159: Chapter 159 Don't Damage My Spaceship

Outside the low orbit of Mobius Prime.

A dense fleet had finished assembling and was sailing majestically into deep space.

Although the vast majority of this massive fleet consisted of conventional military shuttles and modified freighters about 100 meters in length.

But if one stood on the orbital defense platform and looked out, the fleet of warships spitting plasma exhaust plumes still presented a grand, sky-covering sense of oppression.

The fleet sailed smoothly.

A few hours later.

They had traversed the long physical distance and approached the purplish-red gas giant radiating a ghostly light.

On the optical observatory screen, the two companion satellites next to the gas giant could already be clearly seen.

On the bridge of the massive flagship.

Grand Commander Dulong Rofis was leaning comfortably in the Commander's leather seat.

He held an expensive wine glass, gently swirling the scarlet liquid inside, while listening to the adjutant report the radar scan data from the front.

Looking at the gray-brown, incredibly barren and backward junkyard planet on the screen.

Dulong sneered and lashed out mercilessly at the Commander who had been defeated last time:

"That idiot, Colonel Andrei, has the brain of a pig in an Ogryn's body! To be completely wiped out while leading five thousand regular troops and a heavy defense boat against such a primitive planet that doesn't even have a starport? He has dragged the face of the Defense Force into the Warp!"

The adjutant nodded repeatedly in agreement:

"The Commander is right. Those hicks just used some tricks because they were familiar with the terrain."

"Pass on my order."

Dulong took a sip of red wine, having no intention of sending ground troops down for any tactical landing.

His eyes were cold, and he issued the most brutal order directly:

"The entire fleet, continue to advance! After approaching the planet's low orbit, all heavy gunboats prepare the Macro Cannon array. Give me an indiscriminate orbital bombardment of those hicks' positions!"

"I want to see with my own eyes the surface of this garbage planet melted into a flat sheet of glass by high-energy lasers and artillery fire!"

However.

This high and mighty aristocratic Commander did not know.

Long before their fleet had ignited and departed from Mobius Prime.

All the players in the Fire Seed Shelter had already received a bolded, red-colored emergency war mission sent by Lin Li.

[Large-scale Battle Mission: The Air Battle of Purple-Gold Burning!]

[Objective: Defeat the expeditionary fleet from Mobius Prime!]

[Mission Description: The arrogant planetary governor has dispatched 96 heavy defense boats, 355 large armed merchant ships, and thousands of armed shuttles, which are sailing toward our home. Defeat them! Protect our hard-won civilization achievements!]

[Mission Reward: No fixed point pool. All battlefield captures and spoils belong to the individual player or legion based on their own ability!]

At first, when the players saw this short mission announcement.

Everyone did not show much enthusiasm.

"Fighting the Defense Force again? The broken laser guns and rusty body armor in those NPCs' hands aren't even worth selling as scrap metal now, right?"

"Exactly, without a fixed point reward, who would go into space to suffer? I'd rather stay in the territory and farm."

Until.

The solo players in the camp suddenly discovered that players from large legions like the Scourge Legion and the Galactic Empire Stormtroopers had all logged on silently, or were secretly gathering near the arsenal, seemingly plotting some big move.

Finally.

A solo player with a slightly better brain read the short reward description in the mission announcement a few times.

He slapped his thigh and roared at the top of his lungs on the public server channel:

"Brothers! Are you stupid?! Read the prompt carefully!"

"Is it possible that ships, people, weapons—as long as they are in that fleet, they count as loot... If we rush up and seize their ships, these ships will belong to us?!"

One word awakened the dreamer!

The chat box of the entire public channel froze for a second.

Then, like a volcanic eruption, countless messages flooded the screen!

"Holy crap! The opportunity to get rich has arrived!"

"That's right! 96 heavy defense boats! Thousands of ships! If we can seize one, won't our gaming experience for the rest of our lives skyrocket?!"

"Makes sense! Maybe we can really board and seize a big ship to become space pirates!"

But immediately after, a very realistic technical problem was placed in front of the solo players.

"The logic holds, but how do we seize them? They are in space orbit, and we don't even have spaceships. Are we supposed to jump up there with our two legs?"

A player with a unique imagination immediately threw out a hilarious solution in the channel:

"What's hard about this? Can't the underground B5 level of the Shelter build high-thrust engines? We can pool some points, make a fusion engine directly. Then weld a tin cover on top of the engine, stuff a few people inside. Just ignite it and rush into the sky, right?!"

Seeing such an outrageous and unsafe manned spaceflight plan, a large number of solo players actually found it very reasonable and believed it on the spot!

"Five hours until the enemy arrives! Brothers, team up and go underground to grab the Matter Constructor schedule!"

"Team up, team up! A heads-up: when we board later, nobody fire randomly! Don't use explosives! If you break my spaceship, I'll fight you to the death!"

As for the major legions, the style was much more professional.

Large guilds like the Scourge Legion, which have capital operations, had long anticipated that the Governor of Mobius would definitely send troops to retaliate.

Therefore.

In the past few days, they had used massive resources to work overtime and manufacture a large number of crude boarding rockets.

These rockets were each about 20 meters long.

The shape was like huge metal cigars.

Inside, besides installing a high-purity cesium fuel rocket engine with amazing thrust, and the most basic vector control system, they even skipped the life support system! There were no other weapons or radar.

The main feature was a suicidal boarding charge!

