Xyrin Empire
Chapter 574: Landing Operation

Chapter 574: Chapter 574: Landing Operation

The battle was still raging, no, "raging" seemed insufficient to describe the current situation, it should be said that the fight was proceeding in a bizarre manner.

Pandora and Visca’s Shorty made a considerable initial shock with their desperate counterattack, but the enemy’s unending waves didn’t hesitate at the crash of three hundred warships (we later learned this was because most of the enemy’s radar hadn’t even detected the two insignificant little girls in the vastness of space; in their eyes, their own fleet had been knocked out by a sweep of Super Space-Time Floating Cannons, not by two girls barely four feet tall—conventional ship-to-ship radars with a detection precision lower than 1.2m couldn’t even see the two little girls, they had natural invisibility!).

And the reason the combat was dubbed "bizarre" was because I had never faced an enemy with attack methods so diverse: even a mob has its strengths. The bright sparks of electromagnetic cannons were accompanied by a dense downpour of Laser Storms, a wave-like barrage of nuclear missiles covered the defensive lines of the battlecruisers under the cover of the Laser Storms, but just when we thought nuclear missiles were the main focus of the enemy’s attack, the next wave was force field and even space-time field strikes, which left the poor AI on the Light of El caught in a vicious cycle of endlessly formulating—then rejecting—battle plans.

"Large-scale space collapse warning on the right defensive line! Battlecruisers, fall back, full activation of space-time suppression fields... Cancel that order, a Level 9 Energy Attack detected heading for the flagship, Photon Refraction Shields up!"

"This is the Trojan Battlecruiser, a large group of fuel kinetic weapons are approaching our defense line, expected in ten minutes... I know they can’t breach the Ghost Energy Shields, but they’re mixed with two hundred standard units of antimatter reaction! We need support!"

"Who can tell me why those damned Laser Gunboats are firing Phase Impact Cannons?! They’ve wrecked my dear Morgan Type 3 Laser Cannons... Yeah, seem they weren’t that sturdy after all. Command Ship, please increase our data output; ’Easterners’ battlecruiser has collected something of interest to you!"

"’Tauren Chieftain’ salutes you, Commander, we wiped out the target squadron, but each of them was carrying anti-matter weapons, you guys better watch out... What? Are we the only unlucky ones?"

"What a mess, I say, let’s forget about tactics," sweating profusely, I turned to Big Sister and said, listening to the clamor in the public communications channel, which was as noisy as a vegetable market, "let’s just push the fleet forward."

Big Sister shrugged at me, "Didn’t we abandon tactics from the start?"

That seemed to be the case...

Regardless, the trend of the battle was still moving in a favorable direction; the enemy’s chaotic attack methods could only cause us a little trouble, but their absolute oppressive strength wouldn’t be so easily overturned. Just look at that wall-like array of Floating Cannons moving back and forth across the flank—it was clear that the end of the battle was just a matter of time.

"General Jie En requests communication, Your Majesty."

The communicator connected, and there was the middle-aged, handsome General Jie En, his face beaming on the screen, seemingly shedding the bad mood he had fallen into when he was caught passively in the enemy’s trap just a while ago. The tilt of the battle scales towards victory had put the Free Kingdom’s General in a good mood.

"I should be saluting you, Commander," Jie En gave a strange salute in the direction of the screen, which looked somewhat like a reversed Nazi salute, and judging by the fact that both his hands were free, it seemed his Deputy Officer was now holding the camera...

"But I should probably lodge a complaint with you, General," Uncle Reynolds, our spokesperson with a scruffy beard, appeared deeply frustrated, "I’ve never seen such a disordered battle. Was it such an army that occupied your Colonies?"

"You have to admit, these armies are stronger than any other of the same size in the regular military," Jie En shrugged nonchalantly. The forty-something-year-old military man had a personality that was quite agreeable, "In this damned universe, you simply can’t find a properly organized army—except for the Shepherds and the madmen of the Gusta Church."

