Mechs jumping between two transfer points did so via the normal channel. With the support of the transfer point, the mech would consume less energy. As long as the pilot did not drop out of the network because of the transfer, the passengers on the mech would not be hurt. Not too much, at least.
Emergency transfers, on the other hand, were a lot less friendly. Those involved forcibly tethering one’s mech to to a transfer point out of range with known coordinates. Basically, one would be dragging the mech over with raw force. This could be done, albeit at the cost of a massive amount of energy, and would incur considerable damage to the mech. This method was incredibly brutal and inhuman — only madmen attempt it.
Besides using the transfer point as a landmine, another reason why Jingheng Lin blew up “Surprise” was to trap the pirates in this small asteroid belt.
He had barely passed through “Surprise” before the missiles hit, and arrived at a transfer point deeper in the asteroid belt. This was the secret route he had discovered through multiple brushes with death. Unfortunately, it was destined to be destroyed today before he could even finish mapping it.
“Zhanlu,” Jingheng Lin pointed at the unconscious bird youth, “Take out the tracker and wiretap in him.”
“Extraction is impossible,” Zhanlu answered after scanning. “His heart is a ‘bio-printed’ artificial organ. The organ itself is the tracker. There are no extra hearts in this mech’s medical equipment to pick from. If extracted, he will die shortly.”
“Then the correct term is not “impossible”,” Jingheng Lin said. “It’s just that he’ll die if you remove it.”
“Okay, sir,” Zhanlu quickly corrected himself. “Shall I kill him and remove the tracker?”
Jingheng Lin paused, and skipped the question. Without answering Zhanlu, he commanded, “Try to hide parts of the signal, so that what they receive is intermittent and inaccurate. I want them to think that I’m trying to block the tracker, but it’s not going well — try to imitate that as well as you can.”
“I apologize for my direct words, sir,” Zhanlu said, “but I hope that you don’t ask any other AIs to perform such unreasonable tasks in future — they might crash.”
Jingheng Lin gave him an icy look.
Standing at attention, Zhanlu’s stance was especially proper. “Just a suggestion.”
Technology might have progressed, but human reaction time was not any faster than it was thousands of years ago. When the heavy mech took a hard blow to the tail, Primalien couldn’t even make out what was happening. He could only glance back through the mech’s mental network at the explosions across the sky behind him. The communication channels went batshit — but only momentarily.
The extraterrestrial area was not a peace-loving place. The name “interstellar pirates” might not sound professional at all, but each and every one of them was actually well-trained.
After a moment of panic in the communication channel, everyone unanimously went quiet for a second, then started to efficiently give status reports in order.
“No. 1 is missing, No.2 to No. 16 have all crashed...crackle...this is No.17 standing in for the status report. My mech body is severely damaged, the defense system is not working properly, and the arms system is at high risk of exploding. The power system is also not working properly.”
“No. 18 to No.24 has crashed, this is No. 25 standing in for the status report. The transfer point has been blown up. I repeat, the transfer point has been blown up. The missing No. 1 passed through the transfer point right before the explosion and has now fled.”
“Boss, the team lost seventy six mechs, and another fifty three have completely lost their battle capabilities. The remaining sixty all have varying degrees of damage. We have lost over half of our troops, please issue commands if we are to evacuate immediately.”
Primalien sucked in a deep breath. He turned to the empty tracker and raged, “Evacuate, my ass! How dare he set me up, I’m going to flay him! Line up! Assemble! Link all the mental networks together, expand the search range, and search for the closest transfer point's magnetic field!”
The Cayley Guard’s research progress on interstellar transfer had always been ahead than that of the Union’s. This showed back during the attack on the honor guard, but unfortunately that tiny group of interstellar pirates was defeated by Jingheng Lin. The Union Military Committee, remaining in their safe little bubble, did not try to outpace them.
Because of this, Primalien was confident that his sixty medium mechs and one heavy mech would be able to catch the opponent.
“Boss, we’ve detected faint transfer field figures from three sailing days away.”
Primalien calmed down from his rage. “It might be a trap. Do a remote scan.”
“There aren’t any no results. We’re not sure where he’s headed.”
Primalien raised his eyebrows. “Try to activate the tracker on the kingfisher. He might’ve found a way to block off the signal.”
On No.1, Jingheng Lin slowly chewed a bland piece of a compressed nutrition meal. He watched the bird youth’s whole body convulse at his feet, as if he was a heart attack victim who had just received electric cardioversion.
“Primalien is trying to activate the tracker. This guy’s interesting. No matter what you give him, he won’t trust you. But if you just step back a tiny bit, and halfheartedly conceal your own tracks, he’ll be lured to voluntarily chase you himself. As long as he believes that he’s worked hard to investigate it himself, he will believe in the conclusion without a doubt, no matter how ridiculous it is. Who gave him this illogical confidence?”
Zhanlu gave a reasoned answer, “The universally famed singer, Miss Yevghania. The hit song that brought her to fame was called Believe In Yourself.”
To fit the scene, raucous music started to play in the mech.
