Chapter 107: His Wishful Thinking Rings Loud
In the sky, Omar waited 80 kilometers away from the nuclear blast zone, still awaiting good news of victory.
"Oh right, Mr. Ke'er, I have one more thing to discuss. What have you thought about my previous proposal?"
"Please allow me a few more days to consider selling the city in exchange for citizenship."
Ke'er said.
"'New Hope' citizenship is quite prestigious throughout the entire Star Union," Omar said. "Your family can also move into the elite section of the space station with you at that time."
He handed the pad to Ke'er, which displayed artificially dug rivers and lakes, lush green gentle hills, and beautiful three-story villas. This residential area was said to apply the garden aesthetics of humanity's golden age and was priceless within the space station.
"Is this—the city with the best environment within 100 light-years?"
"Yes, possibly even within 300 or 500 light-years."
Omar smiled.
"A private estate covering 6 hectares, a villa exceeding 3000 square meters, plus no less than 10 servants, and two space yachts. Everything you have now is there, and everything you don't have now is also there; your personal assets will be converted into Star Union credits at a special exchange rate, enough to last a lifetime, and we'll also be neighbors."
It did sound very tempting.
Although 'New Hope' is a space station, the indoor space in the rich area is huge, with screen-like ceilings reaching over 300 meters high, mimicking the light and color of a natural sky. The surrounding walls use large-area holographic projections to create distant mountains and seas, making it difficult for people inside to distinguish that it is actually an artificial landscape.
Currently, if you want to experience the 'Garden Planet' style before the apocalypse, that's the only place to go. It's not an exaggeration to call it a paradise on Earth.
However, Ke'er was not a naive young man who would easily be fooled.
"Can I establish my own company and guard force there?"
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Without soldiers under his command, no amount of wealth could be secured. 'New Hope' sounded like paradise and looked like it, but in reality, although he hadn't been there yet, he could guess it was not much different.
"No, ordinary citizens don't have that right. That's a privilege for 'Special Grade Citizens,'" Omar explained. "And Special Grade Citizen status comes with an additional price."
"Specifically, what is this price—"
"Naturally, it's the golden age technology in your city. If you can hand over intact physical objects and technological documents to Apollo, then I might be able to facilitate the Special Grade Citizen matter, as you know, 'New Hope' is our hometown, and Apollo has high prestige there."
No, I don't know. That's just your side of the story.
"After the transaction is completed, what will happen to the citizens of Oasis City?"
"Oh? I didn't realize Mr. Ke'er actually cared about those citizens?"
"No———. Just curious to ask."
"Then let me put it more plainly," Omar's gaze and tone became slightly fierce. "The citizens are packaged in the sales contract and will become Apollo's property in the future. Where they go and what they do after being sold has nothing to do with you."
"...—Alright, let me think about it again." Ke'er's eyes flickered, trying to change the subject. "By the way, how was your operation?"
"Calm down. Commander, report the progress!"
"Report! Contact with the scorched earth cleanup team has been temporarily interrupted, possibly due to nuclear radiation interference."
Contact lost!?
Nuclear radiation interference?
Impossible - the most severe moment of early radiation was the three to five seconds after the nuclear explosion. There's no reason for it to only affect communications now!
Omar's light-colored eyes spun rapidly, falling into deep thought.
He didn't know exactly what happened, but it wasn't difficult to detect the strangeness behind this phenomenon.
Silence is often more terrifying than the sound of gunfire.
"Minister, should we wait for them here?"
Of course not!
If they didn't leave now, even a delay of a few minutes, or even tens of seconds, could lead to irreversible consequences.
Apollo's division minister is a position with great power, but also one that easily makes enemies. Omar was able to work from his prime until wrinkles appeared on his face, not by luck.
"Return at maximum speed! The ones who went are all official employees, they will definitely complete the mission successfully."
Fortunately, the 'hummingbird' can fly at a maximum speed of 1.7 Mach, reaching Oasis City in 15 minutes.
"Received!"
The commander had also risen to a mid-level position and knew that the Minister's accompanying the army did not mean he was truly fearless of death, so he immediately ordered the pilot to turn 180 degrees.
Ke'er: "So this operation is considered———·"
"Very successful! Achieved over 80% of the planned combat objectives."
Omar's face was like a pig's liver, forcing himself to maintain a steady tone.
Ke'er cursed inwardly again.
What a purebred waste, you talk so nicely, but you failed!
"It doesn't matter." Omar saw through his thoughts. "This doesn't change the fact that we have weapons of mass destruction, while the bumpkins have nothing and can only cower and take a beating. Even if they miraculously survive the nuclear explosion, they will definitely be severely weakened.
