stonecrandall Chapter 94: A Series of Unexpected Gains
Chapter 94: A Series of Unexpected Gains
Chapter 94 A Series of Unexpected Gains (Revised)
But soon, real problems came to the fore.
"Boss Andy!"
Bauer came running over, sweating profusely, holding a list in his hand, his voice trembling.
"It's overflowing! It's really overflowing!"
"There's too much equipment! Sixth Sister herself is taking up an entire plane!"
"There are still 232 people without seats!"
Bauer pointed to a large group of people behind him.
Gamma-9 gritted his teeth, drew his explosive pistol from his waist, and strode toward the crowd.
"I'll go tell them!"
A resolute red light flashed in Gamma-9's single eye.
"For the sake of the Sage's great cause, and to preserve the core data, someone must stay behind to cover the retreat!"
"This is glory! This is the return of the God of Myriad Machines—"
"Get back here!"
Andy grabbed Gamma-9's shoulder, interrupting its impending commissar-like speech.
"Who told you to send them to their deaths?"
Andy's electronic eye coldly swept across the hangar.
"I've spent so many resources on them, not to have them serve as cannon fodder here!"
"Human resources are resources, and they are non-renewable resources!"
"But—" Gamma-9 froze, "There really are no seats left on the plane!"
"If there are no seats available, can't you just drive yourself?!"
Andy pointed to a shadowy corner of the hangar where dozens of vehicles were parked.
There was that modified, heavily armored vehicle with a solid chassis, as well as dozens of old but still functional armed off-road vehicles and assault motorcycles.
These were all the belongings Andy brought from the bottom of the nest, which he originally planned to discard in the New Bond.
"this----"
Bauer glanced at the vehicles, then at the swirling yellow sand outside and the approaching landship.
"Boss, this is a wasteland! There are those massive land-based warships weighing tens of thousands of tons outside! If we drive these beat-up cars out here, aren't we just committing suicide?"
"Staying on the ship is certain death, but escaping offers a 50% chance!"
Andy released Gamma-9 and strode onto the platform.
"Everyone, listen up!"
Andy's voice, amplified by a loudspeaker, drowned out the sounds of gunfire outside.
"Those without seats, go drive!"
"Those who can drive, be drivers; those who can't, get on the machine gun turret! If there's really no space, just hang it outside the truck bed!"
"Load all the remaining heavy weapons, ammunition, and grenades onto the truck!"
Andy pointed to the heavy vehicle ramp at the far end of the hangar, which wasn't fully open yet: "We're going to break out with a vengeance!"
"Fight your way out!"
The crowd erupted in cheers!
The soldiers, who had been prepared to face death, had a renewed will to survive rekindled in their eyes.
They don't need any nonsense about sacrificing for the greater good; they just need a chance to survive, even if that chance requires them to risk their lives.
"Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!"
"Hey you! Go warm up the dual engines of the Happy Car!"
"Load the rockets onto the truck! Forget the crates, just throw them up there!"
More than two hundred people sprang into action, and their efficiency was astonishing.
The once lifeless vehicle formation instantly came to life, with the roar of engines rising and falling, converging into a torrent of steel.
"Book."
Andy shoved a large-caliber explosive pistol into the young man's hand; he was Roger's second-in-command.
"You lead the team, ride the happy bus, and be the pioneer."
"Remember, don't linger, don't stop. Once you break through, run north, run for your life!"
Ben looked at the gun in his hand, his whole body trembling with excitement.
"Yes, sir! Andy!"
"Mission accomplished!"
Ben gave a crooked military salute, then turned and jumped into the bottom of the happy car.
"boom!!!"
The Happy Car's twin engines roared, and the twin-mounted heavy logging guns on the roof swung their muzzles, pointing them at the hatch.
"Shuttle formation, take off!"
Andy gave the final command, and the shuttle took off first, flying out of the hatch above.
Followed by.
"Clang"
The ramps carrying heavy vehicles slammed heavily onto the sandy wasteland below, kicking up a cloud of dust.
"Charge!!!"
With a roar from Ben.
The bottom-dwelling happy car took the lead and rushed out of the belly of the new ship.
Following closely behind were more than a dozen armed off-road vehicles loaded with soldiers and countless roaring motorcycles.
The massive New Bond starship resembled a burning steel mountain, leaning precariously against the earth, billowing black smoke.
On its belly, countless tiny black dots surged out like a flood bursting its banks.
These vehicles had no formation whatsoever; they were simply racing at high speed and in large numbers.
Each vehicle was packed with people, and every soldier was firing at the surrounding area.
The explosions of CBS high-explosive crossbows, the rattling of heavy logging guns, and the whistling of rockets instantly shattered the deathly silence of the wasteland.
On the periphery, the approaching Zais land-based warship was clearly unprepared for this turn of events.
They originally thought it was just a piece of fat meat waiting to be cut up, but who would have thought that a whole convoy of cars would suddenly burst out from inside?
"Boom! Boom!"
Several rockets hit the landship's tracks precisely. Although they failed to shatter the thick metal plates, they did make the behemoth tremble.
Taking advantage of this gap, the convoy slipped into the blind spot of the land-based ship like eels.
They weaved through the gaps in the massive tracks and leaped over craters and ruins.
Andy sat in the No. 1 shuttle, looking through the porthole at the long trail of dust that stretched across the wasteland below.
The tiny vehicles appeared fragile yet tenacious beneath the massive land-based warships.
"Live on."
Andy said in a low voice.
The shuttle formation gained altitude and accelerated northward.
