“`
He didn’t need to hide in an air-raid shelter; the missiles wouldn’t claim his life.
But for the residents of the Alliance and the Alliance’s factories, it was a different story.
Continue your saga on empire
And after he ascended, he indeed saw missiles with long trails blazing through the clear sky, roaring toward him.
At the same time, many red beams were fired from a great distance.
Some of these red beams originated from Revival City and others from Weixing City.
He couldn’t hear any sound, but Gu Hang could see, through his viewport, that most of the missiles streaking across the clear sky were hit by red beams and exploded in mid-air.
He was somewhat relieved.
These red beams came from the [Reflector Laser Cannon], which is essentially an anti-aircraft weapon. Its most common uses are twofold: placed on the ground for air defense and long-range anti-orbital bombing; and on starships, to blast approaching landing craft, incoming live munition firepower, and counter-collide with energy attacks from enemy ships.
Even if they couldn’t intercept all, they could reduce the power of the enemy’s energy attacks.
Originally, Gu Hang had acquired the technology for the [Reflector]. The Alliance also had sufficient resources and prerequisite technologies to produce them on a large scale.
But earlier on, the Alliance didn’t have a strong demand for [Reflectors]. On one hand, the Alliance didn’t have starships, so there wasn’t a need to produce hundreds of [Reflectors] for starships all the time; on the other hand, the enemies the Alliance had encountered up until then didn’t have any notable air force, so there was little need for air defense firepower.
Most of the produced [Reflectors] were castrated versions, with reduced size, power, and energy consumption, and were placed on Lion Tanks as main or secondary armaments.
Featuring a full suite including radar, interception, servo-skull computational recognition systems, and precision interception firepower, the production numbers for the complete [Reflector] systems were indeed not many.
It was only through the use of Black Boxes, which guaranteed the production of a complete set each time, that some were made; the mass production lines set up by the Alliance produced very few of these full-system suits.
These produced air defense systems were mainly installed in Revival City and Weixing City.
And at this very moment, such deployment played a tremendous role.
In Revival City, there were a total of eleven complete [Reflector] systems; Weixing City had around twenty or more sets.
The continuous firing of beams intercepted most of the missiles in mid-air.
In the end, only one missile actually reached the skies above Revival City.
But it didn’t explode.
With a wave of his hand, Gu Hang used his Spiritual Energy to capture it, crushing it into scrap metal in mid-air.
But his expression remained extremely grave.
Revival City here may have just had a false alarm, but… what about the other places?
Weixing City didn’t have a top-tier Spiritual Energy user like Gu Hang to perform this final line of defense. Although the number of Reflector systems was more than double that of Revival City, could they intercept all the missiles?
The situation in Weixing City was still manageable, at least with its twenty-plus Reflector systems; but what about other places in the Alliance?
The frontlines, where the main forces of the Alliance were assembling and acting, what about them?
But worrying now was useless.
After confirming that no more missiles were coming from the horizon, Gu Hang slowly descended and returned to his office.
Then, relevant intelligence started to pile up in his office like snowflakes.
The first to report were the air defense systems of Revival City and Weixing City.
These systems detected forty-five incoming missiles. Fifteen aimed at Revival City and thirty at Weixing City. Revival City intercepted fourteen, with one unknown (crushed by Gu Hang); Weixing City, on the other hand, intercepted twenty-nine, with one exploding in a factory, destroying a production line for alloy plastic steel, killing seven people and injuring more than thirty.
All the injured had been sent to the hospital, and the damaged factory had already been scheduled for emergency repairs.
The second piece of intelligence came from the troops assembling on the frontline.
“`
At least fifty missiles launched an attack on them.
But the frontline troops had their own air defense firepower.
In the [Fifth Generation ‘Walker’ Series Armored Vehicle] that Gu Hang had previously allocated, although the most produced were the ‘Forwarder’ Armored Transport Vehicle and the ‘Strider’ Infantry Fighting Vehicle, there was also the ‘Defender’ series of anti-aircraft combat vehicles in this series.
The alliance had been continuously producing related equipment, and almost every division was equipped with an anti-air unit or battalion.
These field air defense vehicles were equipped with actual anti-aircraft guns, which were not as accurate as the [Reflector] nor did they have servo skulls for assistive calculations, significantly reducing interception efficiency.
But the number of air defense vehicles supplied to the field army was still substantial.
Out of the fifty missiles, thirty-eight were intercepted; the remaining ones, although they did explode, didn’t hit the areas with the highest concentration of personnel and equipment right away.
The specific casualty report hadn’t come out yet, but the total number was expected not to exceed one hundred and fifty.
By this step, Gu Hang was already feeling pained.
But he knew that the worst had not yet arrived.
Indeed, after waiting a little longer, two more cities in the alliance reported attacks.
Beigu City in Beiqing Valley Province also suffered a missile attack. Ten missiles exploded in Beigu City, causing no less than five hundred casualties, completely destroying a food processing plant and a food warehouse, with the specific material losses yet to be counted.
Additionally, the former Rubbish Town, now Gaota City, also suffered an attack. Fifteen missiles destroyed the municipal government of Gaota City, causing no less than five hundred direct casualties and also destroying a Low Energy Storm collection factory, causing a sympathetic explosion.
The related sympathetic explosion resulted in 80% of the workers in that factory being out of touch, which was about a thousand people in scale.
Looking at all this information coming together, Gu Hang’s face was so dark it seemed it might drip ink.
Blackbird Heavy Industries possessed intercontinental strike capabilities, enabling them to precisely deliver long-range missiles from a distance of one to two ten thousand kilometers, which he hadn’t expected.
Although the power of these missiles did not seem too great, even weaker than the ‘Scalpel’ missile that Gu Hang had seen before, the act itself was extremely heinous.
The fact that one hundred and twenty intercontinental missiles had been launched and the losses had been secondary, the most frightening aspect was that it exposed a vulnerability of the alliance: no countermeasure capability!
The alliance lacked intercontinental strike means!
And due to previous negligence, the construction of the alliance’s air defense system was not up to par.
The casualties in Gaota City and Beigu City totaled two thousand people!
Although they were all civilians, they were an important workforce.
Not to mention that factories and warehouses were destroyed, the loss of materials and means of production would be difficult to calculate in a short time.
Thankfully, Revival City and Weixing City were spared; otherwise, if the forty-five missiles that hit these two cities had all detonated on impact, the results would be unimaginable. The population density and industrial importance in these places were much higher than those in Beigu City and Gaota City!
What made Gu Hang feel even more alarmed was that he still did not know the extent of Blackbird’s intercontinental missile delivery capability.
Could they only deliver these one hundred and twenty missiles at a time? How many intercontinental missiles did they have in reserve? Was this attack a sudden all-out strike, or simply a probing move? Did they have any ‘big shots’ far more powerful than these one hundred and twenty missiles?
All these unknowns were unnerving for him as a ruler.
But although he was distressed, he did not panic in his actions.
He immediately made a call to the Blade Tiger.
“Colonel Yelisia, I want you to carry out a full-force orbital strike on Blackbird City immediately, no holding back!”
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Wishing all readers a Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!