Jingheng Lin: “......”
The commodore, who had once been confessed to with fiery passion, patiently listened to her for a moment. He felt like his blood pressure had been drummed up by the beat. He also reflected that Miss Yevghania’s voice sounded like a crazed donkey.
“Turn it off,” Jingheng Lin could no longer tolerate it. “Don’t let Primalien’s efforts go to waste. Spill a little information to him when needed.”
Just as he finished speaking, a weak, choppy signal appeared on Primalien’t tracker. A second later, it vanished like a ghost.
Primalien clenched his teeth. “All the damaged mechs, stay here until further command. Pool your power supplies for the ones that can still fight, and prepare for emergency transfer! Firstly, our enemy’s mental strength might be very high, so keep the mental networks connected together to prevent him from invading again. Secondly, be prepared to fire your missiles, we’ll fire immediately once we’ve successfully transferred. Don’t give him any time to react, and fire up your shields to the max! We’ve already caught him!”
Jingheng Lin stuffed the compressed nutrition meal’s package into Zhanlu’s hands. “Prepare to face missiles, fall back in full speed, and be ready to receive a round of bombing.”
Primalien was stuck deep in an unfamiliar asteroid belt, having been suddenly ambushed, and his fighting force had been halved. Logically, he shouldn’t recklessly give chase.
The interstellar pirates were already far away from the passage the base was at, and had taken a hard loss. Logically, Jingheng Lin had already achieved his goal of hiding the base’s location, and shouldn’t lure the enemy deeper in. He shouldn’t try to wipe out a pirate troop that had more than sixty mechs left on his own.
Neither the Union Military Committee nor Black Orchid Academy had ever taught tactics like this.
However, both the Cayley Guard and Jingheng Lin were too proud. Like demons that grew fangs at the sight of blood, every cell in their bodies trembled with excitement at the slightest hint of gunfire.
Jingheng Lin, standing at the frontline of the war against interstellar pirates for thirty years, was like a guard in the abyss. This orthodox Black Orchid graduate, who once had his epaulette lined with stars, did things like an interstellar pirate instead.
At the next moment, the pirate fleet passed through the transfer point. Before the giant energy wave could even spread out completely, hundreds of missiles were fired simultaneously in a sphere formation, shooting in every angle possible with almost no blind spots.
Humanity’s most deadly weapon drove a giant wave in the asteroid belt, almost like a tsunami. All the steadily orbiting particles near the transfer point were shoved aside, chaotically knocking into each other. They were shattered in sequential blasts of white light.
Jingheng Lin pushed No.1’s speed to its limit. He fired three missiles at once, which ran into missiles in close proximity headed towards them. The collision’s energy drew a silent arc in the vacuum. High energy particles, fragments, and the remnants of celestial bodies swept over No.1’s mech body like a tempest. For a split second, the gravity simulation system in the mech couldn’t balance out, and both living and dead bodies were sent flying.
Jingheng Lin kicked aside a pirate’s body with one foot. He ordered No. 1 to stop, and to fall back immediately. Using this slim advantage, he continued sailing upstream, barely brushing past two missiles when he rushed headfirst into the pirate mech fleet.
The interstellar pirates’ missiles’ trajectories were already set before the emergency transfer. At the moment, the pirates had not recovered from the immense discomfort the emergency transfer caused. They couldn’t force their eyelids open due to the bright light and vibration from their missiles. No one had expected the enemy to retaliate so soon!
“Sir, the shield’s damage level is rising fast, it’s currently 80%…85%…90%…” Zhanlu warned.
Jingheng Lin ignored him and fired three consecutive missiles at the pirates. The first one shattered a mech’s shield. The second struck its munition storage right in the center, which immediately blew up. At the same time, the third missile swept the exploded mech’s wreckage aside—
A hole instantly appeared in Primalien’s perfect defense, which was strung together by all the mental networks under his command. Jingheng Lin immediately flew his mech into the empty space, taking over the mental networks of the two mechs closest to him in an instant.
“Sir, the shield has completely lost function, restarting has failed!”
Primalien instantly sensed the abnormality. The muzzle of the heavy mech’s particle cannon instantly swivelled towards him, opening fire almost without preheating.
The two invaded pirate mechs immediately became Jingheng Lin’s shields, blocking the particle cannon’s muzzle. Primalien’s cannon almost burst. A large part of the heavy mech’s shield was blasted apart by his own hand.
The numerous pirate mechs’ mental networks were linked together. This made individual movement difficult, and they were constricted by each other. Even the untouched mechs were affected.
Primalien roared, “Spread out!”
Jingheng Lin started to laugh. “Stop trying to play petty tricks.”
Innumerable weak points appeared in the originally linked mental networks once they were separated. Jingheng Lin took control of all of them without hesitation. For a while, the melee between the countless mechs was like demons dancing around wildly — no one knew who was on which side.
