175: Chapter 175 Logging into the Defense Platform

It was unclear when it started. A mysterious underground resistance organization suddenly emerged in the slums at the lowest level!

They distributed leaflets everywhere, frantically inciting the laborers, civilians, and gang members at the bottom to take up arms and rebel.

In just a few short days, massive armed rebellions erupted simultaneously in the lower levels of nearly three of the eight giant Hive Cities on Mobius Prime!

Governor Cromwell paced back and forth in front of his desk like a trapped beast. "Who on earth is inciting that scum at the bottom?!"

"Knock, knock, knock." The heavy wooden door was knocked. After receiving permission, the old butler walked in, sweating profusely and pale-faced.

"Governor," the old butler swallowed, his voice trembling, "The undercover agents we sent to the lower levels have found out who is behind this recent massive rebellion."

Governor Cromwell rushed forward, grabbing the old butler by the shoulders, his nails almost digging into the flesh: "Who is it?!"

The old butler dared not look into Governor Cromwell's man-eating eyes and replied in a low voice: "It... it is Miss Elena."

"What?!" Governor Cromwell's hands went limp, and he released the old butler. He stumbled back two steps, his face full of disbelief. "Elena?"

Ever since Elena had run back from the junkyard planet and had a huge argument with Governor Cromwell, he had ordered her to be placed under house arrest. Later, he heard she had been rescued by that Catachan bodyguard.

Governor Cromwell had originally thought that with his sister's pampered personality, she would surely have hidden in their grandmother's safe Hive City to take refuge. After all, growing up, every time they argued, Elena would run to their grandmother to complain.

However, this time... she had actually run to the slum at the lowest level to become the leader of the rebels?!

"Why?" Governor Cromwell slumped into his leather chair, muttering to himself, "Why do such a stupid thing that digs up the foundations of our family?"

But soon, the sadness in Governor Cromwell's eyes was replaced by coldness. He seemed to realize something, his spirit jolted, and the iron-fisted methods belonging to a politician once again took the upper hand.

"Pass the order down! Issue a city-wide broadcast in the name of the System Governor!" Governor Cromwell stood up abruptly, his eyes cold as knives, and issued three orders:

"First! Immediately announce that Elena Rofis has completely severed ties with the family! Strip her of all noble titles and inheritance rights! She is now a wanted criminal of the empire!"

"Second! Immediately dispatch the enforcement team to forcibly conscript laborers in the middle levels of the Hive City! Drive the laborers out of the city to build the first line of defense!"

"Third! Mobilize all private soldiers and reserve legions of the major noble families! But remember! To prevent mutiny, no one is allowed to issue guns to any newly conscripted soldiers until they reach the front-line trenches! Issue the equipment only when they reach the front line!"

Watching Governor Cromwell, who had fallen into madness, the old butler swallowed in terror and bowed his head, responding: "Yes! Governor!"

The Governor's iron-fisted orders were quickly transmitted, spreading rapidly through the dense loudspeakers of the Hive City across the major cities.

… An abandoned water recycling plant at the lowest level of a certain Hive City. This place had been converted into the temporary headquarters for the rebels.

Elena was wearing a tactical vest and camouflage pants stained with machine oil, with a laser pistol hanging at her waist. At this moment, she had shed all the delicacy of a noble girl and looked more like a capable young woman who had grown up mingling in the gangs at the bottom.

She stood in front of a dilapidated radio, listening quietly to the city-wide broadcast from the Governor's Mansion. When she heard that she had been publicly stripped of her surname and expelled from the family by her own brother, there was not a ripple on Elena's face, as if she had long expected it.

However, when the broadcast announced the order to forcibly conscript laborers from the lower levels to build defense lines outside the city, Elena stood up abruptly from the ammunition crate, her fists clenched tightly.

"My brother has gone mad! He is sending civilians to their deaths!"

Elena turned her head to look at Cork, who was sitting in the corner quietly wiping his military knife. "Cork! How many people do we have now? When can we take the upper levels of this Hive City?"

Cork did not look up, answering with a very realistic answer in a muffled voice: "I don't know, Miss. My specialty is guerrilla warfare and assassination in the jungle, but I am not good at commanding tens of thousands of civilians who can't even hold a gun steady to fight a siege. As long as the Defense Force blocks the elevator shafts, we cannot fill the gap with human lives."

