blogombal Chapter 57 Destroyed Spaceship
Chapter 57 Destroyed Spaceship
Liu En left the private workshop and walked into the bridge.
Marcus stood before the holographic projection platform, a structural model of the wrecked ship before him. The green channel markers stretched sparsely, with most of the area still shrouded in darkness. More than half of the reconnaissance bee servants had been lost; the seventh batch of data streams had just been interrupted, the last image transmitted back showing the sole of a green boot—that thing had crushed the bee servants' sensor array, and several pieces of armor plating, seemingly salvaged from some ship, were welded to its sole.
"Greenskins," Liu En said. "There are quite a few of them. The weapons are mixed, mainly rifles, but also laser guns looted from Imperial ships. There are at least three heat sources moving rapidly around the corner of the passage; judging from their outlines, they are standard Orc boy builds."
Marcus nodded but didn't reply. He was waiting for Liu En to get to the point.
"The entry point is on the side of the wrecked ship, the bow of a cruiser. The flight bridge deck is relatively intact, with minimal subspace sediment coverage, and the passageway is passable. The radiation dose doubles and accelerates from the entry point; the standard power armor of the garrison regiment can't withstand it. The wet cores of the mechs and armed servants have multiple layers of shielding, so hold on for a while longer. I'll go first. Kara will follow with two companies and five hundred servants, about five hundred meters behind."
Liu En paused, then added, "The Black Pearl remains on alert in space. There may be other debris—or other ships—around the space wreckage. This technology recovery operation is expected to last for several months and won't be completed in a short time."
Marcus listened. He simply nodded, indicating that he understood.
"You decide on the rotation plan for the personnel remaining on duty. The communications array will be on standby 24/7, sending a confirmation signal to the landing team at regular intervals. The Black Pearl will remain on alert and will not approach the debris field surrounding the wrecked ship," Liu En added as a final remark.
Marcus responded.
Armed transport ships emerged from the Black Pearl's hangar, trailing a steady blue plume, and cut into the side of the massive wreckage. A debris field spread across the landscape—fine metallic powder, fragments as large as frigates, all bound together by subspace sediment, gleaming a dark purple in the dim starlight.
The landing team boarded the wrecked ship.
The engineering crews dispersed with signal repeaters, deploying communication nodes at several high points on the flybridge deck. The antennas automatically extended, locking onto the Black Pearl's frequency. The uplink bandwidth recovered to less than half due to radiated interference, but communication was still established.
Liu En stood in the center of the landing field. The field unfolded, his consciousness reaching out; the surface deposits were stripped away at the atomic level, transforming into a harmless cloud of atoms. Beneath the rusted layer, the deck beneath his feet revealed its raw metallic luster. He silently reshaped the twisted section of the passageway entrance; the deformed doorway expanded, and a terracotta frame grew from within the rusted walls, locking the loose bulkhead. Then, the servitors left several new weld marks along the edge of the doorway—it looked like they were the ones who did it.
He sprayed three horizontal lines on the landing zone wall with high-gloss paint, each marked with coordinates and radiation values. The markings were orange, making them highly visible against the dark gray bulkhead. This served as guidance for subsequent troops and as optical positioning data for the Black Pearl. Liu En said in the garrison's channel: "Landing zone cleared. Markings in place, coordinates synchronized. First echelon, follow me."
Fifty Casterland mechs led the way. Their heavy hulls gleamed a dark gray under the searchlights, and the hydraulic pushers hissed sharply at the joints with each step. The repulsive grid was in standby mode, with faint static electricity patterns visible at the seams. The passageways varied in width—in narrow places, the mechs could only enter in a single file, their shoulders brushing against the side bulkheads; in wider sections, three or four could advance side-by-side, their explosive guns' firing arcs expanding. Crossroads appeared where the passageways forked, sometimes requiring a turn left or right, sometimes leading to shafts or staircases. The mechs' sensor arrays scanned in all directions, their guns pointed at every corner and every dark creek.
One hundred armed machine guns followed closely behind, with laser guns and explosive guns deployed alternately.
Liu En walked in the middle-forward section of the mech formation. The formation moved through the twisting tunnels, and he would sometimes quicken his pace to pass several mechs and reach the front, and at other times slow down to join the ranks of the armed mech servants—clearing the way when there were obstacles ahead, and retreating to deal with sources of contamination. His consciousness constantly scanned the structural integrity of the tunnel: which section of the bulkhead was covered with fine cracks, which floorboards were corroded down to a thin layer, and which ceiling welds had come detached. When he encountered a weak section, he moved to the front first. The field coverage filled the cracks at the atomic level, and the ceramic steel composite material was poured into every gap. On the surface, the cracks were still there, but inside they were as solid as if newly cast. The loose bulkheads were supported from behind by the ceramic steel frame, and the nearly broken beams were reshaped, but the appearance still retained the rust patterns of thousands of years.