I admitted this. Counting from the first images I saw in Shadow City to now officially engaging with the enemy, this ragtag force from across the universe has demonstrated combat effectiveness stronger than the regular army. The Federation Fleet, accustomed to fighting regular armies, indeed encountered considerable trouble when facing opponents that fought with the ferocity of street thugs.

A wild punch can kill the master, martial arts can’t compete with the ruthless Wang Ba Fist. Didn’t the former Imperial Leader get beaten to a pulp by a twenty-combo Black Tiger Heart Plucker?

Why do I keep thinking about that female hooligan?

"Speaking of which, where are the two young ladies, Pandora and Visca?"

I suddenly remembered the two weapons of mass destruction I had just released. It seemed that just a few minutes ago, I caught a glimpse of the Floating Gun Array advancing forward in a peripheral view on one of the monitor windows. But now when I looked for them, they were nowhere to be seen.

...They couldn’t be so small that even the radar of the Light of El couldn’t detect them, right?

Cough cough, of course, that’s a joke.

"Pandora and Visca—you’re talking about the two... warriors that your military just released?"

Jie En chose his words carefully for quite some time before he finally settled on the term ’warriors’ to describe the cranky crazies who had been pushing the Floating Gun Array back and forth across the battlefield for half an hour. From this, I gathered two pieces of information: first, the Pandora Sisters had indeed made a very deep impression on the General, and second, the radar precision on Jie En’s flagship was quite high.

"They’re my sisters," I wasn’t sure how to explain that the two little maniacs capable of pushing fleets across space came to be, "They have a bit of a violent streak—might have gotten a bit carried away this time."

"To tell you the truth, I was shocked at first," with the battle outcomes becoming clear, even Jie En had time for small talk, "Their way of fighting reminded me of those fearsome Shepherds... But that must just be some sort of support weapon system you have, after all, nothing like the Shepherds... Sorry, sorry. I might have spoken out of turn. If you’re looking for the two young misses, they’re over there."

After he finished speaking, Jie En sent me a set of coordinates. By that time, I had already spotted the two little crazies; on a monitor screen in the far corner, two dots barely bigger than the pixels were sneakily approaching a huge warship. If I wasn’t using the Imperial command routing to locate them, nobody else would have been able to find their position.

"What are you two up to?"

I connected through the spiritual link and zoomed in on the monitor image. Pandora and Visca had snuck onto the rear half of the narrow rhombic enemy ship and were lying low, plotting something. Echoing in my mind was Visca’s slightly panicked voice: "Ah, Big Brother has found us!"

"This is a secret plan."

Pandora gave such a simple response.

I think you guys just got a bit too excited and started messing around.

But nobody stopped the actions of the two young girls; after all, they knew their limits. Moreover, the warship seemed to be the enemy’s flagship—at least one of their most powerful warships. The dozens-of-kilometers-long rhombic battleship always hovered near the edge of the atmosphere, keeping a safely distant, mutual gaze with us. Its main cannon fired only once, blasting more than twenty of General Jie En’s medium-sized battleships and one of our unfortunate battlecruisers to fragments. As a result, Light of El marked it as a high-risk target. Furthermore, it was constantly emitting strong, dense signals, which further convinced me that it was the command center for the enemy fleet. Due to the distance and the dense enemy formation, our fleet’s artillery could never manage to take down the thing, not even the modified curved light ship’s photon jets could penetrate the layers of shields to deliver a sufficient blow at this distance. This made the rhombic warship the enemy’s last stand on the battlefield. Facing the superior forces of the General Jie En army and us, the mysterious enemies, the enemy had yet to retreat, likely believing this invincible ship could still turn the tide. But now, Pandora and Visca—taking advantage of their height, not much taller than a shell casing (if that can even be considered an advantage!)—had managed to approach and attach themselves to this enormous vessel. It seemed, there was a good show about to unfold.