More nuclear warheads will be transported here next, they cannot escape death."
He looked at Ke'er, smiling with a hidden threat.
"I'll stay in the city with you and wait for the main force to arrive. That should be fine, right?"
After confirming there were no more enemy threats nearby, the Caoyuan aerospace plane landed beside the camp.
"What's the damage?"
Caoyuan jumped out of the plane and asked Salty Fish, who had come to meet him.
"...—Actually, it's alright. Sixteen players died, and over twenty were seriously injured with broken arms and legs, they've all gone offline to regenerate in the hibernation pods."
Salty Fish, who had just finished a tough battle, was breathing heavily.
"Much better than I initially expected. Those few laser cannons are almost scrapped, repairing them is probably worse than rebuilding. 450 square meters of solar panels were lost, and the airdrop pod lost 1/3 of its power generation capacity. Fortunately, there were thousands of tons of water ballast inside, so it wasn't flipped over by the nuclear blast wave, otherwise, it would have been troublesome."
"The terrain helped us out."
Caoyuan sighed.
"Mainly because you intercepted in time. If the missiles had flown into the canyon before exploding, it would have been completely over. Brother Caoyuan, great marksmanship!"
"Alright, alright, stop flattering, I'm getting embarrassed. This battle, there weren't just losses, right?"
If there were, Salty Fish wouldn't be in his current mental state.
"Naturally!" The other party flicked his head. "Come!"
"Stand properly!"
In the camp cave, under Ye Xing's command, six surviving Apollos stood in a row with their legs spread, butts out, and hands on the stone wall, accepting searches from the players, looking very pathetic.
"Big Ye! They don't have any dangerous items on them."
"Got it, go busy yourself with something else."
Ye Xing had the captives turn around.
"Next, I will separate you and cross-examine your intelligence one by one. I'll kindly remind you, Caoyuan only needs one piece of intelligence, and there are six of you, so if anyone's confession doesn't match the others, you should know what will happen, right?"
"Of course!" The captives nodded vigorously. "We are all just company employees, we will definitely cooperate well!"
"Stop insulting employees!"
Who is like you?
"Chief Investigator sir," the Butler came forward, "Please don't easily trust them. Why not leave the interrogation to me? As an AI, I have no emotional burden about using torture; human cries, the smell of blood, and the odor of involuntary excretions will not affect my work efficiency."
"Alright—anyway, this part isn't suitable for the live broadcast, just don't extort a confession by torture."
Ye Xing felt a surge of pride.
Even the Butler AI is calling me Chief Investigator, it feels kind of good. At this moment, he saw Salty Fish leading Caoyuan over, so he pointed to the captured equipment piled in a corner.
"The spoils of war are all here. Let me tell you, we've struck it rich this time. Twelve sets of power armor can be repaired before attacking the Moon mine, and the quantity of various accessories has more than doubled!"
"Is that perhaps the legendary single-soldier electromagnetic weapon!?"
Caoyuan pointed to the two-meter-long weapon on the ground and asked.
He immediately saw the thick barrel with a rectangular cross-section.
This shape is unlikely to be a traditional gunpowder weapon.
Salty Fish: "Yes, you're an expert."
Caoyuan: "What's the power like?"
"I can only say it's quite brutal!"
Jubian, hearing someone wanted to talk about technology, happily came over from somewhere: "The rail and sabot use superconductors, and the barrel has liquid nitrogen cooling to ensure the superconductors can continue to work normally, thus ensuring a sufficiently strong working current. The engineering design is very beautiful!"
"Uh, brother, I was asking about the power—"
"Listen to me finish. This thing can launch tungsten carbide nails at 12 times the speed of sound, with a muzzle energy of 1.6 megajoules, which is about 100 times that of a Barrett sniper rifle and 7 times that of a real-life Navy 1130 close-in weapon system."
Caoyuan: "Damn———· That's powerful."
Jubian: "That's right, after all, it's quite a bit heavier than the autocannons in their fighter jets, and it can penetrate power armor in one shot. Also,
Apollo's 20mm explosive rounds are also quite something. The ammunition is intelligently programmable, with miniature rockets at the tail. After locking onto a target, it can change its flight path within a certain range, Shooting around cover."
Good! Very good!
Before this, Caoyuan had already been appointed by Lu Yuan as the front-line commander-in-chief for the operation to capture the Moon mine.
Now, with these 12 new power armors and new weapons, the probability of mission success will greatly increase.