaos, the more lively the explosions the better—just don’t let the guards suspect our target is the machine room."
The accompanying soldiers imdiately took their orders, scattering towards various paths, while Vincent led the team in another direction: "I’ll take you to the machine room. This path has many branches and we might encounter guards. Scorpion soldiers, you’re needed."
Not far into the advance, I heard the sounds of gunfire from afar: the other groups of soldiers must have encountered guards or guard towers inside the fortress and begun engagents.
Moreover, I believe our group’s movents have probably already fallen under the fortress’s defense system’s surveillance: Large facilities like this are fitted with high-sensitivity scanners, able to detect even an unauthorized fly entering the premises. From the start, this wasn’t a standard "covert operation." We’re ant to march in overtly, then act as if preparing to blow this fortress up from within—the enemy simply wouldn’t realize our target is the planet’s entire defense circle.
Guards or drones on duty are likely heading our way. Vincent took out his ghost energy rifle, staying ready to fight at any mont while leading the team quickly along the corridor. anwhile, I snatched monts to observe my surroundings: The interior of the Fallen Apostles’ facility looked quite normal. Although they preferred black and red décor, they hadn’t gone as far as painting everything inside to a pitch-black extent. The environnt here seed not too different from inside Empire facilities, except all the blue markings and ghost energy pipelines were replaced with red.
Vega led her scorpion soldiers in protecting Vincent and a few "experts," and suddenly stopped: "Vincent, in which direction is the machine room exactly?"
Vincent paused, raising his rifle and pointing down the corridor’s far end: "There’s a..."
"I’m not asking for the route, I’m asking for direction," Vega said, looking down at the forr Fallen Apostle officer beside him, with a particularly serious expression on his face. "Tell you what, just give the coordinates, with the origin point being right here beneath my feet."
Vincent, not understanding, uploaded the coordinates through the spiritual connection, and then I saw Vega take a few light steps to the front of the team, raising his large machete and gesturing around. The other Scorpion soldiers followed suit, raising their own machetes and pointing in the sa direction. Just as Vincent was about to ask what they intended to do, these rather straightforward Scorpion soldiers answered with action: they all leapt forward at a roughly thirty-degree angle towards the corridor floor, and with a loud crashing sound, about twenty of them had already burrowed into the floor.
I and Vincent went over to take a look, and found that beneath the steaming hot, large hole was already a tunnel glowing with intense red heat, with the group of Scorpion soldiers at the tunnel’s end still feverishly digging. In almost no ti, they had already gone so far that they were just tiny dots on the horizon...
Along the tunnel walls, you could see other hallways or the fortress’s transport ducts that had been punched through, along with structural beams of buildings that had been sliced through—these supposedly invincible super alloy components were pulverized and sliced through by these violent Scorpions, as pitiful as a loaf of bread encountering Sandora.
Seeing Vincent’s dumbfounded look, I stepped forward and patted his shoulder: "The shortest distance between two points is a straight line... they say the Scorpion soldiers’ nerves operate on the sa principle, you’ll get used to it."
Vincent was still muttering to himself: "I’ve seen plenty of Scorpion soldiers, none of them this blunt."
Well, perhaps when the New Empire manufactured these Scorpion soldiers, they used blueprints extracted from Visca, so there are at least so ntal quirks, but there are benefits to their straightforwardness: just look at how efficient their shortest path choice is!
We followed the "fast channel" excavated by the Scorpion soldiers toward the server room, passing through countless corridors that had been cut in mid-air, and even encountered several enemy soldiers standing bewilderedly at the hallway breaks, looking up and down. Pandora and Visca enthusiastically greeted each enemy soldier: so with one cannon, so with two, and so with two followed by three grenades...
In a matter of monts, the team had reached its destination: the Scorpion soldiers’ excavation team had dug a path directly from the corridor to the ceiling of the server room, spanning a distance of at least 30 kiloters. I’m already considering having Vega and his machete ladies help out with excavating tunnels in their free ti—they’re essentially six-legged pangolins, aren’t they?
Also, where do they throw all the rubble they excavate? Do they collect it in their personal space as spoils of war?
Alright, getting serious with these Scorpion soldiers can be exhausting; let’s focus on the real task.
The server room had already been "cleansed" by the Scorpion soldiers, and there were no Fallen Apostle corpses to be found, just a lot of dust.
