blogombal Chapter 54 Showing off one's limited skills before an expert
Chapter 54 Showing off one's limited skills before an expert
Acid Swamp, Andy's military base.
"Clang!"
The crisp sound of metal colliding.
A head wearing a yellow tactical helmet traced a less-than-perfect parabola through the air before crashing into the crossbeam of an abandoned gantry crane dozens of meters away.
My head bounced, then I fell straight down.
"Glug glug".
Below is a steaming, green acidic swamp.
His head only bobbed up and down twice before being corroded by the strong acid until nothing was left.
"Oops? It missed."
Andy stood on the shore, watching the rising green foam, and waved his hand somewhat boredly.
The man Andy kicked around like a soccer ball was the captain of the "Wasp" team, a special operations group sent by the Helios Group.
Just thirty minutes ago, these six guys, who called themselves electronic warfare masters, wearing state-of-the-art optical camouflage cloaks, sneaked onto the outskirts of Andy's base.
They set up a high-frequency signal jammer and also attempted to remotely access Andy's logic interface using military-grade data probes.
To be honest, Andy was completely dumbfounded.
Who actually dares to play hacker warfare against an iron man from a dark age of technology?
It must be said that this truly requires immense courage.
This is like a primitive person who has just learned addition and subtraction taking an abacus to challenge a quantum computer that can perform billions of calculations per second.
Even though Andy's current body is only an engineering prototype, many advanced tactical modules have not yet been unlocked.
But the logical firewall in his mind was a top-level defense system designed by humanity in the Golden Age to combat the waste code of the subspace.
Helios's pieced-together deciphered code, based on the Empire's existing technology, failed to even trigger an error message when it hit Andy's firewall.
Andy didn't even bother to use the weapon systems.
He simply followed the data links of the other party's probes and sent back a cute little program.
Deadlock logic virus.
The result was obvious: the heads of the six infiltrators instantly turned into pressure cookers.
Their electronic brains overloaded, their neural bundles burned out, and before they even understood what was happening, they all lay on the ground convulsing, their brains boiling as they died.
Although the process was boring, the loot was pretty good.
Andy's old tan hazmat suit shattered in the radiation from the reconstructor, and he's been worried about having nothing to wear ever since.
As a result, the "Wasp" team delivered six "Chameleon" camouflage cloaks to him.
This is a great product. It has a built-in optical array that can automatically change color according to the environment when powered on, achieving near-perfect optical invisibility.
But there's a small problem.
To prevent accidental injury, this garment uses an extremely striking industrial bright yellow by default when it is not powered on or out of power.
Moreover, humans are too small for Andy to wear them.
But this couldn't stump the engineering genius.
Andy took all six cloaks apart, altered the edges and corners, and then sewed them back together.
He was now wearing an oversized, hooded, bright yellow robe.
Not only can it conceal his conspicuous metal frame, but it can also activate stealth mode when needed, making it an amazing tool for sneaking in and ambushing people.
As for normal times...
His bright yellow robe, combined with his mysterious and unpredictable style, made him look more like a great sage of the Mechanicus with some unknown quirks.
"Yes, yes, it's quite pretty."
Andy admired himself for a moment, then turned and walked towards the training ground inside the base.
The training ground was already bustling with activity.
Two hundred and thirty fully armed soldiers are lined up.
In the past few days, the population of the shelter has seen an explosive increase.
In addition to the original refugees, there were also a large number of stragglers and even members of small gangs who all came to seek refuge.
Andy accepted it all.
After rigorous screening, and eliminating potential cunning infected individuals and Chaos followers, Andy expanded the team to its current size.
They wore brand-new T-9000 exoskeletons, carried fully equipped CBS high-explosive crossbows, and had quivers and throwables hanging from their waists.
Although the training time is short, their tactical skills are not yet fully developed.
However, the increased raw power brought by this equipment makes up for this shortcoming.
At the very front of the line stood a group of people who looked somewhat out of place.
Roger Custer and his Rust Brotherhood.
These people are now wearing uniforms, no longer the beggar clothes they used to wear while scavenging for garbage.
Roger was there, looking constipated, adjusting his newly replaced robotic arm.
This robotic arm was made of high-strength alloy by Andy using a reconfiguration machine, and its precision is many times higher than his old junk.
But Roger didn't seem very happy.
The reason was simple: he was forced into this situation.
With the shelter's industrial capacity running at full capacity, those large machining centers and electrolytic cells were practically power guzzlers.
Without saying a word, Andy immediately sent people to thicken the power transmission cable connecting the fission power plant by three times.
This pull caused the electric grid on Roger's side to collapse.
The fission power plant had reached its limit. Roger's team couldn't even turn on the lights at night, let alone power the machine tools. The entire base was plunged into darkness.
Roger went to confront Andy.
Andy shrugged: Either turn off the power or move over.
Roger looked at his brothers, who were so hungry they were emaciated and couldn't even watch holographic movies anymore, and then looked at the fragrant starch balls and bright lights in the shelter every day.
What else can he do?
They had no choice but to pack up all the remaining fuel rods and move them into the shelter with their families.
Now, the Rust Brotherhood has been officially renamed "Vault Engineering Department II," which is responsible for power maintenance and auxiliary production.
Although they lost their independence and the thrill of being the boss.
But Roger had to admit, it smelled fucking good here!
There was an endless supply of food, an endless supply of high-end parts, and Andy would occasionally throw over a few advanced blueprints.
For tech geeks, this is paradise.
In addition to these changes on land, the underwater projects have also continued.
Andy glanced at the acidic lake not far away.
Below, the underwater base that originally belonged to Dr. Birdbeak is undergoing a large-scale renovation.
Four engineering drones have been working underwater for the past few days.
They cut open abandoned compartments, expanded the foundation, reinforced the outer walls, and laid new ventilation ducts.
The base has now become a huge underground storage center. Andy has moved most of the sensitive materials, such as certain unstable biological samples and the cunning corpse that was locked in the cold storage, underwater.
This is both for safety and to leave a way out.
In case something happens to the ground base and it can't be defended, everyone can retreat underwater and use the underground river to reach the upper nest.
Of course, this is only the worst-case scenario.
Andy is now well-equipped with troops and ammunition, and he also has the full map of District 9 in his hands. He has no intention of running away.