The approach of Pandora and Visca did not alert anyone inside the rhombic battleship; perhaps the two little ones activated some kind of anti-scanning device, but I think it’s more because their combined height wasn’t even as tall as a shell casing—the crew of a warship tens of kilometers long wouldn’t care what two shell casings were up to. Thus, they were doomed to be horrified as they met their end.

Under my utterly baffled gaze, the Shorty sisters had already drilled a hole in the rear of the battleship and agilely jumped inside.

Three seconds later, the entire aft section of the rhombic battleship began to emit subtle sparks, and two bright arcs of electricity sparked at a certain point, moving rapidly in opposite directions along the engine positions, as if someone were performing large-scale cutting operations on the back.

Thirteen seconds later, the electrical arc that moved to the top of the warship broke off briefly, followed by a series of explosions and noisy signals bursting forth from where the arc had been interrupted. Soon after, a violent explosion blew a massive hole in the stern, with various broken debris, including the severed limbs of combat robots and things resembling corpses, being forced out of the hole by air currents. Simultaneously with the explosions, the electrical arcs started moving again and quickly converged with the arcs that had already circumvented the back of the warship.

It seemed that whoever inside was responsible for cutting had a fierce battle with the guardians, and the outcome was obvious to anyone: those fragmented combat robots were all over two meters tall, and both Pandora and Visca would go berserk when facing any enemy over 1.2 meters tall—they were often in a state of fury.

"What on earth are those two Super Soldiers doing?!"

General Jie En’s extremely puzzled voice came through the communicator. Any guy who could afford to fight in outer space these days could certainly afford to fit their warship with an HD camera, though the one on Jie En’s desk was a bit faulty. But it didn’t prevent him from having a high-definition view of the bizarre actions of the two one-point-two-meter girls on the battlefield.

Since a while ago, the two temporarily allied armies had been speculating what Pandora and Visca were up to. As their brother, I already had a vague idea: "All I can say is that they’re playing a game—just watch closely, and in the future, never offend a loli, especially the eternal, never-growing-up kind."

"What... Oh my goodness, Queen above! This is impossible!!!"

Believe it or not, it happened. After a series of forceful cuttings and bombings, the violent duo, Pandora Visca, finally completed their creative operation: They forcefully yanked the entire propulsion system out of the battleship’s hull!

Following the massive explosion was the disintegration of half of the ship’s body. Through the smoke, we could see that the aft section of the mothership was torn apart, but a giant propulsion system mysteriously remained intact and quickly escaped from the about-to-explode mothership region. After zooming in on the screen, what I saw was Visca pushing the two-kilometer-long main engine—like Astro Boy—while spraying huge blue energy flames from the back, speeding towards us. Well, where was Pandora?

"There, there!" Qianqian bounced around, tugging at my arm and pointing towards the Rhombic Battleship which had started to catch fire all over. Due to a leak in its power furnace, it was sinking into the atmosphere after a massive explosion. At the top of the battleship, there was an inconspicuous black dot which turned out to be Pandora pushing the colossal spaceship, seemingly trying to push it back into outer space. However, after trying for a while, the little girl gave up the act, because the Pandora models were all small craft, and it was already shocking enough that she could navigate outer space with a two-kilometer-long engine, let alone push a universe warship tens of kilometers long out of the atmosphere—that would be child labor abuse.

"Listen... listen... listen to this! I must be hallucinating!" stammered the voice of Jie En from the communicator, "My... my God, Your Majesty above! Are you all Shepherds or what? No, Shepherds wouldn’t fly ships like yours... Unbelievable, unbelievable, to find life as powerful as the Shepherds in the multi-universe! I must meet the Queen..."

I no longer had the capacity to pay attention to whatever Jie En was rambling about since Visca had already pushed the huge engine into the crossfire. From a distance, she looked like an ant carrying a peanut (this ant would be a Schwarzenegger among ants) charging into a sandstorm. To prevent the engine from being destroyed by stray bullets, Visca made several swift turns, but you must understand, she was only 1.2 meters tall...