As long as they could withstand the artillery fire and successfully crash into the enemy ship's armor to complete the boarding, it would be equivalent to exchanging a pile of scrap iron for a complete space warship! This deal was a guaranteed profit!

Now, the enemy had indeed appeared.

The Scourge Legion players donned their Power Armor one after another and performed final pre-flight checks on the launch pads.

...

In space.

The Mobius expeditionary fleet had entered the low-earth gravity circle of Outpost Planet 586.

On the flagship bridge.

Commander Dulong looked at the radar screen, his brows furrowed slightly, and whispered to the adjutant.

"Strange. The expected surface air defense fire counterattack did not appear."

The adjutant looked at the scan data, full of confusion,

"Radar shows that no high-energy laser matrix locking signals were detected on the surface of this planet. They seem to have given up on air defense."

"However..."

The adjutant pointed to the dense small light spots on the screen,

"Countless tiny physical targets have just been ejected from the planet's surface. They are approaching us at high speed."

Dulong looked closely.

The volume of those light spots was very small, and there were no energy shield readings.

Rather than fighter jets, they were more like space junk dumped from the planet.

Dulong sneered disdainfully and mocked:

"Heh, overestimating their capabilities. Do they think they can stop our Macro Cannon orbital bombardment by ejecting some space junk? I can't believe they came up with such a lame and ridiculous tactic."

However.

As the speed of that space junk continued to soar.

The sneer on Dulong's face gradually solidified.

...

In deep space.

Gugu Eagle, as a newbie core member, was very quick-witted.

In a very short time, she had mastered the operation of this crude little rocket without a self-stabilization system.

The rocket's speed was very fast.

The crude engine at the tail, which used high-purity cesium fuel, was spitting out dazzling exhaust flames.

There was no aerodynamics, no orbital maneuvering—none of that existed.

These players' main strategy was sheer brute force!

In the cockpit.

Gugu Eagle, with her muscular body, pressed the communication button and shouted in the squad channel with a soft, cute girl's voice that completely contradicted her muscular physique:

"Brothers! We are about to engage! Get your weapons ready!"

A response from another player, Devil Muscle Thor, immediately came through the ship channel:

"Ready, ready! The big axe is already hungry! Gogogo!"

At this moment, hundreds of boarding rockets had completely broken free from the gravity of Outpost Planet 586 and were rushing crazily towards the largest flagship in the distance.

Gugu Eagle looked out through the explosion-proof porthole.

In the pitch-black deep space, the surroundings were densely packed with assault rockets driven by friendly forces, their exhaust plumes cutting through the silence like a meteor shower.

Besides these assault ships that were comparable to iron coffins, the player side had almost not dispatched any decent conventional warships.

The distance between the two sides was rapidly closing.

On the enemy flagship bridge.

Dulong looked at the metal tubes rushing over with trailing exhaust flames on the optical screen and finally realized something was wrong.

That wasn't junk!

Those were a bunch of suicide impact ships that didn't slow down at all!

"Damn it! Close-in weapon phalanx and anti-aircraft laser cannons! Fire at will! Blow those pieces of junk into sieves!" Dulong roared.

"Hum—!"

There is no sound in the vacuum of space.

But the intertwined lasers and dense live-ammunition barrage instantly wove a net of death between the two armies.

Almost the moment they opened fire, a large number of player rockets at the very front were hit by artillery.

However.

Something that made Dulong's scalp tingle happened.

The rockets built by this bunch of lunatics didn't have any complex explosive electronic components or ammunition depots installed at all!

Except for the fuel tank at the tail, this was just a solid, super-sized iron rod!

Therefore, except for a few unlucky ones who were hit directly in the engine and exploded.

The vast majority of the boarding rockets that were pierced by lasers or riddled with holes by live ammunition were just spewing thick black smoke and electric sparks, continuing their desperate charge towards them without slowing down at all!

"Impact warning! 500 meters!"

The adjutant watched the radar flashing with red light, his face dripping with cold sweat,

"Commander! The firepower net can't stop them! There are too many of them, and they are too fast!"

Just as the distance between the two sides reached its limit.

Dulong stared intently out the porthole.

He suddenly discovered that inside a few broken rockets that were about to have fuel explosions.

The hard hatches were kicked open directly from the inside.

Dozens of warriors wearing dark red armor actually jumped directly into the vacuum of space!

The jetpacks on their backs sprayed hot exhaust flames, defying the sky-filling anti-aircraft fire, and like a swarm of ants, they charged directly at the nearest warship armor plate with their physical bodies!

Dulong's eyeballs were about to pop out of their sockets, his hands clutching the edge of the command console, his whole body trembling.

"Pow... Power Armor?!"

Dulong looked at the dark red figures moving flexibly in the vacuum, his voice becoming sharp and distorted due to extreme shock,

"And it's a fully enclosed Power Armor that can provide a vacuum life support system?!"

This level of individual equipment, even if placed in the Governor's elite guards at the galaxy's capital, couldn't scrape together a hundred sets!

"How is this possible?! Where did these hicks in the junkyard get such top-tier things?!"

Dulong felt his brain fall into serious logical confusion.

He couldn't figure it out no matter how hard he tried.

Why could these poor wretches, who didn't even have a proper military warship, bring out so many sets of top-tier Power Armor in an organized manner?! This is unscientific!

Looking at those red figures.

A bad premonition welled up in Dulong's heart.