This was a perfectly circular hall, with the fortress mainfra right in the center: a colossal column roughly three ters in radius, connecting the ceiling and the floor, with blue light flows dancing across its surface. The frequently flickering lights indicated that the system was still operational.
"There’s a high-energy shield around the mainfra, which rebounds attacks, so we can’t touch it directly," Vincent pointed to the column and reminded us. Just as he finished speaking, a Scorpion soldier turned around, her face blackened and her hair resembling an explosion as she reported: "Yes, sir, there’s indeed a high-energy shield around the mainfra!"
: "..."
These Scorpions would probably go up and slice at a ticking bomb just to test its resilience, huh?
Our turmoil had completely driven the fortress’s alarm system insane, with blaring sirens echoing nonstop since monts ago, and explosions created by Imperial troops erupting everywhere. The fortress guards engaged in fierce firefights with the assault soldiers on multiple routes, while the "fast channel" carved out by the Scorpion soldiers turned out to be the path of least resistance, purely because the machete ladies were far too fierce. This is why Armored Scorpions are deed the most dangerous force in intrusive operations: They advance rapidly and utterly disregard conventional obstacles, terrain, and the like. They’ll break through anything between them and their target in a straight line, including personnel, walls, shields, and even energy furnaces. Because their assault path defies common sense, the Fallen Apostles were caught completely off guard—who would have thought these cold weapon maniacs would excavate a straight tunnel dozens of kiloters long directly inside the fortress to charge into the server room?
So despite the Scorpion soldiers causing more commotion than anticipated, the situation hadn’t worsened. Vega had already disabled all the server room’s alarm systems, and a throng of massacre fanatics eliminated everyone inside the room in an instant. We should have a brief window to hack this system; ti is limited—the Fallen Apostles will soon notice abnormalities in the server room through so channel.
Vincent didn’t directly engage with the massive fortress mainfra; instead, he located a console in an alcove, while the other experts he brought also began rapidly operating on various control platforms. The blue shield over the surface of the fortress mainfra flickered intensely, seemingly resisting those irregular shutdown commands, but within a few seconds, accompanied by a low hum, the shield slowly dissipated.
"It’s been a while since I’ve handled this system; it feels sowhat familiar," Vincent said to himself, skillfully initiating the external operation protocol as he spoke. "Alright, they’ve certainly upgraded the recognition database."
A gigantic holographic projection screen materialized in front of the fortress mainfra, populated with warning signs, and a dispassionate voice broadcasted within the server room: "Warning, the operator has not passed the identification process and lacks operational privileges. Warning, the operator has not passed the identification process and lacks operational privileges... recalling identification database, query yields null results. Operator, vacate the console imdiately; your actions violate security protocols. Continuation will trigger the server room’s kill program."
As the server room broadcast blared, I perceived nurous energy points swiftly approaching here, and Vega promptly unsheathed her dual swords: "Sir, the guards are coming! They’ll be here in a minute!"
Pandora and Visca imdiately summoned a slew of Floating Cannons, charging through the large hole Vega and the others had dug to exit the server room. Monts later, the sisters returned to , with Visca, quick-lipped, hurriedly reporting: "Brother, brother, we’ve used the Floating Cannons to seal off all the passageways! So long as the server room remains intact, everywhere else can blow up, right?"
I nodded at Visca and gestured to the Scorpion soldiers to block the fortress guards on other routes, before looking up at Vincent: "How long to resolve this?"
"Very soon," Vincent first confird with a forr Fallen Apostle technical advisor nearby, then looked up to reply, "They’ve replaced the recognition database, but the protocol execution procedure might still have a flaw..."
"Be quick, no panic; Pandora and the Scorpion soldiers are already intercepting those guards."
I nodded to Vincent, then raised my head to gaze at the still-humming fortress mainfra.
The enemy now knows the Imperial army’s direct target is right here, but they presumably think we aim to destroy the fortress, not realizing our true goal is the entire planetary defense circle. However, once Vincent begins inputting command termination instructions, the enemy will surely attempt to quarantine this infected mainfra—hopefully, we have enough ti.
Just then, Vincent suddenly reported loudly: "Your Majesty! I’ve discovered so peculiar things!"
(... Truly, no one watches war) (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, feel free to vote for it and give monthly votes on Qidian (qidian), as your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users, please head to m.qidian to read.)
Reviews
All reviews (0)