Zhanlu’s calm reminder interrupted the sky full of gunfire. “Sir, your heart rate is too fast, and your body temperature is over 40 degrees. Your mental strength is suffering from extreme overload. In your current state, you’re highly susceptible to attacks — ”
The pirate mech fleet was a standard fleet. This was unlike Cow’s sham of a Self-Defense Force, where a mech with a pilot dropping out of the mental network became an unmanned one. In the Cayley Guard, every medium-sized mech had three to five backup pilots. Once the mental network was taken over, more than two backup pilots would step up at once, to wrestle back control over the network.
Jingheng Lin could probably handle one mech’s counterattack. However, even a god wouldn’t be able to hold on if dozens of mechs retaliated in unison.
Jingheng Lin waved at Zhanlu. Picking up the bird youth by the collar, he turned around and hopped into Beijing, which was parked in a corner.
Beijing’s battery had already been silently charged while Zhanlu was still hidden.
Jingheng Lin fired it up. At the same time, just as the pirates were going to start their counterattack on the mental networks, he withdrew from all of them.
The underside of No.1 opened silently, letting Beijing out. At the same time, the empty No.1’s mental network was taken over by Primalien. He did not even blink before he initiated the self-destruct sequence.
Beijing, smaller than even a missile, got close to the heavy mech unnoticed under the cover of the violent explosions. It stayed close to the particle cannon’s muzzle. The shield had just been damaged there, neatly exposing the heavy mech’s backup mech reception port.
Then, like an elusive virus, Beijing silently inserted itself into Primalien’s heavy mech.
Gazing upon the obliterated No.1, Primalien burst into laughter. He couldn’t care less that nearly half of his own sixty mechs was lost as well.
Jingheng Lin took a few heaving breaths. He felt like his breath was so blisteringly hot that it was almost lighting his lungs on fire. His vision turned black and he tried to grab onto something mid-air to keep his balance. Zhanlu scooped him up. “Sir!”
At the same time, the bird youth woke up on Beijing.
“Has the fever broke yet…..” Jingheng Lin asked.
“Sir, the antibodies are wiping out the Rainbow Virus. Some discomfort is a normal reaction. Your main problem right now is your mental strength overload.”
His voice drifted close and then away again. For a moment, Jingheng Lin couldn’t make out what he was saying.
“Primalien’s medium sized mech fleet, composed of hundreds of mechs, only has twenty six left. A part of it is unable to even undergo another emergency transfer. The heavy mech’s munition storage’s explosion destroyed more than half of its shield. One could basically say that the enemy is unable to fight now,” Zhanlu said, “Sir, you need to rest.”
Jingheng Lin heard the last part clearly. He replied, “No.”
Zhanlu: “......Oh, that’s the hundred and twenty-fourth one.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Jingheng Lin whispered almost inaudibly, “He...he ruined the surprise Xin Lu left.”
Zhanlu went silent for a moment. “Sir, you blew up the ‘Surprise’ transfer point yourself.”
“Yeah,” Jingheng Lin’s breathing had calmed down. He shoved Zhanlu aside and stood up on his own. “Whatever, someone has to pay.”
He was just a bastard who would do anything to achieve his goal, and then count all the sacrifices as the opponent's fault.
Jingheng Lin’s grip on his own consciousness was probably affected by the fever. For a second, his thoughts went out of control, wandering to irrelevant places. He abruptly said,”Monoeye Hawk’s decision to not give him to me…...was kinda smart.”
“Zhanlu, how long can the energy left on Beijing support your mental network for if it’s fully spread out?”
“Around three minutes, sir.”
Three minutes…...a heavy mech wouldn’t let him close all the doors and release his poison like No.1 did. It was too large, and its internal structure was too complicated. Three minutes might not even be enough to start its self-destruct mechanism.
Jingheng Lin was stuck in thought for a moment.
The fully conscious bird youth stared at the side of his face, terrified. He crept close to the parked mech’s cabin door silently. Before anyone noticed him, he jumped up, ramming into the glass over the emergency valve and shattering it. In a split second, he manually opened the cabin door and flew out.
“Sir……” Zhanlu spoke.
Jingheng Lin shut the cabin door, his expression unaltered. “Don’t worry, that’s another surprise for Primalien.”
Bixing Lu hurried slowly to the outskirts of the asteroid belt. He stared, stunned at the ‘Desert of Death’ before his eyes. Amidst the mech’s roaring alarms, he murmured to himself, “Could it be possible that he’d joined mysterious organizations like an interstellar suicide squad before?”
The mech wasn’t intelligent enough to appreciate his humor. It was busy screaming in horror of the ‘Desert of Death’.
Bixing Lu’s brain short circuited for a brief moment. “If I really refuse him one day, his inner yandere wouldn’t suddenly wake up and do something to me, right?”
The mech got even more terrified.
Bixing Lu shuddered. His throat moved slightly and the hair on his arms stood on end, but a thin layer of sweat formed on his palms.
His current state was basically — yeah, this is kind of scary, but if you really think about it, it’s also kinda kinky.
Then, piloting a tiny mech that was basically a paper airplane, he burst headfirst into the Desert of Death.
Editor's Note:
Have you all watched the PV2 of the donghua?!?! It looks amazing !!!!