Chapter 502: Hope to Live III
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
He wanted to close his eyes. He coveted that warm, fluffy bed in his room. But reality hit him, reminding him that there were far more important things to do. He tried to relax by sitting at the corner, with a mug of warm water in his hands and a dry bread in his mouth. He had to restore his stamina as soon as possible. With that in mind, the hollow eyes were reflecting the glow of the flares occurring sometimes out there.
"Man this place is just hell." He heard Stringy the repairman, the mechanic, ranting out loud opposite him. His curly hair reminded people of the rounded strings at the workplace, so they called him Stringy.
Yang Ming was smiling, showing agreement on what Stringy had said. He took a few sips. He would love to give a word or two but his throat was cracking from drought.
Suddenly, the ship shook violently, that the water escaped Yang Ming's grip and shattered on the ground.
Both Yang Ming and Stringy looked at each other, their eyes were illustrating the same thoughts - the ship was collided by something huge again, during which their eyes reflected another blooming flare in the dark void.
Yang Ming was a little bewildered upon seeing that one last sight illuminated by the explosion.
It was chaos. A mayhem. Rocks of different sizes were flying everywhere, hitting on anything that stood in their way, be it a spaceship, or another piece of rock. The fleet was having a hard time maintaining the ever-deforming formation.
Those days felt heavenly now when they only had to fight red-tailed beasts.
Before the flare faded, one could see that young face of Yang Ming, at loss of joy belonged to someone of his age, complicated with horror, worries, nostalgia...
Was the exploded spaceship a prophecy of what they would become in the near future?
And somehow Yang Ming could hear the answer, uttered firmly and indifferently by Master Jay, flashing by in his mind.
"Area B-3 has been struck! Area B-3 has been struck! All technicians please proceed promptly! I repeat, all technicians please proceed promptly!" The alarm broke Yang Ming's schemata.
"Kek... my bottom hasn't even relaxed on the ground and they got new task for us," said Stringy with a smile, revealing the pair of yellowish buckteeth of his. He got up and headed B-3 fast.
...(Meanwhile)...
Ye Chong did not look pleased. It was the first time the crew members had seen such expression on their Master Jay. One could already imagine the crisis they were going to face.
"Ye, the destabilization! It's climbing!" alerted Shang.
Honestly, Ye Chong had already perceived the worsening situation even without Shang's reminder. He had already lost 25 spaceships at this point. Way before the fleet sank into the rocky sea of Calamitous Asteroid Belt, Ye Chong had already reallocated most members of the 200 ships at the outermost spaceships to the 300 spaceships at the protected center, which included Haskel that got fairly crowded at the moment. There remained about 20 crew members on every ship at the outermost layer of formation.
The formation consisted of 3 protection layers occupied by those 200 ships, the sole duty for them would be to protect whatever inside.
20 members on each ship at the layers, totaling up to 4000 members guarding the 3 levels of shell for the people.
And all 4000 of them volunteered themselves.
Ye Chong was having headache when he plotted this. He knew what the people on those ships would eventually become.
But Shang gave him a suggestion way back - instead of ordering a random few, let the members volunteer themselves.
He felt it could be an effective way... however as expected from Shang's intelligence.
It was effective, too effective.
Only on the third day after the announcement, he had already received 30,000 applicants for the positions. Under Shang's assistance, Ye Chong picked out 4000 out of those at last.
And they had already lost 25 spaceships, which meant at least 500 men had lost their lives.
The destabilization rate was increasing.
Nonetheless, mortality rate was not the only outcome of the explosion. The explosion had created waves which had negatively affected the stability of the asteroid belt. It was obvious that the destabilization shared a directly proportional relationship with the chance of a whirlpool phenomena formation.
It was a major loss. Not only they lost a portion of their forces on every explosion, but also they faced a higher risk of being destroyed by an asteroid whirlpool.
If they could not figure out a counter for this, they would lose everything in the end, even their lives.
Ye Chong ground his teeth, he thought of conserving forces at first, but he no longer had the option, he must do something. He had to let go off the last bit of forces, "Order : Combat Unit A, battle station."
The commander's room of Haskel got busy as every spaceship containing the pilots was heard. The saving grace was, none of the spaceships with his trained pilots blew up.
10 spaceships containing the pilots readjusted their direction and had their gates opened.
"Charge!"
"Go! Go! Go!"