The two fell into a brief silence. "Then do you think..." Elena bit her lip and asked, "Can my brother... block the Spark Alliance's attack?"

"He can't." Cork answered without hesitation this time, sheathing his polished military knife back into the thigh holster. "Absolutely not."

"What does the Spark Alliance have? They have angels, they have organized units of genetically modified humans! They have overwhelming heavy firepower, and they have Power Armor that even ordinary privates can wear!"

"Even more terrifying is that they have a set of laws and ideological systems that are highly identified with from top to bottom! This is an army with faith."

"The only weakness of the Spark Alliance is that their total number of people is not yet large enough. But in this level of combat, numbers are never the key to victory."

Cork analyzed, "Judging from the consistent style of that Spark Alliance leader, he is very pragmatic. He will definitely adopt the most reliable and conservative tactics."

"He will first use the fleet to completely blockade the orbit of the entire system, cut off all external aid to Mobius, and leave the Governor with nowhere to run. Then he will use high-altitude airborne troops to directly infiltrate the Governor's Mansion and conduct a clean and swift decapitation strike!"

Hearing the words "decapitation strike," Elena's heart twitched violently. Although her brother was cold and ruthless, he was, after all, her relative in this world.

"Will they... kill my brother?" Elena's voice trembled slightly.

Cork was silent for a while, then shook his head. "Most likely not. A living System Governor is more useful than a dead corpse."

Cork calmly dissected the political logic, "Not to mention whether executing an Imperial Governor directly would provoke a strong backlash from the Adeptus Arbites. Looking at it solely from the cost of governance, if the Governor is kept alive and forced to publicly relinquish power through military force, then the Spark Alliance can very smoothly and legitimately take over all the Defense Force on this planet. It wouldn't even suffer much resistance."

"Moreover, the Spark Alliance's so-called 'supreme constitution' poses too great a threat to the interests of the old nobility. But if Governor Cromwell can act as the representative of the first family and take the lead in bowing and acknowledging the Spark Alliance's policies, then for the Spark Alliance, the political benefits will be immeasurable."

After listening to Cork's analysis, Elena's suspended heart eased slightly. She sat back on the ammunition crate and fell into deep thought.

However. Just at this moment! "Boom—!" A terrifying roar like ten thousand thunders stampeding directly pierced through the thousands-of-meters-thick steel dome of the Hive City, clearly reaching the slums at the lowest level!

The whole ground was shaking violently! Their expressions changed abruptly; they rushed out of the headquarters and looked up at the grey, murky dome above.

"It started so quickly?!" Elena muttered to herself.

At the same time. In the near-Earth orbit of Mobius Prime. A huge rock with a diameter of about five kilometers was floating there. Its main component was dense and hard basalt. Because the material structure was very stable, this asteroid had been directly hollowed out from the inside and converted into a massive orbital defense platform and orbital starport.

At this moment. The armor plates on the surface of this rock fortress opened one after another, and Macro Cannons of various calibers and anti-aircraft laser arrays extended from the inside, frantically pouring firepower outward, making a final resistance.

However, this kind of fixed turret resistance lacking fleet cover was destined to be ineffective. Under the long-range strikes of the Spark Alliance fleet, those heavy anti-aircraft guns with the largest calibers and the highest threat to ships had long been "called out" and blown into scrap metal by sea breeze no. 9 and a dozen Great River-class ships.

As for the Brotherhood of Steel responsible for the beachhead landing, the iron-shelled rocket pods they rode in were too small as targets. In such a dense anti-aircraft network, these tough guys' boarding assault suffered almost no substantial casualties.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!" The first batch of twenty rocket drop pods, carrying scorching friction exhaust flames, slammed into the top armor of the orbital defense platform without slowing down! Twenty deep craters were smashed into the hard basalt.

"Hiss—" The hatch exploded open. Legion Commander Flame Fist was the first to rush out. "Brothers! Time to work! Follow me!"