When they encountered sections of passage so narrow that the mechs could barely pass, he again stepped to the front. The deformed bulkheads were peeled away and widened, and a terracotta frame grew out from within the rusted walls, widening the passageway by several inches. The floor was smoothed from the atomic layer, its surface marked with several lines of wear and rust. He stepped back a few paces to let the mechs pass first, then followed. As the mechs passed, the electrostatic texture of the repulsive grid cast a fine, dark pattern on the newly widened wall.
Upon encountering a collapsed shaft, the rubble transformed into an atomic cloud, and a ceramic steel frame grew out of the void, creating climbing steps, while the ceramic steel lining filled in the surface. He instructed his servants to follow behind and repair the weld marks, while he retreated to the middle of the formation.
The contamination was everywhere. Toxic gas leaked from cracks in the pipes, subspace deposits condensed into dark purple crystalline shells on the bulkheads, and radiation readings fluctuated incessantly on the power armor's sensor panels. He didn't need to be at the front—when he was in the middle of the column, the field covered a distance of about twenty meters in front and behind. The toxic lattice structure was stripped away, the core culprit of the radiation source was disintegrated, and the radiation readings dropped an order of magnitude after he passed. Nobody knew. The garrison's sensors would only show "radiation value fluctuated and then decreased."
His consciousness was unrestricted by the radius of the field. Extending outwards from his body, covering an area of five kilometers in radius—the passage forked a few kilometers ahead, the left leading to a huge void, the right to a dense heat source; after climbing two decks upwards, there was a crossroads; the next level was a flooded compartment. The team behind him moved silently through the dark gray passage, the veterans' breathing heavy in the power armor's circulation system. The footsteps of the mechs and the rhythm of the hydraulic actuators formed neat rows in his consciousness, the hum of the energy feedback from the repulsive grid superimposed as a continuous background sound. He marked the forking points of the passage, the entrances to the shafts, and those large spaces that might contain supplies in his perception, drawing the next route in his mind.
Where there was no road, he would clear a path. But after clearing the path, he would always retreat back to the middle of the group.
The first wave of green-skinned soldiers appeared at the fork in the passage.
Three green-skinned brutes burst from the right passage, roaring deafeningly, "WAAAGH!! You bastards! Die!!!" The muzzles of their rifles spit out dark red bullet trajectories, the noise so loud it made your teeth chatter. The mechs aimed and locked on, unleashing a volley of explosives. The repulsive mesh sparked with tiny electrical sparks at the point of impact, deflecting the bullets. Fragments of the green-skinned brutes smeared the passage walls. A hundred armed mechs followed behind the mechs, firing alternately, laser guns and explosives crisscrossing the area, taking down several green-skinned brutes attempting to flank from the left passage.
More roars erupted from the depths of the tunnel. The greenskins knew every bend in this passage—this was their hunting ground. But they encountered mechs and armed sergeants, suppressive fire covering every possible firing window.
Liu En didn't fire. He walked in the middle of the column, his area of operation covering more than ten meters in front of the combat zone. The bullets disintegrated into atoms in flight and disappeared into the void. The green-skinned lads' rifles went silent halfway through their charge, and they fell to the crossfire of the bomb guns before they even realized what was happening. The mechs' firing never stopped, and only Carlos's voice came through the garrison's channel: "Green-skinned ahead, dealing with them." No one noticed why the green-skinned lads' weapons stopped firing after a few shots.
After the battle, Liu En went to the front to inspect the passageway structure. A section of the bulkhead at the corner had been pierced by a stray bullet, cracks extending outwards from the bullet hole. Field coverage was applied, the cracks were filled, the bullet hole was repaired, and the surface underwent a weathering treatment with burning. After confirming it was safe, he retreated back to the middle of the group.
The supplies warehouse was found at the end of the right-hand passage after the fork in the passage.
The entrance was a half-open fire door, its hinges and seals hardened, the door mostly blocked by debris. Liu En dismantled the debris; behind the door was a rectangular compartment, shelves collapsed, containers scattered everywhere. He entered the compartment, his fingers brushing against the edge of the collapsed shelves, touching a fallen, sealed container. He dismantled it. Information about the material composition flooded his consciousness—a food storage container, its contents no longer edible.
Next. The third compartment was deeper in the passageway. They walked and walked until they reached it, encountering several green-skinned patrols along the way. They passed a huge crossroads with passageways extending in all four directions—up, down, left, and right—and overhead was a several-story-high void, revealing the broken trusses of the upper deck. Liu En's field of vision swept over each fork in the road, marking the distribution of heat sources, and he chose the one with the least heat to continue. He walked at the front of the group because this passageway was narrower than the previous ones, making it almost impossible for the mechs to turn around. He dismantled the broken metal plates stuck in the passageway, reconstructing a small section of the supporting structure—at the same time, sensing the severely rusted and unsustainable floor beneath his feet, he reinforced it with a layer of composite material, the surface still retaining its rusty appearance. Then he stepped back to the back of the group, letting the mechs pass first. As the mechs filed through, the electrostatic texture of the repulsive grid brushed against the newly reinforced walls, occasionally a faint arc of electricity flickering at the grid nodes, leaving fleeting bright marks on the rusted walls.