"Charrgggeeee!"
In 5 seconds, the order was carried out. The pilots hopped into the waves of asteroids in their mechs.
Within a minute, the entire Battle Unit A, consisted of 1200 D-6s had been fully discharged from the ship.
They traveled in small groups, with 3 units each. So 400 small groups swam across the ocean of rocks freely like fishes. Mechs were far more flexible than spaceships in an environment like this. Their mission this time would be to hold up the coming asteroids - slowing them down or destroying them directly - anything that could work but safety would be their first priority.
Ye Chong regained control of the situation the moment he sent the 1200 mechs into the asteroid belt. The units would become the net that helped filtering the asteroids, which lessen the protecting units' burden.
The pilots were not having an easy time however. They got to be focused. There were far too many of asteroids around them. They might be trained soldiers, but the environment were far too consuming for their mentality. One could never predict an asteroid. It was like an assassin that would give one's back a stab when unnoticed. There was no second life, it was no game, it was war.
Ye Chong was the first to realize the issue. For some reason, he had amazing intuition on battling, not even Mu/Shang could do it better.
"All units revolve about the spaceship. Maintain coordination."
No one had doubted a single word Ye Chong had said, as they executed the order right away. The wandering mechs had now gathered up and reformed themselves about the spaceships. They would only leave their orbit when an asteroid was approaching them.
A few of them would get onto the incoming rock itself and blasted off to pull the rock aside, while there were also members who would knock themselves into the rock from the side to deviate the orbit of the rock away from the ship. Some of them would also smash the asteroids with their weapons. If it was not D-6 they were piloting, everything felt like walking on thread.
Ye Chong's order was very effective. The situation was under control again.
After the first few incoming attacks, the bond between pilots grew stronger. As they were revolving about the spaceship, they would not have to worry about the rocks hitting them behind. And they believed in each other, letting their mates taking up the sides beyond their viewing scope, so it was less of a chore to protect the ship. Most essentially, they would confirm the coordinate upon seeing a giant rock beyond their control heading towards a specific spot. Then they would inform the warship to launch a stronger firearm to crush it.
It was a shame they had no ranged units or they would be having a winning fight. Only the real giant among the asteroids could do actual harm to the spaceship. They could have shoot everything down if they had ranged weaponry.
Because of the recent exposure to red-tailed beasts, Ye Chong had gained a habit of prioritizing close-combat models while almost all his trainees were made into melee fighters as well. A single type of troop would be the strongest in a particular situation while being the weakest in the others. Ye Chong had never foreseen the travel to Calamitous Asteroid Belt, especially with such a substandard army.
This would be a good lesson, that no one could ever predict anything, even if you had a supercomputer to check out the trend. Murphy's law still stood strong. If anything could go wrong, it would go wrong. It was also this uncertainty that gave the world an irresistible charm.
But Ye Chong did not fancy the charm, so did the crew members on Haskel, as they all were tensed as ever. Master Jay (Ye Chong) had hardly an expression in the past but this time the grimness could be easily perceived by the crew.
They might have regained control of the situation, but Ye Chong remained pessimistic on it. He planned to discharge the combat units on the third day of travel, as a guarantee to lead them to safety, since based on the intelligence he had in hand, the density of the asteroid belt grew dramatically greater the deeper they ventured. And it was only the second day, he had already sent out his trump card.
Right when Ye Chong was worried of the danger tomorrow, the Gray Valley had something happened.
...(Somewhere near Kasent)...
A small team of mechs were carrying out their routine patrolling.
They had heard stories of red-tailed beasts showing up nearby, so they were assigned to watch out the area for the people.
"Wh-What is that! Holy Kasent!" screamed one of the pilots.
The others shifted their sight onto the screen.
They could feel goosebumps crawling every corner of their skin.
It was a conglomeration... a massive, dense, rumbling wave of red-tailed beasts dashing towards them... The pilots could perceive the sizes of the beasts being about the size of a standard mech model. The skin was glowing in dark. The beasts seemed bulky with their muscles, the scarlet tip of their tails were swinging in aggression. The dark-red pupils of theirs were somehow illustrating the death.
"RUN! TALK LATER!" One of them shouted, which woke the others up from their astonishment. They turned up their engines and ran at full speed.
"Sec." And one responsible pilot remembered his duty and recorded everything to be sent back to the base on Kasent.