A lot is understood without saying.

"Go to her aid," I said to Zeratul, "there’s too much fire over there, and heaven knows what Visca wants with that thing."

That girl would not have developed some bizarre collection habit like Little Baobao, would she? A newfound interest in the engines of various civilizations?

Two Protos Carriers broke away from the warship formation and moved to the flank under the cover of the wildly shooting Great Harmony Cannon, which was like a frenzy. Occasionally, stray bullets penetrated the Joint Shield of the fleet and hit the carriers, only causing faint ripples. After that huge Rhombic Flagship was destroyed in a rather cruel manner, the enemy’s morale evidently collapsed before their fleet did. Now, the artillery fire coming from tens of thousands of kilometers away had more of a symbolic resistance. The two carriers heading for the aid didn’t even deploy their fighters, but braved the storm of bullets directly into the crossfire, escorting Visca—who was pushing that huge engine—along with the rushing Pandora into their ranks, while Jie En led his troops in pursuit of the enemies attempting to escape deeper into outer space and those trying to put up a desperate fight upon entering the atmosphere. At this moment, they seemed to have the feeling of shooting themselves in the foot: they had used the low-level tactic of changing curvature to prevent the jump engines from starting, and now they themselves couldn’t get away.

"I’ve noticed something," Big Sister said, touching my arm lightly and pointing at the screen showing the ovoid flagship of Jie En, "that warship has never launched an attack. Could it be that their flagship is unarmed?"

That’s impossible. The energy readings inside Jie En’s flagship were astonishing. It not only had weapons, but it could also very likely be something devastating. However, that was their military secret. The Jie En Army and the Federation Army were but ships that pass in the night, having become temporary allies by chance. Lin Xue had warned me before leaving that this universe was full of anomalies, so much so that even the Imperial Army had to conceal itself in a Red Giant Star to avoid trouble. It’s better to do nothing than to meddle without clarity.

"Friends of the Federation, the enemies in outer space have been cleared. We are very thankful for your assistance. However, the anti-aircraft fire on the surface of the planet is still ongoing, so we must temporarily retreat to the gravitational balance point and plan for the long term," Jie En appeared on the communicator, his expression complicated, showing both the joy of victory and the frustration of not being able to reclaim the Colonies, "We need landing troops; there are numerous laborers and valuable resources on this Colonization Star. We need to snatch them back from the enemy’s hands."

"Landing troops? I have some," I suddenly spoke up, my proactive attitude leaving Reynolds with a puzzled expression.

"No, I deeply appreciate your sentiment, but a landing operation will inevitably lead to heavy casualties. This is the territory of the Free Kingdom, and I hope we can reclaim it ourselves."

"Of course, the lives of soldiers are just as precious to us," Uncle Reynolds said, a master at official-speak since his promotion from pirate leader to an executive head. After grasping the intent of his superior, Uncle Hucha immediately stepped forward with a solemn and grave expression. "But we have numerous unmanned combat units, enough to take a few key military facilities. The enemy is already cornered. Delaying at such a time is very dangerous. They might harm the civilians on the Colonization Star."

Jie En had considered this as well. Seeing Reynolds’s serious expression, he didn’t play pretenses any longer, nodded in agreement, and said: "Then, the Free Kingdom owes you a great favor. Frankly, in this dangerous universe, there aren’t many out there with the kind of righteousness you possess—I will upload the coordinates for the control core of the ground anti-air defenses to you now."

"Prepare the landing pods and the launch tubes, get the Giants and the Robot troops ready. Those iron clunkers have been itching for a fight," I said, then casually turned off the communication with Jie En and faced Reynolds, "Here are the coordinates from Pandora for you. Deploy a group of Ghost Agents to infiltrate the area. It doesn’t matter what you find; the important thing is, don’t let them find you."

(To be continued... If you want to know what happens next, please visit www.qidian.com. There are more Chapters, support the author, support genuine reading!)