The shelves collapsed, the containers shattered, a thick layer of dust accumulated, and there was nothing there. A long enough period of time would degrade all organic matter into powder.
There are items in the third supply warehouse.
The compartment's structure was intact; the shelves hadn't collapsed. The airtight door's seals were worn, but the locking mechanism was still working. The entrance was blocked not because of a collapse, but because the door was deformed, and the door frame, under stress, had been forced inward, jamming the door. Liu En walked over, covered the area, and disassembled it. The deformed door frame was reshaped, the locking mechanism was released, and the door opened. Inside, the shelves were stacked with sealed metal boxes. They weren't military equipment, but rather food storage containers. The contents were long since rotted and dried out, offering no recycling value whatsoever.
Day 1 is over.
The detachment established a temporary camp at the junction of the passageways—a relatively spacious area, possibly a mess hall or activity room on a ship, with a dome over four meters high. Mechanized units deployed a ring of defenses around the camp, the electrostatic sparks from the repulsive mesh forming a discontinuous band of light in the dim space. Relay signal servants deployed a communication node in the center of the camp, its antenna array pointing towards the Black Pearl; the signal was barely sufficient for text reports. Liu En briefly reported over the channel: "Advanced through the passageway by several kilometers, cleared of several Greenskins." Marcus replied: "Roger."
Five hundred meters behind, Kara caught up with two companies and five hundred machine gunners. The sound of heavy explosive rounds firing came intermittently from the depths of the tunnel—the rearguard was clearing away the remaining green-skinned remnants. A fresh laser burn mark appeared on Kara's power armor shoulder plate.
"Captain," Kara said, stepping beside him. "How's it going up ahead?"
"The passageway is alright. The supply depot is empty." Liu En leaned against a support pillar. "Did you encounter any problems behind here?"
"A small group of green-skinned soldiers, nothing to worry about. No one was injured." Kara glanced into the depths of the passage. "Shall we continue pushing in tomorrow?"
"Continue. There's a fork in the road about 400 meters away, leading towards the core area. I didn't have time to explore it today, I'll go that way tomorrow. From what I sensed, that fork in the road goes up two levels first, then there's a large space, and then it goes down again. There are a few particularly narrow sections, and the structure is severely aged. I'll go ahead and deal with those tomorrow."
Kara nodded and turned to arrange the nighttime security.
Liu En sat down on the folding cot, laying down an insulating mat. He didn't remove his power armor, leaning against the bulkhead and closing his eyes. Today, he had walked back and forth countless times within the unit, the field almost never stopping—decomposing contaminants, widening passageways, reinforcing structures, repairing cracks, and handling warheads. The energy feedback hum of the repulsive grid continued steadily and rhythmically in the distance. A deep weariness welled up within him.
Consciousness detached from the body, receding like a tide. It passed through the higher-dimensional anchor point and surged into the life support pod lying in the top-floor bedroom of the governor's mansion.
Garros.
Enp opened his eyes. A thin layer of mist condensed on the inside of the glass canopy. He raised his hand, his palm touching the inside of the canopy; it was warm. The canopy slid open automatically, the nutrient solution drained from the drain, and dry air rushed in.
He sat up, pulled on his dark gray robe, and lowered the hood. Barefoot on the terrazzo floor, he walked down the corridor, the lighting automatically switching to daytime mode. The servitors stood silently at the intersection, their optical lenses flashing in the shadows. He went into his study, sat down at his workbench, and picked up the data panel to review—the dome construction progress, the servitor production line capacity, the wet component core maturity curve. There were also warning messages awaiting processing: the geological strata in a certain area of the dome construction site were unstable.
Progress on the dome has accelerated again; newly manufactured flight servitors are welding trusses high in the air, their blue exhaust flames flickering in the twilight. The wet core in the incubation tank is still growing, the faint light from the data infusion electrodes flashing intermittently.
Enp flipped through the report page by page, annotated a few dispatch instructions on the terminal, and closed the data panel. He leaned back in his work chair and closed his eyes. There was still a long way to go to the wrecked ship tomorrow. He would have to walk forward again and again through the narrow passageways, reinforcing the cracked bulkheads, the loose deck, and the collapsing ceiling one by one.
He withdrew his consciousness and re-entered Cohen's body through the higher-dimensional anchor point.
On the cot, Cohen opened his eyes. In the pitch-black corridor, only the servitor's optical lens shone with a dim red light. In the distance came the heavy footsteps of patrolling mechs, the rhythmic hissing of hydraulic actuators, and the steady, low hum of energy feedback from the repulsion grid.