More than two hundred muscular tough guys wearing heavy Power Armor rushed out of the drop pods. The jetpacks on their backs suddenly spewed out high-pressure airflow, and braving the strafing of the surrounding automatic turrets, they were like a group of humanoid tyrannosaurs on the weightless platform, charging and crashing all the way, rushing straight toward the surviving Macro Cannon barrel in the center of the platform!

All surveillance cameras and automatic defense weapons that tried to block the way were completely cleaned up by them with the weapons in their hands. They rushed to the side of the Macro Cannon barrel, which was several meters in diameter.

"Move aside! Let me do it!" Pi She shouted. He swung the ultrasonic oscillating axe in his hand, which was half a person tall, its high-frequency force field flickering wildly!

"Clang! Clang!" It only took two axe blows! The oscillating axe, which could cut through iron like mud, forcibly hacked a huge gap into that hard gun barrel!

"Alright! Leave it to me!" Zhen was quick-eyed and nimble-handed; he pulled out a large lump of homemade high explosives and threw it fiercely into the depths of the gun barrel along the gap! "Ignite! Fall back!"

A few seconds later. "Boom—!!!" A violent implosion occurred inside the gun barrel. The entire giant gun barrel, which was tens of meters long, was blown into two from the middle, and the precise magnetic rail structure inside was blown to pieces, completely scrapped!

"Turret paralyzed! Blast door is open!" Flame Fist took the lead, kicked open the deformed maintenance passage gate, and took the lead in diving into the platform interior below the gun barrel, "Kill your way in! Control the energy hub!"

… High orbit, bridge of sea breeze no. 9. Commander-in-Chief Ushtan watched the green dots representing the Brotherhood of Steel on the holographic tactical board, which had successfully broken into the core area of a defense platform.

"Governor," Ushtan turned and reported, "The assault team has successfully broken into the interior, and the external firepower network of the orbital platform has been completely paralyzed. The first phase of the clearing mission can be declared complete immediately."

Lin Li sat in the captain's chair and nodded with satisfaction: "Very good. Order the Galactic Empire Stormtroopers to prepare for orbital entry. The main force will rest for ten minutes, preparing to cut into the atmosphere and drop to the surface."

However! Just at this critical moment. Iron Man 73, who had been sitting in the pilot's seat acting as the pilot, suddenly had the electronic red light in its eyes flash frantically, emitting a harsh tactical alarm!

"Alarm!" "Abnormal readings detected! Bearing 180, depression angle minus 20 degrees! At a distance of 0.91 astronomical units, a large-scale unidentified fleet unit has suddenly appeared!"

"Performing data comparison!"

Hearing this news, Lin Li sat up straight from the chair, his first reaction being that most terrifying guess. "Appearing out of thin air? The main force of the Tyranids has arrived?!"

A layer of cold sweat instantly broke out on Lin Li's forehead, "That's not right! Although the Tyranids can perform faster-than-light travel between galaxies, they essentially use physical gravitational sliding! As long as they approach the edge of the galaxy, our deep-space radar would have observed them long ago. It's absolutely impossible for them to appear out of thin air right in our faces!"

"Could it be... that the ancient battlefield remains mentioned by U-999 caused a spatial fold, warping them over?" Lin Li frowned deeply.

At this time, 73's massive computing power had already given the final optical analysis answer. "Identity of the unknown fleet confirmed!"

73 enlarged the blurry image captured by the optical probe onto the main screen, "The target fleet includes one Space Marine-level Strike Cruiser about 3 kilometers long, and 5 heavy Battle Barges!"

"Judging from the hull paint scheme and the intercepted short-wave identification code..." "The visitors are suspected to be a reconnaissance or exploration fleet of the Imperial Astartes — the Blood Ravens Chapter!"

Looking at the familiar dark red armor paint scheme on the screen, and the black raven emblem with spread wings. Lin Li only felt a toothache.

"What the f*ck! Blood Ravens?!" "How did these Blood Ravens brothers, known as the most sticky-fingered in the galaxy, suddenly run to this backwater place?!"

"Old Seven! Quick, quick, quick! Pass the order down!" Lin Li was so anxious he jumped straight up from his chair, shouting orders, "Tell the players below to hide all the good stuff! Especially the identification code of our sea breeze no. 9, hurry up and disguise it as a civilian coal freighter, the lowest-grade kind!"