Shuttle No. 1.
The aircraft's internal structure has been completely hollowed out.
Inside the huge cabin, only Xiao Liu's body remained, along with a simple ring of folding chairs around him.
Andy, Zol, Sisyphus, and Roger, who looked pained, were crammed into this small space.
With the hatch closed, the noise from the outside world was shut out.
"Buzz—!!"
The engine starts, and a strong sense of acceleration washes over you.
The shuttle burst out of the New Bond's hangar and plunged into the desolate wasteland of Zais, where the yellow sand stretched as far as the eye could see.
Roger remained pressed against the porthole, staring intently behind him.
His brothers were there, along with the men he had brought from the Rust Brotherhood.
"Stop looking at it." Andy sat opposite him, checking the data panel in his hand. "They won't be here for a while."
Roger turned around, his eyes bloodshot: "Andy—can they really fight their way here?"
"Otherwise what?" Andy asked without looking up. "You, as the leader, don't you trust the people you've trained?"
"But, such a huge land-based warship—"
Compared to Roger's torment, Father Zor and Sisyphus were much calmer.
Zor was intently checking whether the latches securing the main body of Xiao Liu were loose. For him, as long as the equipment and technology were still there, nothing else mattered.
Sisyphus was calculating the logistical losses from this escape. Although he felt bad about the supplies he couldn't take with him (mainly excess ammunition and seriously excessive aerospace materials), he was even more grateful that he was still alive.
The shuttle formation flew by at high speed at low altitude.
To avoid the air defense radar of the land-based ships, they flew extremely low, almost brushing against the rubble.
"Correcting course—"
Xiao Liu's voice was directly connected to the shuttle's driving system via a data cable.
"Target coordinates confirmed: 34 degrees North latitude, 112 degrees East longitude."
Distance: 450 kilometers.
Destination: Horisonburg
Andy spelled out the name and it didn't seem quite right.
"Horrison? Horizon?"
This name doesn't sound like something a modern imperial person would come up with.
Names like "Horizon," brimming with a spirit of exploration and classical romanticism, belong only to a more distant era.
"Your intuition is correct, Lord Andy," Xiao Liu replied. "According to the machine's database, it was an ancient settlement that existed on this planet before the Great Expedition."
"Back then, this planet wasn't called Zais."
"It is a standard human colony with highly automated agricultural and industrial systems."
Four hundred and fifty kilometers is only a matter of about thirty minutes for a fully loaded shuttle formation.
As the yellow sands cleared, the outline of a magnificent city appeared on the horizon.
Even the well-informed Andy couldn't help but sit up straight.
"Good heavens—"
Upon seeing the view outside the window, his eyes revealed the greed of an old farmer seeing fertile black soil.
Sisyphus, who was sitting next to Andy, jumped right up from his chair!
He was practically pressed against the porthole window, his mouth agape, letting out a very rude exclamation: "Holy crap! What the hell is that?!"
Sisyphus lived his entire life in Forge No. 7, and in his worldview, cities should grow upwards.
The upper nest, the middle nest, the lower nest, the bottom nest, layer upon layer, pressing against each other, obscuring the sun.
But what's in front of me—
It's flat!
The city has an extremely standard grid-like layout, with wide and straight main roads crisscrossing the landscape and stretching as far as the eye can see.
There are no towering metal domes, no oppressive vertical pipes.
There are only large tracts of flat, hardened land.
To the east are rows of industrial buildings. Although some have collapsed, their neat and uniform industrial aesthetics are still evident.
To the west is a neat residential area, with rows of independent buildings arranged in an orderly manner, and even space left for green belts in the middle.
"This—this is such a waste!!"
Sisyphus pointed to the wide streets below, his voice trembling: "If this land were in the capital, it could support thousands of buildings and house millions of people!"
"They're just sitting there empty? And they can even see the sky?!"
Father Zor reacted even more strongly than Sisyphus.
His prosthetic eye spun wildly, emitting a buzzing sound as it focused, and he muttered to himself, his voice tinged with obvious anger: "What—what a blasphemous plan!"
Zor pointed to the group of buildings below that showed no distinction between high and low, noble and humble.
"No spires, no tiered layout! The industrial zone and the residential zone are on the same level?!"
"This is a provocation against the sacred hierarchy! This is chaos!"
"How could the planners here allow those lowly workers to breathe the same air as them?"
"That's incredibly inconsiderate! Don't they think there's anything wrong with it?!"
'
The two were still pointing and gesturing.
Andy's reaction was completely different; he couldn't help but exclaim, "That's more like it! This is where people should live!"
Compared to the hopeless three-dimensional maze of Forge No. 7, this place is simply paradise.
Here, as long as you have the materials, you can start building your base as big as you want!
Logistics vehicles can speed across the ground, and there's no need to squeeze into those outdated gravity elevators anymore!
If the Newborn hadn't made an emergency landing and hadn't made that humiliating abandonment, Andy might never have found this treasure trove!
This is probably what they call turning misfortune into blessing!
"Prepare for landing," Andy commanded. "Land in the plaza over there in the industrial area."
The shuttle formation began to decelerate and descend slowly.
Just as they passed over a black tower in the city center that looked like some kind of monument.
Sudden.
"drop--!"
On Andy's retina, the long-dormant STC radar suddenly went off.
A golden spot of light was flashing wildly at the location of the black tower.
[Signal from the same source detected]
Distance: 5 km.
[Signal Feature Matching: STC Standard Construction Template—Fragments—Alien Technology Analysis Station.]
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